Righteous fascists, tactless hookers, exploding testicles and dozens of other important facts you need to know about Boulevard St-Laurent
by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR "When Montreal has outgrown itself, when places we know today have been obliterated, the Main will always be there. It has a niche in this great city all to itself; time will never change it. People live there and love it; people die there, and dying, love it. Sons follow fathers in the small and large businesses, heritages handed down; nothing can wean the inheritors from the Main's magnetic pull." --An unsigned Montreal Standard article from 1931. If the Main itself could talk, it might ask you to stop walking all over it, then--presuming it was a bit of a gossip--it might tell you these tales...
TRAILBLAZERS Wax freaks and shoe business titans
2. The first fashion eccentric was L. Rap, a mathematician who, in the late 1800s, would parade up and down the street dressed in white with a matching umbrella. His efforts to get a seat in Parliament were greeted with much hilarity. 3. Best cop action thriller novel about the Main: The Main, by Rod Whitaker, aka Trevanian (1976). Detective LaPointe makes sure to shave only in the afternoon so he can keep a five o'clock shadow while he rules his domain of St-Laurent. 4. Best flaky movie about the Main: Montreal Main, 1973. The hero, a photographer, falls in love with a young boy, but his gang of friends disapprove. The movie's a not-so-distant mirror of cool, underground types thriving on the Main. 5. Longest standoff with fire inspectors: Ludwig Karl, who has been banned from his own shoe store after fire inspectors condemned Karl's Shoes (corner Rachel) in October, 1994. The Karls tried to repair the building, which was home to the shop since the 1930s, but an $8,000 dispute with a contractor led them to lose a $43,000 decision in court. Karl, who, legend has it, once responded to a customer's request for a different colour of shoes by spray-painting the same pair in a back room, has recently been spotted selling from the outside of his building. 6. The first projected film shown in Canada was on June 28, 1896 at 78 St-Laurent. Under a tent at the south west corner of Viger, the Lumière brothers held the first North American display of their recent Parisian invention. 7. The wackiest wax was at the Eden Museum, which was built in 1892 and displayed wax statues of Edward Beaupré, a legendary 8'2" Québécois giant; a woman who slept for 18 months straight; plus other freaks, before a disapproving St-Jean-Baptiste Society, which owned the building, turfed them out in 1940. 8. Longest lasting shoe-shiner: Fabien Biondi shined shoes on the lower Main from 1896 to 1964, raising a family of 15 sons and 3 daughters on the 35-cent shines he gave. 9. First (almost) death by sand heap: The responsibility for a 15-foot mountain of sand near Sauvé was hotly debated at city council after a young boy was buried in the pile, only to be saved at the last minute by a passerby in September 1957.
INDUSTRY Billiards, booze and deaf workers
11. Serving only beer and champagne, the strip's first big nightclub, the Frolics, opened in an old fur warehouse in 1928 at 1417 St-Laurent, just south of Ontario. The Frolics boasted a 15-piece orchestra before closing in 1934. 12. In the 1940s the Industrial School for the Deaf (now home to Lucien-Pagé High) was a factory where 300 deaf workers made perfume sprayers and lighters. Men earned $45 a week, women $25. 13. The dollar store warehouse, set in the magnificent stone structure four doors down from Sherbrooke on the east side, was where Eker's beer, one of the city's first brands, was made, from 1845. 14. Three female hat workers died in a fire at the Manhattan Cap Manufacturing Company, 3666 St-Laurent, March 14, 1942.
UNREST Madmen on the loose 15. André Deblois, who grew up at 10422 St-Laurent, was 22, had a wife, kid and a job, but was depressed. So on Friday, March 8, 1957, he walked into the crowded TD bank near Prince-Arthur wearing a vest made of TNT and a big fake nose. His robbery failed when a cop shot him in the neck. The Human Bomb was paralyzed and died a few weeks after being condemned to four concurrent 10-year prison sentences.
