Phillips Square, The Art Association of Montreal

Phillips Square in 1916

Phillips Square, located across the street from The Bay department store in downtown Montreal, has always interested me. Just down the street from Phillips Square was the studio of the Beaver Hall artists, and it was not a long walk from there to the Art Association of Montreal, located on the northeast side of Phillips Square. Eventually, the AAM became the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts / Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, located on Sherbrooke Street West, and it now has several buildings at that location. The AAM building was opened in 1879; the Museum's "new" building, on Sherbrooke Street, was opened in 1912. I consider the MMFA / MBAM one of the great attractions of the city, one of the great bonuses of living in Montreal, both for tourists and for Montrealers. 

    The land that became Phillips Square was donated to the city of Montreal in 1842 by the widow of Thomas Phillips, a wealthy Montreal businessman. At that time this was a residential area as it remained for many years. However, over time, businesses began to move to this area and the residents moved out. Today the square is being made more user friendly by the city, trees are being planted and the whole square is being renovated (if that is the right word). Unfortunately, condos are also being built in the area, huge ugly monstrosities that dominate the skyline. The monument in the center of the square is a statue of King Edward VII, the British monarch from 1901 to 1910; Edward was the son of Queen Victoria and, as Prince of Wales, he opened the Victoria Bridge in 1860. 

    Here are photographs of the Art Association of Montreal, on the northeast corner of the square.

The Art Association of Montreal

Art Association building, Phillips' Square, Montreal, QC, about 1890

Art Association of Montreal exhibition, 1905

The Art Association of Montreal is on the right, on the left is
Morgan's Department Store, now The Bay

Phillips Square in 1907, the Art Association of Montreal is on the left behind the horse and sleigh 

It's -25 C, feels like -32 . . .

Snow clearing (the dump trucks, snowblowers, sidewalk cleaners have already passed) in progress on what looks like a nice winter day, but it's -25 C and feels much colder. We are breaking records for cold weather, not something any of us want. 

View from our front door.

The garden under snow

There's nothing you can do in the garden when it's winter and -25 C (or colder), except stay in-doors, read a book, watch Morse on Vermont Public Television, listen to the radio, cook a meal, make your home cosy, keep the heat at 23 C., wait it out. It's difficult to have any enthusiasm to go outside. The good news is that spring is just two months away. We can do it! We're tough! We're Canadians!

The Brave New World is Here to Stay

Hi Ho, Hi Ho

It's off to work we go,

 A few months ago I heard our former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney say that Canada needs a larger population, he suggested 100 million people as a population projection. When the interviewer expressed surprise at so many people inhabiting our country, most of which average people would find uninhabitable, Mulroney barked back, "Tough luck!" Yes, tough luck to anyone who disagrees with the former Grand PooBah!  

Increasingly, it seems to me, the world's single largest problem is overpopulation. People are everywhere, working, eating, defecating, screwing, drinking, smoking, fighting, arguing, being born, dying, and starting over again; we've become an existential threat to ourselves. Forget about climate change, there are just too many people wanting increasingly limited resources. According to Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World Revisited, overpopulation is the world's greatest crisis. Fewer people = less demand for consumer goods and less destruction of the natural world. 

I recall reading Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It is a typical dystopian setting, it is 2021 and the world has been destroyed by wars and ecological disaster and most of the former inhabitants of Earth have moved to another planet. Meanwhile, there are people still living in our now impoverished and decaying society, in the ruins of apartment buildings, crumbling cities, and other remains of what once was. Think of present-day Detroit. The movie version of the book, Blade-Runner, embellishes Dick's novel, the visual depiction tends to exaggerate the future, it makes it worse than in the novel, but perhaps the movie makes it more realistic to our present-day; think of what we see on the news of some other American cities, encampments of homeless people everywhere, crazy and violent people, drug addicts shooting up on the streets, middle class people carrying concealed weapons for their own protection, and worse. However, there are other characters in Dick's novel, they are androids who have a perfect human appearance but aren't human. Androids are a product of technology and have a furtive and underground existence as they try to survive and blend in with human beings. The protagonist of Dick's book hunts and destroys androids, they fear him, and they will even betray each other for their own survival. In Dick's dystopian vision most of the human population has left the Earth; what is left of Earth is a place of devastation, of poverty, social isolation, and existential ennui. This is the wreck of a world mankind is working on creating.

 

Burying the St. Pierre River

This is the view of the St. Pierre River from Toe Blake Park, looking through or over the chain link fence between the park and Meadowbrook Golf Course. As can be seen, the work of burying the river hasn't been completed. Just a big mess left for the spring. 

The organ grinder outside of Morgan's Department Store

Here is the final memory of going downtown with my Auntie Mable. It is the organ grinder in front of Morgan's Department Store who I remember from one of those Saturday afternoon trips. I am still trying to find the passage in which the organ grinder is mentioned in a poem by Louis Dudek. 

