Small-scale cut-throat capitalism coloured the biggest annual event in Montreal each year as locals jostled to make a buck renting chairs to spectators of the St. Jean Baptiste parade.These Conrad Poirier photos from 1945-1947 confirm that the custom was real and widespread.
But behind the scenes of this money-making scheme was a merciless competition to claim space that often ended up with thugs muscling out people who invested in renting the chairs to offer to parade-goers at a profit.
One newspaper report from 1954 demonstrated the anarchy that accompanied the street-level capitalism.
The Petit Journal of June 27 reported that a Mr. Gagne struck a deal with a property owner to lay out chairs in front of 447 Sherbrooke E.
Gagne had rented 500 chairs from a supplier at 25 cents each and paid Asselin $75 for his sidewalk real estate.
Gagne planned to offer parade spectators a chance to sit on the seats for $1 each. He'd make a $300 profit on his $200 investment.
But his chair-rental scheme didn't sit right (Ah, I see what you did there, are you trying extra hard tonight? - Chimples ) as a group from St. Timothee Street simply moved the chairs, as they claimed that they had been coming to the same spot for a dozen years.
Gagne was helpless to stop it and all he could do was complain about it to newspaper reporter Arthur Prevost.
Charles Nadon of 1136 Sherbrooke E. had a similar experience that year. He placed seats in front of his place in hopes of renting them but "People came at 2 a.m. and knocked down our chairs and put their own."
Property owners on Sherbrooke still managed to rent out spots on their balconies and verandas back at a time when attending the St. Jean Baptiste Parade was an essential Montreal ritual.
One estimate was the small-scale capitalists managed to rent out 7,000 seats in total.
The more successful czars of parade chair rentals included Bebe "Lisette" Vendetti, and Ti Pit Sutton, whose full time job was as a waiter at the Cafe Mexico.
An estimated 7,000 seats got rented out each your along the Sherbrooke Street route.
By the way, the recent hubbub regarding the installation of spikes on fences and railings on public benches on city streets and in parks which are intended to prevent deadbeats and homeless from sleeping on them, is, in my opinion, a good thing.
ReplyDeleteNothing is more annoying than to visit Old Montreal, for example, than to find many benches "commandeered" in this way, thereby denying access to tourists.
Indeed, further west along the canal one can find such anti-deadbeat benches that are intended to discourage the practice but succeed only to a point as I recently saw someone sleeping UNDER the railings!
One of the worst places is opposite the soup kitchen on De la Commune where, despite the placement of smooth yet intentionally discouraging stones adjacent to the fence next to the railway tracks where the legions of deadbeats congregate, pieces of cardboard and sleeping bags now cover them.
Park and street benches are for people to SIT on--NOT for anything else.