17. Ex-mental patient Fernand Rainville, 31, became The Mad Sniper of the Main on April 18, 1957, when, at around 5 p.m., he fired his .22 rifle from a window of the Alto rooming houses on the corner of Ste-Catherine, wounding three people. His suicide note said, "I'm not a rat," but the police jumped him before he had time to kill himself. 18. When Aza "Pin Boy" Filatrault was on his death bed after being beaten in Café Canasta (1214 St-Laurent, where the Panhellion bar is now) on April 26, 1957, he refused to divulge the name of his assailant. Turned out he had given an old buddy a playful shove on the stairs, which led to a vicious fist fight. Walter Maciura, a 29-year-old cook, confessed to the cops, saying he did it because he "likes to play rough." 19. Werner Prillwitz, a 52-year-old tourist from New Jersey, visiting the Main for his first time, had his private parts blown off by a bomb in the bathroom of the Café Canasta in August, 1962. 20. After being the target of gunfire at the Café Rodeo on the lower Main, two employees of the nearby Café Canasta, Pat Létourneau and Vic Pollard (whose wife had been robbed and beaten weeks before) denounced the Main's protection rackets in November, 1961. With their lawyer Antonio Lamer, the duo explained that in return for a cut of your paycheque, Main toughs would promise a) not to beat you up, b) beat your boss up if he tried to fire you and 3) force somebody else to hire you if you wanted to change jobs. 21. The city's first ever nightclub murder took place at the Dreamland Cabaret (corner of Ontario) on July 22, 1925. Joe Mauro was hanged for shooting a busboy in a hold-up that went wrong because nobody took the gunman seriously. 22. In July 1940, in a house just above Sherbrooke, the RCMP seized 15,000 Nazi propaganda pamphlets written in German and a short wave radio "capable of communicating with Berlin." 23. Students chanted "down with the Jews" and smashed store windows in a March 1942 anti-war rally. 24. The funeral of Joseph Guidbord, a printer who believed in Catholic reform, required 1,200 soldiers accompanying his casket to ward off doctrinaire protesters as the procession went up the Main in 1911. 25. A 23-year-old customer, angry because staff had put his bicycle outside and it had been stolen, torched the crowded Midway bar (1219 St-Laurent), killing 3 people, injuring 8, in August 1983. 26. In the '50s the manager of the French Casino near Ste-Catherine was robbed of $600 and forced to strip naked. The victim, wearing only socks, ran into the street, found a cop and had the bandit arrested.
SLEAZE Pimps, porn and the police 27. In August 1961, J.J. Paverne, a welfare court judge, urged Mayor Drapeau to ban kids under 16 from the lower Main, which was dubbed "the city's most hardened artery." The judge was concerned about kids taking drugs, specifically "goofballs." Protection rackets thrived in the area and others lobbied to stop new bars from being opened on the strip.
29. The Gaieté bar, just off the Main, was home to the city's first strip shows in the '40s. The police received 40 complaints the first day. 30. In the 1950s the Midway theatre near Ste-Catherine was a gay pick-up spot until owners turned it into the Eve cinema, a hetero porno theatre. 31. A cop clamp-down scared off the many toy-rifle shooting galleries, tattoo shops and gypsies who were trademarks of the lower Main until the 1930s.
POLITICS Power mongering and demolition 32. St-Jean-Baptiste Market, and its 75 merchants on the north east corner of Rachel, an institution since 1870, was a victim of the wave of demolitions Mayor Drapeau ordered prior to Expo 67. Fueled by a smear campaign complaining of "filthy conditions," the demolition cost the city an extra $92,000, which was paid to the descendants of Côme Séraphin Cherrier because the 12,000-square-foot lot (now Park of the Americas), was given by Cherrier to the city under the condition it be kept as a market in perpetuity. More recently, promoter Marcel Béliveau has been trying to turn the spot into a local celebrity walk of fame. 33. In 1985, when a fire burnt down 10 buildings in a section of Chinatown on the east side of the main, near de la Gauchetière, Mayor Drapeau tried to prevent the merchants from rebuilding their shops, pointing to a bylaw passed months earlier making future construction residential. The Mayor backed down after local businessman Kenneth Cheung threatened to follow Mayor Drapeau through Asia and expose his anti-Chinese policy. 34. The St-Laurent Market, at the northeast corner of Dorchester, was razed by Drapeau in 1959, who attempted to resell it for $620,000. There were no takers and the land remains vacant 40 years later. 35. When the west side of the street was widened in the late 19th century, English and French communities rushed to make their mark. The French built Le Monument National near Dorchester, but artists were too poor to put on shows in the theatre. The English effort revolved around the Baxter Building above Sherbrooke, in which a theatre designed for 2,500 would be the crown jewel. Today, the building contains 11 shops, but the theatre was never built. 