|
Topics
The Early Days The
Early Days In 1916, my father was working at the Grand Trunk Railway shops in Point St. Charles. One of his work mates wanted to join the army, as the First World War was raging in Europe. This man had bought some land on the South Shore and, having no use for it, sold it to my father.
The Montreal & Southern Counties Railway had been built about four years earlier (1912), and farmers' land had been bought and turned into subdivisions then sold as building lots. Stops and stations were arrranged and some platforms and station houses (or just shelters). Such a building was erected at East Greenfield and was used by the community as a church on Sunday and as a school during the week. I attended this station house school until 1920. The old French seigneurie system of allotting land made things easy, as the long strips (about 600 feet wide and a mile long - 192 arpents), bounded by ditches and hedges, made perfect subdivisions. Each was given a name by the new landowners, who had surveyed and laid out for roads and numbered building lots. Each section had a "cadastre" number, and people began to move in - not as fast that they should have done, because of the uncertainty of the First World War. Many young men who bought building lots on the South Shore did not return, and their land was reclaimed by St. Hubert for non-payment of taxes. So land was sold for building lots to people from Montreal - a great many of them from Point St. Charles - because of the Montreal & Southern Counties Railway, where most of them worked. "The Point" they called it. Others worked at the Northern Electric, which was in that area. All were English-speaking, a great many Irish. Names of Families Living in Pinehurst 1916 -- Manning only 1918 -- Fraser, Morris, Stockley East Greenfield
Mr. Baillargeon was the farmer and original owner of the land on which East Greenfield was built. John F. Campbell acquired the land when the Southern Counties Railway came. More names... 1935 Electoral List Next >
|
