📍Belmont Avenue, Westmount, Montreal, QC H3Y, Canada
1934 – 1951“I grew up at 599 Belmont Avenue in Westmount, in a comfortable Jewish family on the slopes of Mount Royal in Montreal. My father, Nathan, ran the family clothing business, and my grandfather and great-grandfather had been presidents of the Shaar Hashomayim synagogue nearby, where I had my bar mitzvah. Behind our house was Murray Hill Park, where my nanny took my sister and me, and where I later wandered with notebooks. The park, with its trees and views over the river, appears again and again in my early writing. My father died when I was nine. I remember cutting a bow tie from one of his and burying it in the garden with a note; perhaps that was my first piece of writing. My mother's father, Rabbi Solomon Klonitzki-Kline, came to live with us, and we would sit together reading the Book of Isaiah, which he knew by heart. I fell in love with its music, imagery and prophecy, the sense that words could be both holy and dangerous. The ritual of the synagogue, the cantor's singing and the old prayers gave me a vocabulary I used for the rest of my life. At Westmount High School I joined clubs and student politics, and as a teenager I learned the guitar, played in a country and western group and began to write poetry seriously. I graduated in 1951 and went on to McGill. My songs, Suzanne, Bird on the Wire and Hallelujah, carry the cadences of that house: scripture, grief, longing and a sense of grace. Montreal remained my city, and I came home to it many times. Today my portrait looks down from a mural on Crescent Street.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today