Society continues to preserve history
I finally found the information about my long-serving neighbour, town councillor J. Raynald Crevier, who was on council from 1929 to 1966. It was on the back of a park bench. The little local park is named after him. They don’t make them like that anymore.
People don’t stay in one place any more, do they?
I vaguely remember Crevier on the sidewalk back in the early 1980s. He was a very kind neighbour and his daughter was at that time assistant to the director general at the town hall, where she later taught me a lot of useful proper French, the kind you send in official letters.
This municipal salute to her dad was engraved in plastic and stuck to the park bench. It used to be on a heavy bronze plaque screwed to a stone pillar in front of Crevier Park. Then there was a rash of metal thefts, which included the war memorials in Kelso Park and a plaque at the town hall naming a mayor and a council celebrating some event. That’s how local history disappears.
Even engraved in copper and screwed to stone and concrete, history passes, vanishes. New generations come along and all that life, all those meetings, those controversies, those characters vanish! Just like that. You might as well put it up in cheap plastic: less likely to get stolen.
Think of Anne Myles, that fearless Baie d’Urfé mayor, who is now a name on a bench behind her beloved Baie d’Urfé town hall looking over Lac St. Louis. Who was Anne Myles, they will ask. I just wish I were there to tell them.
But you can do something about it. You can join your local history society. For $15, you can grasp a few fragments of our history as it floats by.
No one should be intimidated by the name of this history club: it’s a mouth full. It’s called the Sainte-Anne-du-Bout-de-l’Île Historical Society. Not the Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue Society. The geographical end-of-theisland descriptor is more appropriate for a group of local history enthusiasts from Senneville, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue and Baie d’Urfé and beyond. Bout de l’Île refers to the western West Island, which was originally part of one parish whose first church, incidentally, was built where the Baie dÚrfé yacht club is now at Caron Point. Someone’s just built a castle there, fit for a modern seigneur.
Bellevue, a name attached to a piece of the original land in 17th century deeds, was added in 1878 but it actually sounds more like a branding exercise for 21st century tourists. No doubt a tribute to the magnificent sunsets to be witnessed from Park Godin and the jetty at the end of the canal.
So much of local history is oral and anecdotal. We all have stories. In fact we are all stories.
Well, our local Historical Society is celebrating its 55th anniversary in 2017, along with Montreal’s 375th and Canada’s 150th. It’s obviously time to celebrate!
The Sainte-Anne-du-bout-del’île Historical Society, a friendly group of local enthusiasts, was founded at a general meeting back on Oct. 4, 1961. The initial inspiration for the gathering seems to have been to save what is now called the Simon Fraser House situated by the Galipeault Bridge on the main street in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue.
At its founding meeting, the new society applied to the Historic Sites and Monuments Committee with a request that 153 Sainte-Anne (Simon Fraser House) be declared a historic site. And what’s wrong with starting a society with a big win?
The society meets five times a year at Fritz Farm not far from the original settlement. In February, there is an annual dinner in a local restaurant, and twice a year there are trips to places of historical interest. The program for the winter and spring of 2017 includes presentations on the History of the Pointe-Claire library, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary; a History of the Molson family, descendants of John Molson who founded the Molson brewery in the 1780s; Canadian Heritage Québec, and the History of the Royal Montréal Curling Club, which is more than 200 year, the oldest athletic club in North America.
The next gathering is n Jan. 24 at Fritz Farm. For more information, you can call the president, James Hamilton at 514-457-3818 or the treasurer, William Cosgrove at 514-457-7100. .