Saturday Photo: Garden on the St. Lawrence Main

St. Lawrence boulevard was a major industrial and commercial street in the 20th century. Today many of the buildings have been recycled into restaurants, shops and, in some cases, condos as the stretch between Pine on the Plateau and Bernard in Mile End is gentrified.

But there always have been residential buildings. This one, set between combination workshop/stores must have been there for 75 years. It's possible it once was an outbuilding for a structure that fronted flush on the street like its neighbors, and was torn down for some reason. The garden has thrived for the several decades I've lived not far away, however, and last week it was doing very well once again.

A word about the street name: until well into the 19th century the city limits of Montreal were further to the south, and this area was called the St. Lawrence suburb. This street was its main street, and over time as the city crept northward, it began to be known as the St. Lawrence Main, or The Main. As such, it appears in the fiction of Mordecai Richler and other Montreal writers.