Early morning by the park’s lagoon.
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Westmount Park
Early morning in Westmount Park.
Westmount Public Library
Japanese tree lilac outside the Westmount Public Library.
Victoria Hall
Victoria Hall decked with the Fleurdelisé on a rainy Fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste.
Ingleside Lane
Original hardware on an old garage door at Ingleside Lane.
Building Collapse
Corner of Metcalfe Ave. and St. Catherine Street.
Building Collapse
Building collapse, Metcalfe & St. Catherine Streets. The building was undergoing renovations to create condominiums.
A Missing Fountain – Westmount Park
During the course of browsing digital archive images of Westmount, I keep coming across this picture of a beautiful old fountain next to the park’s current wading pond in the early 1900s.
The research I have done points to a drinking fountain donated to the City of Westmount by the NWCTU to celebrate Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1898.
“National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the members were urged to erect drinking fountains in their towns so that men could get a drink of water without entering saloons and staying for stronger drinks. Often the drinking fountains that were erected offered a place for horses to drink, another place for dogs, and of course, a place for humans to drink.”
Thinking this would be a wonderful historic addition to the park, if restored to its former glory, I contacted City Hall and enquired about its whereabouts.
The City of Westmount Archives and Records Management office kindly did the research, and provided a fascinating insight into this matter.
Apparently, in the 1960s a major redevelopment occurred in the park. During that period, the fountain was removed.
Interestingly, the City’s Archives has a document, with the following photographs, dated 1987, that shows the fountain disassembled, 100 kilometers north of Montreal, in Saint-Gabriel-de-Brandon. How the fountain ended up there is a question – one can speculate that it was given to a City employee who moved it to a country property.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this fountain could be repatriated and reinstalled in the park?
Water Fountain – Westmount Park
The original (1930s) water fountain in Westmount Park.
Twenty five years ago the City suggested replacing these with newer models. A letter to the Westmount Examiner, at the time, suggested changing the faucet and adding a new water pipe. The City agreed and the original fountains still exist to this day.
As an aside, Mayor Peter Trent’s book (The Merger Delusion: How Swallowing Its Suburbs Made an Even Bigger Mess of Montreal) calls the Westmount Examiner the City’s former “Hansard”. I recall realtors mentioning the paper as one of the “selling points” for one moving to Westmount.
The paper used to be delivered, at minimal cost, once a week.
It baffles me as to what happened – it is now delivered, and not and worth reading, in our “Publi-Sacs” with all the other flyers that go straight into the recycling box.
When our daughter was small, and spent hours in the Children’s Library, I used to enjoy reading the old copies (on paper & microfilm) while waiting. It was an excellent local paper that was well written and truly represented the interests of the City – am I the only resident that mourns its loss?
(TCI Media stopped published the Westmount Examiner on October, 2015)
Westmount Green Houses
Westmount green houses – for some reason, passersby treat the windows as a “shrine”; leaving their “marks” as they walk through the area.
Westmount Overlooked 