The Boardwalk Chronicles – Growing up Rich and Poor in Verdun

Verdun is an odd place. A nondescript small city hard by Montreal, it has the singular distinction of being located on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. In another place, such choice real estate might have been snatched up by the rich; their mansions and estates gracing the shores of the mighty river. But Verdun was different.

In Verdun, high density three storey flats looked out over the riverscape with only a boardwalk and a few parks to soften the shoreline. I say a “boardwalk” because that is what everyone called it. It wasn’t made of boards at all. It was a long narrow ribbon of asphalt which snaked from the Auditorium at the foot of Church Ave. ending somewhere in the hinterlands of Crawford Park, three or four miles to the west. A stroll westward along the boardwalk took you from slums to suburbia.

Three steel pipe ralings, invariably painted shiny municipal green, spanned stone pillars, which stood like sentinels alongside the river. Every third pillar footed a tall graceful lampost which provided a pool of light for the nightime stroller. For a boy, the boardwalk railing was the barrier between a life of supervision and order on the city side, and adventure, mischief and “wilderness” on the river side.

Whether in the shimmering humidity of summer, or the numbing cold of a Montreal winter, the St. Lawrence River was always there, and the boardwalk its border.