'Endangered Stories': Filmmaker preserves West Island history through video capsules

Filmmaker and storyteller Jason Bolanis is capturing the history of the West Island by making video capsules.

He says these stories have fewer and fewer witnesses as the decades pass, so he publishes one a week.

You might not think of the West Island when considering key moments in local history, but Bolanis' 'Endangered Stories' -- available on YouTube and Facebook -- may change your mind.

One of these endangered stories is that of the Chateau St-Louis, a country club built a century ago on Baie-de-Valois that burned down after just a decade in operation.

The Chateau St-Louis was a 1920s country club facing Baie-de-Valois on Montreal's West Island. (Photos courtesy of Jason Bolanis)

"People from the city who could afford to come out here and stay at hotels, three-storey, five-star hotels" were the clientele there, Bolanis says.

By digging through archives and interviewing people who were there, Bolanis is safe-keeping moments in West Island history before they're forgotten for good.

The country club is too special to fade into obscurity, he says.

"When you look at it, it looks like something that should be in San Francisco, not Valois!"

Bolanis hired a diver to explore the bay using satellite imagery. They pulled out glass bottles and other items that were under water for 78 years.

Milk bottles pulled out of the Baie-de-Valois are estimated to be from 1920s and 1930s. (CTV News/Christine Long)

He collects photos and anecdotes about the unique 1920s social club that, balanced on stilts over the water, hosted concerts, dances and movies.

"It's an 'endangered story' because, until then, it only existed in that person's head -- unless I'm able to extract all that information to really paint a picture of what it was like to live here when it was first developed."