A month after the Normandy landings, Charles de Gaulle made his first visit to Quebec and he was photographed alongside the mayor of Montreal who would foreshadow the famous balcony scene which would occur in 1967, Adhémar Raynault.
A former insurance agent in the east of the city, Raynault was twice mayor of Montreal in the 1930s and 1940s. After his first mandate from 1936 to 1938, he was succeeded by Camillien Houde and returned to the Hôtel de city when he was imprisoned for civil disobedience.
On July 12, 1944, Paris was not yet liberated… but Adhémar Raynault was experiencing a special moment, because he was celebrating his 53e birthday alongside the president of Free France.
Raynault rouses the crowd by saying: “Show General de Gaulle that Montreal is the second French city in the world!”
The first Jean Coutu pharmacy opened on June 2, 1960, at 4605 Sainte-Catherine Est. Source: Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve History Workshop
Photo GID
100 years black on white
This is one of the pages of history that we discover when reading the fascinating Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, unfolding the pastwhich Les Éditions GID has just published in their “100 years black on white” collection.
The painter Guido Nincheri, who decorated multiple churches and buildings in North America, had his stained glass workshops in Maisonneuve. Source: Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve History Workshop
Photo GID
“This district made up of two old merged towns has had its hours of glory which are worth the detour,” comments the Journal Daniel Rolland, co-author with Sylvain Champagne of this work presenting 200 commented photos.
Himself a native of rue Sicard, where the snowmobile was invented, Daniel Rolland mentions that it was not easy to find images of this neighborhood little frequented by the photographers of the William Norman agency who favored neighborhoods bourgeois and English from Montreal. “But we found some nuggets,” he emphasizes.
-
Photo GID
First Jean Coutu
Throughout the pages we discover the eventful history of Maisonneuve, which notably welcomed one of the country’s greatest religious artists, Guido Nincheri. The painter Marc-Aurèle Fortin painted more than a hundred paintings in Hochelaga.
We also discover that this neighborhood was where the famous singer Diane Dufresne was born and grew up. Mary Travers, the Bolduc, also lived there. A photo shows the politician Gilles Duceppe as a child swinging in his yard under the gaze of his father, the actor Jean Duceppe.
Little Diane Dufresne alongside her mother. “The diva is a pure creature of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve,” we can read in the recently published book dedicated to this neighborhood.
Photo GID
There we discover an image of the first Jean Coutu pharmacy, at 4605 Sainte-Catherine Est, opened on June 2, 1960.
The editor of GID, Serge Lambert, is proud of this title which is added to the approximately 80 works in the collection. “These books are very popular because they present in images a century of sometimes little-known history of neighborhoods or villages,” he says. Journal.
Daniel Rolland et Sylvain Champagne, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, unfolding the past, GID, 2024, 208 p., 34,95$.
