The tour of 2226 Girouard Avenue begins...

Standing on the landing at the front door at 2226 Girouard, here's a view of the street and then looking south to present-day Blvd de Maisonneuve (formerly Western Avenue) that runs perpendicular to Girouard. The western end of de Maisonneuve is at the Loyola Campus of Concordia University (after it passes a recreational field, there's a bend in the street and it becomes West Broadway); it continues east all the way to the the east end of the city. Running parallel to de Maisonneuve are railroad tracks. In fact, this used to be quite a country area, with Western still a dirt road and long walks back in the '30s and '40s along the tracks. My maternal grandparents lived at 2217 Hampton, the same block (below Sherbrooke Street West) as 2226 Girouard, but several streets west of here. Girouard Avenue was widened in the 1930s or 40s and front lawns were eliminated, and street cars used to run along the street. How times have changed . . .

The Chalet Bar-B-Q near NDG Park

Here is the Chalet Bar-B-Q, a block from Girouard Avenue. As I'm driving home from work, getting off the Decarie Expressway, I drive up the exit ramp to Sherbrooke Street West, the smell of chickens cooking permeating the air, and I always think one of two things: it's either I wouldn't want to live near the Chalet Bar-B-Q because of the smell of cooking or I think I'd like to eat supper there and I should go more often . . . The Chalet Bar-B-Q was opened around 1940 and I doubt they've changed the decor since then.  The place has a rustic appearance with wood paneled walls, friendly waitresses some of whom have been there since the the 1970s, and we always make the usual order: creamy coleslaw, a quarter chicken and french fries, served with their own BBQ sauce and a toasted white bun. I am not sure they have these establishments in other places but there is a Quebec-based chain of trendy St. Hubert BBQ restaurants that can now be found in Ontario. In addition to this, there is the Cote St-Luc BBQ on Cote St. Luc Road near Girouard; and the New System BBQ cars seem to deliver to remote locations from their restaurant on rue Notre Dame. Back in the 1940s the Chalet Bar-B-Q didn't provide cutlery, they did have finger bowls and you were expected to pick up the chicken and enjoy it that way, but that's long changed. Imagine that. Before the ubiquitous McDonald's.

BTW, NDG Park is known to many of us as Girouard Park, that's what we always called it.

 

That's Girouard Avenue at the far left, as we drive south, cross
Sherbrooke Street West, and arrive at
my grandmother's flat at 2226 Girouard Avenue

Morrisseys at 2226 Girouard Avenue (3)

Above: the cover from my new book. 

The title poem is on Girouard Avenue. 

The following is taken from Chapter Four of the Morrissey Family History (online); it describes our family’s long residency at 2226 Girouard, and something of the years leading up to living at that address. John Martin Morrissey and Edith Sweeney were my paternal grandparents. 

