Until the mid-1980s Little Burgundy was split by a mud-infested area known as the Bonaventure Yards that gobbled up 900,000 square feet of prime real estate between Atwater and Peel between St. James and Notre Dame. ![]()
A poet with a flair for geography could have created something memorable about the massive and gloomy property that divided a key part of town. None did as far as we know.![]()
Those who sought to pass the land were forced onto bridges at Guy and Mountain, a melancholy experience that I salute in my upcoming Montreal 375 Tales, which should be out in September.
A poet with a flair for geography could have created something memorable about the massive and gloomy property that divided a key part of town. None did as far as we know. The area was once filled with Canadian National Railway tracks that led to Bonaventure Station, which sat at around Peel and St. James across from Chaboillez Square (later home to the Planterium).
Once the glorious steam locomotives and tracks were pulled from the tracks, the Bonaventure Yards became an obsolete eyesore that cast a gloomy pall over the area.
Those who sought to pass the land were forced onto bridges at Guy and Mountain, a melancholy experience that I salute in my upcoming Montreal 375 Tales, which should be out in September. The Bonaventure Yards was slated for residential transformation in April 1969 when Montreal approved the purchase of a few sheds and a fruit store at northwest corner of Guy and Notre Dame, which did not require demolition at all but still went down, with great difficulty we are told, as it was a particularly sturdy structure.
The project also widened St. James to 80 feet wide.
Montreal paid $12 million for the sprawling property, with some contributions from the federal and provincial governments. The deal was announced on December 19, 1973.
The new residential neighbourhood was expected to be built within about five years but took well over a decade to complete.
The project aimed at uniting Little Burgundy, which had been split between north and south prior and the plan was to allow developers to build and sell off properties on the newly-recovered blocks. The transformation was a triumph for the city, except that in many cases the homes built ended up uniform and drab. The process that allowed such an unappealing aesthetic remains unknown but we shall endeavor to figure out how it happened.