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Thursday, June 30, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Process: Griffintown sladdakavring
UNESCO designated April 18th as the International Day for Monuments and Sites in 1983. Heritage Montreal, in collaboration with ICOMOS Canada, brought together several partners to highlight this year’s theme, the Cultural heritage of water in Montreal. Parks Canada put on a conference about the Lachine Canal National Historic Site at Brasseurs de Montréal. While on the guided tour of the canal and its basins, admittedly a cold and wet experience as it rained buckets the entire time, I discovered that The Canada Jute Company used to occupy the building situated at 1744 William Street, which was built in 1889. Specializing in the making of industrial bags in jute and cotton, The Canada Jute Co. was incorporated in 1882 and amalgamated into The Canadian Bag Company in the 1900s.
The proximity of the Ogilvie Flour Mill on rue des Seigneurs (built in 1890, and later occupied by Montreal Woolen Mills), prompted me to wonder if Canada Jute Co. provided the mill with jute bags for its flour and middling products? A material that is considered a waste product along with the bran, middlings or weatlings (in French, remoulage or issues), is obtained in the commercial wheat milling process and was commonly used to feed livestock as a high-protein supplement.
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| Lake of the Woods Tongue Rug, c. 1930 Reverse view of the burlap bags from Lake of the Woods Milling Company Ltd. |
At first, I wondered if there was a Griffintown connection to my sladdakavring? Did The Canadian Bag Company fabricate the middling bag that is stitched on the back of my tongue rug? Upon further investigation, I realized that it is more plausible that the maker of the rug simply lived on a farm or maintained a small stable on their property because Ogilvie Flour Mills only bought Lake of the Woods Milling Company in 1954, while the tongue rug is dated around 1930. It will be difficult to determine the origin of the rug given that middlings were sold all over Canada and the United States to feed livestock.
When I first settled down in the Sud-Ouest in 2007, I walked the Griffintown and Point St. Charles Heritage Trail to explore the area. Hailing from an industrial city in Northern Ontario, I've always appreciated the singular beauty of 19th & early 20th century industrial architecture. I’ve been walking and biking through Griffintown on a daily basis as I started working at the Board of Montreal Museums Directors.
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Curious about the area's architecture, I consulted McGill University's Industrial Architecture of Montreal website. The BMMD building situated at 333 Peel and William was once the garage of the William Dow Brewery Co., built in 1929 by the architect Louis Auguste Amos.
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| Engraving: Commercial trademark of William Dow & Company, Montreal, India pale Ale John Henry Walker (1831-1899) © McCord Museum |
I also recently stumbled upon a heritage study of 55 buildings in Griffintown — residential housing, institutional, commercial and industrial buildings — on the Committee for the Sustainable Redevelopment of Griffintown website. Planification détaillée du secteur Griffintown: analyse du cadre bâti was produced by the consulting firm Patri-Arch (Martin Dubois and Catherine Séguin with David B. Hanna and Atelier B.R.I.C.) for the Bureau du patrimoine de la toponymie et de l’expertise du Service de la mise en valeur du territoire et du patrimoine for the City of Montreal in March 28, 2007. I decided to create a map using the study’s heritage sites as a starting point, in order to find my bearings while on my meanderings to and from work.
View Griffintown Heritage Buildings in a larger map |
It was fascinating to see the transformations over time: from the photos taken during the study's 2006-2007 time period, to the Google Street View photos taken in 2009, to seeing the actual sites now, two years later, on my daily walks. I was frankly relieved to see that all the sites were still in existence with all the construction sites in the area. One of the study's suggestions was to design a series of informational plaques for these heritage buildings, a timely idea especially with all the recent real estate developments; from the well-known landmarks to the more modest dwellings, it is important to remind the passer-by of the varied history of this neighbourhood. The study certainly opened my eyes to the area’s industrial past and the key historical figures who helped shape the community.
| Griffintown Police Station no 7, The Griffintown Tour by G. Scott MacLeod, 2001 |
I also found G. Scott MacLeod's website The Griffintown Tour, which showcases a series of drawings of key sites in Griffintown, namely Police Station no 7 situated at 219 Young Street. Built in 1875, it is now used as a rehearsal space for the Centaur Theatre Company. I recently enjoyed a guided tour of the building. Urban Occupations Urbaines, in collaboration with the Centaur Theatre and Heritage Montreal presented Alison Loader's Ghosts in the Machine, an inquiry into the death of Mary Gallagher. I was impressed on many levels by this work.
