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David Schwartzman was only five when he moved from Mile End to Côte-St-Luc with his family in early 1954, but all these years later, his memories of the old neighbourhood remain clear — from the wooden pickle barrel in a grocery store his mother frequented on Parc Ave. to the iceman, the milkman with his horse-pulled cart and the streetcar.

His father, Ben, had a radio, television and phonograph repair shop on Notre Dame St. in St-Henri and “he could fix anything.” The storefront has since been bricked up and today the space is part of a Mexican café in a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood. Schwartzman, now 71, painted the storefront from memory.

Photo by Dave Sidaway / jpg

He has clear memories, too, of his paternal grandparents’ farm northeast of Montreal in St-Charles-Borromée, near Joliette. They grew tobacco and potatoes and built dozens of cabins they rented to Jewish families from Montreal “who would come from the inner city to get away from the heat” in summer. He remembers his grandmother’s farm store, remembers how several families would rent a truck with a driver to cart their belongings out for the season and how some would rest on their bedding for the trip. He remembers a dance hall on the farm. He has painted those scenes, too — and, in so doing, preserved them.