Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Goose Village 1964






Photos courtesy of David McCall who, upon hearing that the city would be demolishing this area in the spring of 1964, went down and shot these photos from a nearby tower that a friend of his had recently built. McCall took them with an idea of eventually making a two panaromic photos of them. Reader Denis H. kindly did just that for the top photo. Many thanks!

21 comments:

  1. DenisH9:43 am

    Gave it a shot, but the pictures were certainly not taken with a tripod, so the perspective is very different from one image to the next. This makes it very difficult to have a panorama that looks good without losing a lot of information. I emailed you a sample panorama. I'll keep trying. Cheers for the pictures though!

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  2. M P and I.10:13 am

    Well, all that is missing in the photos is the M&SC turning South off of Mill onto ( old ) Riverside to then wend it's way thru the Bituminous desert of the coal yards on it's way the the Victoria Bridge, St. Lambert and the Counties.

    Back in the Fifties my Father and I had walked East on Mill after crossing Black's Bridge coming from watching canallers lock thru and the bridge swing to and fro to permit their passages.

    There was an interesting latching mechanism above the M&SC track that opened and closed to connect the trolley wire between the shore and the bridge.

    Back then there used to be a public outhouse that hung precipitously on the East side just North of Mill over the spillway from the Lachine Canal to the Bickerdike Basin.

    Not poolitically correct?

    Back then most ships, tugs and liners voided directly into the waters into which they were sailing.

    So did much of the sewage from the City itself.

    The same applied to passenger trains from where you could watch the tie ends speed past below as you stepped on the pedal.

    Anyway, I had to 'go' and my Father directed me into this claustrophobic wooden cubicle with diamond-shaped windows which projected well out over the spillway.

    It was dark, and scary within with the door shut.

    The experience got worse when I looked down thru the hole in the seat to view the cataract churning, boiling and hissing just below as it tumbled out of the Lachine Canal.

    I could not go, and it hurt.

    Finally my Dad pushed me around the corner into some grass and it became okay.

    We then walked out to Bridge, past the fire station and then the packing plant with it's tragic sounds and terrible smells and took the Wellington streetcar down under the Canal, one of the purposes of walking that way.

    At that time there was still a green-painted wooden bridge over Bridge St. to move cattle from the freight yards to the packing plant.

    Yes, the photos might be deemed ugly and ripe for redevelopment, but the area then had life and interesting things to see.

    People, sounds of children, freighters and salt water liners, whistles trains, Interurbans, commerce, trucks, bustle.

    The big CNR lift bridge to Central Station had two lift spans and the one required to open for either an up bound or down bound canaller would be the one that would raise, and it's attendant, the CPR swing bridge would revolve.

    The CNR bridge towers were cut down in 1967.

    Much to see and marvel at.

    Look at the area, now, even more ugly! Roofed in in places by a sinuous eyesore.

    Barren, cold and sterile with the roar of traffic a constant din, the harbour and the turning basin, recently so tragic, all but forgotten.

    The harbour was, in ways, a better place when it was still a working entity and summed up Old Montreal.

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  3. Wonderful stories, as always MP&I. Much thanks for posting them.

    Reminds me of riding the Montreal/Rigaud commuter line towards home from school in the mid '70s. The cars had a toilet each, equipped with a footpedal and the obligatory sign reminding one not to flush when the train was "in station". I spent way too much time in those things avoiding the ticket taker for the sake of a little extra spending money.

    Goose Village was before my time, but I remember the cadaverous ruin of the Autostade well. I'd take the 11 from The Bay down to my dad's office at the Port headquarters at Cite-du-Havre almost every afternoon. I'd explore the half-falling down stadium and the other Expo leftovers on my own whenever I had an hour to spare.

    Sometimes we'd detour through the port to inspect some project or other of my dad's before getting on the Bonaventure. Hungry or not, I don't remember ever minding the delay. His enthusiasm for the place was that infectious.

    What I remember of Old Montreal in those days is three hot dog joints and not much else. At the bottom of McGill was an entrance to the Port that gave access to a huge parking lot in front of Grain Elevator #5 (where the first canal locks are now).

    In the winters I remember going by the STOLport beside the Bonaventure on the way home. I can't remember whether the planes were flying or not in those days, but the sight of methane being burned off of pipes stuck in the dump there in the dark of night is a sight I'll never forget.

    Here's hoping more fine walks await us all in the afterlife.

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  4. All I ever knew of Goose Village is the autoroute and the Autostade, for I was born while it was being razed.

    But, nevertheless, the place was magic for me for two reasons.

