Ping pong at the rec centre, flower clock, cannons, POM bakery, Imperial Tobacco smells, finding pucks in melted spring snow, Stores: Arrages, Clements, Pascals, Steinbergs, Tonys Shoes, Dominion, Select Pastry, Lazars, Cantors, Frys, Sams, Dannys, New Plaza, Miracle Mart, Chalet and Chateau, Trainatorium, Miss Westmount, and PikNik. Honeyballs and pinball at Alexis Nihon, fake Westmount ID at the Carb, hockey stick escalators, returning Coke bottles in paper bags, lawn bowling, Murray Park goldfish, pickup football, fouling softballs into traffic on De Maisonneuve through Westmount Park, brown buses on routes 24, 102, 103, 104, 105 and 124, Bob Aiken’s goatee smirk and Johnny Garland staring off into space, the echo in Westmount square tunnel, Harold’s little VW Bug, Spaz beggar in the tunnel to pigeon park, hippie hill, Russell the park ranger, Long-gowned Sufi incense vendors outside chocolate store while waiting for the 124 at Claremont and Sherbrooke, tobogganing on Murray Hill before the stupid hay bales, delivering the Star, skating, swimming, ping pong and basketball, cop station near Selwyn House, Victoria Day fireworks, Man Reading Newspaper, Unity Club, "Terminus!"
(Thanks to Dylan Haines about 60% of these).
14 comments:
when i was about 4 or 5 busted my first pair of glasses toboganning down Murry Hill. Hit a bump and went face first over the front into an icy mound at the bottom. Snap! I guess probably that was my first concussion too! Robert
King's School (on Western, now De Maisonneuve)
"Attewatturr!"
Did Mr.60% (Dylan) or yourself ever witness the great spectacle of the Worm Collectors during certain evenings in Murray Park?
Equipped with miner-type head-lamps, I believe that the City of W. actually employed them. Then again ;)
Lovely fish pond, too.
Changing scents each day emanating from Givaudan in St. Henri, quite possibly other sources, too.
As the flowers say, time flees.
Very little remains the same.
Ah, yes, I remember the flower clock and the cannons in Westmount Park…
I also remember that the streets were paved in a way that had several rows of bricks along the curb before the tarmac began… I wonder why that was.
One of the perks of growing-up in Notre-Dame-de-Grâces was the proximity of Westmount, and the heavier candy harvest on Hallow’een; you had to bring extra pillowcases, and a “Radio-Cart”… It was well worth the trouble to go up the Mountain, the candies would last well past Christmas…
Many NDG boys used to go to the Carb. Andre was slack on IDS,drinking quarts at 14 years old.Those were the days........
You and Dylan have brought back many memories.
I very much remember the Trainatorium where they stocked the big Lionel trains. Before moving to Westmount, they were at the corner of University and Cathcart downtown.
I must very strongly object to you using the phrase "Thalidomide Gervais." I knew Gervais way back then and although we were never close friends, I think it pretty low to nickname someone for a handicap resulting from a poorly researched morning sickness pill his mother took.
I will add one from the forties.
This memory from football in the Queens - Kings - Roslyn school league. Each team played the other twice, once at home and once away. Queens had a very tall heavy player who could run for a touchdown every time he had the ball. I forget his name but when I got to the junior High in 1945, he was in my seventh grade class. The one question that he ever asked was, 'When did compulsory education end?
When told that one could leave school at 14 years old, he raised his arms in a victory salute and said 'Next year! Hurray!'
His name escapes me at the moment but not the name of the only player in the league who had the speed, but mostly the courage to tackle him almost every time he carried the ball despite being half his size. I can still see his little black face looking up at the spectators on the sidelines in silent prayer that someone else would pluck up the spunk to play as hard as he did. That boy was, of course, Richard Lord, one of the finest all round atheletes, no, one of the finest people ever produced by the Westmount Schools System.
Michael Fish
@Westmounter.. I knew and admired Gervais, his whole identity was based around how he was able to overcome his handicap and do karate and other stuff, but if you saw that as a negative description then others probably did as well, so I removed it.
Remember Westmount High School being the school used for high school students who had to go to Summer School...
Oxford Stationery on Greene, the Katz brothers who owned it, Greene Avenue Lunch and Soda for Dinky Toys and a 5-cent bag of popcorn, Hill's Stationery, Clifford's, Gordon's, and Steinbergs with in the winter with tracks of sawdust in the dirty snow by their doors, Westmount police yelling to get your bike off the sidewalk or put a shirt on in Westmount Park, nighthawks calling in the hot night sky and plunging in freefall, The Vancouver train arriving at Westmount Station, the way it had every day since the lines reached BC in the 1880s, the sounds of kids playing in the streets after school, dying in the tropical section of the greenhouse in January, the smell of the linoleum in the "new" children's library of 1959 ...
Gervais indeed overcame much.
Thank you, Kristian.
-Victoria Day fireworks at Murray Hill Park
-Beverley from the Recreation Department
-Mini-Sips from Perrette's on Ste-Catherine at Metcalfe
-1cent swedish berries and cap guns from Anthony's, on Ste-Catherine and Abbott
-Park Rangers, pre-Westmount Public Security days
-The banana tree in the greenhouse
When was that huge bent-over tree finally cut down in Westmount Park
--the one where they hold those little concerts?
Post a Comment