Well over 100 nowhereians, mostly men, overflowed the sidewalk in front of Cafe Canasta - now Cafe Cleopatra - on St. Lawrence a couple of doors south of St. Catherine in September 1960.
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| Martel |
The exactly murder isn't specified by it can only be that of Suzanne Davidson, 31, killed in a room at 1215 St. Lawrence on Wednesday 20 September 1960. Waiter Marcel Martel, 20, was later convicted of manslaughter in her beating death.
The rooming house would have been above the Midway Bar, adjacent to a movie theatre.
One can only be astounded at the low threshold of entertainment demonstrated by the crowd assembled to watch police nose around.
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| Ling 1964 |
The show bar to the left was best known for its time named Folies Bergeres.
The east side of the Main just south of St. Catherine attracted a variety of sleaze tourists with an appetite for cheap beer, lowbrow hookers and homosexual encounters in quiet areas of the dark movie theatre.
Atomik Sales at 1005 St. Lawrence sat in what's now an almost homogenous strip of Chinese restaurants south of de La Gauche. It sold every sort of thing from clothing to radios to novelties.
1184 St. Lawrence the Domestic Restaurant sat next to the Monument National.
Jean Drapeau despised the St. Lawrence Market at the northeast corner of the Main and Dorch and eventually had it razed in the early 60s. The small row of retail directly to its north remained in business until the 1970s at least, with their story recorded in a Time Magazine article in 1971. The space is now occupied by the hipstertastic SAT facility.
As for the St. Lawrence Market at the NE corner of Dorch and the Main, the land remained vacant for decades after its demolition only until finally being filled by the student housing tower funded by the SSJB that feeds Kanuk jacket-wearing francophone students from Shawinigan to stroll up and down the now-sanitized strip.
The southeast corner of that intersection, directly across the street from the old market grounds, remains has remained vacant apparently since the street widening in the early 1950s. We would love to know why it has never been filled. Theories and explanations welcome in the comments below.
Prof Clement, a World War II vet, long ran the long dedicated tattoo shop in Montreal, more on the place here.
The Montreal city archives has also posted the following two photos in relation to the killing of Aurel Bertin, 26, by Christopher Nurse, 42, on the night of Augst 17 1949.
The pictures show the Charlotte Street area where Bertin was stabbed to death.
Nurse, who was a black man and railway porter with a wife and kids, was in the area having a fun night out with a pair of female friends, Frances Gray, 22, and Claudia Borden, 25.
Bertin apparently insulted one of the women, leading to a scuffle which saw Nurse stab Bertin in the heart, causing his death. A judge expressed his positive view of Nurse at trial and gave him an eight year sentence for manslaughter.
Some might have imagined that Nurse might have been acting as a pimp in the situation, as the area was known for that sort of activity but this doesn't seem to have been the case.
