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The Word has been a haven for McGill students for more than a generation, and for many literary friends from all over the city. … It has been a haven in a particular way for me, because when my son was preschool or elementary school age and we were walking home, we would stop off to take a look at the children’s books in the corner, and then as he became more independent, he would stop off himself and was often found ensconced in an art deco armchair in that corner … Recently, when I was walking to our house with my granddaughter, I mentioned to her that one day I would take her on a tour of the ghetto and show her all the places her dad lived in when he was growing up, and she asked me, “Can we go to the bookstore where he sat in the corner and read?”

— Writer and longtime McGill ghetto resident Denis Sampson, from the memoir A Migrant Heart (2014)

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In 1973, Adrian and Luci King-Edwards were soon-to-be-wed McGill graduates living in a starter apartment on Milton St., between Durocher and Aylmer Sts. Their 4 1/2 — read this and weep, apartment seekers of today — rented for the princely sum of $100 a month.