 ----------------------- 

John Martin Morrissey and Edith Sweeney Thomas and Mary's son John Martin Morrissey married Edith Sweeney on 15 May 1895 at Saint Anthony's Church, "in the presence of William E. Flanagan, uncle of the bride" and "Thomas Morrissey, father of the groom". Martin Morrissey was named after his uncle, Father Martin Callaghan. He was known familiarly as Martin, as indicated on the 1891 Census; the custom of the family in some cases was to use the middle name as the everyday name of the child. Martin was also known as 'Banty', which obviously suggests a small physical stature. While I never met my paternal grandfather, I have many happy memories of my grandmother and of my uncles, especially my Uncle Alex and Aunt Ivie. My parents, my brother and I, lived with my grandmother from around 1952 to 1954 when my father was ill. My grandmother loved her children and placed her children and her family first in her life. Her door seems to have always been open to relatives who needed a place to live. She encouraged her children to continue with their education and paid the tuition for my father to attend St. Leo's Academy. My father, like his mother who played piano, and several of his other siblings, played a musical instrument. He belonged to a band that his brother Herb organized and they performed at many venues in Montreal. It was a home of family gatherings, music, laughter, playing cards, and an interest in sports. Martin played lacrosse and their son Frank Morrissey was involved with organizing amateur sports in Quebec. Where They Lived After Martin and Edith married they lived at 572 (now 3072) St. Antoine Street in what was then St. Henri. This is a street level flat exiting directly onto the sidewalk on the south side of the street, a few hundred feet west of Atwater Avenue. In 1907 they moved around the corner to another street level flat, at 94 (now 1094) Marin Avenue. These are attached buildings of two or three floors, all grey stone or red brick exteriors with outdoor stairways for the upper flats. Edith's parents lived at 536 Greene Avenue, which is just around the corner from both of the residences where Edith and Martin resided between 1895 and 1926. Martin and Edith moved from Marin Street to a six and a half room upper flat at 238 Girouard Avenue in 1926 or 1927; this address was renumbered to 2226 Girouard Avenue in 1930. Located in the west end neighbourhood of Notre Dame de Grace, this is where I used to visit my grandmother in the 1950s and 1960s. At some time in the 1930s the street was widened, eliminating front lawns and making Girouard a busy through-street along which streetcars ran to lower N.D.G. until around 1959. Other relatives lived across the street from 2226 Girouard, possibly the MacDonalds. The Family Martin and Edith had three daughters, Mabel, Stella, and Elsie. Elsie and Stella both died young, and Mabel remembered with sadness the absence of her sisters, especially Elsie who was only one year her junior. Mabel Morrissey worked at the Bank of Montreal where she was popular with her colleagues. Otherwise, she lived a quiet life at home with her mother and family. Martin and Edith's first son was Frank Morrissey made a name for himself organizing amateur hockey in Quebec as well as for working with the Montreal Maroons. For a while he and his wife Eva Dubois lived at the Corona Hotel. They had one daughter, Patsy, who spent much time living at Girouard. A newspaper columnist wrote the following, when Frank died prematurely at age forty: I have yet to meet a person who knew him and didn't like him. He had that exuberant spirit which could not be broken, even by adversity. And a 'squarer shooter' with his friends never breathed. Throughout his career as a sport executive he worked like the proverbial Trojan. Much of the foundation of the present amateur hockey structure in Quebec was built by the tireless effort of this diminutive live-wire'. Let us pause just a moment to think of this gallant little man who, to my knowledge anyway, never had a real enemy. William Morrissey worked most of his life for Dawson Company. He and his wife Lil Bateman lived for many years at 397 St. Aubin Street, in Ville St. Laurent. They had one son, Bill Morrissey who served in the Canadian army in World War Two; he fought against the Germans in Holland. Lil Morrissey told my mother about her son's terrible war experience, which she read about in his letters from Holland. Bill junior and his wife divorced and their daughter Joanne was raised by her grandparents, William and Lil. Alex Morrissey and his wife Ivy had one son, Herb, who became a well-known magician and who owns a company in Toronto that sells magic products. Alex worked as a salesman and he and Ivy spent their summers at a cottage they shared with his mother Edith and sister Mabel. For several years my mother rented a cottage across the street from theirs and while my mother was at work, my grandmother and Aunt Ivy kept an eye on my brother and I. Herb Morrissey married my aunt Dorothy Magrane in 1939. For a few years they lived a few doors away from us on Oxford Avenue. They had two children, Linda and Bob. Martin and Edith Martin Morrissey died after suffering a stroke at Windsor Station, probably on Wednesday, 10 February 1932. He was buried at Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery on Saturday, 13 February 1932. Martin and Edith were married for thirty-seven years. Eileen Oakes writes that Martin Morrissey "always worked for the C.P.R. telegraph, in fact took a stroke in his office and died the same day." My father also worked at Windsor Station and could have been present when his father died, or soon after. My grandmother, Edith Sweeney, continued living at 2226 Girouard Avenue until her death in April 1965; she had a cold the previous February, and this developed into pneumonia from which she died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital only a few blocks from her home. Her two sisters, Essie and Edna, continued living at the flat until it was no longer possible because of their advanced age. Essie died in July 1968; Edna entered an old folks' home near Ottawa until her death in January 1970. While Edith is buried in the Morrissey family plot, with Martin, at Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery, Essie and Edna are both buried at Mount Royal Cemetery. Essie is buried with the other Sweeneys, in the plot purchased by her father, while Edna is buried about fifty feet from where my father is buried. Edith Sweeney's Ancestry Edith Sweeney's mother, Margaret Flanagan, was the daughter of Mary Barron and Murtagh Flanagan. An Irish friend informs me that the name Murtagh is "common in Roscommon", an inland county in the northwest of the Irish Republic, and is the name of one of the three kings of Tara. Murtagh, in Irish, means "skilled at sea craft" and today the name might be "Mortimer" for English speakers. Mary Barron was buried at Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery on 26 June 1906 and was predeceased by her husband, Murtagh Flanagan; however, I don't know where Murtagh is buried. Murtagh Flanagan and Mary Barron, Edith's maternal grandparents, had at least four children. There was Margaret Flanagan, Edith's mother. Another child was William E. Flanagan, Edith's uncle, who was a witness at Edith's wedding; he died on 10 December 1927. A third child was Edith's aunt, Elizabeth Flanagan ('Aunt Lib') who had a career as a journalist; she married a Ryan, which may have been a second marriage. Aunt Lib lived at Girouard for a few years until her death on 3 January 1944; her son moved to St. Louis, Missouri and she planned to move there but upon visiting found the climate too humid and returned to Montreal. She is buried with her mother next to the Morrissey family plot at Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery. Finally, there is Ann Mary Barron Flanagan, who was buried on 20 October 1950. She married Joseph William Dowling on 29 October 1890. The Sweeneys and the Barrons were very close, so much so that Edith considered the name Barron as one of my father's middle names. There are also several other family members who have "Barron" as one of their Christian names. While the Barrons were Catholics, the Flanagans and the Sweeneys were Protestants. My grandmother's parents, James Sweeney and Margaret Flanagan were married on 7 July 1875 at Erskine Presbyterian Church in Montreal. Edith Sweeney's father, James Sweeney, was the son of Mary Gallagher and Daniel Sweeney. At James and Margaret's marriage, Daniel Sweeney, the "father of the groom", signed the marriage certificate as a witness. Margaret Flanagan was of the "age of majority" which at that time was twenty-five years of age. Daniel was born in Ireland in 1816; he died of "cerebral apoplexy" and was buried at Mount Royal Cemetery on 8 February 1888, age 72 years. At that time he resided at 153 1/2 St. Charles Borromee Street in Montreal. Daniel worked as a tailor in 1845 when, according to Lovell's Directory, the family lived at "Ste Catherine and Bleury". In Lovell's 1861-1862 edition he was still working as a tailor but had moved to 22 Hermine Street, Montreal; in 1868 the family lived at 107 St. George Street. Daniel's wife, Mary Gallagher, was born in Ireland in 1814 and died of "consumption" (tuberculosis) on 14 December 1860 at age 46. James Sweeney, my grandmother Edith Sweeney's father, lived his final years with Edith at 2226 Girouard Avenue. James was born in 1852 in Montreal; he died when he was 85 years old of "uremia coma and chronic nephritis" on 11 January 1937. In 1864-1865 he and his family lived on Tannery West and worked as a labourer; in his final years he worked in a tobacco store. He is listed as the owner of the Sweeney family plot at Mount Royal Cemetery. James Sweeney's wife, Margaret Flanagan, was born around 1851-1854 in St. Johns (present day St. Jean-sur-Richelieu), Quebec about twenty miles south-east of Montreal. Margaret was baptized at the Anglican church in St. John's, Quebec and was later, like her husband, a Reformed Presbyterian. Margaret Flanagan's mother, Mary Barron, was Roman Catholic and this would account for why several of James Sweeney and Margaret Flanagan's children were baptized at the Roman Catholic La Cathedrale in Montreal (formerly St. James Cathedral, and as of the early 1950s Mary Queen of the World Cathedral). Margaret died of "pernicious anemia" at age 72 years on 4 January 1926 and was buried on 6 January 1926 at Mount Royal Cemetery. According to the 1881 census, Margaret Flanagan and James Sweeney lived in the St. Louis Ward, Montreal where James was employed as a book keeper. By then they had three children: Edith Mary (my grandmother) who was born in 1876; Clara, born in 1877; and their first son, Frederick who was born in 1880. The former are all listed as being Reformed Presbyterians. Also living with them was Margaret's mother Mary (Barron) Flanagan (born 1829) and two of Margaret's siblings, William Flanagan (born 1874) and Marianne (Ann Mary) Flanagan (born 1859), who were Roman Catholics. This also suggests that Murtagh Flanagan, Mary's husband, was deceased by 1881. If James was the sole breadwinner, he was supporting two families.

