The neighbourhood of Rosemont / La Petite Patrie, or at least the section between Parc and Papineau, has been my regular Monday and Thursday morning route all year. Recently, however, I’ve gone and found many of the streets mostly barren, save for a few uninteresting bags here and there. It’s almost like it’s not trash day at all, or perhaps as if the truck had already passed, though I very much doubt the truck would come before 7 in the morning.
I just checked the schedule online and it still looks as if Monday and Thursday mornings are the time to go. They say to put out the trash between 5 and 8 AM. The only thing I can think of is that the trucks come a little later, maybe in the afternoon.
Anticipating disappointment I devised a “Plan B” which took me to the borough of Saint-Michel. I don’t know the area too well so my route was relatively chaotic. Some of Saint-Michel is fairly low income and I’m optimistic about finding anything good there. Other parts, however, are sufficiently middle-class to be reasonably promising.
St Michel differs from Rosemont, the Plateau, Villeray and other Montreal boroughs in the fact that many of the homes are built for single families, while in these other neighbourhoods it is more common to see three-storey buildings that might contain up to five different apartments linked together for a whole block. That means the population density is much lower, which is bad for me because I have to bike that much more to see the same amount of individual people’s garbage. It’s the same in Outremont, NDG, TMR and VSL – these places are not without promise to be sure, but the finds are a bit few and far between for my liking.
I’m thinking I’ll give my old route a second chance. Maybe I’ll try a later morning run, perhaps starting at 9 or 10 and see if that gives me a bit more to look at. I do have a history of finding things a bit late in Rosemont, with the most notable example being in February when I found several hundred dollars worth of gold jewelry at 2:30 PM, long past the time I expected to see trash on the curb. We’ll see in time, I suppose. It’d be nice if that worked out as I’d get to sleep in a couple more hours.
Regardless, I came across these boxes in the middle-class part of St Michel. There was some old pottery inside.
The stuff with the nice earth-tone glaze is made by Beauce, a now defunct pottery company out of Beauce, Quebec. This link explains the history of the company quite well. These pieces are likely from the late 1950s. They have some collectors value but don’t sell particularly well on Ebay. I’m going to put them in my yard sale along with the three hand-crafted mugs in the front.
I found these boots in among a bunch of mostly renovation-related refuse. I took them home because I thought they looked interesting, well-made and vintage. They’re made by the Art Company in Spain. I couldn’t find any other examples of this boot, but as the company didn’t exist before 1995 these boots aren’t especially vintage and probably aren’t particularly valuable. Ah well, I think a friend of mine might like them and if not I can probably still sell them at the yard sale.
The west Plateau trash day is later today. It’s near the end of the month so hopefully I find something good!