Gargoyles, whiskey and long life

Gargoyle-hunting in Toronto is a challenge. There are faces and some actual gargoyles, but it takes real searching to find them. Gargoyle-hunting in Montreal, on the other hand, is more like shooting fish in a barrel. They’re everywhere. I’ve been shooting them practically every time I’ve been there since 2001, but I somehow missed this guy. He is about half a storey tall, and prominently displayed on the former Seagram House on Peel Street.

For you sticklers out there, he is not an actual gargoyle because he doesn’t have a spout. (There is a spout above him.) He has gargoylian features, however, but he also has the features of a telamon, a support sculpted in the form of a man. (The plural is telamones; when the supporting sculpted figure is a female, it’s called a caryatid.)

Construction of this building was completed in 1929, and remained as Seagram Company Ltd. headquarters until 2002 when it was given to McGill University. It is currently known as Martlet House (so called for the mythical birds on the university coat of arms), home of of the university's development and alumni relations department.

The Seagram Company was founded in 1928 by Samuel Bronfman, after he acquired Joseph Seagram & Sons, which he amalgamated with his own Distillers Corporation. In fact, you can still see a stylized Romanesque DCL on the façade of the building.

The architect was American-born David Jerome Spence, who later worked in partnership with Frederick David Mathias beginning in 1937, but Mathias is credited with designing the façade of the Seagram building.

The building contains several ornamental nods to the Scottish spirit the company produces. It is modeled after a 16th-century Scottish baronial castle (including a portcullis), and features not only the magnificent gargoylamon above, but also a relief portrait of Robbie Burns.



There is also a bewhiskered gentleman just above the gargoyle, with the incised legend “aged 152 years.” (He’s hiding behind tape while renovations are going on. At the moment, the roof is being replaced.) He’s not Father Time (who is almost certainly older than 152), nor is he Joseph Seagram. I suspect he is Thomas Parr, aka “Old Tom Parr” or simply “Old Parr,” born near Shrewsbury who was reported to have lived for 152 years (1483-1635).



However, doubt has been cast for some time on his supercentenarian status.

There is a brand of whiskey named for him although not made by Seagram’s.

Ankle biters?

Most gargoyles and other architectural sculptures appear *above* doors and windows, or at rooflines. But when I was in Montreal recently, I saw these two female heads at the bottom of the door frame.

Here's a closer view of the lady on the left:


And the one on the right:


In fact, the figure on the right has a companion who overlooks the steps up to the restaurant next door:

Merry Madmen of Montreal

What can I possibly add to these pictures? Except to say that they all appear on one building, under windowsills, so they're quite low and easy to shoot... which I did, on my way back to the hotel on the last day of the CWAHI meeting.

Serenity

I haven't posted for a few days. I'm tired of taking pictures of the hole in the ground at the end of the street. I'll return to that when there's something more to show.
I'm also having some trouble with post-holiday re-entry to real life. So I thought I'd post this picture I took last summer of Kali, my friend Denyse's cat, meditating before one of the several shrines Denyse has in her apartment in Montreal. She looked so ... meditative and serene and placid...

...until she decided to jump up and check out the Buddha and the bamboo more closely.

Canadian Women Artists History Initiative

We interrupt seasonal pictures for some relatively new news: the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative, based in the Art History Department at Concordia University in Montreal, appears to have officially started.

It is a collaborative effort to bring resources and researchers together to build and build upon scholarship on women artists in Canada. Its focus is on the period before 1967, and includes Canadian women artists born before 1925 (1965 for those in architecture) and working across a broad range of media.

I learned about the plans for this effort when I interviewed Dr. Janice Anderson (PhD), curator of visual resources in Concordia's Faculty of Fine Arts, in June, but I just happened upon the group's Web site yesterday. I interviewed Janice in connection with the biography I'm writing of Toronto sculptor Merle Foster (1897-1986). The picture above is a figure from a fountain she sculpted.

Straighten up, Toronto!

There are a lot of differences between Toronto and Montreal. Bagels, for one. Toronto bagels: not so hot. Montreal bagels: The best.
Oh, yeah, and language for another. Toronto: English. Montreal: French. Unlike the bagels, neither language is better than the other.
Now I've discovered another difference - and a shocking one - between Canada's two major cities: children's posture.

These are Montreal children walking to school. Their posture is so impeccable, they could carry their books on their heads (if their heads were flat, which they clearly aren't). Their stride suggests a sense of purpose. Possibly even joy.

What of the youths of Toronto? Apart from the surrounding city looking an unhealthy yellow, these children are slouching, shuffling, dispirited.
Hold your heads high, youth of Toronto. Straighten up! Put a spring in your step! (It's not officially winter yet anyway.)

Okay, I'll post architecture stuff next time.