St. Matthew`s Anglican Church

Here are photographs of St. Matthew's Anglican Church that I attended as a child. (Located on Macdonald Avenue, just off Cote St. Luc Road in Montreal.) Everyone seems to have a complaint about something these days, especially religion,  but I have no complaints about St. Matthew's or about the Anglican Church of Canada; I was always treated with kindness and respect. Reverend Canon Stanley Andrews officiated at my father's funeral when I was a child and he gave my mother good advice about financial matters: banking rules at the time would have deprived her of whatever money our family had because bank accounts were in the husband's name. Reverend Andrew's advice was practical and helpful, it was to take whatever money we had out of the bank accounts before the bank froze the accounts.  In those days, the 1950s, Anglican churches in Montreal had dances for young people at the church. The last time I attended a service here, it was Christmas in 2007, the congregation had dwindled to about a dozen people. I didn't know at the time that it was the last service I would attend there. 

Photographs taken around 1957, outside the side door which is also pictured in a later photograph; other photos taken from the late 1990s to around 2017.

This view was lost when a condo building was constructed in the foreground;
the condobuilding is under construction here

                       

Above, around 2005

My mother, recently widowed.

My mother and I. 

Above, around 1957-1958

                                                   

                                                   

17 March 2017

22 July 2015

The Montreal Gazette, 14 May 2011

Herbert Read on Celtic Art

Herbert Read writes:

Celtic art is one of the most intrinsically interesting phases in the whole history of art. By various historical accidents, the extreme Northern parts of Europe – Ireland, Scotland, Iceland and Northern Scandinavia – became the preserve of an indigenous prehistoric style. This style, which originated in the Middle Rhine area, was brought to the British Isles by the retreating Celtic tribes, and here preserved  its characteristics whilst successive waves of tribal invasion swept across the rest of Europe.

The development of European art during the so-called “Dark Ages” (A.D. 400 to 1000) is extremely complicated, and Celtic art is involved in the general uncertainty. But in spite of the rarity of survivals from the period, it seems certain that the early Celtic art of the pre-Roman period survived as a continuous tradition in Ireland until a new influence appeared in the North in the form of Christianity. In Britain, the introduction of Christianity was a very slow process, lasting over a period of 200 years at least. There is but slight evidence of the prevalence of Christianity in Britain during the Roman period; its real history in this country begins with the mission of St Ninian, a disciple of St Martin of Tours, who built a church at Whithorn, Wigtownshire, in A.D. 412. Not long after, Ireland was converted by St. Patrick, and during the sixth century the process of conversion spread to Wales, to the Picts in the north of Scotland, and then to the Saxons in England. During the sixth and seventh centuries this northern church became the shelter of Christianity in Europe; and at this period, one of the most important and significant for the whole development of art in Europe, direct contact was established between the North and the East.
. . . .

The whole range of Celtic art therefore divides itself into two distinct periods – the early, pre-Christian period, deriving its style direct from Neolithic Age, and the later post-Christian period, during which the stylistic influences from the east were incorporated. Dr. Mahr… has subdivided this post-Christian period into (1) the Vernacular style, from the seventh century to the appearance of the Vikings about 850; (2) the Hiberno-Viking style from 850 to 1000, the period of Viking domination in Ireland; (3) the last animal style, from 1000 to 1125; and (4) the Hiberno-Romanesque style, 1125 to the Anglo-Norman Conquest.

The ornament of the early Celtic period is linear, geometric and abstract; the type most familiar is the interlaced ribbon or plaited ornament vulgarized in present-day ‘Celtic’ tombstones. It is seen in all its purity in the Book of Kells, the eight-century manuscript belonging to Trinity College, Dublin.
. . . .

Into this gloomy and abstract field of art the symbols of Christianity come like visitants from an exotic land. In a prickly nest of geometrical lines, two birds of paradise will settle, carrying in their beaks a bunch of Eastern grapes. David comes with his harp, and the three children in the furnace; Adam and Eve, and the sacrifice ofIsaac, are represented in panels reserved among the ba ns of abstract ornament; and finally the stone is dominated by Christ in Glory and the company of angels. Such stones still stand where they were erected centuries ago in Ireland and Scotland; and no monuments in the world are so moving in their implications; they symbolize ten thousand years of human history, and represent that history at its spiritual extremes, nearest and farthest from the mercy of God.

Herbert Read, The Meaning of Art, Pelican Books, London, 1950, pages 85-88.

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.