    First of all, my grandfather used to run the “De Kuyper” distillery until he sold it in the mid 1960’s to a larger concern. My grandfather used to travel from Vaudreuil-Station (this was before Dorion) to Bonaventure station from where he always walked to Goose Village. During the summer, people would take two hours for lunch, so he could take the train back home for lunch.

    This was back in the time when you could write a letter in the morning to invite a friend for supper, and get back an acknowledgement — before supper.

    Then there is the more personal reason. Place d’Accueil, that is.

    Every day, my father drove us to the huge parking lot south/west of the Victoria bridge, then we would board shuttle buses — by the rear door!!! — to Place d’Accueil. The sight of the sole remaining part of Place d’Accueil, a rusting balustrade along the bike path and Riverside street still stirs warm memories (I often had dreams of Expo for more than 30 years afterwards). From there, we boarded the Expo-Express on a voyage of discovery of the wondrous sights of Expo’67.

    The sight of the photos you posted did not bring back warm memories, but it’s funny that even after it’s utter destruction by a megalomaniac dictator, a place can still harbour fond feelings despite being a wasted, ugly, dour no man’s land.

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  5. M P and I.6:07 pm

    As Mr. EMDX said, Expo 67 was one of the greatest things to come to Montreal. An extravaganza of the first magnitude.

    In the huge parking lots at Expo there were large signs high up on the lighting poles with numbers AND the silhouette of various animals such as an elephant so motorists could remember where they parked their car.

    The children loved the animal silhouettes and made looking for their car into a game.

    During Expo the MTC went on strike, crippling the City shuttle bus service from downtown. CNR came to the rescue by operating shuttle trains from Central Station to the old-by-then-almost-abandoned Bridge St. station.

    These trains, ( I think there were two in circulation at peak times ) consisted of a freight RS10/18 and three or four coaches and backed into Central from Bridge.

    I was at work and was not able to ride one, the strike lasting only a few days.

    Some of the MTC shuttle buses to Expo operated direct from the then-almost-new Metro at Peel Station.

    CNR Bridge Station is where steam locomotives were exchanged to/from electric locomotives on passenger trains to/from Central Station that crossed the Victoria Bridge.

    At Bridge Station there was/still is a subterranean passage that went down steps from Bridge St. under the tracks and exited up stairs to the platforms between the tracks so passengers could get to/from Bridge Station and Goose Village.

    The far end of the passage allowed access to the Point St. Charles Shops for employees who may have lived in Goose Village.

    The concrete entrance to the passageway, now closed off, is still visible on Google at the North end of the metal fence surrounding the large memorial rock in the middle of Bridge St. at the Montreal end of the Victoria Bridge.

    The date above is 1942. The coverings over the stairs up to the platforms can also be seen above.

    The last time I was thru the passage beneath the tracks in 1968 or so there were still signs on the wall showing 'This way to Expo' with the circular Expo 'gear' symbol.

    Until the M&SC came off the downstream side of the Victoria Bridge in 1955, the upstream roadway was bidirectional and paved with asphalt. Tense driving in a snow storm with ice and bumpy. Narrow!

    On the outside of the M&SC on the downstream side was a wooden walkway shore-to-shore for pedestrians and in case an Interurban derailed or lost power.

    That part of Montreal might not have been pretty in the Fifties, but, it was functional and provided jobs for those living nearby.

    As the M&SC cars curved onto the North end of the bridge they crossed a CNR spur into a scrap yard on the downstream side, a pleasant sight once the Northbound road took over that side of the bridge.

    Thoughts in the Fifties were to put wire shore to shore and run the M&SC on the railway tracks to the Montreal end, but, never happened, thus a valuable 'light rail' transportation link right to downtown at Mc Gill and de la Commune was lost.

    At that time there would have been a conflict of voltages between the M&SC at 600 Volts and the CNR electrics at c. 2400 Volts.

    The M&SC was electrified right to Granby until 1951, then cut back to Marieville until abandonment in 1956. Use Google for more info.

    Of course, by 1955 the M&SC was passe with ancient equipment, trolley wire and light rail.

    Being passe has killed a lot of sensible ideas.

    The Autobus and the automobile were ascendant.

    Look at the mess, now.

    Mais, c'est la vie!

    Thank You.

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  6. Anonymous6:43 pm

    Yes - the days when the word "Flour" wasn't a forbidden word! :-)

    By the way - when was the "Ogilvie" on the sign changed to "Five Roses"?

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  7. There were plans to modernize the M&SC by purchasing PCC cars from Los-Angeles, but the St-Lawrence Seaway modification of the Victoria bridge nixed them, and no doubt also the Métro to Longueuil.

