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| Brigitte Bardot was one of the last desperate moves of the fast-fading wax museum |
It's gonna be a 4,000 square foot job in that underused space in the Eaton Centre.
I demand something far more modern and exciting and interactive.
An updated wax museum would let me storm in with my holographic Union-Jack emblazoned cricket bat and free Pierre Laporte from his evil FLQ kidnappers.
I'd have the opportunity to climb a virtual ladder and get Hans Marotte down from the cross on Mount Royal.
I'd be slamming tennis balls with an animatronic Raphael Nadal.
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I want a knife-fight with a robot Sean Connery and won't stop stomping this desk until I get it.
The technology is there. I know because once in the 80s while shopping for a Swiss Army knife (yeah life was exciting before the Internet) at that old Eastern European guy's knife-sharpening place on Bleury below St. Catherine, I also looked into the sex shop next door.
They had a doll where you press a button and say your name and the sex doll would record your voice and then use that same recording of your voice to call your name back out when in use. Hearing your own voice calling out your name while having sex with a doll must've been really hot. I didn't buy it, of course, too expensive.
But that was back in the 1980s! Even back in those pre-historic times they had cool interactive technology and now they're still trying to get us to pay to see mannequins.
If I want to see motionless dummies, I'll stare in at the black-leather mini-skirted window display in Le Chateau window at Angrignon Mall thank you very much and not pay a cent!
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| (Thx to HRo for finding these C.Poirier pics) |
The other wax museum opened 1935 in the Snow Coat area of Montreal.
It attracted religious tour buses with its stunning likenesses of Christian martyrs and other such exciting stuff.
Two Frenchmen who created the statues, Robert Tancrede and Albert Chartier, handed the keys over to the city in 1985 because even they found it boring beyond words. It's now a pharmacy and I recently overheard someone on the 80 bus saying that the owner plans to pop condos on top at the first possible opportunity.The Parisian invaders are trying to make a few Eurobucks off us Kweebeck colonials by charging us to see mannequins that sort look like astronaut Julie Payette, Celine Dion, Roy Dupuis, Robert Charlebois, Guy Lafleur, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Lady Gaga.
Great to see that the technology of the 1880s is finally here in Montreal.Are buggy whips on sale at Walmart? Will the next big thing be irons that you heat on coal fire? Earmuffs! Gramphones! Mr. Watson come here I want to see you!
I'm boycotting this old stinkiness because I want modern high-tech entertainment thank you very much.
Let me interact with some robots dammit. I've been waiting for this since 1968. Let me have my robot fantasy. I want to rewrite history, do the stuff I was deprived by chronology of doing.
The old wax museum at Queen Mary and Cote des Neiges brings back many memories.
ReplyDeleteIn all those years I was never inside but I remember being fascinated by the small black and white promotional photos they had in several glass fronted display cases on the walkway to the entrance. They were not of individual wax figures but complete religious scenes featuring several figures, scenery and accessories.
All the parked tour buses in front were just as fascinating. While the majority were the Murray Hill Limousine Company's green and silver buses, there were enough buses from elsewhere to make licenses plate watching interesting. After the museum visit, many would head over to the Oratory where they would park on the lower level in a west side parking lot adjacent to a park with lots of apple trees. The park, although much smaller, is still there on the south side of Queen Mary Road across from the College Notre Dame athletic building. As kids, we would chat with the bus drivers and they would be happy to show us the interiors of those 1940s highway coaches.
While the open-topped Murray Hill sightseeing buses were interesting, to me they just seemed like a second-rate version of my favourites: the open-topped Montreal Tramways Company sighteeing cars ("Golden Chariots") that also regularly passed in front of the museum and Oratory in the summertime.
As I recall, the Murray Hill buses featured a sandaled foot with wings in various shades of green as their logo. I believe it was the winged foot of the Greek god Hermes.
Besides buses, Murray Hill also had ambulances in their fleet. The big Cadillacs were also green with the sandaled foot with wings logo.
As I recall their big competitor was the Georges Godin Ambulance company, which also had two tone green ambulances.
I only visited that Cote des Neiges wax museum once. The only thing that impressed me were the catacomb-like passageways.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the tour, the male guide reached up on the wall and pulled out a small plaque which essentially reminded his visitors to give him a donation-a tip!
On occasion, I would have lunch in the Snow Hill Restaurant downstairs.
Please...no condos! In any case, such an ugly, unnecessary addition would violate zoning height restrictions.
In the mid-60s, the small Ville Marie Wax Museam opened at 1198 St. Catherine St. West, corner Drummond, but it lasted only for a few years. I remember broadcaster Don McGowan doing TV ads for it. I visited that place once once as well. Wasn't worth the price of admission, really.
In 1967, some wacko smashed the front window behind which a "Sleeping Beauty" figure was on display.
See Gazette, March 9, 1967, page 3.
For any wax museum to succeed, it would have to match the quality of Madame Tussaud's of London which is world famous and truly marvellous.
