Prefontaine and Ste. Catherine 1960. The car crashed into the pole because - quite incredibly - the street was widened without the poles being moved onto the new sidewalk. This would apparently happen occasionaly. Mayor Fournier blamed the Montreal Electrical Services Commission, calling the group useless. The MESC is still around today and has 115 employees. It was launched in 1910.
"Oh dear!" springs to mind!!
ReplyDeleteIn photo number 1 that's a 1957 Lincoln Premier with its hood dented in to the left of the likewise hood-smashed, British
ReplyDeletemid-fifties Austin convertible. What a place to put a utility pole!
Photo 2 shows a Morris coming up behind the smashed Austin with a Cadbury's truck driving away from the camera.
Although one may be tempted to believe this is Decarie and Queen Mary, none of the buildings match up with 1960 and neither is it Queen Mary and Cote des Neiges.
The fence on the left in photo 2 may or may not be there today, but if it is it should be the major clue. The gabled building behind the smashed car doesn't ring a bell with me--yet.
Looks like a park in the right background, and in photo 2 the street seems to curve off to the left since the building in the distance behind the parked truck is at an angle.
Certainly the actual photo print would reveal the name on the sign on the building behind the smashed Austin.
This must be a north-south street, the photographer facing north. Considering the traffic, perhaps Park Avenue.
I think the casualty was a Hillman Minx and not an Austin.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hillman_Minx_Mark_VIII_Cabriolet_1955.jpg
Could very well be a Hillman. The grill would have identified it conclusively, but it is invisible.
ReplyDeleteSo many British cars here back in the 50s: Vauxhall, Rover, Morris, Alvis, etc. but nowhere to be seen today. Our winters must have savaged them.
Which way is the camera facing?
The Electrical Services Commission today builds and manages the underground network of telecommunications conduits, also used by Hydro-Quebec. You can see them digging and repairing cables.
ReplyDeleteYes, thanks, I had a long chat with an official there this afternoon. I`ll post something about that forthwith.
ReplyDeleteThat is totally wacked. Common sense is clearly not intrinsic to the bygone past as is usually claimed by those bemoaning current thinking. In the West Island along Lakeshore road, I remember as a kid in the 70's & 1980's there were telephone poles right on the road next to the sidewalk. Mostly in Dorval & Pointe-Claire right beside some 200-300 year old stone homes that were reportedly used by the Hudson Bay during the fur trade in 1600-1700s - so said a neighbour doing research on history of the West Island at the time. The homes were themselves jutting into the sidewalk ending inches from the street on sharp curves. As one of those people who eschewed roller skates and later roller blades, and preferred the manly pursuit of riding European racing bicyles made by cranky old Italian men with brazing torches, cycling/training rides on Lakeshore were downright scary with traffic inches beside you and a pole coming up fast. Many a drunk driving accident happened along Lakeshore back in the day - one killed 3 or 4 teens one night hitting one of those poles around 1984 - thanks to the Pioneer (later called Clydes) or that other nightclub with the pool, the Edgepoint I think it was; they all served alcohol to under aged teens. Though I certainly have no first hand proof of this of course.
ReplyDeleteRobert
This could be construed as heresy, but, do the two older pictures of the Can Car buses and the auto kissing the pole correspond in detail to the modern colour views at Ste. Catherine and Prefontaine?
ReplyDeleteMight not be the same location at all???
Does the avenue with the pole seem wider than in the younger images?
Getting old does play trick with the eyes, tho'.
Montreal drivers have always seemed to do creative things with speeding autos.
Two student Firemen missed Pont Viau by inches returning from the North a while back and rested on the bottom of the Back River for several days before being found.
Another missed the CPR Cavendish overpass at high speed, heading North, and contacted the concrete to the right at high speed.
An eager speeder put a car to flight rear Rockland, cleared another road and hit hard at the entrance to the Laurentian Autoroute.
Tragic, but, Awesome in result.
In 1987 I was hit head on in my lane by a 19-year-old with a new licence, he at 54 miles per hour, shoving me back 100-plus feet, NOT in Montreal, and lost enthusiasm for motoring thereafter.
We both walked away, shaken, but whole.
Thank You.
BTW, I cannot guarantee that the picture was taken at Prefontaine and Ste. Catherine but another photocopy I had in my research referred to such a pole at Dezery and Ste. Catherine (just a few feet away from Prefontaine) and I rooted around google street view until I found something that seemed correct.
ReplyDeleteHow many remember in decades past how Mayor Drapeau and possibly his predecessors indulged in street widenings in order to "improve" traffic flow and to permit more curbside parking space?
ReplyDeleteIndeed, Sherbrooke and many of the north-south downtown streets have been widened from their original layout. A quick check of vintage street photos makes this all too
clear.
I believe that there is a still a city bylaw on the books allowing the city to expropriate six feet back from an existing sidewalk, which presumably would still come into effect regardless if that same sidewalk had ALREADY been moved back decades earlier. Surely there must be a limit?
Who remembers a few elections back when former provincial government minister Jerome Choquette ran on a mayoralty platform which included more street widenings? Thankfully that bozo never reached City Hall.
Ironic, isn't it that today even some major streets are being narrowed again; their sidewalks widened, trees planted, and corners "flared". Must be some European model we're copying, no doubt.
Regarding that photo: most likely the reason those poles remained in the road for so long was due to the traditional lack of scheduling coordination among the various utilities, hydro, gas, water, sewer, telephone, etc.
Remember when a few years back St. Lawrence was dug up AGAIN by Gaz Met following year-long excavations to replace water mains and sewers? Remember the outrage? Ill-informed decisions, rivalries, and just plain stupidity has surely messed up the business flow of countless commercial establishments and inconvenienced the lives of residents unfortunate enough to live on such streets.
One may even suspect that some strategically-located businesses were deliberately targeted in order to chase them away, thus making room for the relatives
and cronies of certain bigshots?
The question has often been asked: why can't they just dig ONE big hole, have each service do their thing one after the other, and then fill it all back in? That would do the trick--at least until the next shoddily-built sewer pipe installed by a mafia-controlled contractor bursts and floods the neighbourhood; the kickback firmly tucked away under some politician's
mattress! :-(
Regarding the digging of the main numerous times (and the same goes for Parc Ave. north of Mont-Royal.), reportedly the companies were not able to coordinate their schedules and work projects do due it all at once. But since as the Charboneau Commission is revealing - it probably benefited peoples pockets in City Hall etc. The same stretch of Atwater below Ste. Catherine gets dug up/repaved every other year in the same spot...a bit odd.
ReplyDelete