    CN tracks were also electrified to Turcot; if you look carefully, you can find remnants of that electrification in St-Henri, like this concrete catenary pole base, right by the Notre-Dame underpass. (Wires were pulled down in the 1960’s, after the demise of steam engines, as diesels were deemed “clean enough” to go to Central Station — which, in turn, would reek of diesel. Because my first jobs were near the station, and after work, I often hung around the station, kicking shit with railroad employees, I came to love the disgusting smell of diesel exhaust…)

    The last time I went through the Bridge Street station underpass was around 1973 where I had the silly idea of walking from Old Montréal back to NDG along with a friend. We figured it would be a shortcut, but when we saw the busy shops on the other end, we figured that we’d be given a lot of shit, so we walked up Bridge street, then St-Patrick, Des Seigneurs and St-Antoine all the way to Glen Road… In the 1970’s, it was something for two NDG boys to whip up the courage needed to walk through Goose Village, Pointe-St-Charles, the Little Burdgundy and St-Henri…

    (Now, 40 years later, I live in St-Henri, and I cannot imagine a nicer place in town, save perhaps for Summit Circle, or Highland Avenue…)

    For sure, Expo-67 was the most wonderful thing a 5 year old kid could ever see; that’s where I learned to absolutely love the horrid squealing noise train wheels do on curves, because the Expo-Express had lots of curves and I absolutely adored to ride it. It was so much better than the Métro where you only can watch the tunnel wall concrete…

    For me, Goose Village is inexorably linked to Expo-67 and it will take more than Costco to remove those memories from me.

    Then they dug out the Lachine Canal locks near Windmill point basin, and when it was finally open to the public, it was with great trepidation that I went exploring; when I walked on the sloping cobble-stone earthfills around the locks, for the first time of my life, I had the eerie impression of having been there before, in a previous life.

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  8. Interesting comments! I don't know if MP&I (Montreal Park and Island?) said this before but regarding that plan to bring the M&SC to Central Station, they did go as far as to build bridge piers for it at the Lachine Canal liftbridge (Wellington signal tower). The piers were still there, in pristine condition, last time I went by on the bike path. Presumably a separate lift bridge would have been built for the interurbans next to the heavy mainline one.

    I don't think it's because of my increasing age but there's something crushingly dull and monotonous about this post-industrial age: we're all electronic and virtual now. Cities around the world all have identical skylines, with almost mass-produced skyscrapers from corporate architectural firms. All the world's mayors beetle off to their mayor conventions and scuttle back to install identical pedestrian malls or urban highways. Result: all cities look and feel the same.

    In the industrial age a photo of streetcars told you immediately what city it was: the cars had to be designed for the local geography and climate. Montreal's cars were short, to snake around our narrow streets while Toronto had its block-long long Peter Witts. (Montreal had a few articulated cars but they still looked like Montreal cars).

    When I was little in the 50s I would wake up to interesting smells from LaSalle Coke if the wind was from the southeast. Nor’easters brought a different stink from the refineries. Who misses the air pollution but how many kids today know the sound of the old steam whistles that timed the factory shifts? From my bed I'd hear the Northern Electric plant below the canal, or that of the CPR Glen shops, depending on wind direction. And the people across the lane had blocks of ice and coal delivered. Milk was still delivered by horses because of the old gent who ran the Guaranteed Dairy.

    Contemporary stories proved how miserable life must have been growing up poor in Goose Village but the vitality and “localness” of those teeming neighbourhoods doesn’t really exist anymore. If they hadn’t been demolished the gentrified streets would be deserted since the yuppie residents would be inside on their computers, just as everywhere else. Bill Gates, what hast thou wrought?

    Now where did I put my teeth?

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  9. M P & I.2:00 am

    Here is an image looking to the south of a Montreal and Southern Counties car diagonalling across the coal yards to the southeast of Goose Village, the car heading for the north end of the Victoria Bridge.

    http://donsdepot.donrossgroup.net/dr0101/bv116.jpg

    The M&SC travelled west on Mill, turned left/south onto Riverside, then left the street proper near Britannia and travelled on it's own right of way at a angle towards Victoria Bridge.

    Also entering the area was a CNR freight spur which handled coal from the coal yards on the south side of Bickerdyke Basin, the coal arriving by ship and being unloaded by cranes onto the adjacent wharf as shown in the Goose Village photos from 1964.

    This CNR spur crossed the M&SC at grade and to protect against collisons between the freight trains and the Interurban cars an Interlocking was installed with a control tower overlooking the diamond crossing.

