Story of Montreal's West Island's Main Roads

[@verity9000]

I could watch W.I. material like this forever. I hope you'll make more of these. Thanks!

[@cynthiabolanis1374]

Informative and so humorous.

[@plaws0]

I think someone behind the camera eggs him on ... 🙂

[@hamiltonmcclymont1967]

Another marvelous short answering a question I've always had! Thanks Jason!

[@EndangeredStories]

Thanks for watching!

[@abrahamdozer6273]

It was VERY unusual for roads to be surveyed in straight lines in New France. They generally followed the natural topography (rightly so) but I guess that this was not an issue on this part of the Island. It was the British Royal Engineers who surveyed Upper and Lower Canada on straight line grids with occasional jogs to correct for the round planet thing. I'm thinking that those three roads carry their fingerprint ... War of 1812 or later, perhaps?

[@argopunk]

I moved from Toronto to the W.I. in 1982 for a few years. St. Anne de Bellevue was the best part of it IMO. Still really charming when I drop in for a visit. I also recall a lot of depressed people in the Anglo community back then. I often heard from my teachers etc: "You should have seen Montreal in the 60s, it was fantastic!" I think half the city moved with me to Toronto when I left in '85. And they never stop complaining about it haha

[@SkySim]

Always interesting.

[@EndangeredStories]

Appreciate it

[@voxer99]

Probably nice country roads back in the day. Today, horrible stroads. As a pedestrian you take your life in your hands trying to cross these things.

[@david3549tw]

"And who the heck was the Picasso who built this thing (Sources/Aut 20 overpass)"? It's difficult to use for the drivers, the pedestrians, and for those Bus 211 riders who wonder why isn't here a bus stop like the one at the intersection of Boul. Saint-Jean/ Autoroute 20?

[@markhillhouse1]

Interesting video....but can I suggest that the background music is wee bit lower in volume?

[@deborahlinton9635]

Love it!

[@plaws0]

OK, so, the St John's/Maywood battle. A couple things I know ... one is that when John Rennie HS was built it was located at 500 St John's Rd. Today, its address is 501 Boul Saint-Jean ... did it cross the street? No, the street moved and it was now on the "wrong" side of the road to have an even number. I would like to know more about the Pulp and Paper Research Institute and its relationship to the new road. In my head -- unsupported by any facts -- the new road was one of the things the City of Pointe Claire promised to lure "Paprican" to it's long time spot on St John's. Recall that there was no A-40 in the early 1960s, so any motor vehicle traffic from downtown, would come out "the 2 and 20" to St John's and then north. Paprican probably liked the location (land was surely cheap) but wanted better access than via the existing Saint John's Rd, so the city built a new road that lead from the Milk Bar directly to their new location. It likely didn't matter that Maywood basically ended at their front door, because, again, there was no reason to go further north ... until the "Trans-Canada Highway" started ... and Fairview was announced ... and all the farms north of there grew houses ... The reason for the curve is obvious if you dig up some of the maps Jason showed (nicely done transition between the different era maps, BTW). The lower part of Cote Saint Jean was there to connect what eventually became Lakeshore Rd to the *actual* Cote Saint Jean which were the long narrow farms that were perpendicular to what is now the Maywood/Boul St Jean axis (it's still a mostly straight line headed away from the lake). Because those cotes were created after the initial parcels along the lake shore had been handed out, the road to access the new cote had to run along a farm border until it reached the edge of the new cote then swung over to where the arpenteurs had decided it should run. It's really obvious from the older maps and remnants of the seigneurial system of land management abound in Montreal today beyond just the many cotes that retained their names for 300 years.

[@plaws0]

Another brilliant Bolanis video. Where *is* your Patreon, anyway? The reason current-day Boul des Sources bulges to the west is because of supersonic jets. In the 1960s, the Powers That Be were scrambling to develop a modern jetport that could handle the supersonic jets that were Right Around The Corner (cf. Aérospatiale/BAC's Concorde which entered revenue service and the Boeing SST [aka 2707] that never did). One "solution" was a new, longer runway at Dorval, designated 12-30, that would support the new aircraft. It wasn't an extension of (still existing, I think) 10-28 because aircraft departing to the west had to make an immediate hard right for "noise abatement" so that they flew over farmland north of where A40 is now instead of the heart of the Lakeshore. Moving the westbound departure heading 20 deg towards the north would alleviate that (by ignoring the explosive growth on the West Island, but never mind that). There are old roadmaps of Montreal that show the proposed runway with a broken outline indicating "proposed". If you ever saw one of those maps, as I did 50 years ago as a kid, you'd know exactly why Sources bulges as it does - it was to avoid the new runway! Other solutions proposed were a new airport at Drummondville ... out by Coteau-du-Lac / Vaudreuil ... or maybe up at Sainte-Scholastique ... Yeah, let's do that one! The odd thing is that the moving of the road, etc, happened not long before Mirabel became a live project c.1970 (+/- a year or 2). Needless to say, 12-30 never got built.

[@abrahamdozer6273]

Some of the wags in the Anglo community referred to Sainte-Scholastique ... the future Mirabel as "Saint Elastic".

[@plaws0]

@@abrahamdozer6273 Yeah ... folks back then seemed more antagonistic to the Québecois generally, instead of focusing their anger on the ultra-nationalist faction.

[@jkenemy1]

Awesome

[@KevinPont]

😆“Straight John’s”😆

[@EndangeredStories]

Finally! Someone who got the joke.

[@thumbs4fingers]

So our high school was built over an old dump? Seems about right 😉

[@EndangeredStories]

Not there…the dump was in the forest. Where the path was/is that we took to the Shops.

[@thumbs4fingers]

@@EndangeredStories ah