Ummm...Jessica Alba? Not my cup of tea, thanks, but I'd snuggle with Julianne Hough anytime! ;-)
Yep, I remember the wax museum. When I was a kid I was curious about it, but my mom always said "Maybe some other time, it's not very interesting." Once I was old enough to go in myself, I'd pass by and say "Maybe someday"... Oh well. It did have a nice entrance facade, though. Although I'm something of a museum freak, (historical or art)another one I've never been to is the Redpath! A couple of my favorites were the miner's museum in H=Glace Bay NS: Captions on photos reading "10 year-old children loading ore carts a half mile under the Atlantic while the mine owners played croquet on the lawns of their mansions".
ReplyDeleteTracadie NB proudly claims a museum dedicated to, and converted from, Canada's only leprosy hospital. Creepy place.
The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa rivals Glace Bay in its dry captioning wit: One caption under a Ross rifle mentions that the weapon was "unpopular" with Canadian troops because of its tendency, when fired, to blow the bolt straight back through the shooter's head...
There was a sculpture in a fairly prominent place between galleries on the main floor of the museum of fine arts: Big thing, maybe 6-8' tall, a white marble oval with an oval opening through it. It held a semi-honored position for 20-30 years, until it was moved out to the terrace cafe. As the story goes, the thing's previously unknown provenance had been discovered: It wasn't some unknown artist's appreciation of vaginal form. It was a salesman's sample showing that you could carve huge holes through Carrara marble without it shattering (always a concern when carving stone). It wasn't some beautiful work of art, it was an advertisement. Maybe the museum found it on their doorstep back in 1910 or something, and never realised it had just fallen out of their publi-sac.
And I remember the "Cutlery Specialist" on Bleury (that was the name of the shop; "Cutlery Specialist"). Pleasant enough fellow, older guy, even in the 1960's when I used to bring the factory's shears and scissors in to be sharpened. His location probably came from being close to what was once the heart of Montreal's needle trade: We now think of that as Chabanel, but at one time, the Lennox, Wilder, Sternthal, and Sommer buildings, all in the vicinity of Bleury and Ste.Catherine, were the centers. In the 1920's or so, the trade moved east to St.Lawrence, from around Sherbrooke to St.Viateur, then north above the Metropolitain in the sixties. I think there's still a considerable number of furriers downtown though- they used to run up and down St.Alexandre St. Sufficiently significant that the Hudson's Bay company maintained offices at St.Alexandre and Dorchester.
Amongst other things, my dad was a real old-school cutter who would only send his shears to a trusted and skilled cutler for sharpening (Never one of those guys on bikes with grindstones who used to ply the trade areas- now it's somebody named Tony, who works out of a truck. We regularly hear him clanging up and down the streets of NDG.)
Anyways, Dad's cutlers of choice were the delightfully and appropriately named WL Chipchase on Ste.Catherine W. near Pierce, and your Cutlery Specialist guy on Bleury.
I once took a friend to the Redpath Museum, who had never even known of its existence. Rarely advertised, McGill seems to prefer keeping it a secret, who knows?
ReplyDeleteMy favourite display was the collection of shrunken heads on the wall of an small office downstairs. I stared at them with fascination, although feeling sorry for them, wondering how they manage to end up with such a gruesome fate.
Those heads are long gone, though; presumably returned to their owner who possibly invites his women friends over to see them. ;-)
ReplyDeleteEvery time our relatives living in the USA would visit us, my French grandfather would so proudly take them to visit this museum . . . and drag me along. I had a standard response whenever they would ask me what I thought of the museum. My standard reply, “Mon Dieu, mais c'est fatiguant”. Lovely museum, but after twenty or so visits, what would you say? As much as I loved the American branch of our family, I almost dreaded their visits because I knew what was in store for me each time they came.
PS - I love what AstroPaul said...
I went there once when I was a kid, in the mid-Seventies. My mother wasn't really enthusiastic about spending any money to see wax figures of Marguerite Bourgeoys and Champlain and I had to pester her quite a bit before she gave in. I thought it was nice, a welcome change from our frequent visits to the Oratory. It must have been on a Sunday afternoon and we were the only visitors in the place.
ReplyDeleteI find it surprising how so many people get a thrill from getting photographed next to a waxen ersatz of Arnold, Sly or Barack. Comme quoi la quétainerie ne tue pas.
I married and moved away from Montreal in 1965, but through the years and up until it being closed, I visited on a regulary basis. I also visit and still do St. Joseph's Oratory. Thank God that hasn't been closed.
ReplyDeleteI live in Charleston, SC and they preserve almost every bilding. They're so glad they survived the Civil War, due to the influence of someone's mistress, it wasn't burned to the ground like many other Southern cities, so the story goes. Who really knows.
What I want to say is when I see so many marvelous buildings that can never be re-recreated again in anyone's lifetime torn down and new buildings, some nice some not so nice, replace them, I'm sorry that Montreal hasn't respected or appreciated just having such beautiful structures for people to enjoy. You should maybe check out Charleston , compare it to burned down Atlanta, Columbia etc. and maybe appreciate the most marvelous structures you have. Joan Hoyte
I took time, left a long comment about coming back on a consistant basis to visit Montreal and the was museum, but never saw it again. Where did it go?
ReplyDelete