The Main is losing one of its oldest shops
They’ve hammered a symbolic nail in the coffin of the Old Main.
A For Sale sign has gone up outside one of its oldest and most unusual landmarks: Berson’s funeral monuments — right across from Schwartz’s.
The business’s front lot, cluttered with slabs of gravestone, has been there 93 years — the oldest family-run business on StLaurent Blvd.
It’s strange to mourn the burial of a gravestone shop, but Berson’s was an eccentric ghost of the Main’s past on this changing street of hip bars, tattoo parlours and Vape shops.
In recent years, Berson’s has been oddly sandwiched between an ice-cream parlour and a sports bar — and was still maybe the only place in the world you could line up for a smoked meat — then order your future headstone.
But it was a reminder of the mishmash that’s always been the Main.
That includes the trilingual sign outside saying “L. Berson & Fils Monuments” — in French, English and Hebrew that became a small cause celebre during Quebec’s language wars.
Says fourth-generation owner Brandee Berson: “We replaced the word “sons” with “fils,” but the language inspectors also wanted us to change the Hebrew word for “monuments” — because it was the same size as the French word.
“My dad Mendy fought it — and the media supported him so eventually the Hebrew stayed.”
Mendy himself was practically part of the street’s pavement. He was buddies with many legendary characters of the Old Main — like Simcha, the timeless fruit vendor across the street who stood outside every day like a sentinel — guarding his barrel of pickles — as serious and unsmiling as a Buckingham Guard.
Down the street was Mrs. Levy, platinum-blond owner of dilapidated but soulful Warshaw’s supermarket. It was a weird jumble of fruit, vegetables, meat, sofas, ironing boards, desks and carpets hanging down over the watermelons.
In the store’s legendary motto: “Warshaws has it all, from croutons to futons.’’
Berson’s, too, was unique, its yard packed with slabs of immense unmarked stones and heavy machinery. A friend who “shopped” there says Mendy could locate every cemetery gravestone in the city in seconds in his vast and mysterious, handwritten notebooks.
I’m not trying to turn back the Main’s clock. Things move quickly everywhere in our ultrafast, high-speed world — and the street obviously couldn’t stand still.
But it’s difficult to keep any street unique in a chain store world where most cities’ commercial
arteries look identical — rows of Starbucks, Gaps and McDonalds that feel like Nowhere-ville.
The Main has fought that valiantly for decades with its popular old stalwarts like Schwartz’s, Moishe’s, Vieille Europe and Berson’s. But lately there are vacancy signs on far too many boarded-up windows.
Much of this is City Hall’s fault, ever since they launched a murderous assault on the street, officially labelled as a “renovation.” It brought two years of jackhammers, dust clouds and misery to the merchants.
“We never recovered from that construction work,” says Brandee. “Most of our customers drive here from the West End and they couldn’t get to us at all for a year.
“Then, when the work was over they cut the street’s parking spaces and no one wanted to schlep
to the Main just to go around the block 20 times looking for a spot.”
Berson’s is relocating to a new showroom on Ferrier St. with easy parking — but Brandee feels emotionally uprooted.
“I hate leaving. I’m so attached to the Main — its history, its memories, especially the people. At lunch I love to watch everyone go by: students, old people, musicians, businessmen, black, white English, French, poor, rich, from every corner of the world.
“Sit and watch, and eventually everyone in the city comes by. … But we couldn’t do our business there anymore.”
City Hall is trying to help, at last. It’s letting the street’s stores stay open till 8 p.m., in an effort to resuscitate them. This spring the Plateau borough launches a massive operation to remove the street’s Great Wall of graffiti.
Let me add another suggestion that might help other commercial streets, too. If Montreal really wants to fight off suburban megamalls like Dix-30 they need lots of cheap, or free parking to compete — and the Main is a great place to start.
A hospital down the block, Hotel Dieu, is closing and whatever replaces it, let’s also try something new. Make at least some of the hospital’s vast outdoor parking lot available to customers on the Main.
Brandee Berson couldn’t agree more, though she does have her own dark hopes for the street.
“I hear they’re renovating StDenis and then Ste-Catherine — and I do feel bad for them, I do.
“But maybe when the construction starts, with all the dust and noise we had, people will come back to the Main.”