Saint-Raymond is the little slice of NDG on the other side of the tracks, or as I described when I lived in the neighbourhood, the wrong side of the tracks.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s not a terrible place. The residential streets are lined with post-war, Italian-style duplexes and could be called quaint, while the back alleyways, criss-crossed with laundry lines and smelling of ripe tomatoes in the summer are downright charming.
What makes this neighbourhood so hard to love is its isolation: Wedged between the train tracks and an impenetrable natural cliff, and cut off from the metro (and the rest of civilisation) by the Decarie expressway, Saint-Raymond is about the last place that anybody would stumble upon.
On top of that, the main thoroughfare, rue St-Jacques, is the first entry point into Montreal from Highway 20 and seems to have been built for truckers with its garages, cheap motels, and fast food. I have even heard that it is a hotspot for prostitution by some accounts. With big box stores filling in the gaps (and creating other, permanent gaps with their ample parking lots) it is the only strip in Montreal that I specifically recall feeling uncomfortable as a pedestrian and cyclist.
But Upper-Lachine road is the neighbourhood’s saving grace. Momesso’s deli and the NDG bakery are long-established Italian institutions that draw clients from beyond the local neighbourhood. Along with a hair-dresser, a tiny supermarket, a café and a couple dépanneurs, Saint-Raymond is actually a neighbourhood against the odds.
A couple years ago I sat in on a presentation of the McGill Urban Planning Master’s program about revitalizing Saint-Raymond. The planners-to-be hung their hopes on Upper Lachine developing into a viable main street. They theorized that, with the construction of the MUCH mega hospital mere blocks away, residential development could be in demand, and thousands of hospital employees on lunch break would create a whole new clientele for the businesses (although I wonder how many hospital employees would venture beyond the daunting overpass and underpass that isolate Saint-Raymond, especially with tidy Westmount village so close-by.)
Then this happened:
Some time around 2006, I guess it was determined that pocket of land under this massive radio tower was fit for residential development.
The architecture here is no treasure but the real tragedy is that this development turns a permanent blank wall on Upper Lachine road. It would have been easy (and probably profitable) to integrate commercial space into the southernmost units of these three buildings. In failing to do this, the developer, and the borough that rubber-stamped the project, interrupted the evolution of a more continuous Main Street.
Where a fruit store, a roti shop, or a laundromat might have catered to these condo-dwellers and breathed new life into the area for long-time residents, we find instead three inhospitable blocks that are going to stay that way for a very, very long time.
11 comments
What a fantastic in-a-nutshell account of a neighbourhood’s history and, thanks to shitty urban planning, blighted future.
I’ve only been to St Raymond once, on my bike, and it felt like Toronto. Not really sure why.
Years ago I used to work here, at 5757 Upper Lachine Rd. the tower in the photo is/was for Microwave Telephone communication.
( The road in the new developement at 5757 should be named Wilson Ave/Place as thats the name on the other portions of the same alignment from St. Jacques thru to Cote St. Luc. )
In the old days, the steam locomotives on the passenger trains would be working hard leaving Westmount Station, now Vendome, making a lot of noise and sprinkling the area with cinders from their coal fires to top the grade near Grand.
At night I used to walk up to Sherbrooke to catch the 105 to West Broadway thru the underpass beneath the CPR at Melrose and De Maisonneuve, as the service on the 106 Upper Lachine was not all that great in the evening.
Grotty area even in the sixties, and, even then as a young adult, I had concerns there at night. One reason people use cars, as some of the areas are not that safe.
You are right about the sleazo motels.
Some of the trucks used to come East on 2-17, up the grade at Brock and Rafael Ruffo Motel then turn West onto St Jacques towards Elmhurst Dairy.
( Side bar note. Rafael Ruffo was a building contractor who constructed many houses throughout the West end in the late forties and into the fifties.
He had a salvage yard on the North side of Cote St Luc between Earnscliffe and Clanranald where he used to store lumber and doors he salvaged from condemned buildings. The 102 used to stop there to connect with other routes and the streetcars on Girouard.
Montreal Tramways had a private right of way behind the homes on the West side of Earnscliffe from CSL to Queen Mary.
In the triangle formed by Girouard, Terrebonne and CSL, there was a large building that had a huge neon Diamond Taxi sign on it’s roof, and the streetcar route angled thru the roads diamond.
Ruffo homes were said to be well constructed as they used salvaged lumber within that was seasoned and of a quality not availble after the War.
There is a gas station on the location of the Ruffo salvage yard and the Tramways right of way to Queen Mary now. )
2-17 was THE highway to the West then, as Turcot Interchange still in the future as well as the now Route 40 above Cote de Liesse.
Highway 2 went West to Cornwall, Kingston and Toronto, Highway 17 to Ottawa, splitting at the West end of Vaudreuil/Dorion.
Highway 2 parallelled the Soulanges Canal where you might see canallers again that you had seen the day before passing up thru the Lachine Canal at Mc Gill St.
There was a no-tell motel at the bottom of Westmore below the tracks named ‘Peg’s’ which was otherwise know as ‘Pig’s’.
On a boring hot day in summer, we used to cross the tracks at Elmhurst just below Coffee ( Charles Duranceau Ltee 1957 ), a quiet area between the rush hours, as Western/De Maisonneuve not yet built, and the sleazy market at Harley and Elmhurst where the 90 Lachine and the 106 busses used to turn just a vacant lot.
That area was even then known as Slumhaven Village, a play on Westhaven Village, the true name of those apartments ajoining Elmhurst.
Another place not comfortable at night.
Commuters from Lachine or Ville St Pierre could get on a train at Montreal West or walk up to Elmhurst Terminus and catch the 102, 105 or 162 which all terminated/originated there back then.
We were prohibited from hanging around ‘Pig’s’ but, went there, anyway.
