Comments on: Montreal Geography Trivia No. 65

By: Norm Spatz

Norm Spatz — Sun, 16 May 2010 04:42:51 +0000

This was really interesting. I've done a lot of research onto just how MacDonald Avenue came to be part of Cote Saint Luc - or should I say remained part of Cote Saint Luc.

The person who was probably the most responsible for the current situation was Sir Herbert Holt who spearheaded the development of Hampstead. Modeled along the Garden City concept, the original city charter only allowed single family houses and was created from farms originally in Cote Saint Luc. It didn't even allow a fire station!

Unfortunately apartments had been built by a Mr Sabbatino Damiani of Sabbatino Realties with offices for years at 5548A Queen Mary. The plot of land, actually a farm, extending along MacDonald Avenue and Dufferin Road was therefore not included in Mr Holt's real estate venture. The Dufferin Road section wound up in the hands of A. Hamilton Gault who formed the Princess Pats. Gault's heirs forced the farmers on the village council in the main section of Cote Saint Luc to cede the land to any municipality that would build roads in 1924. Holt had deep pockets and Dufferin Road became part of Hampstead leaving only the strip on MacDonald Avenue within Cote Saint Luc.

It seems that the city of Cote Saint Luc found a way to make this little area work economically. At some point about sixty years ago, zoning in this little island of CSL permitted residential high rises where nothing similar had been close. This little slice of land could suddenly accommodate a population of taxpayers that made maintaining an isolated slice of land viable. Former Mayor Adessky of Hampstead spoke to me about the outrage that residents of his city near the border with CSL expressed as high rises were built to the rear of their gardens.

I hope this has shed light on at least one of CSL's mysterious exclaves!

By: Jean Naimard

Jean Naimard — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:25:12 +0000

Not only that, but I’ll betcha that those who live there ain’t got a clue who Tommy Douglas is…

By: Homer

Homer — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:34:35 +0000

Is it just me or is there some irony in the fact that those homes on Tommy Douglas street are $1M+ to start?

By: emdx

emdx — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:38:31 +0000

There were farms all over the place, so the Montréal Island was far from being "unexplored". Those farms were quite renowned for their produce; heck, the Montréal melon, grown in NDG, was an eagerly sought delicacy, all the way to New-York.

I remember farms on Bois-Franc in St-Laurent… If you look closely, there are still some farmhouses snuck between the warehouses…

I even remember when Bois-Franc crossed the airport runway and had crossing gates that went down when an aircraft took-off…

By: Fagstein

Fagstein — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:35:27 +0000

By the "centre" I mean areas away from the shorelines. There were villages in Ste. Geneviève, Pointe-Claire and Ste. Anne de Bellevue, for example, but little in between. Closer to downtown, there was development in NDG, Côte des Neiges and as far north as Ahuntsic, but nothing in what we would consider today's Côte Saint-Luc.

When it was founded, Hampstead was mostly untouched forest.

By: kate M.

kate M. — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:20:53 +0000

"Most of the island (especially its centre) was uninhabited, unclaimed and unexplored"? Especially its centre? That's a bit oddly put. I think a lot of the unpaved stuff was farms – at least, I've heard tell of orchards in western NDG and farms all the way up the upper Main to Ahuntsic.

By: Fagstein

Fagstein — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:05:34 +0000

The geography trivia quizzes are posted at noon sharp on Mondays.

By: emdx

emdx — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:30:09 +0000

Darn, I missed a great quizz!!! (I should come here more often - Is there a way of being e-mailed automatically whenever you post some new stuff? :) ).

You make a great point to justify re-merging everything, the various suburbs are nothing but a huge mess.

By: Franc

Franc — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:41:56 +0000

Wow! Thanks for the history lesson, Steve! I had business in that area, a couple of months ago, and was driving on Isabella/Ellerdale/Fielding, but I had no idea of the history there!

By: soup

soup — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:23:43 +0000

Thanks for the history lesson. I always wondered why McDonald ave. at Queen Mary had a Côte St Luc. street sign on one side.

By: Jean Naimard

Jean Naimard — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:56:10 +0000

Well, the suburbs are all about NIMBYsm…

By: William

William — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:45:03 +0000

I was speaking about the third exclave, at the west end of Blue Bonnets.

By: Maria Gatti

Maria Gatti — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:39:22 +0000

The stuff on MacDonald avenue actually looks rather nice - almost looks like a city, until you scrutinise the photo closely and realise that there are no "commerce de proximité" on the ground floors of any of those buildings.

See suburban cul-de-sac planning is alive and well.

By: Steve Hatton

Steve Hatton — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:30:09 +0000

Cote St Luc

I know the extra part at the top was annexed to Cote St Luc as a result of some fiasco regarding condos that were built in area known as Hamstead North. (The area between Hampstead and Blue Bonnets) I don't know all the details regarding this but I think had something with Hampstead refusing to open up their street to a piece of land that was part of Montreal at the time.

As for the extra rectangle in the East, I have no idea.

By: mare

mare — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:34:12 +0000

It's Cote St. Luc, but it's rotated slightly clockwise. Maps should have their North on top. I know this is hard for the Island of Montréal, but it teaches people a completely false world view.

By: Clement Côté

Clement Côté — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:30:18 +0000

Wow, I was off, and by at least a dozen miles apparently.

By: Jim J.

Jim J. — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:05:16 +0000

I should also point out that that third part of electoral district #1 is not an exclave, but is contiguous to the rest of Cote-St-Luc proper. I should have made that explicit point in my previous post.

By: Jim J.

Jim J. — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:19:17 +0000

Unsure if your comment was in response to my earlier one.

There are two exclaves, as the map indicates. Municipal electoral district #1 is comprised of three parts: Exclave #1, Exclave #2, and a third part that is comprised of a small strip that runs along Cote-St-Luc Road and, is also rather small, geographically speaking.

By: William Moss

William Moss — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:25:08 +0000

So to come back at you, where was the third Cote St Luc exclave?

By: Jim J.

Jim J. — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:02:25 +0000

It's definitely the municipal boundaries of Cote-St-Luc. The little exclaves correspond to two out of the three parts of muncipal electoral district #1.

As to why? Still working on that.