Taverne Magnan, Montreal, Quebec

What happened

Armand Magnan opened his tavern on rue Saint-Patrick in Pointe-Saint-Charles in 1932, out of work and in the middle of the Depression, with about fifteen seats and a trade of railway and factory men — some of them walking over from Verdun, which was still dry. His wife Marie-Ange began serving pea soup and bacon sandwiches, and the roast beef that made the name came later. After Armand died in 1953 his sons enlarged the rooms and in time admitted women, which a Quebec tavern licence had not allowed. By the 1990s it was a house where politicians and athletes were photographed, serving more than a thousand meals a day. That fell to fewer than 350. After three years of losses the family announced in October 2014 that it would shut, blaming the number of new restaurants, the roadworks outside and a thirty per cent rise in the price of beef, and the general manager said the gentrification they had waited for never arrived. The last meal was served on Sunday 21 December 2014.

What is there now

Gone, and built over. The borough approved demolition in 2016 on condition that whatever replaced the tavern commemorate it; the building came down on 16 January 2019 and a developer put up a three-storey block of about fifty rental flats with commercial space beneath. OpenStreetMap records two restaurants in it at 2600 and 2602 rue Saint-Patrick, a ramen bar and a vegan sushi room. Dinner is still sold on the corner. The tavern is a name attached to it.

Sources

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