Bucolic Mile-End
(Montréal seen from Mile-End, 1840)
You should go check out Christopher DeWolf’s latest piece on what Mile-End once was. Very nice.
Two little historical blurbs you’ll find in his article:
“We moved out to the Mile End and lived for a time in a great big old stone house on Mr. Jacob Wurtele’s farm. It stood far from the road and there was a fine avenue of basswood, elm and poplar trees in front. Here my mother taught school. The children came in from all round.
There were stone quarries, too, some old ones filled with water, fine, fresh and cool, the swimming places of all the boys around. There were broad sand pits, too, where we boys used to play and hunt for martens’ and swallows’ nests in the sand bank.”
Mile-End Road (now avenue du Mont-royal, 1839)
Read his whole entry, and follow his links. DeWolf has been a consistently great source for learning about the history of Mile-End.
