Québec English Communities and History in Montréal (National Institute)

Westmount, Notre Dame de Grâce, Town of Mount Royal and Hampstead
These were once “English” enclaves,


 * …residential havens for upper-middle-class families. Not coincidentally, the principal examples have retained their independence from Montréal: Westmount, Outremont, Montréal West, Hampstead, and the Town of Mount Royal. …in Westmount, for example, the most elegant area lay north of the Boulevard, on the steepest part of the slope [of the mountain]…


 * Notre Dame de Grâce (NDG), which was sub-divided largely between 1905 and 1912, housed economically stable craftsmen and white-collar workers, most of whom commuted. Located just west of Westmount, the bulk of NDG shared Westmount’s ideal location for homes on the western slope of the mountain, separated from the smoky industrial areas along the Lachine Canal by a cliff running for several kilometres along the suburb’s southern edge…


 * With language groups concentrated in different suburbs, linguistic polarization on the Island (with St. Lawrence Boulevard acting as the popularly recognized boundary) encouraged stronger local loyalties.


 * …Not all anglophones were Protestants, of course, but almost all Protestants were anglophone…more and more anglophones moved to neighbourhoods north and west of the city, …in 1911 for example, 78 percent of Westmounters were Protestant.

The TMR (Town of Mount Royal, established 1912) was created directly out of farmland by a subsidiary of the Canadian Northern Railway Co., which was blasting a tunnel through the mountain to gain access to the harbour. It hoped to recoup part of the huge cost by developing a prestigious planned suburb linked to downtown by commuter trains through the tunnel. Hampstead, created 1914, to the west was also a “corporate suburb” laid out by town planners.

“Gigantism in Downtown Montréal”, by Isabelle Gournay, pages 153-182, includes discussion and plans, of several of the prestigious early apartment buildings:


 * Beginning in 1905, the Square Mile and the streets immediately east of the McGill University campus saw the construction of a growing number of apartment buildings designed for the Anglo-Protestant upper class, as an alternative to the private home whose maintenance had become quite costly.

There was another building boom of luxury apartments in the Square Mile in the 1960s, and many brick mansions and grey stone town houses were destroyed. All but a handful of the mansions along Dorchester Street have vanished, but between Dorchester and Sherbrooke Streets, the rows of grey stone town houses survive; many have become boutiques, restaurants, and there are still many residential units on upper floors. Photographs and other records of most mansions and many town houses exist in the Notman Collection and Archives of the McCord Museum. Check their website.

Moving Day in Montréal

 * “Compared to almost every other Canadian city, Montréal has a small proportion of single-family detached homes.”

Montréal is a city of tenants. In 1994, 53% of households rented, the average rent being $542 per month, and families may have moved every year, though most did not. Nevertheless, in June 1995 some 175,000 households notified the telephone company of an impending move.

Until 1973, moving day was 1 May, traditionally the day most residential leases started. In 1973, worried by the disruption this date caused in childrens’ education, the Québec Government declared that these leases would now end on 30 June. This meant that until 1973, when planning a census hunt for a Montréal family, you must know the date (day and month) the census was taken, since in Canada censuses tended to be taken in late spring, for example, you may have to check two addresses: where the family was in the 1881 Directory (usually compiled late in 1880), and the one in 1882 (made up late in 1881).

Now that 1 July (Canada Day) is Montréal moving day, there are fewer problems for family historians, but just as much chaos as some 200,000 apartments change tenants, as Mark Abley’s article amusingly describes.

Street-Car Routes
“Guy—la rue Guy—Guy” used to be the call of the streetcar driver at Sherbrooke Street, where Côte-des-Neiges turned into Guy Street. In Montréal, Public Transportation will often determine where a family lived. As Stephen Leacock explained it:


 * Fast urban transport spreads a city out; telephones put the suburbs within talking distance; lighted streets and comfortable streetcars invite movement abroad; and on the heels of all that the motorcar puts anybody anywhere.

The telephone came to Montréal in 1880 with four hundred subscribers. The Montréal Passenger Railway Company had put their horsecar on Notre Dame Street in 1861, and when Montréal shops moved up the steep hill to St. Catherine Street they instituted the first electric car. The Rocket began experimental runs along St. Catherine Street on 1 September 1892. It met with such success that:


 * … on Christmas Day, sixteen of the modern vehicles permanently replaced horses on the line. The next year, the Montréal Street Railway Company … felt sufficiently satisfied with its use of electricity, to keep the service running all winter. There were to be no more sleighs and soon, no more horses. By 1894 the changeover on all lines was complete.

By the 1920s city maps show a complex network of streetcar lines leading off to Cartierville and other island suburbs. Instead of living within walking distance of the factory or shop where they worked, a family could move to a pleasanter part of town and take jobs at places along different streetcar routes. Maps for visitors often give this information, for exampleMap of the City of Montréal with Index of Streets and Numbered Charts of the Tramway Routes (Revised to March, 1925), published by A.T. Chapman of Montréal. Lovell’s Montréal Street Guide a booklet published annually, also contained lists of Bus and Tramway Routes. John Lovell and Sons, Ltd., a firm that started publishing in 1835, still publishes Directories, maps and Street Guides for Montréal and its suburbs.

The Railways
Two major employers were the CPR (18,000 employees in 1955), whose Angus Shops were in the east end of Montréal, a block north of Sherbrooke Street, and the CNR (15,000) whose Pointe St Charles Shops and Yards were near the river, where the rails crossed the Victoria Bridge. Workers would have had passes to use their company’s trains, so look for their homes in streets along the railway tracks.

CNR records are at the NA in Ottawa in RG 30, and hold very few, scattered, employee records. I am assured the CPR records have survived, but if you check the CPR Archives website you find a discouraging note:


 * Unfortunately, employee records are not held by CPR Archives and are not available for research purposes.

Bill 101 removed the ’s from many big stores (and big employers), like Eaton’s (4,000) whose archives are at the Archives of Ontario, Simpson’s (1,631) (absorbed by Sear’s), Henry Morgan’s (2,750) (bought by The Bay). The Sun Life Insurance Co. (2,000) left town years ago as did many smaller firms, so employment records are scattered and difficult to find, if they survive at all.

Some Montréal Dates
For a fuller chronology and other useful facts about Montréal, see C.P. de Volpi, Montréal: … A Pictorial Record, Vol. 1, pages 1-9.