I found the site-specific nature of her work a key component to the multimedia installation. The historical signification of the building for the Irish population at the time and the "residue" of a 135-year-old space added to the experience: the creaking of the floorboards, the smells and the general atmosphere. I appreciated the fact that there were multiple entry points, that is, each person would have a different experience based on their vantage point of the projections; each person, depending on when they entered the installation, would experience the narrative differently as there was no beginning nor end to the audio loops. One was free to creep up to see an image on the cylinder, to walk around the distorted projections or to simply sit down and listen. The imagination of the visitor — his or her ability to fill in the gaps — is another important component of this piece. The image of a nude figure with an axe for example, becomes a skewed image of some sort of animal galloping in a monstrous manner. Closer investigation is needed to determine what one is looking at or what one is hearing as the audio of the three circular areas overlap. The piece is interactive in that it demands work; visitors need to spend time with the installation to put together the pieces, to reassemble the bits of information that they are hearing and seeing. This process of reconstitution mirrors the multiple points of view at the time on the crime (the beheading of Mary Gallagher) as well as the societal biases around women and class that came to corrupt the justice process in finding her killer.
It would be interesting to have a permanent exhibition of Lauder's work in Griffintown much like the Silophone project in the Old Port.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Story: Tea Lake / Lac Tea
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Tea Lake: 44.606818N, -63.575613W
Francesca via e-mail
Montreal - May 20, 2011
Coordinates: 44.606818, -63.575613
Other name: Purcell's Pond
Tea Lake is a tiny lake about 20 minutes outside of Halifax along Purcells Cove Road. It's unofficially called Tea Lake because minerals in the water have coloured the water like well-steeped tea.
Tea Lake Gypsy
Come and we go
Everyone’s a gypsy girl
Nowhere to go?
There’s a place we know called Tea LakeDriving along the highway
Dapples washing over us
We’re on our way
To a little place we know called Tea LakeGypsy do the swirling dance
Brother she won’t need her clothes
Water colour of Red Rose
Sip the tea it’s deliciousCome and we go
Everyone’s a gypsy boy
Nowhere to go?
There’s a little place we know called Tea LakeDiving beneath the water
Ripples washing over us
We’ve found our way
To a little place we know called Tea LakeGypsy do the swirling dance
Sister he won’t need his pose
Water colour of Red Rose
Sip the tea it’s delicious
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Story: Rawka Stream / Ruisseau Rawka
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Rawka Stream: 50.276937N, 19.024086W
Moniczka via form
Halifax, Nova Scotia - May 18, 2011
Coordinates: 50.276937N, 19.024086
Waypoints: Industrial area, nearest town is Katowice, Poland
Other names: Rawa, Roździanka (1737)
The story is about a stream that ran behind my grandmother's house. As a child I remember walking on a small roughly made bridge that crossed it. I always hesitated however because my mother always made a point to tell me to be very careful when playing by that stream. Years later, my mother told me a story of how she almost drowned in that very stream. She was walking alone near the edge and slipped. Thankfully one of the neighbors was looking out her window and ran to help; she jumped in and saved my mom. I always loved how my grandmother ended that story; the neighbor ripped her stockings in this ordeal and my grandmother had bought her a new pair. Sadly, the stream was filled over in recent years.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Story: Lake Laurentian / Lac Laurentien
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Lake Laurentian: 46.458333N -80.933333W
Karen Hibbard via form
Winnipeg, Manitoba - May 3, 2011
Coordinates: 46.458333 -80.933333
Waypoints: The Laurentians in Sudbury. Roadside. Laurentian Lake. Suburbia. The University.
Summers swimming up near the University at Laurentian Lake, Sudbury, Ontario
My sisters and I would spend all summer walking between Laurentian Lake and our little suburban enclave where we lived as children. There were 4 of us. And we walked for a mile there and back, spending our day swimming in the sun. We didn't hurry along like we would now as adults. Of course you can't when you are just children, our bodies were still in development.
Walking along an isolated country road is something that children would not be allowed to do nowadays. There was nothing but bush. And drivers would race by from time to time, caught unawares that children were by the roadside. I was the oldest and always slightly worried about any trouble that could potentially appear.
We loved getting to the lake finally, dusty from the walk. If we were hungry, we'd fill up on blueberries and raspberries we saw peaking through the woods at us. Or we would vandalize the food machines at the University. Not that we were old enough to do any real damage besides maybe squeezing a sandwich out (if we were lucky). This is not really a story but more of a memory of a happy childhood spent independent of adults and as part of a sister gang with bonds that last to this day.
