HISTORY THROUGH OUR EYES

Jan. 23, 1967: ‘Old-fashioned ride’ was a popular sight

Horse-drawn calèches have long been a staple of Montreal’s tourist industry — though they won’t be for much longer.

This photo of Roméo Lapointe — “the proud owner of one of the oldest calèches in the city,” we called him — appeared in the Montreal Gazette on Jan. 23, 1967. It “shows how he gets around in the wheels-down position, as he passes the Windsor Hotel in Dominion Square. The wheels go up when there is sufficient snow on the streets and when he’s on the mountain,” we wrote.

“The lack of snow on our town’s streets often made it impossible for ... Lapointe to go about his business of taking wintertime visitors to the city on an old-fashioned ride — that is, until he had wheels added to his sleigh.” Indeed, only traces of snow are visible in this photo, including on the runners, presumably picked up from a jaunt on the mountain.

The previous day’s temperatures had been warmer than average for that date: a high of 36 F, and a low of 10. In the Celsius scale we use today, that would be a high of 2 and a low of minus-12. While the day the photo was taken is not indicated on the original print, presumably it was a day or two before it was published.

Motor vehicles had long-since taken over Montreal streets by 1967, but many people alive then would still have easily recalled an earlier era, when horses pulling carts were common sights.

Now, however, the idea of having horses working in the middle of the city seems like animal cruelty to many Montrealers. The city has passed a bylaw banning calèches, effective next year.