Montreal Memories of the Century: From the Sketchbooks of John Collins

Bruce Grainger is head of the Public Services Department, Macdonald
Library, McGill University.

John Collins was editorial cartoonist for the Montreal Gazette for more
than 40 years. After his retirement, he continued to provide
illustrations for a very popular local history column in the Gazette and
to paint watercolors. This book illustrates his memories of Montreal
through simple, even crude, cartoonlike line drawings. The accompanying
prose briefly explains the context of the drawings.

Many of Collins’s illustrations represent aspects of early
20th-century urban life that have since disappeared, including the
iceman, the breadman, the milkman, the organ grinder, streetcars, the
horse and buggy, and the old-fashioned telephone switchboard. Some
drawings depict famous sites such as the Forum and Expo ’67, while
others illustrate the distinctive architectural history of the city
(e.g., bygone department stores, churches such as Notre Dame de
Bonsecours, and the Old Fire Station in Place d’Youville). The book
contains an appreciative foreword by noted Montreal writer William
Weintraub. Montrealers and all others who admire the city will enjoy
this nostalgic retrospective.