Big trucks back then had to carry licence plates from each state and province in which they operated, the front of the tractors sometimes having 8 or 9 plates, the idea was to see the plate from furthest away.
Yes, it was boring in the summer and we had to be outside by parental edict. Channels 2 and 6 only on TV, if you had one, in black and white.
( When CBFT 2 first went on the air, BEFORE Toronto!!, it was Bilingual, BUT, the Saturday night game from the Forum was broadcast in French, so English listeners would tune in an English radio station carrying the game on their AM radios and turn down the TV. )
We then would go to the South end of Westmore and sit on the catwalk of the billboards there overlooking 2-17, Turcot West, the Canadian Car and Foundry Works, Montreal Tramways to Lachine, when still running, the Lachine Canal, and, to the East, LaSalle Coke up on the bench.
Once again the object was to see the trucks and the box cars on trains from furthest away, and, inside, wish we were going there to see what was what.
Yes, we were bored, and had no money. Too hot and humid to look for bottles.
In a bad year we had to stay INSIDE as Polio raged thru the summer.
Pools closed, along with public drinking fountains.
Even in the sixties, below the tracks between Grand and Decarie, in the 2xxx addresses was deemed to be not a nice place to live, a tough working district.
I was surprised, on a visit a few years ago, to see 5757 being levelled, as was 375 River St in Verdun.
Could be worse. The new subdivision could be several stories higher.
Another story that has grown way too long, but, may provide a bit of history of Montreal’s West end.
I know the following does not belong here, but, the robins are back, the sun is out and it’s great to be alive!
Look at the beautiful photo herein!
Farms and streetcars.
The two don’t mix?
Streetcars connote the vision of busy crowded city streets and tall department stores, jostling with taxis and pedestrians, ringing their bells for the right of way.
Well, then, look at this photo from the Internet!
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b61/SDR_North/Cartierville17Sept1951.jpg
Cartierville 17 car Southbound at-then CNR Val Royal Station just North of Bois Franc, Sept 1951.
This is now rue Grenet, looking to the North.
Hopital du Sacre Coeur de Montreal visible to right in the distance.
Farms AND Streetcars!
Note the streetcar has a locomotive headlight.
Thank You!
That photo is gorgeous. Of course it belongs here. The sun is splendid. So much history underneath our feet. Makes me want to cry + dance.
So many beautiful Italian gardens sacrificed for those ugly gray condos. I still miss them.
Just horrible. I used to live on Decarie Blvd (between Sherbrooke and De Maisonneuve and remember getting flyer after flyer trying to sell me on one of those places. There are even any trees on the residential part of the street! This is a good example of why urban planning and regulations are so important. We don’t want to end up looking like Laval who have very little urban regulations.
You sure you don’t Montreal want to be like Laval, even just a bit? At least these guys are growing tremendously, while the city of Montreal has been stagnant for almost eternity.
I’m not trying to compare both, but they must be doing something right with the population boom they are enjoying in the last 40+ years.
Just a side note. Those atrocities were built by a known affiliate in Montreal organized crime. Remember the drive-by shooting on Cavendish last summer that had the drivers Range-Rover end up in a building?
Interesting discussion.
I too grew up in this charming neighbour during the 70’s.
What a disappointment. It’s shameful how this massive development got borough approval. This proposal would never have gotten off the ground just next door – Westmount.
This is not rocket science. Ask yourself, where is the Planning? Design? Quality? Value?
The local property owners and tenants had no idea of the outcome. I think the citizen deserve an independent investigation to answer who, what, when, where, why???
In my opinion, this neighbourhood is heading for even greater social problems as local mayor plans to densify this sector with more condos.
I believe the market on the corner of Elmhurst and Harley was called Assally’s. Everytime we passed it on our way to St Ignatius school from Westmore Ave. we used to say “ass ass Assally’s. Pretty cheeky for 7-8 year olds. Also, there is a story in the April 7th, 1966 Montreal Gazette “do it yourself park plan…” about kids from Westhaven Village not having a park to play in and talks about the possible creation of Coffee Park. Coffee park was built by the city of Montreal in the summer of 1966 and was the home of the Westhaven Outlaws hockey teams. Jim Morse who is mentioned in the article was instrumental in the creation of this hockey association although there was tough resistence from the people at Loyola Park.
Hey Terry. So you were on Westmore and I lived on Patricia. When did you start at St. Ignatius? I remember Assally’s Supermarket. Right, we never did have a park in Westhaven Village, but after reading the one snide remark about it, I don’t agree. I graduated with high honors at Marymount High in 1966 – worked in law offices, engineering firms and as an instructor for computer training as well as legal office procedures, and have lived in the accompaniment of rescued animals all of my life. At 64 years young, I rescued a 165-lb big black beautiful female NEWFOUNDLAND dog – and now she rescues me as my Legally/Medically Certified Service Dog. So thanks for insulting where I grew up, because most of us did not live in what many thought of as a “slum neighborhood”. I also have a diploma in Animals Sciences and have successfully passed Criminology I and II courses from John Abbott College. I am an avid reader, researcher, proof-reader and happen to be a well-reputed and prolific freelance writer. And I grew up in WESTHAVEN VILLAGE, and I’m proud to say so. My father was an aircraft mechanic for TCA and during the war he serviced everything from a tiny Hudson to a gigantic Lancaster bomber for the RAF Ferry Command. My mother helped to remove the US insignia from the incoming bombers from the US and re-painted the British Roundel on them for ferrying over to Great Britain and beyond, wherever allied troops needed food, troops, mail, medicine, armaments, plane parts, whatever. What have you and yours accomplished? God bless us, everyone, no matter where we came from. It’s not where you were brought up that counts, it’s the person you have become! Take care. V and B