Girouard Avenue

Back porch at 2226 Girouard Avenue, 1953

The following is from an interview that is forthcoming in www.poetry-quebec.com; this describes something of the content, the poems, in Girouard Avenue. 

 ------------ 

Do you write with the intention of “growing a manuscript” or do you work on individual poems that are later collected into a book? 

My ambition has always been to write a thematically cohesive book. I remember, in high school, running home at lunch time and listening to the Beatles’ “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” I believe this is one of the first concept or thematic albums. Then, there was also Frank Zappas’s parody of the Beatles’ album, and that was also fun. It was from the Beatles that I had the idea of a thematic book of poems, and I’ve followed this ever since. My new book, Girouard Avenue, is the most cohesive and thematic of all of the books I’ve written. It took many years to write Girouard Avenue, I must have started the writing in 1995, and then I’ve waited years to publish the book, my first since 1998. 

Girouard Avenue begins with a prologue, “Holy Well,” an ancestral memory of Ireland where my family originated, but it is a mythical Ireland, a place of the unconscious mind, and then the poem also reflects on where we are today, in Montreal. The unconscious has always been important to my work, as it must be to any poet, for where do the poems come from but the unconscious, that place of dreams, mythology, and psychological and spiritual depth. There are four long poems in Girouard Avenue, the first two are poems of place, of different homes where we lived in Montreal. The first of these is “Girouard Avenue Flat” which celebrates my grandmother and includes family history. She lived for over forty years at 2226 Girouard Avenue, renting a large flat below Sherbrooke Street West in Montreal. This home was busy with the daily life of a large family, which included seven children. Many played musical instruments. Other family members also lived there, due to illness or old age or financial straits. Even my parents and my brother and I lived on Girouard Avenue in the early 1950s, with my grandmother, my Aunt Mable, and my great aunt Essie, because of my father’s heart condition. Before that we had lived a few blocks away on Avonmore. This was my parents’ first home after they married in 1940, but a small 3 ½ room apartment wasn’t a good environment for a family of four people when one of them is seriously ill. After the war it was difficult to find a larger apartment to rent, so off we went to Girouard. By 1969, after my grandmother died, there was just my grandmother’s two very elderly sisters left living there and I talk about visiting them with my brother at Christmas. The next poem is “Hoolahan’s Flat, Oxford Avenue,” where we moved in 1954, after living at my grandmother’s for the previous two years. “Hoolahan’s Flat, Oxford Avenue” is a poem of the 1950s, of television, and family. In this poem I purposely avoided being overly confessional or emotional in favour of a kind of reporting on the times in which I lived, what they were like, in a fairly matter-of-fact way. I mention my first friend, Audrey Keyes, the girl next door, and over forty years later Audrey saw the poem online and contacted me, and we’ve become friends again, as though no time has intervened. These first two poems in the book are of places where I lived in Montreal, but they are also significant for other reasons. More happened in these two flats than just daily life. These homes were foundational to the development of who I am as a poet and as a person. 

