Easter decorations!

A family on Chester Avenue and Montclair Avenue make the neighbourhood more friendly and attractive by decorating their home each holiday season. Last Christmas a crowd of school children, on their way home from school, walked among the Christmas decorations; they were having a great time! Now it's Easter, a time of rebirth, renewal, and revisioning life.

Top photographs taken on 08 March 2024.

About 20 children from a local daycare had a great time today at this Easter display (on 27 March 2024). after they left I took the following photos:   

    

Wild asters

These New England asters are growing near the senior campus of Willingdon School on Coronation Avenue near here; you see them everywhere, they're like weeds. 

Where Trenholme Park meets de Maisonneuve

De Maisonneuve Blvd West, between Girouard Avenue and West Broadway Avenue, used to be called Western; up to the early-1950s it was a dirt road. It was country-like back then and people would go for walks along Western. From 1950 to 1954 we lived at 2226 Girouard with my grandmother and Auntie Mable, and my grandmother's sister, my Great Aunt Essie. That's seven people in a fairly large flat, but it's still a lot of people. My mother's parents lived at 2217 Hampton Avenue which is a short walk along Western from Girouard. Today, de Maisonneuve is a through street, you take it to avoid traffic on Sherbrooke West; only the stop signs slow people down. There is a bike path and the train tracks running beside de Maisonneuve are used by commuter trains going from downtown Montreal out to the West Island and beyond. The CPR long ago gave up passenger service to other cities on these tracks. 

    Here are some photographs, taken yesterday morning, of de Maisonneuve Blvd at the bottom of Trenholme Park. Trenholme was mayor of NDG when it was a separate municipality from Montreal, now it is part of the NDG-CDN Borough which, by the way, has a larger population than the province of Prince Edward Island but none of the advantages of being a province. k 

    BTW, the streets on either side of Trenholme Park are Park Row East and Park Row West; Sherbrooke Street West on the north and Blvd de Maisonneuve on the south.

Looking south to de Maisonneuve Blvd

Looking north to Sherbrooke Street West

Some of these maple trees must be seventy to eighty years or older

de Maisonneuve Blvd West

The modern 1960s building above is a part of the park; there used to be a skating rink below the building which is where I lost teeth playing hockey...

A walk in NDG (seven)

A walk in NDG (six)

In these "walks" in NDG, I have wanted to show some of the expressions of spirituality in this neighbourhood. I've noted before that Quebec is the most secular and probably anti-religious place in North America, but expressions of Spirit are still present. Spirituality is a part of the human psyche and, basically, you can try to repress it, you can make it unpopular and not politically correct to say you pray or you believe in God, but Spirit, God, and prayer are a part of the psyche, a part of human consciousness, and they cannot be denied or repressed for long. As an example of this, consider the emergence of the orthodox church in present-day Russia. Even after seventy years of official atheism people needed religion, not the substitute of dialectical materialism and Communism . . . In this photograph, someone has placed a cross over a side door, beneath a pizza parlour, just off Fielding near Walkely Avenue in Notre Dame de Grace, Montreal.

Note: as of 04 July 2023 I am not as optimistic as I was when I wrote this. Quebec was never secular until around 1960 with the Quiet Revolution, before this it was in the grip of the Roman Catholic Church; today, this very claim to secularism is being as an excuse to deny religious groups their freedom to express their religion, as per Bill 21 and the restriction of wearing religious garb when employed by the massive civil service here. 

A walk in NDG (five)

Here we are on the Loyola Campus of Concordia University, a statue of Mary near the Psychology Department.

A walk in NDG (four)

This statue of Jesus is behind Souvlaki George in NDG.

A walk in NDG (three)

Here is the labyrinth outside Rosedale United Church in NDG.

A walk in NDG (two)

Outside the Loyola Chapel at Concordia University, this rowan tree is full of berries; after the first snowfall, I was surprised that most of the berries had fallen. November 16, 2010.

