Leo Page House – Then and Now

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• Wow, I didn't expect that. It looks like something straight out of the Boston-Edison district.

• When was the boxy faux-antebellum facade put up on Mr. Page's modest dwelling?

• omg!!! you're weren't kidding! i'm totally blown away. wow.

• I wonder if they hosted a funeral to the death of what once was a beautiful mansion. I also wonder if the old facade was destroyed, or just buried?

• unreal

• Wow! I grew up in a (now demolished along with the rest of the neighbourhood) house at the corner of Healy and Reed on property that extended back to Wright Street. A lot of the properties were held by speculators, some in the States - as my father discovered when he spearheaded a petition to have municipal water installed in the area after amalgamation with the City in the fifties. (We got a fire hydrant right across the street which was a good thing when the house burned the following year.) Building was never much more than sparse, nothing like the subdivisions of today, and was pretty much all independantly done. When we bought our "house" in 1949, it was three rooms and a path to which my father added on for decades. I remember one house where the people lived in the basement for a generation or more until someone could afford to put the house on top. There were two big, brick house across Healy from us, two more at the foot of Healy (at Sandwich) and a "fancy" place at the corner of Broadway and Sandwich (on the north side of Sandwich). Most houses were frame; some were - like ours originally - little more than shacks.

  I just remember a real shanty town on the beach at the foot of Chappus with blanket doorways and metal Coca Cola sign walls. A girlfriend of mine lived in the one (brick) house actually "on" Chappus, near the river.

• Further to my previous comment and rather ironic in a way, Paul Janisse and I have been friends for many years but never knew of the "connection".

• A beautiful old house. It would be nice if a restoration could be undertaken at some point in the future.

• I used to live in Broadway just off Linsell across from the Park. We used to BMX in the trails (Yacky Bush!), fish beside that huge boat that was back there for awhile and skate on the pond in there. It was a major pain to walk all the way over to Rum Runners to catch the Crosstown 2. Was a fun place to be until Ford came in closed off Linsell. I went back there a few years ago and all the hills and trails were pretty much flattened or closed off due to some reckless dirt bikes and ATV's that were wrecking everything. I had no idea of any of the history of the area, good to know.

• The "renovation" was undertaken circa 1960. Ouellette Ave. was once lined with stately homes. A cluster of these on the east side of the street between Elliott and HMCS Hunter survived into the mid sixties. The Ursuline Sisters had a convent and music school there composed of three of these large homes connected by additions but still retaining their original character.