TRAF : Q UEBEC ’S OLDEST ENGLISH GIRLS ’ S CHOOL $10 Quebec VOL 6, N O. 7 AUTUMN 2012 Heritag eNews Tractors, Trains, Mills and Orchards QAHN’s Photo and Essay Contests Ottawa River adventurers George Hamilton and Thomas Kains Montreal’s Musical Heritage The Junior Symphony Orchestra and One Lost Piano QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS Quebec CONTENTS Heritag eNews EDITOR Editor’s Desk 3 RODERICK MAC LEOD PRODUCTION Fixing a Hole Rod MacLeod DAN PINESE Letter 4 Street level screenings John Annesley PUBLISHER THE QUEBEC ANGLOPHONE Timelines 5 HERITAGE NETWORK The Cost of our Heritage: The Paul Holland Knowlton House Jessica Campbell 400-257 Q UEEN STREET Mystery Objects from Rawdon Beverly Prud’homme SHERBROOKE , Q UEBEC J1M 1K7 Between St Lambert and Longueuil: Remembering Montreal South Kevin Erskine-Henry PHONE Spem Successus Alit 11 1-877-964-0409 125 Years of “Traf Janet Chandler Allingham (819) 564-9595 FAX QAHN Heritage Photo Contest 16 (819) 564-6872 QAHN Heritage Essay Contest 18 CORRESPONDENCE EDITOR @QAHN .ORG Montreal’s Music Man 20 WEBSITES Lewis V Elvin and the Junior Symphony Orchestra Carol Martin WWW .QAHN .ORG Just When Things Couldn’t Get Much Worse 23 WWW .QUEBECHERITAGEWEB .COM The Trials of George Hamilton Joseph Graham Devastation’s Purser 26 PRESIDENT Thomas Kains and the War of 1812 Eve Krakow KEVIN O’D ONNELL StoryNet Story 28 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & Lost:Morris Listowel Piano. Contains:Unrealized Dreams Gordon Rainey WEBMAGAZINES EDITOR MATTHEW FARFAN OFFICE MANAGER KATHY TEASDALE Quebec Heritage News is produced four times yearly by the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network (QAHN) with the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage and Quebec’s Ministère de la Culture et des Communications. QAHN is a non-profit and non-partisan umbrella organization whose mission is to help advance knowl - edge of the history and culture of the English-speaking communities of Quebec. Annual Subscription Rates: Individual: $30.00; Organization: $40.00 Cover image: Original doors from a now demolished original wing of the Trafalgar Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement Number 405610004. School for Girls, Dr. Penfield Avenue, Montreal. Photo: Rod MacLeod ISSN 17707-2670 PRINTED IN CANADA 2 AUTUMN 2012 EDITOR ’S DESK Fixing a Hole by Rod MacLeod e’ve been hearing a lot given a reasonable amount of thoughtful striven to create the kind of grand termi - about crosses lately, about planning. Alas, for much of the twenti - nus the city deserved and for which the how they are somehow eth century, Montreal’s planners were site was well-suited: McGill College Av - fundamental to Quebec’s far too preoccupied with grandeur (of enue offered a vista running from the culture and identity. Whether or not that buildings and egos) to give much steps of the Arts Building right down to Wis true, I would argue there is one partic - thought to pleasant urban environments. the prospective terminus – a version of ular cross that is fundamental to Montre - The small terminus at the southern New York’s Grand Central Station, per - al’s culture and identity, for two reasons. end of this site, facing onto La - haps? Architect John Campbell Merrett One reason is that it typifies the modern gauchetière Street, was good enough for designed a striking Art Deco interior cosmopolitan city we are all proud concourse, but from the outside the of. The other is that it filled a nasty building that rose by the end of hole that no one loved. World War II was a dull, squat box I, perhaps alone, a mad voice set some distance from Dorchester in the wilderness, hate this particu - Street as if ashamed to go near it. lar cross. I quite liked the hole. It was Central Station, but never The hole was once filled very Grand. nicely by a large house and garden The CNR eventually cottoned belonging to the Joseph family (see on to its new terminus’s mediocrity QHN, September 2009) known as and decided to build a vast hotel Dorchester House, after the street complex on top of it, recalling the on which it was built. The Josephs great hotel-termini of the CPR. sold the property in 1912 to devel - This being the 1950s, however, the opers, the ones behind the Canadian result was no Viger Station or Gare Northern Railway project to dig a du Palais – rather the monstrosity tunnel under Mount Royal and give we know today as Hotel Le Reine their trains a downtown terminus. Elizabeth. The building is even Other, smaller buildings were also more of an affront to Montreal’s sacrificed to create a large piece of skyline than its title is to French real estate. By the time the tunnel grammar. (Isn’t the queen a was finished, there was a long woman?) If