For quite some time in the 40s and 50s the John Young Monument statue at the Old Port was known for its Neptune with the amputated left leg.
The statue was done in 1895 and placed in Place Royale in 1908. It was moved to Common St. in 1997 so it remains prominent but with its leg fixed.
Legend had it that the leg went missing after being pulled off by a brawl participant to be used as a weapon. Another version has it that a truck drove into after it swerved out of the way to avoid bales of clothing that fell on the road.
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| Delaney in the Griff in the '40s and more recently |
The person who broke the leg off was - however - Denis Delaney, who said that it was a secret he had for quite some time.Delaney, from Griffintown, was playing with his friends around the thing one day until accidental contact pulled the leg right off.
He carried the metal piece around not knowing exactly what to do with it and eventually sold it to a scrap metal guy for a small sum and nothing was heard of it again.
The city placed a wooden replacement on it in 1942 but that broke off in 1948
Another published account, however, gives a different timeline that says that the leg was lost in 1932 and replaced by wood the same year and in 1940 English seamen were overheard in the Joe Beef tavern concocting a plot to unscrew and steal it and it thereafter had one leg.
Money was finally earmarked to fix it in 1957 but the actual repair of the half ton statue was only done in October 1962 by sculptor Joseph Guardo.
Delaney, a great source for local history of the Griff, says that another hobby for the kids in the Griff when he was growing up in the early 1940s was to jump off the pier into the water near the entrance to the Lachine Canal. Alas occasionally a ship would shift and the kid would drown as the gap that would have allowed him to come back up had disappeared.
The city should place a stylized, wrought-iron fence around the John Young Monument; high enough to prevent potential damage by errant vehicles, but low enough to allow unobstructed viewing, such as this:
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Furthermore, the engraved lettering should be painted black so that it can be read more easily.
There is no excuse to allow our historic places to become weather-beaten and defaced.
Italian-born sculptor Joseph Guardo (1901-1978) had his studio at 963 Rachel Street East, where the galerie Graff is today, near La Fontaine Park. There's lots of stuff by him at St. Joseph's Oratory, the Bon Secours Chapel in Old Montreal, the Botanical Gardens, etc., etc. He also did murals, one of the most important of which was destroyed a couple of years ago. For that story, see http://histoireplateau.org/architecture/lieuxdeculte/nouvelleStLouisdefrance/pdf/fresquestLouisdeFrance.pdf. Sorry, couldn't figure out the embedding stuff.
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