A place like no other

BY MARC LALONDE

marc.lalonde@transcontinental.ca

Want to see the West Island in a whole new light?

The portion of the West Island encompassing Lake St. Louis, the Ste. Anne de Bellevue locks and the St. Lawrence Seaway has a rich and varied history, and pieces of that history are as

Come with us as we take a drive - and make s few stops along the way between Dorval and Ste. Anne de Bellevue - along the same path many original West Island settlers took when they were looking for a place to call home.

We start our trek in Dorval, near the intersection of Dorval Avenue and Lakeshore Drive (The launch for the Dorval Island ferry; in 2001, an association made up of the islands’ cottage owners - including then-mayor Peter Yeomans — bought the island from the city of Dorval before it was merged with Montreal on Jan. 1, 2002. The government successfully blocked the sale in court a few years later. Dorval and Dorval Island have since de-merged from the city.)

A quiet drive down Lakeshore follows, with historical lakeshore homes mixed in with leafy trees and quiet laneways before the Sarto Desnoyers Dorval Community Centre looms on our right and the Royal St. Lawrence Yacht Club on the left.

(Sarto Desnoyers Community Centre and the adjoining pool and athletic fields are a hub for activity in the summer in Dorval. Catch a baseball game, move on to a soccer game and end the evening with a refreshing dip. Sounds nice? It is.)

Further along, the lakeshore is dotted with green spaces as Pine Beach Park comes up on the left.

(A stroll through Pine Beach Park on a sunny morning is one of life’s great pleasures. Try it, and you’ll see what all the fuss is about.)

Soon, Dorval gives way to Pointe Claire, and even more heritage lakefront homes.

Maison Legault, built in 1705, sits on the north side of the lake, overlooking Lakeshore Road and the lake itself. The distinctive green paint gives it away.

(A little further down Lakeshore, you happen across a townhouse development where the Maples Inn once stood before it burned to the ground in 1985. The Maples Inn was loved by its patrons and loathed by pretty much everybody who lived around it. The suspicious fire that destroyed the place after its liquor license was pulled was a happy day for many nearby residents.)

Further down the lakeshore is impressive Stewart Hall and the lakefront park around the venerable building

(Its evocative lakefront scenery makes the location popular for newlyweds taking photos on their big day A summer Saturday sees at least one and as many as a dozen such caravans come through its gates.)

Continue a little further down Lakeshore until you arrive at the corner of Cartier and Lakeshore avenues in Pointe Claire Village. A quick stop at Bourgeau Park to take in the view from the lakefront benches and you’re back on the road, passing the venerable Village businesses that have been there as long as most folks can remember. Soon after you leave Pointe Claire Village and cross into Beaconsfield, following Beaconsfield Boulevard as it snakes past St. Charles Boulevard and down past the soccer fields at the Beaconsfield Recreation Centre. (Feel free to stop by the Beaconsfield Library as well. For a smallish facility, it’s extremely well-stocked.) Down the road apiece is Centennial Hall - always a nice place to spend a few minutes playing with the kids on a summer day.

Then back in the car to continue through Beaurepaire Village (which got an $8 million infrastructure facelift in 2002 and 2003 that accomplished two goals: to make the village more appealing to pedestrians and to stop sewage from pouring directly into the lake when there was an overflow of rainwater. Now that they’ve done both, it’s a lot nicer down there.) and on to Baie d’Urfé.

Past the Lakeshore Road home where Mary Glen was killed by serial murderer William Fyfe in 1999, and down to a much cheerier locale: Baie d’Urfé town hall and its adjoining park. If you feel like the modern world is getting to be too much for you, you ought to head out for a good sit while staring blankly at the water. If there’s a better stress cure than that, it hasn’t yet seen the light of day.

The adjoining park and the Fritz Farm Community Centre, which sits across Lakeshore Road on the north side of the road, are ideal picnic spots for families with busy schedules looking to slow things down.

The winding and leafy nature of Lakeshore Road is never more in evidence than at the western end of Baie d’Urfé, past the Red Barn and the Baie d’Urfé Curling Club (home to gatherings as diverse as post-election party workers and raucous lifeguard parties, known to the informed as ‘rants’) and as the red-brick buildings on McGill University’s Macdonald Campus come into focus, you know you’re crossing into Ste. Anne de Bellevue — the cradle of West Island higher education (thanks to venerable institutions like Mac and John Abbott College.) It’s also the cradle of West Island partying. After one particularly beer-soaked night in November 1989, Olympic-medallist swimmer Victor Davis was run down in the street with a car after a verbal confrontation with another man. He died of his injuries two days later.

(Since then, though, Ste. Anne de Bellevue Mayor Bill Tierney, first elected in 1994, has placed a premium on quality of life and has restricted more bars from opening in the village. Popular watering holes Quai Sera and the Belle-Vue Resto-Bar both burned down in the past decade — February 1999 and July 2000, respectively - and have yet to be replaced. The nightlife aspect of the village gave way to a slower pace of life. Rather than at 3 a.m., Ste. Anne now comes to life at 5 p.m. in the summer, as boardwalkers and cinq-a-septers alike find their way to the city’s terraces for some summer libations.)

Park the car (on a side street, preferably. Ste. Anne Street now boasts parking meters, and paying for parking goes against many West Islanders’ infinitely suburban nature). Get on the boardwalk and walk west, toward the locks. Maybe grab yourself an ice-cream-cone (especially if you saved on the parking meters) and continue down Ste. Anne Street to Godin Park, where the West Island’s most spectacular sunset waits to greet you. On a bench sitting on a pier that juts out into the Lake of Two Mountains facing west, you can sit, taking in one of the greatest wonders of the universe and contemplate your place in it.

If that doesn’t grab you, continue in your car up Senneville Road and follow it along until you come to the Riviere des Prairies shorefront.

That story’s going to have to wait until next year, though.