Here is a small text for those curious on the influences of our current gastronomic roadmap.
The cultural foundation of what was to be Montreal was arguably rooted in the treaty of Paris following the French and Indian war where France, preferring to keep its rich Caribbean colonies to what amounted to a few acres of snow in North America, decided to give most of its holding in North America to British rule.
French Canadian culture at the time had much more to do with the colonial spirit that animated the 13 colonies than with metropolitan Paris. Even before the English came the continental French complained that the French Canadians were arrogant, didn’t know their place and refused to be called “peasant”, preferring the term “inhabitants” (habitants).
Consequently, the food that we ate had little to do with the refined French tables we so often find nowadays (that came with the 1960’s). Our original food was lowbrow peasant’s fare. It intermingled with English, Scottish and Irish culture, giving us our versions of Shepherd’s pie (Paté Chinois), local variants of boston baked beans (fêve aux lards), ci-paille (originaly “sea pie”), french canadian meat pie (tourtière), our own variations on shoo-fly pie or chess pie (tarte aux sucres, made with maple sugar or brown sugar), ect.
French Canadian owe a lot of their cultural preservation to the “Quebec act” of 1774, where the British crown guaranteed the free practice of catholic faith. We would still have French without the Quebec act but it would not be as prevalent as today. As it stands, French Canadians were devout Catholics from the Quebec act to the 1960’s, the church acting in turn as a cultural beacon, a safety blanket and political tool. Maybe that’s why our swear words, to this day, are religious in nature: “baptism”, “chalice”, “calvary”, “ciborium”, “Christ”, “damn”, “host”, “sacrament”, “simony”, “tabernacle”, “virgin mary” and “moses” are all used as swear words (baptême, calisse, calvaire, ciboire, crisse, maudit, osti, sacrament, simonaque, tabarnak, viarge and mozus respectively).
Religion played an important part in the Quebec of 19th century, especially in Montreal where most of the immigration established themselves. The dividing line between Protestants (English and Scots) and Catholics (French and Irish) seemed much more important than language at the time. The English and Scots tended to have a bigger presence in business and politics where the French and Irish were the bulk of the manual labor.
Subsequent waves of immigration marked the culinary history of Montreal. Scots came following the clearances in 19th century, Irish immigrants came following the enclosures movement and the potato famines, Ashkenazic jews came following pogroms in Russia, the 20th century saw Italians, Portuguese, Spanish, East Europeans, Sepharadic jews, Levantines, Maghrebans, Haitians, Africans, Chinese and Vietnamese (among others) come to Montreal and establish themselves.
Initially, most communities would move in near to each other and offer their own brand of cooking. Some communities are still very concentrated (Little Italy, Chinatown) but many disappeared as they were absorbed in a bigger Montreal landscape (the Portuguese community being absorbed by the Plateau Mont-Royal for example). As time grew, Montrealers adopted some communities cooking tradition as their own. Bagels and smoked meat, coming from our jewish heritage, Portuguese chicken and Shish taouk are example of popular Montreal dishes that originated from immigration.
Montreal was, at least until the construction of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959, an economic powerhouse. The golden square mile, established in the 19th century in what is now downtown by rich Montrealers to get away from the crowded Old Montreal , was once said to contain 70% of Canada’s wealth. Montreal’s economy greatly benefited from the fact that ships could not go further and a lot of cargo was either transferred to trains or transformed in Montreal proper. Goods would come in by boats and tourists would come in by train at Gare Windsor and Gare Bonaventure. Gare Windsor still exists but Gare Bonaventure is now a shopping mall (Place Bonaventure).
The city benefited also from the American prohibition. It became a party town and, until the mid-1950’S had a famous red light district, well established clubs, boatloads of illegal casinos, more whores than you could throw a stick at and a metric ton of booze. Most tourists had access to whatever sin they would prefer. As a result, there was a lot of corruption in Montreal and, predictably, there was a backlash.
The 1960s were a period of tremendous change for Montreal for a number of reasons:
•The construction of the Saint Lawrence Seaway took away a lot of the industrial activity in Montreal as primary goods now bypassed the city to go elsewhere.
•Political reforms greatly cut the influence of the churches and French Canadians decided to throw away their Catholic security blanket
•The political and religious reform helped to bring about of a new nationalist movement and provided the environment for the initial articulation of the separation movement
•The 1960’s witnessed the core of the Jean Drapeau reform. Drapeau, mayor of Montreal from 1954 to 1986, kicked off the initial “cleanup” of Montreal’s crime scene in the 50’s(eliminating much of Montreal’s red light district in the process), the institution of the metro system, the construction of “La place des arts” (the place of arts), Expo 67, the Olympic games, ect
•Tramways were retired in 1959
•The 60’s saw the last gasp of well-known clubs. From cabarets to legendary jazz clubs to the French “boite à chansons”, a number of Montreal landmarks became ghosts.
The 60’s were a weird period. A lot of baby boomers see it as a fabulous era, most French Canadians see it as a tremendous period of liberation and a lot of Anglophone probably see it as the start of a pretty gigantic headache. As the son of baby boomers, I can only mourn the loss of so much of our 1940 and 1950’s heritage. I read Montreal Confidential, a tourist guide written in 1950 by a Montreal journalist named Al Palmer and it might as well talk about another city.
1960 saw the arrival of a lot of French cooks who decided to stay after the world expo in 1967. Le Mas des Oliviers, Chez la Mère Michel and L’express come from that era. French gastronomy was the golden standard in the 1970 and 1980 until a new generation of Quebec chefs, presumably coming from French kitchens, started to take over the scene in the 1990s. Quebecquers always loved food and cooking but most of the farm to table aspects we take from granted now are pretty recent.
Our current staples, from refined bread and pastries to specialty cheese to microbrewery beer to ice cider, are barely older than 25 year old. In my youth, during the 80’s, cheese were Mozarella, Cheddar and Swiss. “Fancy” french cheese were Camembert and Brie. There were a lot of cooking shows but I credit the explosion of our more refined options to a cooking show by a journalist named Daniel Pinard in the late 90’s. This position is very controversial as few people remember Pinard fondly these days and he is not considered as having had the same influence as, lets say, a Jehane Benoit (our Quebec Julia Child). He isn’t even a chef! However, I remember most of my friends and family watching his shows. Produce would disappear from shelves after he talked about them and he spent a lot of time talking about speciality cheese, local products at Atwater market and Jean-Talon Market. My family started to introduce a cheese course to our holidays and started debating about the provenance and specifics of specific local cheeses. Moreover, they are convince that they always had that custom, even before Pinard’s show (which is false). That, to me, is a true cultural change. From “le Petit Québec” to “le Louis d’Or”. Its a hell of a step.