This Morgan's Department Store was also called Colonial House, that would be the original building as shown below, not the newer wing attached to the rear of the store. Morgan's was founded in 1845 and sold to the Hudson's Bay Company in 1960, this flagship location became La Baie in 1972. Morgan's was the first large department store in Canada; it was also the first large Montreal department store to move to Ste. Catherine Street in 1891 and our commercial downtown area grew from that time on. 

The store is bound by Ste. Catherine Street, where the organ grinder stood outside of the store, Aylmer Street on the east, and Union Street on the west. What also interests me is Phillip's Square, across Ste. Catherine Street from the store, and the location of the original Arts Association of Montreal, later the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. 

There used to be a plaque commemorating Jefferson Davis's visit to Montreal, he stayed at the home of John Lovell, and the plaque was on Morgan's exterior wall on Union Street where Lovell's home had been located; Davis stayed at Lovell's home in 1867; the plaque was removed in 2017.

It seems that a twenty story condo and office building will be built on top of the old Morgan's building.

Morgan's Department Store, 1960s; Union Street and Ste. Catherine Street

Pushing his organ outside of Morgan's on Ste. Catherine Street West

The organ grinder in front of Morgan's

I am told he lived in a shed in Chinatown

Cartoon by John Collins

The organ grinder in the background

A Saturday Afternoon Downtown

I wrote a poem about going downtown with my Auntie Mable, the poem was published in A Private Mythology (Ekstasis Editions, 2015). 

Downtown Montreal, around 1955; Morgan's in the background, 
Christ Church Cathedral behind the streetcar on the left

A Saturday Afternoon

 

Outside the main doors

of Morgan’s Department Store

facing Phillip’s Square, an organ grinder

played music that Saturday afternoon downtown

with Aunt Mable. I was a child in the late 1950s

with my aunt, walking beside her, window shopping, 

eating turkey and mashed potato dinner

at Woolworth’s basement lunch counter

then buying pastries upstairs as we left to walk along             

Ste. Catherine Street. You could list the beggars you

saw in Montreal back then, the woman with one

shoe off, the shoe hidden behind her,

and the chauffeur-driven black car

that would pick her up,

or so we heard… or the old woman,

scarf tied under her chin

and the tin can of yellow pencils she sold.

Then, Eaton’s, Simpson’s and Morgan’s

were the big department stores,

now it's boutiques, restaurants, crowded streets,

strip joints and bright lights.

At Eaton's Department Store

Stephen Morrissey at Eaton's Department Store around 1960

Here I am around 1960, at Eaton`s Department Store on Ste. Catherine Street in Montreal with my Auntie Mable not visible but looking on from the side, at a boat show on one of the upper floors of the store. Polaroid photos were a new invention at the time and one of the store employees took my photo in front of a boat, I think anyone who was there could get a free photograph of themselves. Of course, the first thing I did was smudge the photo with my finger since the photo was still wet and I was told to wait to let it dry. In fact, I still have this photograph. I guess the rolled-up papers were brochures from the boat show. What was the boat show? Probably a few boats with Evinrude motors attached to the rear of the boats, nothing like the monster luxury boats that you would find at a boat show today, for instance at the boat shows held at Place Bonaventure.

Many years later my wife and I ate at the famous ninth floor restaurant at this Eaton`s branch. Eaton's went bankrupt in 1999 and many of us got some good deals on clothes; the clothes are worn out and the store is gone. Even in 1999 the big department stores were closing, and with them a part of a way of life and an important institution in Canadian life. 

Saturday afternoon with Auntie Mable

People used to go shopping, to movies, or to restaurants downtown on Friday evenings; they'd go shopping downtown on Saturday afternoons. I remember going downtown with my Auntie Mable (Morrissey) on Saturday afternoons, but memory has a life of its own so perhaps it was only one time or perhaps it was a few times. This was probably around 1960. 

There are several memories from those times. One is shopping at the Woolworth's store located on the corner of McGill College Avenue and Ste. Catherine Street West. This building was demolished years ago and it is now the location of the Montreal Trust building which includes a shopping mall. I remember eating a turkey dinner at Woolworth's and having two chocolate milk shakes on one of those occasions. I think the lunch counter was in the basement but perhaps it was on the main floor; as we left the store I remember Auntie Mable buying lemon squares in a white box tied with string when we left to return home. 

Because of these memories I have collected photographs of that Woolworth's location; the better to remember it. 

Woolworth's is the white building, centre of photo; view of McGill College Avenue
from Place Ville Marie

Interior of Woolworth's, late 1940s; not sure if this photo is of the Woolworth's we visited

Crowded Ste. Catherine Street in early 1960s, Woolworth's on right

Woolworth's on right; these people are crossing McGill College Avenue and walking along
Ste. Catherine Street, the main shopping area of Montreal

The lunch counter at Woolworth's; again, not sure if this is in Montreal where the lunch counter
was possibly located in the basement of the store

Looking east on Ste. Catherine Street; Woolworth's on the left; late 1950s