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.
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| Looking south to de Maisonneuve Blvd |
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| Looking north to Sherbrooke Street West |
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| Some of these maple trees must be seventy to eighty years or older |
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| de Maisonneuve Blvd West |
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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...
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