Some of my memories of the most mind-numbing moments in high school are of history classes. Exceptions that stand out are times spent learning the history of the Roman Empire, and the early history of New France.
The former, because of the heroic grandeur of Rome, and the latter because, as a child in grade school, I was both riveted and sickened by the accounts of graphic horror, cruelty, and suffering said to have been inflicted on the colonists by the native peoples.
My preferred scooter commuting route follows the southern shore of the Island of Montreal. Many of the defining moments in the history of New France took place on, or near, that shoreline.
Without really having any intention to devote portions of this blog to history lessons, I find, as I look back on my posts, that I have touched on quite a few history-related subjects.
I decided to set up this History Lessons page because my life on two wheels led me, quite accidentally, to stumble upon some ancient history. Unaccountably, that long dead page out of the history books recently turned out to have tentacles that are still very much alive. Those tentacles reached out to snare my Vespa and I. In some small but real and meaningful ways, ripples of the little known Battle of the Lake of Two Mountains are still radiating more than four hundred years later. In fact I find that in a deliciously ironic twist, my scooter commuting blog and I have been enlisted as historians very much involved in preserving and interpreting the continuing history of that 17th century conflict. It was long ago, but is clearly not forgotten.
That experience led me to learn a lot more about the history of the Montreal West Island than I had any right to expect. I didn't even know that there was any history to the West Island that didn't happen in the last hundred years or so.
Against that backdrop, I have gathered the history lesson posts here so that you can explore them at your leisure, if you're so inclined.
- The Battle of the Lake of Two Mountains
- Birthplace of the ScootCommute
- Expo 67
- The Lachine Canal
- The île Perrot Windmill
- Victoria Bridge
- Village of Lachine and the Lachine Canal
- Lasalle Windmill
- Stewart Hall
- Montreal's shot tower
- The Senneville Fort and Benedict Arnold
- The Pointe Claire windmill
- Windmills