Avonmore Apartment, some old photographs

5515 Avonmore Avenue

5514 Avonmore Avenue

My brother at Avonmore apartment, Christmas, around 1949

My brother at Avonmore apartment, Christmas 1949

My brother at Avonmore apartment, Christmas, around 1949

Gerry and Kitty Heffernan (Gerry Heffernan played for the Montreal Canadiens
hockey team) were good friends of my parents and visited
them often at the Avonmore apartment

Here is a photograph taken by one of my parents, it is the 1939
construction of the Avonmore apartments; according to the City of Montreal's
website, the building was constructed in 1943, this must be an error.

 

Visiting Avonmore Avenue on 22 July 2015

In July of 2015 I visited Avonmore Avenue and took these photographs; it is where my parents lived after they married in 1940.

 

This is the apartment building where my parents lived

They lived at 5515 Avonmore Avenue

Photographs are posted of the apartment that is for rent at 5515 Avonmore

The lane at the bottom of Avonmore with old streetcar tracks still present

Streetcars ran at the bottom of the street; you can still see the streetcar tracks

Here are some photographs posted at the entrance of the building, they show the  interior of the apartments 

 

Avonmore Avenue in January 2015

“Can you take me back where I came from, brother can you take me back?”

Avonmore Avenue. This was my parents' first home after they married in 1940, they lived at Apartment #4, at 5515 Avonmore Avenue; it was their home for the next ten years. During this time they lived only a few blocks from my paternal grandmother's home at 2226 Girouard Avenue. That's how things worked in the old days, you didn't move far from where your parents and siblings lived, your parents didn’t live far from where their parents lived. You stuck together as a family but this isn't possible anymore. My parents lived on Avonmore; it is a short street, it is a crescent and easy to miss as you walk in this area. This whole area, including Avonmore and Clanranald, always felt like it was in the past, to walk there was to walk in the past, it a neighborhood of apartments built in the 1930s and 1940s and, for me, it always had a quality of those years; it was also Avon which is a Celtic word for “river”, and it always suggested to me a place of dreams and mystery, a place where the days and nights were long. And then, in 1950 when I was born, my father was told by his doctor “you can’t live in a 3 1/2 room apartment with two small children” and so we moved a few blocks and lived with my maternal grandmother on Girouard Avenue, and that’s where we lived until around 1953. It was after the war and places to rent were still difficult to find, and if you did find an apartment or a flat to rent you had to pay the landlord for the key, it was a way the landlord could make some money on the side. Then, around 1953, we moved to one of Hoolahan’s flats on Oxford Avenue where my father’s brother, my Uncle Herb, already lived and he helped get us a place at 4614 Oxford, just a few doors from where Uncle Herb and his family lived. The new place was spacious, hard wood floors, a fireplace, living room, dining room, three bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom, an unheated enclosed back porch, front and rear balconies, basement and garage. My God, it was (and still is) luxury living compared to the 3 1/2 room apartment on Avonmore that had a kitchen, a bathroom, a living room, and a single bedroom. 

These photographs were taken on the afternoon of 06 January 2015.

5515 Avonmore Avenue is on the right

5515 Avonmore Avenue

The Nine Year Nightmare of Justin Trudeau

 End of the year report .  . .