Now we are all grown up middle-aged women. Everyone is living in a different city. Some are single and others are married with children. There is very little time for communication and lots of worries about money and jobs and children. I have worries for the future — what will happen to our parents health-wise and how will we react as a unit? Will our sisterhood fall apart when our parents go? Are the bonds from our childhood really as strong as I imagine? Are they just valued memories for some of us?
Jumping in the lake as kids from a rock face seemed reckless but exciting. We knew the lake so well and had the good sense to investigate below the surface of the water beforehand. Free from all cares for that moment in time, we enjoyed each other's company and our natural surroundings. I would love to experience this innocent abandon again with my sisters. I hope our bonds will not be broken in our old age.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Story: Lake Huron / Lac Huron
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View Larger Map |
Lake Huron: 44.8N -82.4W
Morgan James Hanam via form
Sydney, Nova Scotia - April 25, 2011
Coordinates: 44.8 -82.4
Where I lived as a child in Kincardine, Ontario, we were very close to a beach on Lake Huron. The Huron is important to me because it was the first major body of water that I was aware of. Its recession from the shore at the time (getting shallower and shallower each year) eventually made me aware that it had originally been over where my house was abutting a low cliff past the top of our subdivision — so that I became aware of deep time and geology at the tender age of seven.
I had many adventures along the shore — one I remember distinctly was in winter, the ice floes had piled up along the shore very thickly that year and extended out several dozen yards. I made my way out to the outermost floes and literally skipped along at the edge of the ice. This was a joyous act of daring but thinking back on it now I was very lucky.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Process: Isidore and Rose Alma Legault
Legault Waterway |
Cours d'eau Legault |
Tweet your story @tongue rug or fill out a short form! Tweetez votre histoire @tonguerug ou remplissez un formulaire! |
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I decided to follow the same process as the Lapalme map and superimpose multiple generations of Legaults with the respective tongue rug placenames. I started with Roch Legault (Legoff) in Irvillac, France and moved westward.
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View Legault Ancestors in Canada in a larger map |
Just as I suspected, five generations of Legaults have lived in proximity to the waypoints that are concentrated in the Outaouais region: LE-1, LE-8, LE-10 and LE-6.
- Jacques Legault
(b. Sep 19, 1764, Pointe-Claire, d. Mar 18, 1847, Montebello, Papineau, QC) - Michel-Amable Legault
(b. Nov 16, 1809 Rigaud, Vaudreuil, d. Sept 11, 1906, St-André Avelin, Papineau, QC) - Justinien Legault dit Délaurier
(b. Feb 1831, Rigaud, Vaudreuil, St-André Avelin, Papineau, QC) - Isidore Emirie Legault
(b. Abt, 1856-1876, St-André Avelin, Papineau, QC) - Isidore Legault
(b. May 7, 1918, St-André Avelin, Papineau, QC, Apr 8, 2007, Sudbury, ON)
I remember when cycling to each of these bodies of water, I passed by many farms. Most of the Legaults were listed in censuses as farmers or cultivators. My grandfather Isidore had worked as a lumberjack before injuring himself. It was the thriving forestry industry in Northern Ontario that triggered his move northwest.
I was unable to find much info on Isidore Emirie Legault?
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Story: Simon River / Rivière-à-Simon
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Rivière-à-Simon: 45.9N -74.25W
Paul Meillon via form
Montreal - April 23, 2011
Coordinates: 45.9 -74.25
A beautiful nude goddess, floating down the river, her red curly hair mixing with the undulating lemna minor, while I film, enchanted.
Story: Lake Simcoe / Lac Simcoe
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Lake Simcoe: 44.4366677N -79.339167W
Paul Meillon via form
Montreal - April 23, 2011
Coordinates: 44.4366677 -79.339167
Fishing at night with square nets and lamps at the Orillia lake, quite the adventure! Wiggling slimy silver gleaming in the night.
Story: Rouyn Lake / Lac Rouyn
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Lac Rouyn: 48.233333N -79.016667W
Paul Stavert via form
Montreal - April 23, 2011
Coordinates: 48.233333 -79.016667
Eternal summer days of youth, where the infinite mystery of the world revealed itself in blue crystalline sandy lakes, surrounded by pines, and the strange undulating movement of leeches.
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