A walk in NDG (one)

Here we are, walking on a winter day in Notre Dame de Grace. Quebec may be the most secular place in North America, but there are still many examples of religious symbolism. The presence of the numinous in everyday life helps us connect with the divine. I have tried to show evidence of this, of manifestations of spirit in everyday life, among everyday people, in these "walks in NDG." Society can try to repress spirit, make those who adhere in spirit look ignorant and old-fashioned, but spirit surfaces in its important psychic role in our lives, spirit has an archetypal role in life that cannot be repressed for long before it emerges in some new and relevant form. This street is a few blocks from where I live. It is January 2011.

Holy Wells, Montreal (late August, 2010)

Last summer, I wrote here about holy wells in Ireland and in Montreal. Here is the effort of the City of Montreal to deal with a natural occurring well in Loyola Park, in western N.D.G. The bottom photograph shows the site of the well, it's on the far left towards the top. Yearly run-off from the well, or underground stream, has caused the asphalt to lift on the footpath to Fielding Avenue (not shown, but visible in a Google street view of "Fielding and Doherty, Montreal"). This neighbourhood, Notre Dame de Grace, has many underground streams, as do other areas of Montreal. It's not so long ago that this was country...

Update on 10 September 2018: The St-Pierre River, which has been covered with asphalt and buildings, runs under different parts of NDG; it originates in Old Montreal and ends at the Meadowbrook Golf Course in Cote St-Luc. Wouldn't it be great if we could see parts of this river restored aboveground? Re. this experiment in Loyola Park, it failed because some people were afraid it would cause disease as they believed mosquitoes would breed in the water; however, it also dried up and I suspect the amount of water in this experimental area was a lot less than originally estimated... SM

A walk in N.D.G., Summer 2008

A walk in our neighbourhood, Notre Dame de Grace, is always interesting and fun. Here, beside the apartment where Artie Gold used to live, is a painted billboard from the 1920s-1930s, pristine and clear after being protected and hidden for many decades by another building that was destroyed by fire a few years ago. The debris has now been removed from where the old building used to stand. I see others have posted photographs online of this same painted billboard. 

Montreal isn't Ville Marie--the City of Mary--for nothing. Here, a few blocks east of the Turret cigarette advertisement, is a statue of Mary (to the left of the huge statue of Jesus), in someone's back yard. 

A few hundred feet east from the statues of Jesus and Mary, on Monkland Avenue, is the former home of poet Irving Layton; it has been renovated by the new owners. I remember visiting Layton here, with CZ and Noni Howard, in his living room. Sometimes, when I would walk or drive by Layton's place, I'd look at his home and see him sitting at his dining room table writing poems, smoking his pipe.

On the Loyola Campus of Concordia University, near where Irving Layton used to live, is this statue of Mary, with a water fall and water circulating around the statue.

Next, we walk down Elmhurst Avenue from Sherbrooke, cross the railway tracks, and then walk along St. Jacques by the old Griffith-McConnell nursing home; the building has fallen in disrepair and neglect since they moved to their new location in Cote St. Luc. The old place is still standing, but since these photographs were taken, in 2008, construction has begun behind the building and I suspect it will be demolished.

Poetry, spirituality, lilacs blooming in spring, lanes that are like the country, history and people, they all make N.D.G. one of the nicest neighbourhoods in Montreal.




On the way home we stop by Rosedale-Queen Mary Road United Church, at Terrebonne and Rosedale, where they have constructed a labyrinth outside of the adjoining community centre. I gave a reading here once, all very nice people. The labyrinth is open to the public and has an amazing affect when walking on it. You are almost immediately plunged into profound questioning on the meaning of mortality. I never expected this but it certainly had this affect on me. As you walk the labyrinth, you are removed from the everyday, you find yourself in the spiritual.

There is a lot more to see than this on our walk in N.D.G.; this is just a part of the less trendy western part of N.D.G. For instance, there is a miniature Chinese garden directly across the street from the labyrinth; this is a wonderful creation someone has lovingly made and maintained in their front garden, it is a city and landscape all in miniature, with Oriental statues, running water in a little river, and tiny houses.