Hope you all had a happy holiday season! This time of the year is usually not too exciting for trash, as most people are focused on other priorities. After my last post, I went a few weeks without finding much of anything. This week and last, I made up for some otherwise slim pickings with a couple of small silver & gold hauls, both from recently sold houses. This week I salvaged about 10 mismatched napkin rings, and four of them look to be solid silver. I think they are from France, as they each have a Minerva hallmark. In the same bag I found a lone gold band, a 14k gold clasp, and a Trifari brooch. I’ll be returning to that spot next week for sure.
Otherwise I’ve been pretty productive at creating order in my garage “office.” I don’t think I’ve ever been this organized. I’ll share some pictures of that once I have the chance. I’ve also been reading more, and writing (for a potential book) a bit, although I haven’t done much of that in the last few weeks. I find my inspiration is stronger when I’m actually finding fresh junk, but I don’t think there is a big rush regardless.
Anyways, I want to keep clearing out the last of my “old stock.” Here’s some cool old (mostly) Montreal postcards, and a few blanks dating as far back as 1897.
I found an envelope addressed to someone in the old Corn Exchange Building, containing some larger photos of what I assume is very old Montreal. It’d be cool to know where these were shot. The first word looks like Clarke, which is a road in Westmount (checks out), but I’m not sure what that second word is. It looks like Roy, but those roads don’t come close to intersecting (unless they did about 130 years ago, but I doubt it). Regardless, the fact that these fences were down was apparently very relevant in 1896.
On the topic of photos, these five were pretty cool. The first three were taken on Mount Royal during Easter of 1902, according to some writing on the back. The 4th was taken in Val Morin, and the 5th is unmarked. I think getting the three Mount Royal ones frames together would be pretty neat.
There’s not too much left from this spot. Mostly photos if I recall correctly, but harder formats to document than the ones I’ve shown here recently.
Sweet finds!
Wishing you a 2026 filled with wonderful (and profitable) trash adventures!
I love old photos of the city. Great finds! You may want to post the photos on a Facebook group that I joined some years ago. It’s called Montreal Historical Photos Historiques. You may already be familiar with it. They have over 60 000 members, amongst them, some very knowledgeable historians and contributors, who may recognize where the photos were taken. Happy New Year, Martin! Wishing you a year of great health and great finds!
I don’t do much Facebook these days but those groups can be useful. Feel free to download them and post them yourself if you want, the odds of me getting to it are slim
Happy New Year to you and all followers of the blog
I look forward to your posts and this one is amazing; these pictures of our fair city hold a why/when/who/what story behind each one of them; makes one stop and think as well as wish for a time machine to take us back to a different time.
Martin, what a wonderful post, as always. LOVE the Montreal photos. The Westmount Clock was created in 1927 and I’d bet that the photo was taken “Montreal Look-Off” one is amazing – looks like a precarious structure. Congrats on the napkin rings and gold! I hope that spot continues to be productive for you. Here’s wishing you much success for 2026.
Ugh, typos and/or inadvertent pre-posting deletion that I can’t edit. Meant to say that I’d bet the clock photo was taken shortly thereafter.
Could it just be “Clark and Roy” (i.e. a block west of St-Laurent)? They don’t touch now, Roy vanishing for that block before reappearing briefly at St-Urbain, but that area was probably just being developed around 1896 – maybe the fences were coming down in anticipation of new construction?
Looks a little desolate for there even in 1896. You’d still be close to downtown, Sherbrooke street, Square St Louis, Hotel Dieu, etc. Could be those words aren’t street names at all, maybe property owners? Who knows. Too bad that little bit of paper is ripped off, might have provided a hint