Melbourne Street, Sherbrooke, Que.

Unused card marked "Valentine's Series (Britain) and additionally marked "Published by W. H. Griffith, Sherbrooke, Que." Another version of the same card that I have (which is coloured) was postmarked in 1906. The reason I have the card is that this is the street that my grandfather lived on as a boy, right around this time (he would have been 15 in 1906). It was a long post road that began in central Sherbrooke and made its way to Melbourne, a town to the north where my grandfather's parents had, incidentally, been married in 1886. There is no Melbourne Street anymore since it was broken up into a number of smaller streets to better fit the city's grid pattern as Sherbrooke grew.

Interestingly, my grandfather's house (then known as 28 Melbourne) is one of the row houses shown just at right. The face of the kid looking at the camera reminds me of him ... but that would be too much to ask for. Here is a great view of the exact same scene today from Google Earth. Other than the paved street and the loss of the house in the right foreground (as well as some of the street straightening mentioned above), it is virtually an identical scene over a century later:
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