Garden at St. Philip's Anglican Church

It was June 14th, sunny and mild, and I was walking across the grounds at St. Philip's Anglican Church. 

I like this addition, added this year, if I had the room maybe
I'd build one of these circular gardens for herbs

Not the most aesthetic addition but "A" for effort and originality!

A pleasant place to sit and rest

They should leave the grass uncut here, it gives a country feeling
and avoids a too perfect feeling to the grounds

Louis Dudek's white book

Here I am with Louis Dudek, not sure who took the photograph; it is 1993 
at the Loyola Campus of Concordia University, at the League of 
Canadian Poets' AGM, when Louis was made a life member of the
League (an organization he helped to found)

1.

 

One day in the mid-1970s, Louis Dudek came to our graduate seminar with copies of his Collected Poems, (1971); "Does anyone want to buy a copy?" he asked; it was $5.00. I never had any money and passed on buying his Collected Poems, but a few months later I bought a second hand copy of Dudek's Atlantis at The Word Bookstore and I forgot about the Collected Poems of Louis Dudek. Over the intervening years I bought most of Louis' other books as they were published and around 1997, when the League of Canadian Poets AGM was held in Montreal, and I had nominated Louis for a life membership, I brought at least ten of his books with me to the AGM for him to sign. That was a bit much but Louis went along with it, we sat together, he signed his books, he gave his speech, and he left. He mentioned that one of the books of his that I had brought with me that evening had not been distributed, hang onto it, he said, it will be worth something one day, but I forget which book he was referring to. Like all good teachers, Louis was good with fatherly advice. He told me that my M.A. degree would get me a teaching job, and it did and that set me up financially and employment-wise for thirty-five years of my life. Then it was 2020, twenty years later, and I was at Stephanie Dudek's estate sale;  Stephanie was Louis' first wife and, although he died in 2001, many of his books were still stored at the Vendome Avenue home where he used to live. There were copies of Atlantis, in pristine condition, still unwrapped from when they were printed in the UK and shipped over to Montreal. I bought a few copies just for old time's sake and as I left I asked if they had any copies of Louis' Collected Poems; someone, I was told, had just bought all the copies they had, I was out of luck. And then, finally, I found a copy on Amazon; you don't often see Dudek's Collected Poems, 3,000 copies were printed but it didn't sell many copies when it was published and it wasn't widely reviewed. I finally found a used copy for sale by a book seller in Vancouver, for $10.00; I placed my order and a few days later received a phone call, the book was missing a page, did I still want to buy it? Of course I did. The price was reduced to the original $5.00 it had been in 1975 and my copy, a former library copy, was sent to me.

Photographs of St. Michael the Archangel Church, Montreal

There is much that could be said about St. Michael the Archangel Church; it is unique in its design, its history, and it is still operating as a church. Here, I just want to give some photographs of the church, most of which I took in the early 2000s. If you stand on Mount Royal, in Mount Royal Cemetry, near the graves of Mordecai Richler or Boris Brott, you can see St. Michael's in the distance, it is a prominent feature on the Montreal landscape.

Rosette window above main entrance

St. Michael's Church on St. Viateur

Guido Nincheri must have felt like Michelangelo when he painted this

About this painting, Fr. Luke Callaghan wrote: 

The dreadful fall of the angels is ingeniously represented: from the four corners of the dome they are hurled into space studded with stars, stripped of their perfect beauty and their spiritual charm; their draperies, torn by the terrible cataclysm, reveal the animal hidden below. They are enveloped in flames that lick the base of the cornices of the arches and the vertical bands that support the dome.

The original statement in French:

La terrible chute des anges est ingénieusement représentée : des quatre coins du dôme ils sont projetés dans l'espace constellé d'étoiles, dépouillés de leur beauté parfaite et de leur charme spirituel ; leurs draperies, déchirées par le terrible cataclysme, révèlent l'animal caché en dessous. Ils sont enveloppés de flammes qui lèchent la base des corniches des arcs et les bandes verticales qui soutiennent le dôme.

I took the following photographs inside St. Michael's Church when it was open to visitors. 

 

That's my wife sitting in the pews...

That's me beside the young woman who was at the door
welcoming visitors to the church

The Luke Callaghan Memorial School

When I visited Luke Callaghan Memorial School in the fall of 1998 it had already been closed as a school; the building is just a block from St. Michael's Church. At the time I visited it was the location of various art and public service organizations. It had been an English-language school in the Catholic School Board of Montreal; it closed (like many other English-language schools in Montreal) due to a decline in student numbers caused by the Quebec government, the children of immigrants had to enroll in the French sector schools. Luke Callaghan was the priest who oversaw the building of St. Michael's Church and then he was the pastor at the church until his death in 1931. Luke Callaghan is my great, great uncle. There is more on him and his two brother on other pages of this blog, or click on www.morrisseyfamilyhistory.com.

