USK:MTL Griffintown Sketchcrawl

For this month’s USK:MTL 4th Sunday sketch-out we did a walking tour
of Griffintown. This historically Irish part of Montreal has been
undergoing gentrification for a few years now – I was hoping to find
some left over urban decay, but it seems pretty well cleaned up these
days.

Wikipedia has this to say about the neighborhood:

El
name Griffintown was derived from Mary Griffin. Ms. Griffin illegally
obtained the lease to the land from a business associate of Thomas
McCord in 1799. She then commissioned land surveyor Louis Charland to
subdivide the land and plan streets for the area in 1804. Griffin’s
husband, Robert, owned a soap manufactory in the area, and went on to
become the first clerk of the Bank of Montreal upon its formation in
1817.

[Sketches are Lamy washable ink and W&N watercolor pans in an 8×8″ HandBook sketchbook]

Nuestro
first stop looking for G-town was this two-towered basilica. I’m not
sure the history of this looming structure – but today it’s the Korean Martyrs
Mission. It surely must have been something before that, as it has the
hallmark look of all of Montreal’s historic religious architecture. I
don’t know when all this lot was built – perhaps I’m going to have to
read a book. This is the kind of stuff I love to draw – I’m always game
for a dome’d tower.

All the little speckles by the way, are rain.
When I closed the book, the water-soluble ink transferred from the
branches to the raindrops.

Siguiente
stop, Robbie Griffin’s Bank of Montreal. A fine looking red sandstone
block, with a fun roof decorated with Griffins and Lions. This family
might have had some clout in this area? I dunno. One day I’ll have to go
back and do some detailed drawings. This place has numerous gargoyles
and medallions that would make for great pencil drawing studies.

Sólo
up the street from there we found this old church. You can’t tell from
the drawing, but there’s some kind of an interesting story here. There’s
a lot of broken glass in the windows, and some of the doors are sealed
with a small plaque. All the copper statues and finials are gone. Either
sold off, or packed away for safety.

I have heard cases of
valuable copper decor being stripped and sold for scrap. Something about
a fellow from Laval killed by a falling saint. Some instant
divine-justice there. Perhaps a precursor of what is coming for all of
us. I don’t know where you think you can sell a 500lb statue anyway.
Perhaps they have to cut the saint up and sell the parts piece-meal? Got
to be some bad karma.

Anyway, I get the impression this place is
on its way to being shuttered. Perhaps even demolished. There’s a lot of
talk about how much of this area has been razed and replaced with
freeways and warehouses, which are now being upcycled into condos and
artist studios.

But on the other hand, I also hear people saying,
good riddance to those old shacks. There probably aren’t a lot of fond
memories of Ms. Griffin’s factory worker’s housing. I’m not the one to
judge. But it was an interesting feeling to sketch this old church and
wonder about the history there.