    Semaphore signals provided visual indication to the trains and the trolleys as to who had the right of way at the diamond crossing.

    In the photo, the trolley has just passed over the diamond crossing headed south, the Semaphores for the northward cars are visible to the left of the photo.

    The CNR coal spur is in the bottom left corner of the photo.

    The tower is further to the left, out-of-frame.

    The M&SC had a siding between the tower and the bridge, it, and it's trolley wire are on the far side of the track in the photo.

    Present-day Riverside is built over the spillway from the Lachine Canal to the west end of Bickerdyke Basin and passes to the east of the old pumphouse.

    Old Riverside was to the west of the open cut of the spillway, and it and the M&SC both passed to the west of the old pumphouse as shown in the photos from 1964.


    Here is a map from Coolopolis showing the PROJECTED route of the M&SC back in 1906.

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BkBpOsTSTnw/ShozK5KMifI/AAAAAAAACMA/Hz1ViIKrlaU/s400/MtlSouCounties06.jpg

    At one time there were at least 10 railway crossings on Bridge St. between the Victoria Bridge and Wellington.

    Yes, in many ways the industrial past was far more interesting than what is out there, now.

    Thank You.

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  10. This is a really good read for me. Must agree that you are one of the coolest bloggers I ever saw. Thanks for posting this informative article.

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  11. Tragic about Victoriatown getting wiped out. Part of it being presently a parking lot for a casino is too ironic. It was Drapeau's opposition to vice which enabled him to get elected in the first place and casino's were not even legal at the time of Victoriatown's destruction. Worse, the very idea of destroying this community with the intent to prevent American tourists viewing a slum (actually the Point proper was in worse shape at the time) was ammunition for the FLQ as they actually mention Drapeau's eagerness to hide slums from tourists on their way to Expo '67. Drapeau was in reality a dictator.

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  12. On Bridge Street, near the stone, is a tunnel under the tracks, now closed. Any information on this ?

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  13. This was a tunnel allowing workers using commuter trains to cross under the tracks safely. Many people worked in factories around the Lachine Canal, and some, like Northern Electric, were involved in war production. (My mum was from the village and worked there.)

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  14. Hello, My name is Marisa Portolese, I am an artist and university professor working on an extensive project about the Goose Village, is there a way I can speak with you David. I love these photographs so much. You can see my work at www.goosevillage.ca
    And you can contact me at m.portolese@videotron.ca thank you so much for your time.

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    Replies
    1. David? Did he write something particularly insightful above? I highly doubt he'll see your comment. If you're looking for past residents of Goose Village you might try John Coyveduck on FB. We just chatted about it this week.

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    2. Ah, you're referring to David McCall. His email is bigdave@access.com I haven't seen him for several years so I hope he's still in good shape. I don't think he has any particular knowledge of Goose Village tho, he just went and shot photos there. I have a 30 page Masters Degree paper I wrote on the area in the late 1980s.

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    3. Thank you for responding. I will reach out to both David and John. You wrote a 30 page thesis paper? Are you Kristian Gravenor?

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    4. Yes. I had that thesis online for a while but the link no longer works. I don't know if it's on my hard drive or what at this point. If you give me an email address I could maybe get it to you. The paper was a comparison in the citizen resistance to demolition to Goose Village (nil) and then a few years later to Milton Park (fairly massive.).

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    5. I read it and congratulations on such amazing work. Thank you for writing about the village. I tried to reach Dave, but the email bounced back. However, I did manage to get in touch with John. Thank you! My email is m.portolese@videotron.ca if you want to send me the thesis. I would love to read it again.

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    6. Not sure that my thesis would help out in any big way. I was unable to detect any resistance to the demolition plan and yet there was a lot of desire to return to the area, as attested to in a special meeting held decades later to explore the possibility of rebuilding there with former residents returning. There's an article about that somewhere in the Gazette or Star which you could probably find on newspapers.com Loads of other stories about the area in those papers as well.

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  15. There is a man I knew, father of a friend in the Point in the '70's Kevin Stevens, his name is Albert Stevens. He was obsessed with two things, trains and Goosevillage. He met his future wife Anna who was an immigrant from Italy in the 'village'. Kind of like a mini Bridges of Madison County kinda deal except he wasn t a photographer---just a guy that made her happy. I lost contact with them after he moved to live in Greenfield park--across the river directly but somehow the Victoria bridge connected two very different worlds. If you can find Albert--- you can get a book out of him EASILY. He knows or knew every tiny detail about that lost place.

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