Griffintown

Is the gentrification of Griffintown enough to scare away the ghost of Mary Gallagher?

You won't find Griffintown on any map. But it's one of the oldest, and most storied parts of Montreal, home, at one time, to one of the city's 4 founding cultures (French, English, Scottish, and Irish). The area is part of Montreal's South-West borough which encompasses other storied, working-class neighbourhoods like St. Henri, Little Burgundy, and Pointe St. Charles. The Lachine Canal cuts through the borough; over the years the canal was beautified, made green, with places to picnic along a path for cyclists, rollerbladers, and runners.

Griffintown itself had for years been a ragtaggle pastiche of clapboard, crumbling homes and factories. The Irish-named neighbourhood has traditionally been home to those who broke their backs, worked their fingers to the bone, and in some cases gave their lives building the canal and the Victoria Bridge.

Many of the old buildings in several parts of south-western Montreal, have been converted, over the years, into offices or lofts, like the Lowney project, the half-completed condo development in the old Lowney Candy Factory. The developers of the Lowney project recently pulled a bit of trickery, playing fast and loose with the law, to fast-track approval of the next phase of development.

Griffintown, by the way, is home to the headless ghost of Mary Gallagher, a woman of ill repute, as it were. One night in 1879, after boozing it up and turning tricks, another prostitute decapitated Mary Gallagher in a jealous rage, tossing her head into a pail. It is said that every 7 years Mary Gallagher walks the night searching for her severed head throughout Griffintown. Excavation in Montreal sometimes turns up bones. Could it be that any one of several development projects in the area unearthed Mary's head, dismissing it as a relic?

By the mid-1970s Griffintown had become a ghost of its former self, its remains picked apart by Expo '67, industrialization, and the building of Montreal's Bonaventure Expressway. Part of the elevated highway, which connects downtown to the south shore via the Champlain Bridge, might one day be demolished as part of another redevelopment plan that would include a new bus corridor for south shore commuters. But not everyone likes that idea; the contentious Societe du Havre de Montreal, has become a sore spot for residents of Griffintown, who worry that increased bus traffic will threaten the way of life they'd become accustomed to.

Montreal's Mayor Gerald Tremblay supports the project. Opposition leader Louise Harel does not. She'd prefer to see a train line using existing tracks to serve south shore commuters, along with a light-rail system running across Victoria Bridge.

I don't know if development and gentrification will scare away the ghost of Mary Gallagher, or if new and future residents of Griffintown even believe in ghosts. But developers and residents alike would do well to preserve the village's history lest its past return to avenge its most foul and unlawful murder.