by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

In the shadow of construction cranes, just a block from where yellow hardhats mill about a soon-to-open CÉGEP wing and a block from massive condo projects a block south of downtown, Leo Leonard warms himself next to a stove in a shack next to his stables. He pops his lukewarm bottle of Molson Dry into a boiling pot of water. "It's better for the stomach to drink it warm. Sailors from England would tell me how they'd take a poker from the fire and put it into their beer to warm it."

The 77-year-old finishes lamenting the buildings in the area that he didn't buy when they were still cheap, then starts on his life story. "I grew up in [nearby] Goose Village and went to school here in Griffintown. I started delivering ice with the horses in 1940. There was a time when there were 3,000 horses in this area," he says. Leonard isn't only a throwback because he runs the Griffintown Horse Palace on Ottawa street, just a stone's throw from buildings that scrape the sky, he's also unique for being the last Irishman in an area once flavoured by folks from the Emerald Isle. "There's me and a woman named Murphy on Mountain and then there's O'Connell the plumber over there."

However, O'Connell - whose family owned the public baths in the area - has sold out and plans to leave the neighbourhood. Leonard alone, it seems, has no plans to leave the Griff. "My wife keeps saying we should move. When she says that I tell her: you move!"

Neglect as policy

The area south of Notre-Dame between McGill and Guy has long been in decline due to what one might consider an intentionally malevolent government policy dating back at least to 1960, when Mayor Jean Drapeau deemed that all new structures be industrial. As the cold water flats occasionally burned down they would be replaced by empty lots or warehouses. The Bonaventure expressway then cut a man-sized swathe through the neighbourhood, and dilapidation continued unabated as renovation grants common elsewhere weren't available to Griffintown. Under Jean Doré, Griffintown suffered its most recent insult: it's now officially known as Faubourg des Récollets.

All agree, however, that the most painful blow to the fabled tight-knit Irish community occurred in 1970, when St. Ann's church was demolished.

According to Griffintown-born Denis Delaney, "The Catholic Church decided to get rid of either St. Ann's in Griffintown or St. Patrick's Basilica, and even though St. Patrick's is impressive, it wasn't an obvious choice because St. Ann's was well attended. Busloads of people would come down to the Tuesday devotions to visit the picture of Mother of Perpetual Health. It was said to cause miracles. Even my mother used to say that it did something for her but she never told us what it was."

Delaney, who now lives in Westmount, frequently rides his bike down to the old area to reminisce about his youth. "The canal was our summer resort. I'd say about six or seven kids drowned there when I was growing up. There was the Oka Sand barge that would park down there, which was basically a big rectangular thing with a big pyramid of sand on it. We'd climb up the sand and dive off. One time a kid swam against the other side of the barge but it moved against the wall and he couldn't get out.

"We'd dive off the Black's Bridge at Wellington and dive to the bottom of the canal and grab a handful of silt from the bottom - that was probably highly polluted - and show the other idiots this stuff. Every spring they'd empty the canal and find old cars and occasionally somebody who'd been murdered."

Missing leg, no hot water

Delaney also confesses to his role in the local legend of the mysterious disappearance of Neptune's bronze leg from the John Young statue. "One day we were playing in the fountain [beneath the statue] and we knocked off the leg by accident and we ended up hiding it on a cart and bringing it to a metal worker who gave us $1.85 for it as scrap metal."

Although the memories are sweet, Delaney also remembers how heat and food were luxuries, while hot water was unheard of. "These homes had only one tap, it was the cold water tap in the kitchen."

Local filmmaker Richard Burman, who spent five years meeting dozens of former Griffintowners for his documentary The Ghosts of Griffintown (it airs on CFCF Saturday, March 13 at 3 p.m.), considers it an "unusual neighbourhood." "People felt passionate about living there. It wasn't a rich neighbourhood but they had everything - sports and culture and a self-sufficient community. It impressed me to meet people who remember their neighbourhood quite fondly and like to get together and reminisce about it - it amazes me."

Burman says that the Irish started abandoning Griffintown after the War. "I guess they were tired of it but of course they maybe didn't realize what they were going to lose. Maybe they didn't realize their feelings for the area were so strong until after they left."

Dirty secrets

There seems no concerted attempt to reclaim the area, although Irish-Montreal's attempts to resettle their once-fertile turfs aren't unprecedented. Decades ago, dozens of former residents of Goose Village - razed by Mayor Jean Drapeau in 1964 - tried to organize to rebuild their former community, only to have their hopes dashed by news that the plot of land they planned to rebuild upon was too polluted to proceed.

And any attempts to reconstitute the former vocation of the Griff could hit the same hurdle. Bankers, wary of losing their investment, are refusing to lend money to people who want to reinvest in Griffintown unless the land passes rigorous soil tests.

When O'Connell Plumbing sold its HQ on Murray along with 15 apartment units upstairs, the new purchaser could only get a mortgage after paying for a $250,000 soil cleanup. O'Connell's attempt to remain in Griffintown has also been dashed by soil issues, as a building he was eyeing on Wellington would also require a similar soil-cleanup fee. "If you're a small investor that needs a loan, you'll have trouble getting one in the area because of the soil question," says Christian Arcand of O'Connell Plumbing. "But it seems that if you have money enough to buy a building outright without a loan you'll have no problem."

But even big developers have struggled with the soil of the Griff. The True North condo project just north of Notre-Dame almost didn't get built. "What we thought was a $2-million problem turned out to be a $22-million problem. We ended up building on a podium on the west side. Instead of taking the oil out we put a big slab on top of it," says former director Jean Dorion, who considers the provincial soil requirements excessive. "You'd have to eat a lot of that soil before it'd even start affecting your health."

Borough Mayor Jacqueline Montpetit believes that Griffintown will be reinhabited in spite of its latest bureaucratic barriers. "I agree that they must check the quality of the soil but it's not always clear when and where it should be done," she says. "We might consider refining our manner of evaluating soil."

Some environmentalists like the Société pour vaincre la pollution's Daniel Green believe that the strict soil standards put out by the provincial Environment Ministry are justified. "If a child is exposed to lead poisoning through soil, he's finished for life," says Green.

Delaney, however, has no doubts that the area will eventually be the "next Westmount." But the old Griffintown is gone, never to return. "I used to hear this song since I was about five years old." He sings: "Take me back to Griffintown Griffintown Griffintown, that's where I long to be/Where my friends are good to me/Hogan's Bath on Wellington Street where the Point bums wash their feet/Haymarket Square I don't care anywhere/For it's Griffintown for me."