Chapter 3

The district known as Pointe-St-Charles is an old workers’ district located to the west of Montreal’s harbour; here lived most of the workers for the heavy industries that grew along the sides of the Lachine Canal and the Grand Trunk Railway between the 2nd half of the 19th century and the 1st half of the 20th. However, the Grand Trunk went belly up in the twenties and the Canal was closed in the seventies. With the construction of Expo 67 came the Ville Marie and the Bonaventure expressways that cut off easy access to ‘the Point’ both from land and from the river. All of these created a psychological barrier that separated The Point from the rest of Montreal. All of the industries that were the lifeblood of the area disappeared and the Point now has one of the highest unemployment rates of the city. Recently, the city has tried to boost the neighbourhood again by making it an ‘In-crowd’ hot spot and advertising the fact that the Point is in fact the second oldest part of Montreal, founded right after Ville Marie itself by Charles Le Moyne, in 1668.

The Point does have its attractions; firstly, there’s the Victoria Bridge, originally built to connect the Grand Trunk with the South Shore, it is the oldest functional bridge to cross the river. Nearby, in 1932 during the construction of the Montreal aqueduct, built to provide the city with a steady supply of water, Marie-Ange Magnan set up a tavern on the shore of the Lachine Canal and two streets west of the Atwater tunnel to feed the neighbourhood workers. Her son, wanting to create a meal that would outclass all of the competition, came up with a recipe for a roast beef platter that was even better than the Colonel’s chicken. Even now, when they have the chance to do so, people congregate there for a meal and a stein.

Thus it was that, for that particular payday, Roger decided to treat himself to a special meal. He had no reason to celebrate, in fact, it was the opposite! He needed some TLC. Things at work were going from bad to worse. After several weeks of rumors, the boss finally admitted that Liberty Packers would have to let people go. Even now, they were canceling or rescheduling vacation time. Roger had been planning to go on a trip with Karine again this year only to find that his two weeks’ vacation had been put off and split into one week in September and another in November. On top of that, Karine got this fool idea into her head to go visit an old friend of hers at that nudie colony. Even worse was that Paul had again been over for a visit the night she announced that crazy plan of hers and he had jumped at the idea and said he absolutely wanted to try that out as well instead of trying to talk her out of it. Paul was a good friend but sometimes, he was too much of a good thing.