Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard

We’re pleased to invite friends and members of Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard to our general meeting, which will be held on Saturday 15 June 2024, 4 pm, at Parc du Portugal. We will have pastéis de nata to eat.

Apart from presenting a report of activities, we will be voting on a proposal (see below) to merge the Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard and Mile End Memories, an organization with a similar mission to ours. This merger, which has been approved by both boards of directors, also requires the adoption of revised by-laws.

Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard is a non-profit organization incorporated 25 June 2003 with the mission to support the community in projects of broad consensus that highlight the points of interest of boulevard Saint-Laurent, all the way from the Old Port of Montréal to Jean-Talon Street. The organization’s founding, on the initiative of the Société de développement du boulevard Saint-Laurent (SDBSL), followed on from the designation of the 6-km stretch of the boulevard between the Old Port and Jean-Talon Street as a National Historic Site of Canada in 1996.

Mile End Memories was, at its foundation in 2003, an association; it became a non-profit organization by incorporation on 26 May 2011. Its mission is to work towards creating awareness of and promoting the heritage, history and culture of the Mile End district and its environs; to encourage and facilitate links between individuals and organizations interested in these subjects; to encourage and carry out research projects on the area; to organize activities of commemoration and recognition; and to design, produce and distribute useful information on the heritage, history and culture of Mile End and its environs.

Since 2006, the two organizations have always had at least one person in common on their boards of directors. Over the years, several activities have been organized in collaboration (in particular, walking tours and the creation of the historical panel series “The Main, Always in Tune”). The two organizations’ web sites and accounting have long been handled by the same person. The culture and the vision of the two organizations have evolved together and have always been very similar.

It is proposed to request letters patent of amalgamation for the two organizations.

The organization resulting from the amalgamation will be called Mémoire du Mile End et de La Main / The Main and Mile End Memories. A new mission statement has been written, combining and clarifying the existing missions.

The merged organization will continue to use one, the other, or both of the existing names, Mile End Memories and Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard, along with their logos and graphic signatures, in its communications, according to their nature, for at least five years after the amalgamation.

The web sites memoire.mile-end.qc.ca, amisboulevardstlaurent.com, and mainaudioguide.ca will be maintained at these addresses for at least five years, and probably indefinitely thereafter. Their management will be combined.

The merged organization will make efforts to propose activities covering the territory of the National Historic Site of Saint-Laurent Boulevard, both inside and outside the municipal electoral district of Mile End, and to promote the visibility of the National Historic Site.

The memberships of Mile End Memories will be maintained: among others, in Fédération Histoire Québec and the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network. The organization will remain a partner of the Laboratoire d’histoire et de patrimoine de Montréal at UQAM.

The merged organization will continue the collaborations that its two constituents have developed with SDCs and commercial associations, with local history societies, with other community groups, and with municipal instances.

Photo : St. Lawrence Street, at the intersection of Pine Avenue, 1904.

At the end of the 19th century, the Baxter Block (3608-3712), as well as the Larivière hardware store (3715) opposite, were elements of a newly created prestigious commercial strip on St. Lawrence Street between Milton Street and Pine Avenue. Starting in 1888, the Main was gradually widened along the western side, incidentally allowing plenty of space for electric streetcars (1893) running in both directions; the rails can be seen in the photo. The new buildings transformed the streetscape by eliminating the old texture of bourgeois villas, gardens and orchards interspersed with small faubourg houses, of which a few examples are still visible on the east side in the centre of the photo.

The Baxter Block and neighboring Préfontaine Building (at right in the photo) were built on the former back garden of Durham House, the villa of the late entrepreneur Stanley Bagg converted into a private school. To the north had lain the site of the Guilbault Gardens, a popular amusement park closed in 1869. The Baxter Block, a row of terrace houses with a Romanesque Revival stone façade, was designed by architect Théodore Daoust in 1892 for developer James Baxter, also known as a diamond merchant and banker. The Préfontaine Building (1890), immediately to its south, was probably designed by the same architect for a certain Napoléon Préfontaine. It is marked by a façade of Romanesque arches decorated with ceramic tiles and bay windows. Originally, both buildings were crowned with onion domes, turrets and fantastical fleurons, unfortunately no longer existing. Their ground floors were occupied by shops and the upper floors housed offices and workshops.

Opposite (at left of the photo), the hardware company Amiot, Lecourt & Larivière constructed in 1895 another prestigious building designed by architect Joseph Perrault. The ground floor served as a showroom and retail space, while the upper floors were used for administration and warehousing. Through its monumental character and its elegant composition, the building – also in the Romanesque Revival style – gave its owners a forceful presence on St. Lawrence Street. The street’s commercial prestige was confirmed when it received the designation of Boulevard in 1905.

This photo is displayed over the entire surface of the shop window at 3660-3662 Saint-Laurent Boulevard as part of the project « La Main en histoire(s) », a collaboration between the Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard and the Société de développement du boulevard Saint-Laurent, 2020-2021.

(Text by Bernard Vallée. Translated by Justin Bur)

The Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard wish you a happy new year 2021 and invite you to discover with them the history and the oddities of the Main

The Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard invite you to the launch event for our new audioguide: 10 Moments on the Main – Petite-Italie.
Tuesday 8 May 2018, 5:30 to 6:30 pm
Casa d’Italia – 505 Jean-Talon Street East, Montreal

Our annual general meeting will follow from 7 to 8 pm. We welcome old and new members with an interest in the Main.

The next annual general meeting of the Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard will be held on Wednesday evening, 15 March 2017, at the Museum of Jewish Montreal. Come hear Yves Desjardins’s talk on the municipal elections of 1934, have a bite to eat and meet other friends of the Main.

Waiting room of the Seigler (Laurier) Clinic, 1933.
Archives de la Ville de Montréal, VM94-Z97

Mile End Jewish history: the election of 1934 in Laurier Ward
Talk by Yves Desjardins

Spring 1934. The Great Depression of the 1930s is at its worst. Camillien Houde is about to take back the mayoralty of Montreal. His supporters and opponents combat fiercely in the city’s districts.

One of them is exceptional: Laurier Ward, i.e., the southern part of today’s Mile End. A “national unity” candidate, Omer Langlois, is running against the incumbent Jewish councillor, Max Seigler. The campaign is impassionned and violent. A recently opened municipal medical clinic (corner of Mont-Royal and Henri-Julien, now occupied by Jeunesses musicales du Canada) is the focal point of the storm.

Yves Desjardins is an urban history researcher and a member of the board of Mile End Memories. His book Histoire du Mile End will be published by Septentrion in May.

This talk was previously presented by Mile End Memories in April 2016.

• Wednesday 15 March 2017, from 5:30 pm
• Talk at 6 pm – followed by the annual general meeting of the Friends of Saint-Laurent Boulevard
• Museum of Jewish Montreal, 4040 Saint-Laurent Blvd., Montréal (corner of Duluth Av. – 55 bus)
• Free, no reservation required
• Presentation in French, discussion in English and in French