Former Montrealer Juergen Dankwort has shared these photos* of a briefly-famous Free the Chicken sign put up outside Louis Tucker's poultry shop at 20 Roy E., SW, corner of St. Dominique in 1970.Tucker's was a place where you could buy "live or dressed chickens, baby ducks, squab, pigeons, rabbits, geese and turkey" according to one description.
A bunch of young hippies, artists, students and politically-motivated folk, known as the Chicken House Gang, lived upstairs, in a commune-type setting, including Dankwort
Dankwort was one of tens of thousands of American draft dodgers** who came to Montreal around that time.
Others living upstairs from Tucker's included artist Louis Spira and war-refusenik Kevin Cohalan, who still lives in Montreal and participates in a Plateau-area historical endeavours.
"Every morning at 6 a.m. you'd hear bawk-bawk-POW!" Cohalan tells Coolopolis. "Maurice got the idea of painting a sign designed to overhang the sidewalk. He was a good artist. He discussed it with the city of Montreal and it hanged over the sidewalk for a few weeks or months."Dankwort, who now lives in Vancouver not far from Spira, recalls that the now-demolished building was none too luxurious. "It was a communal existence. By today's standards you wouldn't set foot in the place. There were rodents and it was pretty gross. Then you had the smell from the live poultry store. We saw the chickens coming in in these wooden creates. It was pretty horrible to see how they were treated. It was inhumane.
"The sign Spira created read 'Free the Chicken' and 'Vive le Poulet Libre' on reverse, both painted in glorious colours on a wood base that was later illuminated with a light bulb after the city told us we had to take it down because it was extending signage from a wall more than the permissible few inches without illumination," said Dankwort.A Montreal Star article by Laird Baldwin described the sign as "a heroic spread-eagled chicken leaping a brick wall and breaking its chains as the long awaited sunrise bursts forth from behind.”
Spira told the newspaper reporter that the sign represented more than just their objection to the shop below."We are trapped poultry all.At an early age were are all chained to social dogmas, sexual inhibitions, guilt concepts, competitive games. In general we suffer the oppressive stifling of our natural instincts which are divine messages from the purse source of all creation.”
"When the chickens are free, we will be free."
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| Dankwort in more recent times |
No word on what Tucker thought of the sign.
Tucker's poultry shop survived at least until 1975 when it was listed as being subject to bailiff seizure.
*Photos copyright Jurgen Dankwort, please do not republish without his permission.
**Dankwort's father was a top German diplomat stationed in the US and while Jurgen was not a US citizen, he was eligible to be sent to Vietnam as a US resident.