you don’t believe me, trough running north-south between go to the top of the McGill Arts Mansfield and St Monique (roughly Building steps and look down the on a line with McGill College Av - length of the street at the hotel’s enue) which emerged from the side endless boxy grey windows. They of the mountain and ran under the couldn’t even centre the building wide bridge that Dorchester Street properly. had become. Hugging the edge of North of Dorchester Street, be - this trough were such prestigious tween Mansfield and University buildings as St Paul’s Presbyterian the Canadian Northern Railway, but far streets, there was still plenty of hole. To Church, Mary Queen of the World from adequate for the Canadian National fill it, developers decided to vault brave - Cathedral, the Sun Life headquarters, Railway, which had swallowed it up by ly into modernity, leaving behind the and another lovely mansion-in-a-garden the late 1920s. In order to create a prop - stale pseudo-Deco of Le Reine Eliza - known as Homestead. er rival for the Canadian Pacific’s Wind - beth. They hired architects Henry Cobb Montrealers who remember this sor Station, Canadian National bought and IM Pei, who had some experience hole almost universally lamented what additional land to the east, as far as Uni - fitting skyscrapers into heritage areas in they saw as a scar on their city. But any - versity Street. Homestead and St Paul’s cities such as Washington and Philadel - one who has visited Edinburgh (a city Church were demolished – the latter, phia. For some time it had been appar - whose New Town was the inspiration for fortunately, rebuilt in St Laurent as part ent to Montrealers that their city, too, Montreal’s downtown) will know that a of a college. needed a dose of urban renewal, particu - trough with trains running through it can This loss of architectural heritage larly given the kind of blight still on of - make for a pleasant urban environment, might have been justified had planners fer along Dorchester Street – such as the Place Ville Marie, 1961. Photo: Architecture, 3 Bâtiment, Construction, October 1961 QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS elegant St James Club and the distin - guished Burnside Hall (recently home to the Fraser Institute Library). Both promptly fell to the bulldozer. The building that rose on the north side of Dorchester Street, completed ex - actly fifty years ago, was to weather the controversy it immediately engendered and emerge as Montreal’s most beloved building. The new head office of the Royal Bank consisted of a massive tow - er in the shape of a cross (as you looked down on it, which of course you could not do other than from an airplane as it was the tallest thing around) and a series of lower buildings framing the kind of windswept plaza that planners were fond of in the 1950s. Despite some obvious acquaintance with the work of Mies Van the Royal Bank building is now general - ish today despite, not because, of Place der Rohe, Cobb and Pei seem to have ly known, though that name originally Ville Marie. Fifty years on, we ought to been influenced principally by the archi - referred only to the mall beneath it) won look back and realize we deserved tects who designed the Exposizione Uni - its way into Montrealers’ hearts as proof something better. A grand central station versale Roma (the “EUR”) for Mussolini that they were hep and progressive and facing up McGill College Avenue to the in the 1930s, albeit on a vaster scale. on their way to being citizens of a World mountain. Or even just a hole. Like that fumbling attempt at classical City. Montrealers also like it because of This is a rant, I know. You can stand pastiche, Montreal’s cruciform tower its cross shape, which is of course a re - there and disagree if you like – but I and its subordinate blocks offer rows of flection of the cross on top of the moun - should tell you that I’m fixing another vacant black windows instead of the tain, which is also the city’s symbol. sort of hole: one that lets the rain get in clean lines and stunning surfaces that is The architecture of Place Ville Marie is and stops my mind from wandering… Modernism at its best. Compare the secondary. We’ve long since stopped ac - Royal Bank tower with Victoria tually looking at its massive bulk, or for Square’s Bourse, or with Dorchester that matter noticing how complicated LETTER Square’s RIBC building, or with the (albeit warm and dry in the winter) it complex at Westmount Square – which makes getting to and from Central Sta - was actually designed by Mies. tion. We think it did great things for us Street level screenings These were all products of the same pe - as a city, but I would argue that Montre - riod, but seem infinitely fresher.