If you like this sort of thing please purchase a copy or two of my book Montreal:375 Tales when it comes out shortly. Keep your eyes peeled on this site for details.
Life on the Main
Fascists, hookers, exploding testicles and dozens of other important factors you need to know about St. Lawrence Main Street
TRAILBLAZERS
Wax freaks and shoe business titans
1-The first pop star from the Main was Solomon Mazurette (1847-1910), 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.
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 fie o'clock shadow while he rules his domain of St. Lawrence.
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 is a not-so-distant mirror of cool, underground types thriving on the Main.
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5-Longest standoff with fire inspectors: Ludwig Karls was banned from his own shoe store after fire inspectors condemned Karls Shoes (corner Rachel) in October, 1994. 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 court decision. Karls once responded to a customer' request for a different colour of shoes by spray-painting the same pair in a back room. He was spotted selling from the outside of his building, which later burned down.
6-The first projected film show in Canada was on June 28, 1896 at 78 St. Lawrence. Under at tent at the southwest corner of Viger, the Lumiere 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 Edouard Beaupre, a legendary 8'2" Quebecois 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 three daughters on 35-cent shines he gave.
9-First (almost) death by sand heap. The responsibility for a 15-foot mountain of sand near Sauve 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 1975.
INDUSTRY
Billiards, booze and deaf workers.
10-Although the pool tables at the once-infamous Montreal Pool Room still on the west side of the street between Dorchester and St. Catherine haven't
been in use for 40 years, the steamy shop's owner once refused offers of $6,000 for their purchase.
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. Lawrence, 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 Page High) was a factory where 300 deaf workers made perfume sprayers and lighters. Men earned $45 a week, women $25.
13-The former dollar store warehouse, turned Just for Laughs headquarters, set in the magnificent structure four doors down from Sherbrooke
on the east side, was where Eker's beer, one of the city's first rands, was made from 1845.
14-Three female hat workers died in a fire at the Manhattan Cap Manufacturing Company, 3666 St. Lawrence March 14, 1942.
UNREST
Madmen on the looes
15-Andre Deblois, who grew up at 10422 St. Lawrence, was 22, had a wife, kid and a job, but wa 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.
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.
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 St. 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" Filiatrault was on his death bed after being beaten in Cafe Canasta (where Cleopatra's 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 Machira, a 29 year-old cook confessed to the cops saying he did it because he "likes to play rough."
19-Werner Prillwitz, a 42-year-old tourist from New Jersey visiting the Main for the first time, had his private parts blown off by a bomb in the bathroom of Cafe Canasta in August 1962.
20-After being the target of gunfire at the Cafe Rode on the Lower Main, two employees of the nearby Canasta, Pat Letourneau 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 pay cheque Main toughs would promise a) not to beat you , b) beat your boss if he tried to fire you and 3)fore somebody else to hire you if you anted to change jobs.
21-The city's first-ever nightclub murder took place at the Dreamland Cabaret (corner 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 changed "down with the Jews" and smashed store windows in a March 1942 anti-war rally.
24-The funeral of Joseph Guibord, a printer who believed in Catholic reform, required ,2000 soldiers accompanying his casket to ward off doctrinaire protesters as the procession went up the Main in 1911.
25-Jacques Picard angry because staff had put his bicycle outside and it had been stolen, torched the crowded Midway Bar (1219 St. Lawrence) killing three and injuring eight in June 1989. He was arrested at his parents cottage after witnesses described his spider web tattoo.
26-In the 1950s the manager of the French casino Near St. 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, pron and the police27- 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.
28-In the early 1990s hookers working out of XXX video booths below St. 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 fistfight inside the porno palace at 1209 St. Lawrence on October 24, 1992. he died hours later.
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29-The Gayete, just west of the Main, was home to the city's firs strip shows in the 1940s. The police received 40 complaints the first day.
30. In the 1950s the Midway theatre near St. Catherine was a gay pick up spot until owners turned it into the Eve Cinema a hetero porno theatre.
31-A cop clampdown 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 norteast 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 $92,00, which was paid to the descendants of Come Seraphin Cherrier because the 21,000 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 Beliveau 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 Gauchetiere, mayor Drapeau tried to prevent he 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 Dreap through Asia and expose his anti-Chinese policy.
34-The St. Lawrence 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 rushed to make their mark. The French bulit Le Monument National
near Dorchester, but artist 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 2,5000 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 the corner of St. 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 frequently rented tables to non-street merchants for $500, which is of questionable legality.
38-Mayor Dore 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 Bourgeoy's 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 (northeast corner Dorchester) longtime 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 article 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 shakedown and the building was re-acquired by the Societe after the deal fell through.
43-The construction of "l'etoile," a $5 million , 1,200 seat cinema, in 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 in 1998 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 on-way north.
46-With 77 major accidents in 1973, the corner of Cremazie 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 Cote St. Lambert. It got sidewalks in 1804 and had its phone lines buried in 1961. Cabbage 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 wets 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 the St. Martin River, which is now St. Antoine.
