On Avonmore, 1948 - 1949

Here's my brother around 1948 - 1949.



Here's my brother, before I was born, in the Avonmore apartment, our parents' first home after they married in 1940. This is around 1948 - 1949; it's Christmas and the cards are on the book shelf in front of the living room window. I think those chintz drapes were recycled to our home on Oxford Avenue. Entertainment back then was the radio and reading--no TV, no internet--I think I still have some of the books that are on the shelves beside and under the radio, or I've given them to my son.

Here is what Avonmore looks like today. Photo taken around 2004. One day my mother was followed home by a strange man; she phoned her father who was a fireman for the City of Montreal, and he sent around a police officer to check out the problem. Her parents were very protective of their daughter. Another time, she received a phone call from a neighbour, someone had been killed by a streetcar that ran on the far left (between two streets) of the above photo. Maybe it was a suicide. Streetcar service in Montreal ended in 1959, I remember the tracks on Decarie Blvd. being removed from the road, but you can still see some tracks embedded in asphalt, for instance the corner of Sherbrooke and Elmhurst; as well, where the tracks ran perpendicular to Avonmore, behind someone's fence, you can find the old tracks, maybe ten feet are left.

Here is what Avonmore looked like in 1940, just a single street then, now it's a crescent and the front door of the apartment opens directly onto the street. My parents lived here from 1940 to 1952 or 1953, after I was born. Back then a lot of the old neighbourhood was still country.