History Lesson
38
When McGill med students went grave-robbing for science
The law demanded they learn anatomy but made dissection illegal, so for nearly a century, stolen corpses were tobogganed down Mount Royal to a folk hero janitor who paid cash, no questions asked.
How Little Portugal carved out its place in the Plateau
From postwar migration to piri piri chicken, Azorean immigrants transformed an iconic Montreal neighbourhood with enduring community.
How 24 Stanley Cups turned the Montreal Canadiens into a religion
From dynasty to drought: a brief-ish look at the making of Montreal's most devotional sports franchise.
The rise and fall of Le Palais des Nains, the palace where tourists became giants
For over 60 years, the fully functional home of two circus veterans became a Montreal tourist attraction where everything was scaled down to their three-foot-tall size.
A butcher's gamble, a forgotten tavern, and how the Mile End earned its name
From a Durham County butcher shop and Massachusetts tavern keepers to a global creative district, the real story's one historians got wrong for decades.
How Montreal got its Little Italy
A century-long story of how a neighbourhood grew from railroad workers to family legacies everywhere you look today.
Montreal's decades-long Polynesian fantasy and volcano cocktail experiment
When Kon Tiki brought post-war escapism and Hollywood's idea of the South Pacific to Peel Street, it created an exotic escape unlike any other.
Before the world knew his name, Montreal heard him first
The Harlem of the North, Little Burgundy, raised a legend. It took 100 years to say it as loudly as possible from the city's rooftops.
How the Atwater Market fed Montreal through depression and renewal
A civic monument, a neighbourhood anchor, and a living archive of what Montreal eats since 1933.
From opera house to haunted relic to hot ticket, Montreal's Rialto Theatre refuses to die
A near-forgotten movie palace that's outlasted demolition plans, disco dreams, and decades of decline to become one of Montreal’s most resilient cultural landmarks.
Before "world music” was a genre, there was Club Balattou
From exile to empire, this is how a tiny St-Laurent nightclub became the global heartbeat of African music in Montreal.
If this factory closes, a century of Montreal's Chinatown history goes with it
For over a century, Wing Noodles has fed Montreal with handmade noodles, fortune cookies, and quiet defiance—one of the last family-run factories still standing in Chinatown.
Canada’s most prolific killer is the hitman Montreal created
Authors Julian Sher and Lisa Fitterman discuss their book that chronicles the creation of a man who killed 43 people at the height of the biker wars in Quebec.
The dining theatrics and dark history of Montreal's infamous restaurant Au Lutin qui Bouffe
Fine French cuisine, tableside photo sessions with piglets, and a botched robbery that marked the beginning of an end.
Henri Henri is the Montreal hat shop that has defined a century of style
NHL hat tricks, Hollywood icons, expertise passed on through nearly a century—this legendary shop is a cornerstone of a city's sartorial history.
Why André the Giant was one of Montreal's greatest entertainers in and out of the ring
The city's role in André the Giant's path from French farm boy to the Eighth Wonder of the World, with a downtown brasserie pitstop.