Even as a child I felt there was a bravery and heroism to everyday life as it is lived by everyday people. There is a courage in average people that has always interested me. I’ve loved stories of family, of who did what and when. These family stories are framed by history. These accounts have an aura of historical reality and authenticity; my poems about family are also poems of spirit, of courage, of dedication to family and everyone working hard. This is what I want remembered, so that these people aren’t forgotten, so that the ancestors are suitably remembered. “November” is the third long poem in Girouard Avenue. The month of November is the time when I have always been closest to the unconscious mind, to dreams, to Spirit, to what the spirits say to me. The days are growing shorter, we are moving relentlessly into winter, and the fabric between our material world and the other world is at its thinnest. Now I return to my father departing for Boston in 1956, where he died a few weeks later; but I also reflect on the importance of the railroad in Canada. Many members of my family worked for the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The railway was an important form of transportation in the past. In this poem there is the juxtaposition of the personal with the impersonal, but always memory of the people I am descended from and who I honour. But a poet is more than this: a poet affirms life and writes from a vision that reminds the reader there is more to life than mundane activity, there is epiphany, spirituality, aesthetics, and dignity even in the most humble people. 

The final poem in the book is “The Rock, Or a Short History of the Irish in Montreal” and uses my own family’s history in Montreal, from when they arrived here around 1844, to recall something of the history of the Irish in Montreal. The Irish were an enormous immigrant population here; people who mostly arrived with nothing, which is also the story of the Irish in other North American cities. Within several generations these Irish immigrants rose to become doctors and lawyers, politicians and leaders in government. The Irish have always believed in education and fighting to survive. There is the Black Rock, a memorial to the Irish who arrived in Montreal in 1847 from famine-ridden Ireland, only to die in fever sheds located near present-day Victoria Bridge. Here you can see the heroism I am referring to. Families came all this way from Ireland, so hopeful, so desirous of a new life, and then five thousand of them perished soon after arriving. It’s a tragic story but at least they opted for survival and a new life, rather than give up and die in Ireland. Having said this, perhaps there’s a balancing of tragedy and bravery that I find compelling. It is also my own Irish sensibility that causes me to perceive tragedy and melancholy in what I see around me, in the stories and lives of people. Even my father’s story is a combination of bravery and tragedy: he was a man of such intelligence that he rose from the working class to quite a prestigious executive position in the C.P.R., but he had rheumatic fever when he was a child and this eventually caused medical problems, scarring of his heart, that caused his early death. He didn’t give up, he lived as long as he could, he had a family, he did his best despite knowing that his life would not last as long as other people’s. Had my father lived for just another six months medical advances were achieved that could have extended his life for many more years. But that was not to be. His death when I was only six years old changed my life, and perhaps it made a poet out of me. The last poem, the epilogue, is “The Colours of the Irish Flag,” which celebrates marriage, family, and love. But it is also a poem about being strong, not being defeated without a fight for one’s survival, or the survival of what one believes in. You don’t just roll over and give up, you fight, you struggle, you go the distance, you don’t be a coward, you be a man or a woman. We’ll have no cowards here. You can see that I feel very strongly about all of this.

Revised: 09 February 2022

Girouard Avenue (1))

In a few days my new book of poems, Girouard Avenue, will be published. I believe that this is my best work as a poet, my first book of new poems in eleven years. My last book, Mapping the Soul, New and Selected Poems, was published by the Muses' Company in Winnipeg in 1998. For the next while I will publish information on the book, as well as a special feature, new photographs of 2226 Girouard Avenue, after which the book was titled.

Some of the poems in the book are already online; for instance, "Hoolahan's Flat, Oxford Avenue," can be found in its entirety as an online chapbook at http://www.coraclepress.com/

The book's epilogue, "The Colours of the Irish Flag," can be found at the site of the Montreal Gazette. It is a video of me reading the poem, so this might be of interest to some readers.

A Poet's Journey

When you see your life as a journey, right away you've mythologized it, placed it in an experiential framework, a narrative with a beginning, middle, end--you've thought the way poets think.

