Verdun in the 1920s
UPDATE: Linda Potts writes: “I grew up in Verdun and lived on Galt ave at the corner of Bannantyne. My Mother and grandmother would often send my older brother and me to the Chinese laundry on Gordon and I also remember my mother and aunt taking me to a restaurant at the corner of Gordon and Wellington in the late 1950's and early 60's and I believe it also might have been owned by a Chinese person.”
This doesn’t prove that there was a laundry at Galt above Wellington way back in the 1920s, but a photograph sent by Katherine Black adds strong evidence. She points out that in the group photo, you can see what certainly looks like the roof of the nave of Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs just above the two men in felt hats. Katherine walks by that corner often and she stopped to take a picture looking through the lane toward De l’Eglise avenue. As mentioned in the original post, the wooden building that housed the laundry has been replaced by the Renaissance building, but the triplex on the left, although somewhat changed, could very well be the same structure. And there is the identical roof and chimney at the end of the lane!
Thank you, Linda and Katherine, for the feedback! - Amy
P.S.: I really wanted to call this Blog post, Cloche Hats and Laundromats, but a laundromat is where you wash your own clothes, whereas a laundry is where you take your clothes to have someone else clean them. Oh well.
ORIGINAL POST:
“Verdun Methodist” is all it says on the original of this photo. This tells me one thing: that although the hats suggest the 1920s, this was most probably taken before 1925, when Verdun Methodist Church became Verdun United. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess this is a choir group, and that maybe they are heading out to do some Christmas caroling on this snowy day.
So where was this shot taken? I hoped the laundry in the background could provide the answer. A search for “Wong Sing Laundry in Verdun” didn’t turn up anything, but on a no-longer active website called “Growing Up in Verdun” people recalled two Chinese laundries in Verdun, one on “the even side of 2nd avenue near Verdun ave.” and the other on “Gordon avenue, next to the lane above Wellington”.
That spot is currently occupied by the Friperie Renaissance building (the door where they receive donations faces Gordon and is next to the laneway). The person who mentioned the laundry in this location also recalled that there had been a restaurant next to it (would be off the right side of this picture) facing Wellington avenue. These memories were of Verdun in the 1940s, but it seems possible to me that the laundry was in that location twenty years earlier. What makes this location seem to fit is that the old church was located on the “even” side of Gordon, just a little above Wellington. It has since been torn down and there are condos in the spot now. But if the laundry in this photo is the one that was on Gordon, the people in this photo would be facing Verdun Methodist Church!
Let’s not stop there. A second photo in our collection is labeled “Verdun United Church Choir 1928”. Although the name had changed by this time, the building was still on Gordon, as the church on Woodland wasn’t built until 1930. I think that’s a corner of the church building we see on the left of this shot, and that if we could swing around and look across the street, the Wong Sing laundry might still be there!
Two Verdun Methodist churches were built on Gordon avenue, the first in 1902, and the second in 1908 as the congregation grew by leaps and bounds. The picture below is of the 1908 building, which served the congregation until they moved into an even larger church at 650 Woodland in 1931.