50 When 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 to expand.
![]()
"The Main," continued the same unsigned 1931 Standard article, is home to "gamblers, dope fiends, pickpockets, wealthy merchants, clergymen, bankers, shysters and every other type and kind. " And is a "veritable farmyard, hens cluck, cocks crow, turkey gobble, pigs squeal, dogs bark and cats meow. The Great St. Lawrence Boulevard is a remarkable place to explore, the more one seeks of it, the less one knows of it."
by Kristian Gravenor from The Montreal Mirror Aug. 5, 1999 - some text updated
Fascists, hookers, exploding testicles and dozens of other important factors you need to know about St. Lawrence Main Street
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.If the Main itself could talk, it might ask you to stop walking all over it, then -presuming it was a big of a gossip-it might tell you these tales....
-An unsigned Montreal Standard article from 1931.
TRAILBLAZERS
Wax freaks and shoe business titans
1-The first pop star from the Main was Solomon Mazurette (1847-1910), 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.
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.
 |
| Montreal Main |
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 is a not-so-distant mirror of cool, underground types thriving on the Main.
5-Longest standoff with fire inspectors: Ludwig Karls was banned from his own shoe store after fire inspectors condemned Karls Shoes (corner Rachel) in October, 1994. 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 court decision. Karls once responded to a customer' request for a different colour of shoes by spray-painting the same pair in a back room. He was spotted selling from the outside of his building, which later burned down. |
| The place where the Lumiere brothers showed their first Montreal movie burned in 11/16 |
7-The wackiest wax was at the Eden Museum, which was built in 1892 and displayed wax statues of Edouard Beaupre, a legendary 8'2" Quebecois 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 three daughters on 35-cent shines he gave.
9-First (almost) death by sand heap. The responsibility for a 15-foot mountain of sand near Sauve 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 1975.
INDUSTRY
Billiards, booze and deaf workers.
10-Although the pool tables at the once-infamous Montreal Pool Room still on the west side of the street between Dorchester and St. Catherine haven't
 |
| Montreal Pool Room in old space |
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. Lawrence, 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 Page High) was a factory where 300 deaf workers made perfume sprayers and lighters. Men earned $45 a week, women $25.
13-The former dollar store warehouse, turned Just for Laughs headquarters, set in the magnificent structure four doors down from Sherbrooke
 |
| Ekers |
14-Three female hat workers died in a fire at the Manhattan Cap Manufacturing Company, 3666 St. Lawrence March 14, 1942.
UNREST
 |
| Deblois |
15-Andre Deblois, who grew up at 10422 St. Lawrence, was 22, had a wife, kid and a job, but wa 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.
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.
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 St. 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" Filiatrault was on his death bed after being beaten in Cafe Canasta (where Cleopatra's 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 Machira, a 29 year-old cook confessed to the cops saying he did it because he "likes to play rough."
19-Werner Prillwitz, a 42-year-old tourist from New Jersey visiting the Main for the first time, had his private parts blown off by a bomb in the bathroom of Cafe Canasta in August 1962.
20-After being the target of gunfire at the Cafe Rode on the Lower Main, two employees of the nearby Canasta, Pat Letourneau 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 pay cheque Main toughs would promise a) not to beat you , b) beat your boss if he tried to fire you and 3)fore somebody else to hire you if you anted to change jobs.
21-The city's first-ever nightclub murder took place at the Dreamland Cabaret (corner 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 changed "down with the Jews" and smashed store windows in a March 1942 anti-war rally.
 |
| Picard |
25-Jacques Picard angry because staff had put his bicycle outside and it had been stolen, torched the crowded Midway Bar (1219 St. Lawrence) killing three and injuring eight in June 1989. He was arrested at his parents cottage after witnesses described his spider web tattoo.
26-In the 1950s the manager of the French casino Near St. 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, pron and the police27- 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.
 |
| Arrington |
29-The Gayete, just west of the Main, was home to the city's firs strip shows in the 1940s. The police received 40 complaints the first day.30. In the 1950s the Midway theatre near St. Catherine was a gay pick up spot until owners turned it into the Eve Cinema a hetero porno theatre.
31-A cop clampdown 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 norteast 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 $92,00, which was paid to the descendants of Come Seraphin Cherrier because the 21,000 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 Beliveau has been trying to turn the spot into a local celebrity walk of fame.
 |
| Cheung |
34-The St. Lawrence 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.
 |
| St. Lawrence Market |
near Dorchester, but artist 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 2,5000 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 the corner of St. Catherine for $25,000 in June 1908, the Finance Committee admonished them for corruption because the building was only worth $10,100.
 |
| Baxter Building |
38-Mayor Dore 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 Bourgeoy's 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.
 |
| Monument National |
43-The construction of "l'etoile," a $5 million , 1,200 seat cinema, in 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 in 1998 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 on-way north.
46-With 77 major accidents in 1973, the corner of Cremazie 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 Cote St. Lambert. It got sidewalks in 1804 and had its phone lines buried in 1961. Cabbage 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 wets addresses in the city.
 |
| Closse |
 |
| Vizel |
50 When 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 to expand.
"The Main," continued the same unsigned 1931 Standard article, is home to "gamblers, dope fiends, pickpockets, wealthy merchants, clergymen, bankers, shysters and every other type and kind. " And is a "veritable farmyard, hens cluck, cocks crow, turkey gobble, pigs squeal, dogs bark and cats meow. The Great St. Lawrence Boulevard is a remarkable place to explore, the more one seeks of it, the less one knows of it."by Kristian Gravenor from The Montreal Mirror Aug. 5, 1999 - some text updated