"Grrrr" said Justin Trudeau

The days of Justin Trudeau running the country have almost come to an end, it's just a matter of time waiting for him to announce his resignation. His nine years in office have been a disaster for the country; this is his legacy: We are alienated from India and China, and Donald Trump is making disparaging comments about both Canada and Trudeau on social media. In the news yesterday a third homeless man has died, in his fifties, he was living in a tent in our cold winter climate; there are homeless encampments in every city and town in the country. Two million Canadians visit food banks every month. Our national debt and deficit have never been higher. Our medicare system is collapsing and we all live in fear of losing our family doctors, we won't get another, and we live in fear of getting sick, who knows what kind of health care we will receive, maybe none; the message is "don't get sick". Our military is underfunded and demoralized and Trudeau's comments about spending two percent of GDP on the military as required by NATO is laughable; he says we might get there by 2032. His feminism is a joke as he fires strong women members of his cabinet; Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister, is the latest, she was betrayed by Trudeau so she quit. Our federal civil service has grown by 30% since Justin was elected and still the country is failing. The CBC serves the Liberal Party agenda and Pierre Poilievre, the opposition leader and most likely the next prime minister, wants to defund the CBC, close it down. Our population has grown from 36M to 43M in nine years, but who are these people? Who are these men I see wearing flip flops at McDonald's in December's cold weather? What happened to the point system for selecting immigrants? Our schools are overwhelmed by newcomers and we don't have enough teachers, housing, or medical services for everyone; Justin has flooded the country with people and even he is now saying it was a mistake; with Justin nothing was thought out, nothing was planned, it was government by extemporaneous legislation. Canadians always welcomed immigrants, now most Canadians think this massive immigration has been a huge mistake and want immigration stopped. The cost of groceries has made all of us buy cheaper foods, be much more careful about what we buy, some go hungry, 2M people visit food banks every month. The young will never own their own homes, property is inordinately expensive and now beyond the reach of most people, and many young people can't even afford to rent an apartment, they live in their parents' basements; the supply of new housing doesn't exist despite the government knowing the population was exploding. We have become a country that is not serious, other countries don't waste their time consulting with Canada, it's a waste of their time and we all know it. Canada was a happy place just nine years ago, it was thriving and it was a good place to live, but that is no longer the case. Justin Trudeau’s incompetence and commitment to both big government invading every aspect of our private lives and to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, (DEI), has resulted in attacking the traditional moral values of the country; and you had better be careful what you say because they do not countenance any opposition to their beliefs. Now that cannabis has been legalized everywhere you go there is the smell of marijuana. Now that medical assistance in dying is legalized —MAID— it is one of the leading causes of death. No government has compassion, what they have is expediency, and Justin Trudeau’s government is no different. And Justin now claims he helped the English-speaking population of Quebec, a population which is under constant attack by the provincial government; in fact, he consistently sided with the provincial government, and he supported language laws against us Anglos living here, we’ll never vote for the Liberal Party of Canada again; in fact, Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government have done zero for us; Quebec’s separation seems almost inevitable after nine years of Justin running things. And, just think, the other night the CBC state run news network rebroadcast a programme on how politicians are getting increasingly hateful mail, they are called all sorts of terrible names, told that people want to kill them, do harm to them, and some politicians have body guards and still feel unsafe, and the CBC also interviewed a few people who the CBC claims hate these same politicians, they were just good, decent, average people. Of course, the CBC only follows the Woke agenda of Justin Trudeau, it's all gender with the CBC, it’s all disparaging or ignoring average Canadians, it’s all biased reporting; it’s all trying to destroy what made this country great, and what has been the result? We've become mediocre and demoralized. Well, folks, no one approves of incivility and no one approves of politicians, or anyone else, being harassed or threatened and that has to stop, this is not a violent country, but under the circumstances it is understandable that people feel the way they do, they are angry, they live in fear of the future, the good life that we had is gone, and what will the lives of our grandchildren be like if it's like this now? It has been nothing less than a nine year nightmare with Justin Trudeau as prime minister. And, by the way, on last night's news, there was Justin Trudeau on holiday skiing in British Columbia when a young woman approached him and told him to get out of B.C., she told him to F-off. Is he finally getting the message? 

30 December 2011, downtown Montreal

 

Restaurant Julien

The Bay in the distance

At The Bay

At The Bay

Phillips Square and The Bay on the left 

29 december 2009, in New York City

 

St. Mary’s Hospital, Paying it Forward

St. Mary's Hospital, 20 August 2014 

Walking down the hall at St. Mary’s Hospital, I said a silent thank you to Fr. Luke Callaghan for saving the hospital. Back in the 1930s Dr. William Hingston, who founded the hospital, asked Fr. Luke for help dealing with Sr. Helen Morrissey (no relation to me), the nun who had initiated the idea of a hospital for Montreal’s Roman Catholic population; however, Sr. Helen had her own rigid ideas of how the new hospital should be run, and she proved an obstreperous and formidable opponent as she alienated the all-male board organizing the new hospital. She almost derailed the hospital before it had even opened. As a last resort, and exasperated with Sr. Helen, Dr. Hingston called in Fr. Luke, who was the pastor at St. Michael’s Church in Mile End, to see what he could do about the situation. It was because of Fr. Luke’s intervention that fund raising and building the new hospital could proceed. Soon, the new St. Mary’s Hospital opened and it has been serving Montrealers of all faiths ever since.     

It occurs to me that at this time of the year, a time for giving and thanks, we might remember those people from the past who made our present lives possible. Fr. Luke Callaghan, who is also my great great uncle, helped pay forward the gift of St. Mary’s Hospital. This hospital saved my wife’s life ten years ago; my two grandsons were born here; and the doctors, nurses, and technicians at St, Mary's gave me truly exceptional care just three years ago when I was diagnosed with cancer, they saved my life. 

I would be a terrible ingrate if I did not contribute to St. Mary’s Hospital Foundation. I think of Fr. Luke Callaghan and the words of Dr. William Hingston, “In my opinion, Luke Callaghan saved St. Mary's.” Of course, Fr. Luke probably never heard of the phrase “paying it forward” and he had no idea that his intervention to save the hospital would also help his family’s descendants ninety years later, but that’s exactly what he did; we, too, can pay forward something of what we have received. Be generous, be giving, and pay forward what we have been given for future generations.

Notes: Quotation from Dr. Hingston is from Allan Hustak's At the Heart of St. Mary's, A history of Montreal's St. Mary's Hospital Center, Vehicule Press, 2014.

I also recommend Dr. J.J. Dinan's St. Mary's Hospital, The Early Years, Optimum Publishing International, Montreal and Toronto, 1987.