2005
Westmount historian 'loved this city'
'Gubbay taught people not just to walk by, but to use their eyes to see the city' -- Flora-Lee Wagner
Alan Hustak
CanWest News Service
October 25, 2005
Aline Gubbay, the historian, architectural photographer, author and social worker who chronicled the social and architectural history of Westmount and Montreal in four books, died in her apartment of pancreatic cancer Friday. She was 85.
In the preface to Gubbay's last book, A View of Their Own: The Story of Westmount, the city's former mayor, Peter Trent, described her writing as "a delicate work of love" that "deftly limns the city's gentle history and modestly allows places, characters and buildings to speak to the reader directly."
Marilynn Vanderstaag, a columnist with the Westmount Examiner, said Gubbay was "a great, gracious, graceful lady, so detail oriented."
"She not only wrote, but she published, photographed and promoted her books."
A silk merchant's daughter, Alice Helfer was born in Alexandria, Egypt on June 20, 1920. Her mother was Turkish, her father, a Russian Jew from Georgia.
She and her family moved to England when she was 4. At 15, she was one of the youngest students to win a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
Her parents frowned on her becoming an actress, and instead encouraged her to study photography with a family friend, Germaine Kanova. Aline became a portrait photographer, training her lens on people in the arts world.
During the Second World War, she took the picture of French General Charles de Gaulle, then in exile, that was used on the Free-France propaganda leaflets that were dropped in Nazi occupied France.
In 1948, she met and married Eric Gubbay, a cardiologist originally from Calcutta, and they emigrated to Winnipeg.
In 1956, the Gubbays moved to Montreal where Aline took correspondence courses to get her BA and then obtained a degree in social work from McGill University. She then went to work at the Constance Lethbridge Centre.
"She always had that kind of heart to help people out," her daughter, Sharon, told the Montreal Gazette yesterday. "She also always had a strong intellectual curiosity. She was always interested in what was going on in the contemporary arts, in theatre."
After surviving a bout with cancer in her mid-forties, Gubbay went back to university, wrote a thesis on Quebec sculptor Albert Laliberte, and obtained her master's degree in art history from Concordia University in 1976.
Gubbay wrote four books: 1981's Le Fleuve et la montagne/ The Mountain and The River, 1984's Montreal's Little Mountain, which she co-authored with Sally Hooff, 1989's A Street Called The Main and 1998's A View of Their Own: The Story of Westmount .
Her column, Know Your Westmount, regularly appeared in the Westmount Examiner.
She taught art history at the Visual Arts Centre and costume history at LaSalle College. She was also president of the Westmount Historical Society from 1996 until 2000.
"Her books are Westmount, the city's past, what it is, and how it became what it is now," Flora-Lee Wagner, immediate past president of the Westmount Historical Association said yesterday. "She had knowledge off the top of her head. She loved this city, and with her books and her photographs she taught people not just to walk by, but to use their eyes to look, to see and to appreciate the city."
Gubbay's husband died 11 years ago. She is survived by her three daughters.
Obituary of Aline Gubbay.
A View of Their Own
A Story of Westmount
by
Aline Gubbay
The Front cover of Aline Gubbay's new book. The painting is by James Duncan, showing a view ofvGreen Avenue in the late 1800s. |
Westmount Library's Centennial Author Series presented Aline Gubbay, who was aloud to read from her new book A View of Their Own: The Story of Westmount early in January 1999.
Aline Gubbay |
The president of the Westmount Historical Society, Aline Gubbay, makes a fair case for the diversity of the city that's often seen as an "anglo bastion". It was reported in the Gazette December 19th 1998, by Elaine Kalman Naves. (Price-Patteron, 156pp,$25)
From the Iroquois to Peter Trent, Aline Gubbay has written the definitive history of Westmount
By Wayne Larsen
Leafing through an advance copy of a new tome chronicling the story of Westmount, one is immediately struck by what a daunting task it must have been to cram the entire history of a community-going back some 300 years-between the covers of a single volume.
But this is exactly what has been done, and who better to do it than Aline Gubbay, Westmount's venerable resident historian and president of the Westmount Historical Association. Given the broad scope of the subject she has chosen to tackle, to say she has succeeded admirably would be an understatement.
With the long-awaited 'A View of Their Own: The Story of Westmount' (Price-Patterson Ltd.), Mrs. Gubbay has penned an attractive, informative chronicle so full of colour and warmth that readers will no doubt be astounded by the amount of relevant, fascinating material she has managed to cover in a mere 148 pages.
In short, Aline Gubbay has written the definitive history of Westmount.
Anyone surprised to learn that the Summit Circle lookout was originally commissioned as a 'make work' project for the local unemployed during the Great Depression are sure to find hundreds of other interesting facts scattered throughout the 14 lively chapters (plus epilogue) the soft-spoken author has compiled.
Most Westmount Examiner readers are already familiar with Mrs. Gubbay's historical writings, which have appeared over the years in her popular column 'Know Your Westmount'. Those who have missed her familiar photo and by-line above the column since it was temporarily taken over by fellow members of the Westmount Historical Association last spring will no doubt be heartened to know that Mrs. Gubbay has since been busy putting the finishing touches on this book-a veritable labour of love that has understandably taken several years to complete. But she assures us that a series of new column manuscripts (always meticulously hand-typed on thick yellow paper) will soon be arriving at the Examiner office.
Generously illustrated with rare photographs from a variety of sources ranging from the William Notman collection to the Historical Association archives-as well as many taken by the author herself-Mrs. Gubbay's detailed account of the community is set out in a breezy prose style that consistently reflects a genuine love and respect for the subject matter.
The starting point she has chosen for this odyssey is present-day Arlington Lane, originally an Indian trail that led up the mountain. From the native villages that flourished in the area long before the arrival of the Europeans, through the Sulpician priests and French farmers to the wealthy British merchants, the development of the settlement once known as Cote St. Antoine is documented right up to the present mayoralty of Peter Trent.
How the Westmounters of a bygone era worked and played is covered extensively. So comprehensive is Mrs. Gubbay's study of the community that no institution, be it social, athletic, religious or educational, is overlooked. Schools and churches are featured with such prominence that a brief yet well-rounded history of each is offered.
With a handsome jacket cover featuring an 1870 view of a rural Greene Avenue by painter James Duncan, 'A View of Their Own' is not Mrs. Gubbay's first foray into the local book market. Her previous publications include 'Montreal: The Mountain and the River' and 'A Street Called the Main', as well as 'Montreal's Little Mountain: A Portrait of Westmount', which she co-authored with Sally Hoof.
"Mrs. Gubbay deftly limns our gentle history and modestly allows the places, characters and buildings speak to the reader directly," Peter Trent writes in the preface. This is followed by a foreword by former Examiner patriarch John W. Sancton, who writes, "…anyone who cares about this community's rich history should not only give themselves the pleasure of reading 'A View of Their Own' but keep it in a convenient corner of their home library as a ready reference and a means of enlightening visitors, more often than not from less fortunate places."
Published by Westmounter Michael Price, 'A View of Their Own: The Story of Westmount' has arrived just in time for the city's 125th anniversary and the public library's centennial-both of which will be celebrated throughout 1999.
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