A Little Nostalgia about Strip Clubs & Libraries in Montreal
Literary Tourist in Montreal
The first time I hit Montreal as an adult was in 1984. A group of about 25 of us from the Queen's MPA program in Kingston, Ontario had decided to make the trip up by bus. It was one frosty fucker that January morning. So cold you could barely take a breath without gagging. Upon arrival the guys all had one thing on their minds: getting to the Super Sex strip club on St. Catherine Street as fast as they possibly could.
Super Sex, Montreal
I'm not sure where the ladies went, but it wasn't to a strip club. I should mention that I'm no fan of these places - my guess is that many of the drugged-out, breast-enhanced, frequently exploited dancers, and pathetic, lonely often impotent patrons are frustrated, unhappy people. But put a gang of horny young male students together in front of a parade of experienced strippers who seem genuinely to enjoy their work, add a few quarts of alcohol and, despite the negatives, you have a pretty damn fine time on your hands. In fact I can't remember ever having laughed harder, for so long, in my life.
At around 5pm we poured our female-objectifying selves out onto Montreal's main shopping drag and headed up-wind (it was by now Canada Goose-piercingly cold) to this outstanding little cafeteria-style Italian restaurant (sadly no longer with us), where we reunited with our female classmates who all now appeared intoxicatingly good looking. The pasta was home-made and delicious; the tomato sauce, sublime. We then hauled our bloated bellies over a few frigid blocks to the Forum and watched the Canadiens play the Calgary Flames (I think) while continuing to drink. There was a guy named Beers on the team. We kept yelling 'more beers on the ice,' throughout the whole evening.
The first time I was in Montreal was when I was eleven years old and fresh off the S.S. Maasdam from England. One memory stands out: it was at the train station: my younger brother and I racing along what seemed like an endless row of public telephones, checking for coins in the change slots. What made it so memorable is that we actually pocketed a fair amount of cash. I also remember riding on the raised monorail train that circled the Expo '67 site. It went clean through Buckminster Fuller's giant geodesic dome.
But hell I'm waxing too nostalgic here when I should be talking of the much more interesting topic of books in Montreal.
So let's turn to the Rare Book Library at McGill University.
About 10 years ago I was distinctly enamored with Stone & Kimball the small Chicago-based literary book publisher. It produced a string of lovely William Morris-inspired books during the 1890s and into the first few years of the last century. I'd started to collect them. Many could be had for under $50. During a trip to the Boston Antiquarian Bookfair one year I interviewed Tom Boss, a recognized expert on late 19th century small American literary presses. Listen here:
At around the same time I learned that McGill had a Stone and Kimball Collection, so I trekked up from Ottawa and interviewed Librarian (now retired) Richard Virr about it. Listen here:
More recently, I interviewed Chris Lyons, current head of the library, about McGill grad, 'father of modern medicine' and famed book collector Sir William Osler who left his significant collection of medical history books to the university. Listen here:
While I was in town I decided to check out the Irving Layton collection at Concordia University as well. I think Layton, despite all of his bluster and bravado, is one of Canada's best poets, as does McGill Prof. Brian Trehearne who I interviewed about the Nobel nominee, here.
As with most Canadian writers of note, first editions of his work can be had for a song.
Speaking of music, you can't be in Montreal without thinking of Layton's friend and early disciple Leonard Cohen. Shortly after Cohen's death we attended a spectacular exhibition celebrating his work, at the Musee d'Art Contemporain. His son Adam later hosted a tribute concert at the Bell Centre that we were also lucky enough to go to. Sting was there, and Elvis Costello. K.D. Laing performed a searing rendition of Hallelujah
Like most cities in the world, Montreal has seen a drop in its bookstore population during the past several decades. I remember visiting Russell Books way back in the late eighties at its location opposite the Gazette building on the edge of Old Montreal. It consisted of a large dusty room that had a narrow second level wrap around balcony that provided browsers with access to more books. The place was captained by a tall, white-haired, bearded gentleman - at least that's what I remember. His children re-located the store to Victoria some years ago, where it continues to thrive.
Back in Montreal, today, used bookstores are pretty thin on the ground. There's Encore Books
Encore Bookstore, Montreal
S.W. Welch's, Wescott Books - which has bumped around a bit during the past few years, and The Word
The Word Bookshop, Montreal
near McGill on Milton Street, which has been in business for more than 40 years under the same owner Adrian King-Edwards who I interviewed last year
In addition, there's a selection of Renaissance thrift shops throughout the city that are worth browsing too. As for independent shops, there's "Montreal's oldest English Language bookstore" Argo Bookshop and Paragraph Books, both of which frequently host author readings.
Various visits to Montreal over the past decade have yielded dozens of Biblio File interviews, notably, ones with St. Armand Papers owner David Carruthers and Vehicule Press publisher Simon Dardick. In our conversation Simon and I run through a list of the books he's published, including early titles, among them several favourites: one sporting a real honey bottle label on the cover, another an actual packet of seeds. The tradition of intriguing covers continues to this day, thanks to the quality work of award-winning designer David Drummond. Simon has also published a series of 'Montreal noir' novels in his Ricochet reprint series, edited by Brian Busby. I spoke with Brian about them some years ago; listen here:
We also spoke more broadly about Literary Montreal in part two of the same conversation, here.
One year I conducted a Q&A with biographer Charlie Foran on Mordecai Richler for Guerilla magazine. In preparation I visited Richler's grave (next to his beloved wife Florence's) on a hill overlooking the city, with Olympic Stadium in the distance, and Wilensky's a local eatery that Richler favoured. Months earlier I'd conducted this interview with Charlie:
Montreal is home to the second largest Bloomsday celebration in the world - thanks in great part to Dave Schurman and his wife (stay tuned for the Biblio File podcast episode) - and to many influential contemporary authors, among them Rawi Hage, Madeleine Thien, Kathleen Winter and Heather O'Neill all of whom, save for Winter, I've Biblio-Filed at one time or another. English theatre-goers are well served here by The Centaur and The Segal Centre. I attended a good stage adaptation of J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians a few years back, and interviewed its producer Maurice Podbrey, here.
All of this activity has had an impact on me, reader. I fell for the place,
Billboard atop the Musee d'Art Contemporain, Montreal
and so decided to move here.