The original version of this article can be read here : https://mileendings.blogspot.com/2011/05/urban-barnacles.html
Sarah Gilbert
At the end of February 2021, Stephen Welch announced the closing of his bookstore because of a huge rent increase imposed by his landlord, the Shiller Lavy Group. The news was received with stupefaction by numerous residents of Mile End and was widely reported in the media, for example in this […]
Page Turner
2 The building at 5585 Park Avenue is now the headquarters of Pop Montréal. If you’ve been there, you might have felt you were inside a home that had hardly changed since it was first built. For almost 47 years, this was Regent Photo, Norman Epelbaum’s studio. During these many years, […]
Portraits, Weddings, Passports
1 Last fall, while masons worked on the 25-foot stone wall around the Carmelite monastery, I tried to peek into the secret garden. The high old wall made everything behind it intriguing, even the grass. That’s cloistered grass. On the other side of the wall, in the middle of a neighbourhood where privacy […]
Neighbours behind the wall
On a recent rainy Friday, the door stood open at Riddell’s Fishing Tackle at 55 Bernard St. West. People carried bags of lures and armloads of mounted fish heads out of the musty store. I hadn’t expect Mile End’s most eccentric storefront to stay intact forever, but at the same […]
Gone fishing
At 9 o’clock on Sunday morning I heard the fanfare, loud and slightly wonky. It was coming closer. They were back. The Complesso Bandistico Italiano was marching along St. Viateur in honour of San Marziale. I first heard them on my very first morning at the corner of St. Viateur […]
Cymbals and pinwheels
Call of the Alley, June 1, 2009 On a warm evening when I open the back door and the whole alley seems to be in bloom I hear him. A crazy burst of tuneful whistling. A loud whit-whoo! as if in appreciation of a real looker. It’s my favourite and most mysterious neighbour […]
Call of the Alley
The Field of Possibilities has been a protected natural area since May 2013. But in September 2009, when Sarah Gilbert wrote this portrait, it was still largely the dream of an artist, Emily Rose Michaud. 30 September 2009 Past the east end of St. Viateur and beyond a gap in […]
Field Custodian
1 By Sarah Gilbert – First Published May 2, 2009 For years, Luboslaw Hrywnak and I were neighbours without knowing it. Then, once I meet him, I see him everywhere. Our paths cross on Parc Avenue near his apartment building, or along St. Viateur, or outside the Mile End Mission where […]
Mile End Mission
1 by Sarah Gilbert – first published June 30, 2010 At the north edge of Mile End a web of footpaths leads to the railroad tracks. If you follow the paths to the chain link fence there’s a hole, and if you step through that, you end up someplace else. It’s […]
Mile End Line
1 Sarah Gilbert has lived in Mile End for more than 20 years. From 2008-2011, she wrote a blog, Mile Endings, in which she memorialized certain neighbourhood personalities and institutions before they were swept away by time. We find them to be written with a particular sensibility and a keen sense of […]