Luke Callaghan Memorial School in 2009

Luke Callaghan Memorial School in 1927

Graduating class from Luke Callaghan Memorial School, 1930s, copied from Facebook

Graduating class from Luke Callaghan Memorial School, 1930s, copied from Facebook


Below: that's St. Michael's Church (on St. Viateur West), just a block away on Clarke Street, as seen from the Luke Callaghan Memorial School.

View of St. Michael's Church from Luke Callaghan Memorial School

Possibly Clarke Street, near Luke Callaghan Memorial Church

Luke Callaghan Memorial School

Luke Callaghan Memorial School

Luke Callaghan Memorial School

The following, from  http://memoire.mile-end.qc.ca/fr/ecole-luke-callaghan/ website, is of interest:

Luke Callaghan School, originally named St. Michael's, was the school for the Irish Catholic community in Mile End. Opened in 1907, it was initially located on rue Boucher, at the corner of rue Drolet. The Sisters of Saint Anne teach the girls and the Marist Brothers, the boys.

After the construction in 1915 of the new St. Michael 's Church at its current location, rue Saint-Viateur Ouest, the school moved in turn. Classes were first held in rented stores on rue Saint-Viateur until the opening in 1922 of the current building, located on rue Clark, between Saint-Viateur and Bernard. The Sisters of Saint Anne still teach girls there, who use a separate entrance. After the withdrawal of the Marist Brothers in June 1925, the parish priest, Luke Callaghan, entrusted the teaching of the boys to a community from Ireland, the Presentation Brothers. The school was renamed Luke Callaghan Memorial after the priest's death in 1931.

The departure of the Irish population from Mile End during the 1950s and 1960s led to a transformation of the school clientele. The secondary level moved to the new Pie ​​X school, located in Ahuntsic, in 1960. The Presentation Brothers left the premises in 1968, because the children of the Italian community in the neighborhood replaced the Irish. The strong Italian immigration of the 1950s and the baby boom meant that the school was quickly overcrowded. Classes must be transferred to French schools in the neighborhood, but they do not meet demand. This situation led to demonstrations against the management of the English sector of the Catholic school board by Italian parents during the spring and summer of 1968.

But the Italian community in turn deserted the Mile End for the suburbs; in addition, the Charter of the French language (law 101), promulgated in 1978, ensures that the children of immigrants now go to French school. During the 1980s, it was the neighboring primary school, Lambert-Closse , which would become the multi-ethnic school in the district. The Luke Callaghan school was empty, and when in 1983 the number of pupils fell below the 200 threshold, the English sector of the Commission des écoles catholiques de Montréal (CÉCM) decided to transfer them to the Nazareth school , located on rue Jeanne-Mance, between Laurier Avenue and Saint-Joseph Boulevard. A petition of 600 names, which denounces the influence on children of pornography present in bars and cinemas of the adjacent avenue du Parc, does nothing about it.

The building now houses an Early Childhood Center (CPE) and the Educational and Pedagogical Resource Center, which offers training for adults. The facade of the building, at risk of losing bricks, has been covered with a net since 2015 pending restoration.

Crow keeping out of the rain

It was raining and this crow was sitting under the apple tree in our backyard keeping out of the rain. I know how he felt, I was just leaving for a walk and I was already wet. I had something in common with the crow. 

 

Possible new St. Pierre River sighting

Leaving Meadowbrook Golf Course--anyone who has been there knows where this area is located--I could hear running water, but where was it coming from? Then I noticed a drainage ditch on the other side of the train tracks. Above the tracks is the Montreal West town maintenance department and other buildings. It seems to me, and I could be wrong, that this water could possibly be from the buried St. Pierre River on that side of the tracks. It's too late for this to be melting snow or spring run-off so the river may be the source of this water. Of course, I could be totally wrong and this is just wishful thinking. . .

This is the trail out of the golf course

On the right are train tracks and below are more train tracks

That is quite a lot of water emptying out of a drainage pipe

This is just about thirty feet east of the train bridge as you exit the golf course;
the train tracks going east and west are directly below the source of water

As I was watching this, a ground hot crossed the water; there
is still a lot of urban wildlife 

I make a stew

On this rainy and sleighty chilly May day, I've made my first stew, something I've wanted to cook for some time. And it was really good!