My first Montreal apartment: Dennis Trudeau

Dennis Trudeau is a retired newsman who worked in print media, as well as radio-hosting and TV anchoring here in Montreal. He has a great mind with an impressive grasp for all sorts of detail, but he's an excellent guy as those who have met him will attest.
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  I'm pretty sure I found my first apartment in the classified ads of the Montreal Star, but I was drawn to the area --Lincoln--because my sister had lived there during Expo '67.
  I was 23, it was late summer 1971, and I was arriving from Ottawa--via nine months in Quebec City working for the Quebec Chronicle Telegraph--a daily at the time--and perfecting my French.
As for the rent? Who can remember the actual amounts from that long ago. I think that moving from the Chronicle to Canadian Press in Montreal I was moving from $90 a week to $125 per week in salary.
  The papers were full of cheap apartments in Verdun but as I say, I was drawn to Lincoln Ave. The price was more than acceptable because it was so central and because it wasn't really an apartment, but a large furnished bed-sitter with cuisinette; and a shared bathroom in the hallway.
But it was in a big old house subdivided, and the wood panelling and leaded windows looking out the back were what sold me. Parking too, off the back lane, access from de Maisonneuve, for my red 1962 Volvo 544.
  The vibe of the area was much as it is today I would say, very mixed, but not yet overcome with the high rises--(where I lived on Lincoln at first, is now a high rise). But on Ste Catherine it felt like a cool place to be--the Toe Blake Tavern, the York and the Seville not far away, the scuzzy Diana Bar with cheap quart bottles, the coolest book and news paper store whose name I can't remember, plus the Pique Assiette Indian restaurant; and not too far from Crescent Street.

Trudeau seen in his days as a morning man in the mid 80s

   And at the corner of Fort and Maisonneuve, a handy depanneur and next door, another Indian restaurant, where I sampled my first onion Bhaji, still looking for one that good.
   I was so into my job at CP and the colleagues there, plus my friends who lived in the ghetto and my girlfriend in Westmount on Mount Pleasant near Sherbrooke, that I really didn't connect to anybody in the building or on the street. But I do remember an old lady, lived across the hall, probably not completely sane, who made a habit of dropping it in the bathtub.That was unpleasant.  
    And one stormy winter day, somebody stole my brand new Kodiaks that I had left at the door in the hall. Walking my girlfriend back to Westmount in the snow in my sandals was no joke. But memory plays funny tricks. Maybe they were her Kodiaks. In any case, it was Kodiak time.
    I eventually moved on. Obviously the shit in the tub and the stolen boots helped, but by spring of 1972, friend of a friend was getting married and leaving his apartment a block west on Lincoln. This was a real apartment, large living room with Murphy Bed, a real classic Murphy Bed, plus kitchen with breakfast nook, a real private bathroom, and even a kind of balcony on the fire escape.  Life with a Murphy Bed is good because you just fold it up and close the double doors, with mirrors in them to boot. But you still don't know what to do with the space Murphy takes when folded down.
    Interesting aspect to this apartment building, probably dating from the 1920s and still there on Lincoln, was that the fridges were all connected to a central system which operated by natural gas! And the whole building would be defrosted at the same time. The super would let us know. I imagine that the system has been replaced.
   This area always seems to be trying to gentrify itself but never quite succeeds.

Read the entire My First Montreal Apartment series

• Snarchland: Neil Cameron's My First Montreal Apartment
• My First Montreal Apartment: John Allore
• Mike Boone: My first Montreal apartment
• My first Montreal apartment: Jack Ruttan
• Vava Vol - My first Montreal apartment
• My first Montreal apartment: Kate McDonnell
• My first Montreal apartment: John Hood
• My first Montreal apartment: Stephen Lack
• My first Montreal apartment: Taras Grescoe
• My first Montreal apartment: Dennis Trudeau
• My first Montreal apartment: Colin Robertson
• My first apartment - Daniel Richler