Phillips Square seen from The Bay, 26 February 2011

Photographs of Phillips Square taken from The Bay on Ste. Catherine Street on 26 February 2011.

"The square features a bronze monument of King Edward VII, who ruled from 1901 to 1910. He visited Montreal in 1860, while he was still the Prince of Wales, and opened the Victoria Bridge. The statue was designed by Louis-Philippe Hébert and was erected in 1914. The four allegorical figures at the base of the monument represent Peace, the Four Founding Nations, Abundance, and Liberty." From Wikipedia.

Phillips Square from The Bay

All but one of the following photographs were taken in 2011 when we used to go to The Bay and my wife would buy clothes at The Bay's Jacques Vert department, I think it was on the second or third floor. In Vancouver The Bay has a terrific cafeteria, full course meals, while the cafeteria at the downtown Montreal Bay store is good but not great.  Next to the cafeteria is a small, free, museum on the history of The Bay and it's worth visiting. Some of these photos were taken from the dress department just above the Ste. Catherine Street entrance to The Bay; that's Phillips Square directly across the street, this is the entrance where the organ grinder played back in the 1950s.

Spring 2011

June 2011

Where the Burger King is located was the location of the Art Association of Montreal; June 2011

Birks is on the right, now it has a hotel built on top of the original store

The Canada Cement Company building behind the statue of King Edward VII

Taken from Ste. Catherine Street, this is the entrance to The Bay, in 2013

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.