Visit to La Ronde, Montreal

It was a dark and rainy day when we visited La Ronde.

The Guaranteed Milk Bottle in Montreal

This giant milk bottle has been on the Montreal cityscape for many years. It was put up by the old Guaranteed Milk Company, which may have had its factory or delivery department on present-day Lucien L'Allier just below present-day Rene-Levesque. The street names have been changed to reflect our changing times . . .  so Dorchester Blvd. is now Blvd. de Rene-Levesque, and so on... My great uncle Victor Parker used to work at a dairy on Lucien L'Allier, I am not too sure what he did, but he lived with his mother until she died around 1949 and then he was relocated to the Douglas Hospital by his three brothers. He died in 1969.

The hotel that can be seen on the right in the photograph below is now gone, and new bigger buildings have been erected on this location. The milk bottle is always about to be demolished until someone hears about it and calls for it to receive some kind of special status as part of Montreal's history. The milk bottle is now rusting out and is covered by graffiti . . .

Bonsai at the Montreal Botanical Gardens

Rocks at the Montreal Botanical Gardens

Doors at St. John the Divine Cathedral, NYC

Stairs in Old Montreal

More family history photographs

My maternal grandfather, John Richards Parker, came to Montreal with his wife around 1912. Here is a photograph of him, at the Central Fire Station in Old Montreal, where he worked. He is first on the far right.


Here is my maternal grandmother, Bertha Chew Parker, taken when she still lived in Blackburn, Lancashire, England.



Here is my grandfather's mother.


Here is my grandfather at the fire station on Somerled near Cavendish, in the Notre Dame de Grace neighbourhood of Montreal. He is second from the left. Photograph dated July 1940.

At the horse races in Vancouver

Stag

This image of a stag, a totem animal, is located at Mount Royal Cemetery.

On Mount Royal, Montreal

Yes, we now know what it means to run around like "a chicken with its head cut off" with this collection of signs directing us to go here, no, go there. These signs were located at the bottom of a slight hill that is used for skiing in the winter, there's even a ski lift visible in the bottom photograph. Just in front of the signs is Beaver Lake, a man-made pond on Mount Royal. This place is crowded in summer!

Restaurant Emile Bertrand

My photo of Restaurant Bertrand

I visited Restaurant Emile Bertrand once with my father when I was a child (around 1955). It wasn't until around 1994 that I returned there, more by chance than anything else. That first visit, over fifty years ago, he and I may have come down from Windsor Station, where he worked. Why else would we have been in the neighbourhood? But why would I have been at Windsor Station? I remember that visit, the stainless steel counter tops, and that Emile Bertrand's specialty was spruce beer (a soda pop, or "soft drink" as we say in Canada) that has limited appeal and has a sprucey sweet taste, like the smell of spruce tree resin. It's an acquired taste but when I start drinking the stuff I can't get enough! They used to make this drink on the premises, as well as serving the obligatory French fries and hot dogs "fully dressed" (meaning garnished with chopped cabbage and onion)... I like a toasted bun and grilled or steamed hot dog. Premier Bourassa got himself into trouble years ago by referring to certain lower class people as "eaters of hot dogs", but I have a craving for hot dogs every now or then. I rediscovered Restaurant Emile Bertrand fifteen years ago and enjoyed going there again a few times, for sentimental reasons, and I wrote a poem referring to that day I went there with my father. The restaurant was eventually closed, due to a family dispute it seems, about two years ago, and although it was announced they would reopen, they never did (as far as I know). The new ,almost upscale, restaurant now located on the premises is for a new demographic, a younger educated clientele, who want whole grain bread, etc., not fully dressed hot dogs and French fries. Restaurant Emile Bertrand was located on rue Notre Dame West just down from Guy Street, or Peel Street.

Montreal Skyline

Taken one fall day at the Chateau look-out on Mount Royal.

Photographs

Where The Bonsai Are

Bonsai at the Montreal Botanical Gardens.