Gangland Killing At Turcot!

From The Gazette archives, February 23, 1968.

Full story here.

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Where Trains Collided In Turcot Yards

From Gazette archives, August 11, 1941

“A panoramic photograph of part of the Turcot Yards train accident taken yesterday gives a clear picture of the wreckage caused by the collision. One man was fatally injured, 27 other persons were taken to hospital and 25 others were given medical treatment as a result of the crash Saturday.”

A passenger and freight train colliding just sounds bad and it might be a miracle of some kind that there was not more deaths. I find it very interesting that in those days they even listed all the names of the injured in the paper.

My guess is the shot was taken from the Falaise Saint Jacques and, according to the article, near Wilson avenue would put it just west of where the interchange is today. Strange to not see the 20 in the background.

Full page here.

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Grand Trunk Is Building A Sixty Stall Concrete Round House At Turcot

The Gazette archives, May 26, 1903.

Full page here.

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“City Spending $300,000 To Turn Dump Into Park”

That would be the Falaise Saint Jacques getting a much needed makeover. Article from the Gazette archives in 1982 features the then assistant director of public works, Pierre Bourque, discussing the ugliness of the dump. Ironically, many years later, as mayor, Pierre Bourque would get the idea to build a garbage transfer depot under the Turcot Interchange. Of course, he also once promised to run the Blue Line to Pointe Claire.

Story at the top of this page.

Also on the same page is a Ted Blackman column discussing the closing of the Snowdon Theatre.

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Expropriation Struggles in 1971

A whole page of interesting stuff from The Gazette, April 21, 1971. People were only beginning to fight expropriations then but it was an impossible time when Drapeau wanted the Ville Marie built for the Olympics and government believed that freeways were the indisputable answer to everything. Here is a little excerpt.

It seems that expropriation compensation went from $0.00 to $500.00 with $50.00 a room being typical.

And highway construction is very noisy.

And here is an amazing quote by then roads minister, Bernard Pinard.

For the full page go here.

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7 Workers Killed At Turcot- Questionable Scaffolding Collapses

Article from The Gazette, January 11, 1966 that implies there were irregularities between the recommended plans and the type of scaffolding that was actually used by the workers who fell to their deaths. Tip of the iceberg?

Read the full article with “dramatic” photograph here.

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3 Freight Cars Smashed At Turcot

This is from The Gazette, September 12, 1912. Thanks to a reader at Coolopolis, a very cool search page was found for a ton of old Gazette files searchable on Google. You just have to type your search word (s) in front of “source”. Cool!

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