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| nightlife.ca |
The St. Hubert Tavern took over the premises in '36 a from a short-lived fruit store, which had only recently supplanted a resident at the ground-floor unit of a greystone at the corner.
Quebec was then a Canadian leader in beer consumption and over half of all beer sucked back in this province was downed in taverns and bars.
Going to a tavern was a daily ritual and many men would push through tavern doors six days a week.
Men with hands of leather, voices hoarse from a day yelling over the construction din sit drinking cheek-to-jowl with their unemployed lifelong friends poring over the race results.
Drunkeness. Ages of now-forgotten drunkeness and camraderie.
After working shifts in mind-numbing jobs at train yards, paint factories and sign-painting shops, these gentlemen would stumble in to down a few brew before heading home to the dinner table to drunkenly hear their many kids babble on about their feuds and issues.
Such was the world before facebook status reports and clicking likes on tourism photos.
When the St. Hubert Tavern opened, the Montreal Maroons finished in first place thanks to the slick passing of Baldy Northcott,The Great Siegfried was playing downtown, Pennies from Heaven was croaked from radios and do-nothing mayor Raynault was being blocked in his battle against crime.Day-in and day-out, white-shirted waiters - names now forgotten even by their descendents - would hustle over to tables with cold, sudsy Dows and Molsons.
The war began and the battle became the one and only thing until Hiter died. Soldiers returned, women went back to kitchens and the housing crisis began.
Taverns in the TV era
Then that outlier popped up: television started pulling people back into living rooms and - along with quality refrigeration - slowly started eroding the need for taverns. |
| pierreoxyde.com |
The establishment was nestled in a densely-populated area three blocks west of Lafontaine Park and its dense encatchment area provided enough male feet to weather the postwar departure of many locals to newly-built suburbs of Laval, St. Leonard and beyond.
The tavern also withstood competition from rivals on more-frequently trod strips on Rachel and Mount Royal.
In 1965 someone named George Marcil renamed the place after himself. So it became the George Marcil Tavern, (surely not the same George Marcil who developed much of the land in NDG decades earlier). Hello to you George Marcil wherever you are.
The seventies began and the ban on women in taverns fell and in 1981 somebody renamed the place at 4051 St. Hubert the Inspecteur Epingle Tavern.
It has kept going throughout the ups and downs and has transformed into a musical venue with many notable musicians dreamily squeezing guitar pick and hitting ivories at the cozy facility.
But the tradition now comes to an end, as all things do.
Thousands of stories, millions of interactions, brawls: their untold heritage and legacy comes to an end now as the place closes, apparently a victim of a sensitive neighbour's noise complaints.