Gisèle P.

A retired piano teacher but still a music lover, Gisèle grew up in the Sault-au-Récollet district on St-Firmin Street. Her family lived there from 1955 to 1968. As a child, she studied at the neighborhood Saints-Martyrs-Canadiens School.

With a husband who had a successful career in sales and enjoyed several promotions, she moved over a dozen times, including once to Toronto. Until recently, she lived in Anjou.

As a music teacher, she was able to give recognized courses from her home. This allowed her to have a career of her own while raising her children. She was, over the years, linked to institutions like CEGEP St-Laurent, Collège Marie-Victorin and schools in Beloeil and Granby. While I was trying to find the right shooting angle for the photo below, I noted that she had retained her methodical and attentive teaching skills. One could hear it when she sat at the piano with her friend Nicole to practice a four hands piece.

Together, the two friends lead, with the help of a few other residents, a friendly group of people who meet several times a year to sing without rehearsals. The organizers choose, print and distribute the texts of French songs for the group, which can sometimes reach up to 130 participants.

In addition to the concerts of the Musical Sundays at the Maison Symphonique, Gisèle attends several other concerts. This is how she discovered some of the venues of the Réseau Accès culture. Nevertheless, she prefers the acoustics of some churches that do better justice to the music.

If your steps take you one day to Les Jardins Millen and you hear melodic notes from the grand piano, she may very well be the one playing!

Gisèle  with Nicole at the piano

Nicole T

It was the day after the inauguration of a pedestrian street section on Park Stanley Avenue that I met Nicole and her friend Gisèle. These two retired ladies are both condo owners in Les Jardins Millen. Nicole told me that she was the first person to acquire a unit of this project when it was launched. Her choice was already made. She appreciated the concept, the vicinity to the metro and the neighborhood, having been a resident of Ahuntsic in the 60s with her parents on Séguin Street.

See how times change: as young girl, she followed the philo 1 and 2 program at Collège Marie-Anne, a normal school for girls. At the time, the Sisters of St. Anne who taught there considered that Nicole had the talent required to undertake advanced studies in piano. She chose instead the path of social work and had a long career in this field. Today part of the CSDM, this same school welcomes a regional clientele of students determined to resume their studies or continue them in a context more favorable to their success. You have to see the crowd who gets off at the bus # 121 stop: it includes representatives from around the world!

Another sign of significant change, Nicole experienced the last days of the Hôpital St-Jean-de-Dieu, who was overcrowded with patients, many of whom did not belong there at all. In the 70s, at a time when the institution was renamed Hôpital Louis-Hyppolite-Lafontaine, or more familiarly Louis-H, the turn to ambulatory care was just beginning.

Nicole lived until recently in Outremont. She has a daughter, who now lives in Switzerland. Having kept her love for music, she made friends with Gisèle, a retired piano teacher, upon her arrival to Les Jardins Millen. You can learn more about their common musical projects by reading the text on Gisèle.

These two ladies are as friendly as dynamic.

Nicole T.

Ishwar L.

I met Ishwar in the Saint-Simon-Apôtre Park. I arrived by bicycle and crossed him and a young man of his family on their bicycles as well. They had stopped to take a double portrait with a cell phone. It was my first day attempting to approach strangers to seek their permission to take their picture. I was still nervous, even though two other persons had already said yes. I told myself that as they were already in camera mode, the contact would be easier and that at least the youngest would accept.

Wrong! It was Ishwar who generously agreed. The young man watched with curiosity but politely declined.

Ishwar is a retired real estate agent. He has been living in the St-Sulpice dsitrict for about fifteen years. Native of India, he has not returned there since his departure.  His family and his country are now here. However, he highly recommended that I travel to India, even suggesting that I make a grant application for an artistic training project! He then pulled out his cell phone to show me pictures of paintings by an Indian artist friend.

When asked to describe himself in one word, he said friendly. I would add that I found him to be an open-minded man.