Village life between the mills and the Church of the Visitation
Here are a few testimonials of people remembering life in the village of Sault-au-Récollet between 1900 and 1950. These are audio recordings from the Cité historia Fonds of the Société d’histoire d’Ahuntsic-Cartierville Collection.
A group of school children in front of the second school in the village, circa 1900. The Gabrielite Brothers gave instruction there.
Mrs. Gagnon talks about the girls’ education, around 1910:
“At the Sacred Heart School, you had one schoolyard for the older girls and one for the younger ones; you had students coming in from as far as Rivière-des-Prairies, Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, they’d cross over on the ferry… Pont-Viau, Bordeaux, Ahuntsic, the Sault, Saint-Paul-de-la-Croix. When the Sault was annexed by the city, the school board bought schools so we could go in our own parish.”
A group of children and adults on the sidewalk in front of Jeff Geoffrion’s restaurant and pool hall on Gouin East, facing Du Pont Street.
Paul Desjardins relates things his mother told him:
“… She said that at the end of Du Pont Street, at the intersection of Gouin Boulevard, right across, I’m guessing south, there was a convenience store, and that’s where the parents of Bernard Geoffrion, who played hockey for the Montreal Canadiens, used to live. My mother remembered that, when she was young, there was an outdoor skating rink where he would play hockey and shoot pucks at the side of the store. And then there was Mr. Beaudoin, that was the drugstore, a very small one if I remember correctly. It was so small that you couldn’t fit more than 4 people at the time. More than that and you had to wait outside.”
A newspaper clipping from the Montréal-Matin showing two photos of tennis players wearing skates on a rink near the La Visitation school. Daniel Danis, one of the club’s administrators appears in the photograph.
Daniel Danis describes an unusual winter sport:
“We would play tennis there. Even in the wintertime. We would make an ice rink. But the ball wouldn’t bounce on the ice, it would roll. So you had to hit it before it touched the ground. It sure was a lot of fun in the Sault.”