Skip to content

Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Montreal in the snow… in February 1972

Read more articles by


Peel Street looking north from Sherbrooke

It must be end-of-year nostalgia: after Mike Gericke’s photos of Montreal in 1987, I can’t help but revisit some other old photos I came across earlier this year.

February 20, 1972 was a snowy day in Montreal and Colin Rose was there to capture it. His images of early-70s downtown Montreal, scanned from transparencies and as clear as any photo taken yesterday, show a city that is at once completely familiar but also, in some ways, entirely foreign.

Don’t forget to click on all of these photos to go to their Flickr pages; they’re worth seeing large.


Peel and La Gauchetière, with Windsor Station on the right


Dorchester near Dominion Square. Notice the Laurentian hotel on the left, now gone


Ste. Catherine looking west from University


Sherbrooke looking east from Stanley

Recommended

11 comments

  1. I’m looking at these shots and wondering….
    Why I didn’t hear one complained about a snowboard shop opening in the Windsor station that we can see in the 2nd picture.

  2. Brings back memories,my family was still living in Pointe-Claire at the time.
    I was 8,my mom, sister and I out shovelling out her1966 Dodge Dart and dads pride and joy,his 1969 Dodge Polara.
    Thanks for bringing back some great memories.
    We moved to Rothesay, New Brunswick in 1978.
    The cars are long gone, but the memories aren’t
    Again Thanks

  3. Great seeing the old Man & his World signage on the lampposts.
    Man , have times changed.

  4. Another weather event was The Ice Storm of 1998 that struck Montreal and area with a vengence.,Fiona and I were here in Montreal during the Ice Storm, we’ll never forget the long blackouts, the destruction.
    We’d love to see photos from the ’98 Ice Storm.
    Snowstorms are spectacular, but The ’98 Ice Storm, words cannot describe it.

  5. Thanks for the great Montreal pictures. I stayed at the Laurentian in the early 70’s while at the University of Vermont. I wanted to stay there again. What happened to the Laurentian Hotel and what replaced it? Thanks for any info.

  6. I’ll never forget the “Great Blizzard of ’72”. Ski-doo’s in the streets (DOWNTOWN of all places!) snowbanks the size of Everest (Everest to a 6 year-old, anyways) and a week off school…what great memories. I was living in A-Ma-Baie (Eastern Pierrefonds) at the time and when we woke up that morning and opened the front door to our house on Glenn St., we were greeted with a wall of white! The snow had gone PAST the height of the door! It took our family 3 days to dig our way out! Haven’t seen a snowfall like that since. Would be cool to experience something like that again.

  7. I stayed in the Laurentian Hotel when on holiday in 1964. I live in Brisbane, Australia and found an old letter addressed to this hotel so I decided to search it on Google. Luckily I found your photos, and see it is no more.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *