St. Eustache summer cottage, mid-1950s

Above: One of the only photographs of the children we knew in St. Eustache. In fact, I can't really identify any of them but Nicky Coppens, front row, first on the far left and myself standing to our right beside him. If, in fact, this is a photograph of what I think it is, and I think it is... taken maybe around 1958 or 1959? Curiously, I met Nicky again around 1981 at the founding convention of Alliance Quebec, held at the Loyola Campus of Concordia University. I was the Chateauguay Valley English-Speaking Persons Association (CVESPA) representative; I suppose they asked me to go because they couldn't find anyone; I am the last person anyone should ask to do committee work and I am not, for the most part, a team player. And there, by chance, was my old friend from the summers in St. Eustache, Nicky Coppens. At the time he was living part-time (?) in Holland and making movies and his older sister was teaching at the University of Sherbrooke. This is what I remember him saying, but I don't really know how accurate any of it is.

Below: One of the few photographs of St. Eustache taken in the winter. Here is my brother and Buddy, around 1957. My father bought Buddy for my brother; I remember driving to Howick where he was bought . I hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong about any of this:


Here I am at the cottage my mother rented across the street from my grandmother's on 11th Avenue. I remember getting those new glasses I'm wearing. I wanted horned-rim glasses just like my Uncle Alex's...

My mother and I.

Buddy and me.

My mother and Buddy.

We rented a cottage from the Goodyear's, which was located directly behind their home, and which was across the street from my grandmother's cottage on 11th Avenue. I think this is where we got our Siamese cat, Simey, who I believe jumped out of someone's car, and somehow we knew they were from Baltimore. Anyhow, we kept the cat and loved him, he was a part of the family. I was with him in the late seventies when he died, he was around eighteen.Back in the country in the late 50s and early 60s, when my mother was at work, my brother and I were looked after by our grandmother and Auntie Ivy.

Here I am in someone's rowboat, left anchored at the bottom of 11th Avenue where we went for the summers to around 1962.

St Eustache, an afternoon at the quarry, early 1960s

Here are two photographs taken at the quarry near St. Eustache. You take the Oka road, on which the monastery where the monks made Oka cheese was located (but is now closed). I remember this day very well, I remember not wanting my grandmother to come with us to the quarry... Now I wish she were still here.

Auntie Ivy and my mother.

My mother.

My Auntie Ivy.

St Eustace summer cottage, 1940s and 1950s

My father's brother, my Uncle Alex and Alex's wife, my Auntie Ivy. This is where we used to swim, at the bottom of 11th Avenue in St. Eustache, where my grandmother and Uncle Alex shared a cottage just up the street; we had a rented cottage across the street from them, behind the Goodyear's home. In the cool August evenings we'd have a fire in the Franklin stove and toast bread on it. That was always nice.

My mother and our beagle, Buddy. Around 1957 - 1958, outside our grandmother's cottage.

                                                     My brother, John Morrissey.

                        My brother and I outside of our grandmother's country cottage.

                       Auntie Mable (my father's sister) and me, maybe early summer 1951, 

                       sitting in someone's rowboat at the bottom of 11th Avenue in St. Eustache.

                      My father's sister, my Auntie Mable outside the summer cottage, in 1948.

My grandmother outside the cottage. I think this was taken in 1948, just a few years after my grandmother and Uncle Alex bought the cottage. Before this they would spend the hot summer months at Pine Beach, which is on the West Island of Montreal, just off Highway 2 & 20, near Pointe Claire.

Here I am on the left, with my mother and my brother.

My cousin Herb Morrissey and his mother Ivy (Lewis) Morrissey, around 1948.

I always loved St. Eustache. What wonderful summer holidays we had there! For a child, it was truly, shall we say, "Edenic". We had our cottage and across the street was my grandmother's cottage, which she owned with my Uncle Alex. They (Alex and Ivy and my grandmother and Mable) all shared their rather small cottage every summer. During the day, when my mother was at work, my Auntie Ivy and my grandmother kept an eye on my brother and I. We spent our days swimming, walking on the railroad tracks to a small island and making camp fires there, smoking little cigars (the things children do!), roaming around, walking on the train tracks into the country, hearing about some farmer who would shoot trespassers with pepper shot, buying candy at Jed's, going to movies at The Normandy (?) Theatre, sitting in the still hot summer afternoons with my grandmother and Auntie Ivy, the smell of Ivy's DuMaurier cigarettes, the smell of newsprint and the coloured comics on Saturday, sleeping with my Auntie Mable and grandmother when my mother wasn't there, the three of us in the same bed with my head at the bottom of the bed between them. I wouldn't exaggerate this if it weren't as I've described, but (of course) what I've described is from a child's perspective. For my grandmother there was the middle of the night phone call from my Uncle Herb telling us that Auntie Mable had died in her early 60s in P.E.I (?). Mable was Grandma's closest companion. No wonder I'm still writing about them, thinking about them, I loved them all so much.

Quarry Near St. Eustache

Edith Sweeney Morrissey, early 1960s.

Ivy Lewis Morrissey, early 1960s.

That Was Then, This Is Now (1)

                                        Photo dated on back: May 2, 1948.

                                Edith Sweeney Morrissey outside of 11th Avenue cottage.

                            Ivy Lewis Morrissey and her son, Herb Morrissey, dated 1948.

                            My Uncle Alex and Auntie Ivy (late 1950s).  ; that was then ...

                                                                 ... this is now.

From the mid-1940s to the late 1960s various members of our family had summer cottages in St. Eustache, now a half hour commute to Montreal. In the top photo, my grandmother is outside of the cottage on 11th Avenue that she bought with my Uncle Alex. In the summer my grandmother, Aunt Mable, Uncle Alex and Auntie Ivy lived together, escaping the heat of the city. My parents had a summer house built for them, but after my father died in 1956 the house was sold and my mother rented a cottage across the street from my grandmother's. They were happy summers surrounded by family. I was warned to never return to St. Eustache, that it is unrecognizable. They were right. The summer cottages have been winterized, the trees that lined the street have been cut down, and where we swam at the bottom of the street has been made into a park. Instead of summer cottages and country, the area (north of Montreal) is now expressways, big box stores, and suburban housing. What we had is gone forever.