Two photos are all that remains online to demonstrate the existence of a nameless village that once thrived in Montreal at the foot of a hill that also has no name.
Until the 1970s the land atop the hill was known as The Glen Yards, for the trains that switched on the flat section.
That land now houses the MUHC superhospital.
So the hill is named valley, as glen is the Scottish word for valley.
The dramatic view from the northwestern part of St. Henri has since been obscured by highways and overpasses. The village, as it was, is now long gone.
Many houses were lost to those highways, including on the north side of St. James, in what's now a field at the bottom of a highway support across from the Home Depot.One of those houses, forever a mystery to history, was home to tax supervisor Raoul Deschamps who died in 1937. .
The village revolved around the Ste-Elisabeth-du-Portugal church at the corner of Courcelle (aka Landsdowne, aka Glen Road) and St. James (aka St. Jacques).
The well-dressed gentlemen are seen standing at the back door of the church, which was demolished in 2008 and replaced a couple of years later by a tall residential building.
Lise Lefebvre published the book Album souvenirs de la paroisse Sainte-Élisabeth-du-Portugal, Saint-Henri, Montréal in 2005. It likely has images from the area but the book is impossible to find.
Only scattered tidbits about the church can be found online, for example Rev Clement Berthiaume, priest of the Ste Elizabeth du Portugal Parish died of pneumonia in 1930 at the age of 65 after serving 28 years as local priest. He had a twin brother who was also a Montreal priest.
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The second photo features joyous local kids assembling in a near park that appears to be west of the church, south of Pullman private railway street.Montreal children held elections to pick a peer to be mayor of the park. The park mayor would then get to meet Montreal's mayor and submit a list of things they'd like to see happen to their park. The practice thrived in the 40s and 50s and is detailed in my book Montreal 375 Tales.
The top of the St James Cliff, or escarpment, housed a series of farms including the Decarie Farm, the Brodie Farm (now Oxford Park), the Pasquini Farm - complete with goats -, the Aubin Farm, the Nittolo Farm and others.
The exact name and location of that park is anybody's guess.
The area has sometimes been referred to as Glen Village or Turcot Village, although that is a name that would only have emerged in the 1960s.
These photos are taken from a long-gone website operated by former residents Andrea Mancini and Peter Raimondo, who appears to have passed away in November 2018.