Park Extension - 65 photos from the past that will haunt your dreams in the future

Mrs. Pinkerton on Jean Talon, 1954.

"Join the mighty throng going to the opening of The North End Suburb" read the first-findable mention of Park Extension, in 1908, known at the time as Park Avenue Extension. Developers promised that they have "land, not mud, for sale,""dry as tinder and almost as level as the top of a billiard table."

These photos were mostly shared on Flickr's Park Extension Historical Society page and Facebook's Park Extension Memories. Coolopolis claims no ownership. We thank and salute all those who took the care to shoot these photos, those who preserved them lovingly for a long time and finally those who shared them on the internet.

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Bobby Scrimgeour, Ross Scrimgeour, Wally Ziobro. April 1957 at 7417 Bloomfield

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Jarry Park 1954

Park X resident John Clarke was one of the first newsmakers from the area. He took some cash out of the bank at Laurier and Park and then visited some nearby bars to drink. He came outside and rang a doorbell to ask directions to Park Ex. He grabbed the man by the sleeve, ripping it. The man turned out to be police officer Emile Legault who shot him dead. Local residents demanded the city pay his widow $10,000.

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Playing baseball 1965.

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Nellie Cassidy with her daughters Grace, Elnora and Francis at 6980 Durocher in 1947.

Early day promos promised that King Edward Blvd would be 80 feet wide and a mile in length. "and will be popular a residential street as King Edward is now the popular Monarch of Greater Britain and Canada." King Edward was penciled in to be just west of Park Ave. Acadie was Allan Ave., and later McEachern, Wiseman was Vendome, other strets included St Adele, Birckerdike, Geenshields, Abraham, Dickson, Howard.

Jarry Street 1926

Bill Scrimgeour tending the horses for firehall 41, early 1950s. "Horses were used when motor vehicles couldn't negotiate the muddy streets in the early days."

Beaumont and Park 26 Sept. 1949.

Delivery boy for Larose Hardware June 1941.

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Querbes St 1970s by Ron Bridgman

Jean Talon and Hutchison 1940s.

Developers included such "well known and shrewd businessmen as Robert Bickerdike, George Ball, (both former MPs) J.N. Geenshields, Sydney P. Howard, R. T. Hopper and F Abraham. Lots have 25 feet frontage and cost $90 and up payable 5 percent cash, with the first 50 buyers getting a 10 percent discount,.according to an advertisement published 28 March 1908. Prices doubled by 1910. By 1911 it had a neighbourhood baseball team. First real news story from the area 31 July 1912 a disoriented man was found wandering naked in a field. People started shortening the name to Park Extension starting around 1913, and within about 10 years nobody was calling it Park Avenue Extension anymore.

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Park Avenue, near Beaumont

Donald Tarlton (Donald K Donald) in Park X.

After much local lobbying, a tramway was finally opening to the area may 6 1921 from the norther side of CPR tracks to Ball via park. It ran from 6 a.m to midnight.

Priest on Ogilvy in 1925

Montreal pedestrian tunnels in 1932 at Jarry Park

The area sits next to Town of Mount Royal, which became a suburban garden city thanks to the Mount Royal Tunnel that was drilled through the mountain between 1911 and 1918, a process that led to considerable land speculation. Park X is smaller, poorer and, unlike TMR, built on a grid. Homes in Park Ex are smaller than many other parts of the city. The two neighbourhoods are divided by a fence on Acadie, which has aroused much irritation over the decades. The area became a landing pad for new immigrants, populated largely by Greeks for many decades and now others from East and South Asia. Census data from around 2000 indicated that it and Point St.Charles were the city's poorest areas, the difference being that Park Ex is working poor, while Point St. Charles is welfare poor. The most famous people from Park Ex were hockey star Dickie Moore and actor Glen Ford who lived there for some time as a young child.

M. Lucien Fortin, senior clerk at J.C. McLaren Belting Co. Ltd., 6836 de l'Épée, c. 1940

Janet McConnell and friends on bicycles in 1943, with the tall Station 41 fire tower in the background on Ogilvy Street.

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The Fuoco family returns home to Terrasses St-Roch from a baseball game. Sept. 11, 1970. Crowds crossing the footbridge at St. Roch Street after an Expos game.

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