Out Spotlight CVXXX

Today's Out Spotlight is the first recorded gay establishment in North America.

Must be be in New York? San Francicso? Chicago? No it's Montreal. And it was in 1869. Thirty years before the word homosexual was in the vernacular.

The first recorded gay establishment in North America was Montrealer Moise Tellier's "apples and cake shop" on Craig Street, which is now rue St-Antoine, in Old Montreal where men met and had sex. Today there is Le Village/The Village one of the largest gay communities in North America.

But back then anyone outside of the loop had to be extremely careful about where they would hook up. It was the summer of 1891 when Montreal police arrested of William Robinson and William Looney for having sex by the fort on Ile-Ste-Helene, according to police records.

"William Robinson was on his back with his pants down his legs and his shirt lifted above his chest," the arresting officer wrote in his deposition. "Looney also had his pants pulled down and shirt pushed up and was lying on top of Robinson. Their private parts were touching and they were making up-and-down movements. They continued to do this for 10 minutes."

Moise Tellier's was somewhere that was more discreet for men to meet other men, and less of a risk of being arrested by the police for "lewd acts". The Colonial Baths/Bain Colonial Baths, the city’s oldest bathhouse, opened in 1914, adding to the few other gay establishments in that area of Old Montreal.

The fact that all gays and lesbians did not internalize the dominant culture's view of them as sick, perverted and immoral went a long way to helping establish a community in Montreal. Montreal had long been a gateway for people, much like New York for over 300 years, a place where from no matter you came from, you could find a place for you there. One reason that there was thriving nightlife in Montreal, both gay and straight was that Montreal was a major entertainment capital, second to only New York and ahead of Chicago on the vaudeville circuit, and the city was still wide open to gambling, boozing and carousing during American prohibition.

In the 1920s, gay people began to congregate in Montreal’s downtown establishments, centred around the corner of Stanley and St.-Catherine streets in the west. For decades, this area remained the epicentre of gay life—through the Second World War and into the late 1970s. “The Village was from Peel to Atwater ,” recounts George, a long-time bartender at Mystique (1424 Stanley), one of the last holdouts from times past. “Now people call that ‘the old Village.’” Lesbian venues could be found along St-Denis, and a few other gay spots were clustered on St.-Laurent, with one or two stragglers in the Centre-Sud area.

Popular myth has it that the mayor at the time, Jean Drapeau, instituted a mass purge of downtown gay establishments to “clean up” the city for the 1976 Olympics. But in fact, it wasn’t until 1984 that the gay bars moved east en masse to the Centre-Sud area, and then it was mainly for financial reasons, as business-minded bar owners realized that the downtown core was becoming too expensive.

But it wasn’t all economics that had the gay bars and clubs moving out of downtown. I It was a political history-making time for GLBT's in Montreal. In October 1977, Montreal ’s very own Stonewall took place in the form of a massive raid on Mystique and the now-defunct Truxx, during which 144 men were arrested. The next day over 2,000 people showed up to protest. Riding the energy of the demonstration, an anti-repression committee jumped into political action. By December 15, bill 88 was voted into law, making Quebec the second society in the world (after Denmark) to forbid discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. This set the stage for a strong community to develop and support its own.

A handful of gay establishments remain in the downtown core, but the center of queer life and nearly 100 gay and lesbian establishments, now mainly centered along Ste-Catherine Street between St-Hubert and Dorion streets. The Village is centered on Beaudry metro station, and on Amherst Street in the Ville-Marie borough. It runs approximately from Berri Street to De Lorimier Street on Saint Catherine Street, and between Sherbrooke Street and René-Lévesque Boulevard on Amherst Street, a distance of nearly two kilometres. The Village is now one of the largest gay neighborhoods in the world, the largest in North America and its principal metro station, Beaudry, proudly bears the colors of the gay community.

The Village's lively nightlife is complemented by a high level of daytime energy, when the streets of The Village hustle and bustle with employees from nearby radio and TV production houses. It boast a wide variety restaurants, entertainment and bars, from upscale pubs to leather clubs, from women-only bar to the city’s renowned nude dancer bars. As well, hosts the Bad Boy Club’s seasonal circuit parties, including the mega-Black and Blue Party each October and the Hot & Dry in May.

But its not just bars, clubs and parties that make up The Village. It a vibrant community of shop owners, workers, residents, commuters, and artists, filled with culture, activities, sports and recreation geared to gays and lesbians throughout the year. Including every September, the Image & Nation, every September, is the oldest and largest queer film festival in Canada and Divers/Cité’s Queer Pride parade, with over 800,000 participants, which now outdraws the entire city’s historic St. Patrick’s and Saint-Jean Baptiste Day parades.

The Village remains the heart of, and service center for, Montreal's LGBT's community starting a hundred and 140 years ago with one shop.

We believe that differences should enrich instead of divide.
We believe in freedom, the real one, the one that must sometimes be obtained through the debate of ideas. We believe that freedom is what renews and allows people to grow. We want to be one of its mosaics.

The Village/Le Village