36. When the Police Committee tried to buy a fire station at 1392 (corner Ste-Catherine) for $25,000 in June 1908, the Finance Committee admonished them for corruption, because the building was only worth $10,100. 37. The twice annual street sale rents tables to non-street merchants for $600, which is of questionable legality. 38. Mayor Doré forwarded a plan to build a lavish opera hall for the MSO at the corner of Prince-Arthur in 1983. It was never realized. 39. The Congregation Notre-Dame, notable among other reasons for being the living tomb of Jeanne Le Ber--a society girl who, in 1682 gave up her fortune and freedom for a life of hair shirts--was demolished in 1912 so the Main would reach to the river. 40. In March 1942, construction workers discovered a sophisticated tunnel near St-Paul dating from 1620, made by highly skilled masons, the tube held arrows and bullets and an inscription from Marguerite Bourgeoys' school, the city's first. The tunnel was a hiding place from Indian attacks. 41. Buildings between Milton and Prince-Arthur were spared after a plan to demolish them for a huge, garish Hungarian Catholic church was abandoned in 1959. 42. In 1961 the city was abuzz when an Englishman purchased Le Monument National building (northwest corner of Dorchester), long-time home of the St-Jean-Baptiste Society. The secret new owner was a partner in the Peppermint Lounge, a nightclub housed in the building. Colin Gravenor (who later helped conceive the writer of this article) incurred the wrath of his famous Peppermint partner, Solly "The Twist" Silver, who resented his purchase. The nightclub fell victim to police shakedowns and the building was re-acquired by the Society a few years later when it went up for auction for past taxes. 43. The construction of "l'Étoile," a $5-million, 1,200 seat cinema, on a parking lot just south of Prince-Arthur on the east side was announced in November 1986, to be completed within two years. It never got built. 44. The high-profile, high-damage attacks waged by racist skinheads on their pacifist cousins last year in bars along the Main were only a few of many more that were not reported by the media, according to a cop from Station 36.
CARS AND CABBAGES Potholes and potatoes 45. Cars drove both ways on the Main until 1972, when a long-ignored study from 1961 was finally adopted. But contrary to the study's recommendations, the flow was directed one-way north. 46. With 77 major accidents in 1973, the corner of Crémazie became the city's most dangerous intersection. It remains near the top of the infamous list to this day. 47. Road repairs were so intense in 1971 that business was hurt and kids were endangered. Nat Krupat of Feldman Provisions (5448) claimed that "the kids used to play in a hole at least 10 feet deep." 48. The Main, founded in 1720, was temporarily named Côte-St-Lambert. It got sidewalks in 1804 and had its phone lines buried in 1961. Cabbages and potatoes grew alongside the hill below Sherbrooke until 1830. Horse-pulled streetcars required an extra team to tackle the same hill, until 1892 when electric trolleys arrived and sped development of the strip. In 1905 the Main became the division between east and west addresses in the city. 49. The Main was the dividing line between a farm given to Sergeant Major Lambert Closse in 1658 and the estate owned by Jacques Archambault from 1651. A stream ran down the route from the mountain to St-Martin River, which is now St-Antoine. 50. The Merchants Association sought to ban cars to counter declining sales in 1973. Its boss, Peter Vizel, prophetically stated that the street would soon explode because McGill ghetto gentrification had nowhere else to expand.
"The Main," continued the same unsigned 1931 Standard article, is home to "gamblers, dope fiends, pick pockets, wealthy merchants, clergymen, bankers, shysters and every other type and kind." And is "a veritable farmyard: hens cluck, cocks crow, turkeys gobble, pigs squeal, dogs bark and cats meow. The Great St-Laurent Blvd. is a remarkable place to explore; the more one sees of it, the less one knows of it."
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1. The first pop star from the Main was Salomon Mazurette, a pianist-composer who toured the States at the turn of the 19th century. He grew up upstairs from his dad's tailor shop on the east side just below Sherbrooke.
10. Although the pool tables at the once infamous Montreal Pool Room, still on the west side of the street between René-Lévesque and Ste-Catherine, haven't been in use for 20 years, the steamy shop's owner has refused offers of $6,000 for their purchase.
16. A 23-year-old who tried to torch 3847 (where the Old Europe Deli is now), was easy to catch as he turned into a Human Torch, running around the street on fire. The building suffered $100,000 in damages July 21, 1983.
28. In the early '90s hookers working out of XXX video booths below Ste-Catherine would call out for customers as children played in the adjoining arcades. Police tolerated the practice until a pimp-pusher named Jay Arrington, 33, from Buffalo, had his skull smashed in a fist fight inside the porno palace at 1209 St-Laurent on October 24, 1992. He died hours later. The peep show has been free of hookers since.