Patrons turn out in droves to support restaurant
Residents send message after N.D.G. business was firebombed on Tuesday
Only a few days after it was firebombed, a Middle Eastern restaurant on Sherbrooke St. W. was swarmed by Notre-Dame-deG-râce residents using their wallets to send a clear message to the owners — N.D.G. cares.
“What better way to help them feel at home again (than) by showing up in large numbers?” wrote Romney Copeman on a Facebook event page he created soon after the Boustan restaurant’s floor-toceiling window was smashed and a Molotov cocktail was tossed in. “It’s up to us to show them how much the N.D.G. community really does care!”
The firebombing incident took place on March 7 at around 1:20 a.m. at the Grand Blvd. intersection. Two suspects, a 28-yearold man and a 39-year-old woman, were arrested near the scene of the crime that same morning.
Copeman’s Facebook event quickly built steam as residents throughout the area shared it on their personal pages and in groups, inviting their friends and family to support the restaurant.
By Friday evening, the window was repaired and residents began trickling in alone, with friends or as families with young children in tow. While some people ate inside, many took their orders to go, shaking hands with Copeman and saying “hello” to their neighbours. It wasn’t long before the restaurant, relatively new to the neighbourhood, was bustling with both regular customers and those that braved the blustery sub-zero temperatures for the cause.
Copeman and his fiancé, Romina Nadeem, made headlines after the Quebec City mosque shooting in January. The Muslim-Jewish couple started a successful GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the victims’ families.
“There are different things we can do, using the Internet to confront these situations or, at least, make some kind of contribution,” said Copeman, a 27-year-old Université de Montréal master’s student. Putting together a small event, he added, gives people an easy way to express their support by “having dinner at a delicious restaurant.”
Romney Copeman is the son of Russell Copeman, mayor of Côtedes-Neiges-N.D.G. Sharon Leslie was one of the first through the door on Friday evening. A longtime social activist, she was a city councillor for the Loyola district in the late ’80s to early ’90s. N.D.G. citizens, she said, have long worked to build bridges, connecting the area’s ethnically diverse communities. There is a concern among many that this attack was racially motivated and, along with showing the restaurant support, she said she wants to promote the message that these types of incidents are completely unacceptable.
“Even though we hear about this stuff happening a lot, it’s kind of a shock when it’s in your own neighbourhood,” she said. “I think, mostly, people are feeling angry that this could happen so close to home.”
Laurence Cartier, bundled up with a scarf and winter tuque, stopped by for takeout, walking to the restaurant from his nearby home. After greeting his friend Romney Copeman, he said, even if the incident isn’t hate-related, it was “really sad” to have it happen in N.D.G.
“You don’t think something like this would happen, especially in a community as multicultural as N.D.G,” said Cartier.
N.D.G resident Rachel Berger was there with her wife and their twin sons. She was Copeman’s undergraduate professor at Concordia University. She said they have been eating at Boustan’s downtown location for some 20 years, but it was their first time trying the new place in N.D.G. They took advantage of the tables and chairs available for eat-in customers.
“I think it’s really great to support local businesses, especially Muslim-owned businesses in this era of Islamophobia in Quebec,” said Berger. “We’re excited that this downtown institution is spreading out into other parts of the city.”
Boustan Restaurant is a fast-food franchise with six locations in the Montreal region that offers pickup and delivery. On its website, the chain touts itself as “serving up the exotic flavours of the Middle East and Mediterranean” since 1986. An attempt to reach the manager by phone was unsuccessful.