Canadian houses, Montreal: Lower Westmount.

You'll find more about Lower Westmount--in particular the 'little' streets below St. Catherine--at Spacing Montreal. The streets I'm exploring here are all just above Sherbrooke Street. ('North' of Sherbrooke, in Montreal usage; though this doesn't have much to do with any compass bearing.) We are between Atwater and Claremont Avenues. Nineteenth- and early Twentieth-Century, often terraced houses, and nothing really fancy. Prosperous middle class. Who lived in these houses when they were built a hundred years ago? Senior clerks with 'positions' at the CPR, maybe Scottish-born? Bank managers of the larger downtown branches? French Canadian and Jewish owners of small-to-medium businesses? "Westmount" rings all kinds of psychic bells in the Canadian and Québecois mind but a lot of this clanging merely awakens stereotypes and tedious cliches about WASP plutocrats. Who are very rare on the ground in W'mount these days, and never much liked this part of the neighborhood anyway. Canadians hold onto their clichés--especially about themselves--longer than most people do. Stereotypes linger perhaps because Canadians often think their country dull, and this stops them from looking closely at or reexamining the way they actually live in their towns and cities.
This section of Westmount reminds me of parts of South Dublin: Ballsbridge, Ranelagh. Montreal and Dublin were both large commercial cities of the (British) Empire during this period. Other quarters of Montreal look like other parts of Irish cities: the commercial buildings and 19th century warehouses along rue de la Commune in Old Montreal remind me a lot of the quays along the Liffey, in Dublin; also of certain parts of Cork city.