Pictures of my grandmother’s home

On this day in 2009, it was 14 May 2009, I visited my grandmother's home at 2226 Girouard Avenue for the first time since 1969. My grandmother died in 1965, just a few days before my fifteenth birthday, she was one month short of her 90th birthday as my Auntie Ivy told my mother that morning when she phoned to tell her that my grandmother had died. For years, when driving passed the Girouard Avenue flat on my way to work, I would look up at her living room window remembering the many memories of my grandmother. It wasn't until 2009 that the flat was being sold and I had the opportunity to take these photographies. It was the last time I would visit my grandmother's home, where she had lived since the mid-1920s. 

Walking up the stairs to the flat

In the living room facing the Girouard Avenue

Entrance to the flat from the stairs.

In the living room.

The bathroom with the original
claw foot bathtub.

This was my Great Aunt Essie's bedroom,
she was my grandmother's sister.

The back porch facing the lane.

The kitchen.

This room off the kitchen, at the 
rear of the flat, was where my grandmother's
father slept after he moved to Girouard Avenue.

To the left was my Auntie Mable's bedroom,
to the right was the living room.

The living room, facing Girouard Avenue.

Entrance to the foyer from the living 
room; in this room, to the right was a maroon 
couch covered with a white sheet, the springs
touching the floor; to the left in this room
is where an upright piano stood.

The stairs and front door.

The upstairs is 2226 Girouard Avenue.

Cards from my grandmother and her sister, my great aunt Essie, around 1963

Postmarked 1966

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Memories of both our Irish heritage and family on this St. Patrick's Day, 2023. In the following newspaper article, all of the references to Callaghans are to my great great uncles, Fr. Martin, Fr. James, and Fr. Luke Callaghan. The three priests were brothers of my great grandmother, Mary Callaghan; she was born on my mother's birthday in 1845 and died on my birthday in 1906. 

Chronological History of the Irish in Montreal,
from The Gazette, 23 May 1942
(click to enlarge)

And thinking of my grandmother Edith Sweeney Morrissey. I took these photographs at my grandmother's home, where she lived until her passing in 1965, located at 2226 Girouard Avenue. I was driving home one day in May 2009 and I saw that the place was for sale and they were having an open house; I rushed home, got my camera, and returned to take these last photographs of where she had lived from around 1925. Those of us who are still alive and knew her, we all loved her and still miss her. 

Front entrance to 2226 Girouard Avenue

Looking out living room window at
2226 Girouard Avenue

Living room, 2226 Girouard

May 2009, 2226 Girouard Avenue

From left, my mother, my Auntie Ivy, my grandmother;
outside Parliament, Ottawa, 1962

My grandmother at our home on Montclair
Avenue, 1963

My grandmother, back porch of Girouard Avenue 
flat, around April 1938, holding her grandson,
Herb Morrissey

My grandmother's summer cottage

I used to say I'd like my garden to be a place where my grandmother could visit and feel at home. In fact, I don't remember my grandmother walking in any garden or even being interested in gardens, so what I really meant is that I'd like my garden to be as old fashioned as possible, with old fashioned cottage garden plants, and a quality of timelessness throughout. Yes, my grandmother would feel this timeless quality, as would everyone else who walks through such a garden.

I remember my grandmother's summer cottage on 11th Avenue, not far from the water where we used to swim, in St. Eustache. It was a place of summer cottages back then, now it's a bedroom suburb and proof of the truth of Thomas Wolfe's book title, You Can't Go Home Again. My wife and I visited 11th Avenue in 2007 and I regret that I ever returned even for just an hour, it is in the process of gentrification and nothing is left of the way it used to be, nothing is left of what made it a special place. Because of this I am filled with sadness and nostalgia remembering those summers of my youth, they are gone forever, the old people I loved are gone and will never return. This is, of course, common sense--the one constant in life is change--but it is still upsetting. 

Facing my grandmother's cottage there were phlox growing between her house and the adjacent cottage on the right. Remembering those phlox, one of the first plants I wanted in my cottage garden were phlox just like hers; but the way it has turned out is that the phlox in my garden are never as nice as I expected them to be or as nice as everyone else's phlox in this area. Right now my phlox, with both white and purple flowers, are coming to the end of their growing season while my neighbours still have beautiful phlox. 

A cottage lends itself to timelessness. It should be a cosy place and that quality of cosiness is important; it contains a perennial desire, it is the desire to have a safe harbour, a place where one can relax and not worry about the outside world, and a place where one is safe from the vicissitudes of life. Everyone needs a roof over their head, everyone needs both a home and enough food to keep them from being hungry, and most people need family or friends with whom they can talk, laugh, and socialize. And we can all have some of this in a cottage with its cottage garden in the back yard.

I am reminded of Patrick Waddington's short story, "The Street that Got Mislaid", about some people who live on Green Bottle Street, a street that the bureaucrats who run the City of Montreal have somehow forgotten about; it "got mislaid" from the card index of city streets, and because of this the residents pay no taxes, they don't live in our world but they are of our world. These people are dedicated to their hobbies, playing the piano, gardening, talking about the past, and living with the other people on the street. It is just after World War Two and all of them are wounded in some way, life has not been kind to any of them. As well, the street is shaped like a bottle, implying it is isolated from the rest of the city, which it is, but it is also a kind of utopia, a kind of Shangri-La. It is their safe harbour. At the end of the story, the protagonist is invited to join them and live on Green Bottle Street and he happily does this and leaves the noisy and rough outside world behind him. A cottage is also a safe harbour, we say leave your cares at the door, put your feet up, have something to eat, and enjoy yourself. Or just sit and do nothing.

Here is my grandmother outside the cottage in 1946, the year she and my Uncle Alex
purchased the place; doesn't she look happy! 

My grandmother's summer cottage, photo taken in 1946 when she and my Uncle Alex
bought the place.

Here is the cottage around 2009, it had been winterized and renovated. By 2011 the cottage had been demolished, property near Lac des Deux Montagnes has increased in value, and a new large house has been built on the site.