Lost sounds of Montreal - the once-ubiquitious steamwhistle

   Friend of Coolopolis MP&I supplied this photo of a now-silenced steamwhistle on a building on Westminster that once provided a soundscape to his childhood in Montreal.
   Steamwhistles were common back then and used industrial sites, such as railways and and on the Lachine Canal.
   The one that stood out was at the roundhouse at the top of Westminster. It told CPR rail employees when shifts started and ended and when to take their breaks. The one photographed was affixed to the roundhouse that was build just prior to 1949.
   You could think of the whistles as a sort of industrial version of the church bell, as people would use it as a reminder of the time.

MP & I in a very difficult-to-shoot mountaintop selfie

    "We used the whistle when walking to and from school on Mariette to judge how much time we could waste," he writes.
   The whistle went silent sometime in the 1960s as more residents came to the area.