Article content The Plateau today isn’t the Plateau I grew up with. I was living in Mile End in the 1980s and that neighbourhood is technically part of the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, but anyone who knows anything knows Mile End is its own micro-hood. Back then, it was working class and very ethnically diverse — Italians, Portuguese, Hasidic Jews and French-Canadians — and it was beginning to attract students and artsy types.
But it wasn’t really the Plateau then and it isn’t now. It became the indie-music/coolster hub early this century, and now it’s mostly a mecca for tourists and well-to-do professionals who like living in a trendy neighbourhood. Forty years ago, I’d walk east of Mile End to the Plateau, and back then it was still not that different from the ‘hood described in the plays and novels of Michel Tremblay.
Working-class, French-speaking, salt of the earth. In the ’80s, if you were on Mont-Royal Ave. east of St-Denis St.
, the chance of hearing anything in the language of MacLennan was about as likely as finding a Parti Québécois minister singing the praises of the Rockies and the beauty of Canada. Recently, I strolled down Mont-Royal Ave. E.
, which is closed to car traffic for the summer, and I heard loads of conversations in English. Of course you also hear a lot more French being spoken by folks born on the other side of the Atlantic, and it sometimes feels like if you’re immigrating from France to Quebec, you have no choice but to move to the Plateau. That’s probably nowhere more evident than on Laurier Ave.
E. just east of Laurier Park, a neat little strip full of funky, oh-so-French bakeries, restaurants and cheese shops. Michele Luchs, who was born and raised in Baltimore, moved to Quebec in 1988, and she has lived in the Plateau ever since — first on Laval just south of Rachel, then Milton-Parc, and for the last 22 years on de Lanaudière north of Mont-Royal.
(Milton-Parc, like Mile End, is another part that is technically the Plateau but isn’t what most of us think of as the Plateau.) In 2002, when Luchs first moved there, Mont-Royal E. was a whole different scene.
“There weren’t a ton of anglophones,” Luchs said. “If I heard an English voice here, it was kind of a surprise. There was a woman who lived on our block and who whenever she heard an anglophone voice, she’d start screaming in French.
If my daughter was on the porch and she’d say ‘Don’t forget to get butter,’ the woman would scream ‘You don’t have any place here!’ There definitely were some people who weren’t that happy about anglos moving in. But it was a small number.” Michele Luchs, seen outside her Plateau-Mont-Royal apartment on Aug.
20, 2024, says the area is more diverse now than when she moved there in 2002. Photo by John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette Now in the triplex she lives in and the one beside her, people are from England, Australia, Newfoundland, France and there are even a couple of people from Quebec. And she loves the fact her ‘hood is so much more diverse now.
Just round the corner from her place is Chez Victoire, a funky resto on Mont-Royal that has been dishing out innovative French cuisine for 15 years. Over that stretch, co-owners Alexandre Gosselin (who’s the chef) and Karl Leblanc have watched the street and the area change radically. Leblanc, who now lives in N.
D.G., used to live in this part of the Plateau 20 years ago.
“Back then, restaurants and bars were opening and it was super trendy,” Leblanc said. But now, he notes, there are other hip parts of town, like St-Henri and Griffintown. Co-owners Alexandre Gosselin, left, and Karl Leblanc are seen in their Chez Victoire restaurant in Montreal’s Plateau-Mont-Royal district on Aug.
21, 2024. They have watched the street and the area change radically since they started dishing out innovative French cuisine 15 years ago. Photo by John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette “Back then, everyone would go to the Plateau for the bohemian hip scene,” Leblanc said.
Gosselin said the Plateau is less cool than it used to be. “It’s not the prime spot it was when we started 15 years ago,” Gosselin said. “Now there are all the big-name stores; there are less mom-and-pop businesses.
Rents go up and smaller businesses can’t open here. It used to be really Québécois, kind of the little jewel of Montreal. Now we’re just like all the other neighbourhoods.
Now there’s nothing different on Mont-Royal. Mont-Royal is losing its allure.” Club owner Gary Tremblay says the neat thing about the Plateau scene is how so many of the bars and venues have managed to survive all these years — places like L’Escogriffe, Quai des brumes, Bily Kun and Diese Onze, the St-Denis St.
jazz bar he owns and operates. “These places adapt, but the good thing is they do it without selling out,” said Tremblay, who is also a co-owner of ultra-cool Mont-Royal Ave. venue O Patro Vys.
“They’re still true to their school, but they adapt. They still keep it real. I find it quite impressive.
Diese Onze has been open now for almost 18 years, Bily Kun is in their 26th year now, O Patro Vys is in its 21st year, L’Esco and Quai des brumes have been there forever. I was with the manager of Quai des brumes yesterday. They do two or three shows a day sometimes and it’s busy as hell.
” One of the biggest changes, Tremblay says, is the exponential growth of Airbnb in the area. The 2018 bylaw that restricts those apartment rentals to strips of St-Denis St. and St-Laurent Blvd.
has actually helped the clubs, notes Tremblay. He says that has been great for business in the clubs because now there are loads of tourists who stay in the Plateau and they’re looking for live music. “The whole revival of (St-Denis St.
) is due to all the Airbnbs because there’s never been any hotels on the Plateau,” Tremblay said. “The fact that they’ve put so many Airbnbs on the street now ..
. there’s so much tourism, so many people coming into town who are curious. If you go to Montreal for a three- or four-day trip, it’s usually because you’re curious.
Usually you’re an open-minded person. I think that’s been the saviour for St-Denis St. We’re at the highest occupancy rate on the street in 10 years.
We’re at 87 per cent occupancy, which is quite surprising since everyone has pretty much buried the street.” It’s true that the Plateau probably isn’t as cool as it used to be. All you have to do is stand at the corner of Mont-Royal and St-Denis and weep: All four corners have fast-food outlets and three of them are chains (A&W, McDonald’s and Thai Express).
But the Plateau still has cool characters like Paul Gabber, a one-of-a-kind guy it’s hard to imagine existing anywhere else. He grew up in the ‘hood and has run the wildly eclectic second-hand vinyl record store Paul’s Boutique on Mont-Royal Ave. at the corner of de Bullion for the past 23 years.
“It’s still a very good neighbourhood,” Gabber said. “I walk east on Mont-Royal and it’s boring. But here it’s fun.
” “Here” is the strip of Mont-Royal between St-Laurent and St-Denis, and Gabber is right. This is the model for the street — cool venues, bars, ice-cream parlours, pool rooms, almost all locally run. bkelly@postmedia.
com twitter.com/brendanshowbiz.
