Neo-Nazis on Mount Royal: Hitler heel-clicking in swinging 60s Montreal

 Mount Royal just west of St. Denis is a pretty good spot to get a drink, but in the swinging sixties the spot once had another considerably more sinister vocation.

La Patrie p. 13 14/07/68

 These days
   Sock it to me! Peace and Love! Tie dye! Austen Powers! Hippies! Flares! Long hair!
   Montreal's neo-Nazis were having none of that in the 60s.
   Here is a description from Duplessis Orphan activist Rod Vienneau about his encounter with a neo-Nazi meeting around 1964.

   I was living in Montreal on Henri Julien St, this certain night, took a walk down Mont Royal to St Denis, was standing in front of the Banque National which was at the direct corner of Mont Royal and St Denis, looking towards the mountain. I started walking on the south side, there was a Spanish night club just next Boxer’s grocery store,

     I stopped between both places, it was a Thursday or Friday, and it was at this place I noticed a lot of men going upstairs, a door between both stores but what I found weird, was every man entering was wearing a blue shirt. I stayed outside quiet sometime, when nobody else was coming in, I could hear a lot of rumble and yelling.

   I went up, there was a small little glass that one could look in. I looked and saw maybe 75 or more men standing hitting their boots together like the Nazis, all together they would yell Heil Hitler! with their arm out facing the ones in front behind the table, maybe Adrien Arcand was there and their leader,

    I couldn’t see the whole hall, but there was quite a few, something I noticed: the men had armbands. I  didn’t notice any wearing them when they went in. They all had black boots army style at the time and they looked French. 

  So why on earth would Montreal have such a strong neo-Nazi/fascist group into the mid-60s?
  Vienneau is interested because he believes that postwar Nazis had a strong influence on Quebec. He believes there to be a link between such figures as Camille Laurin, Denis Lazure and former Nazis and the nuns who ran the insane asylums where many Duplessis Orphans were forced to live.
  Laurin and Lazure visited East Germany and might have had contact with former Nazis during their time in East Germany and then went on to work with nuns at a secretive insane asylum.
  I can't much comment on his viewpoint.
  However the neo-Nazi meeting on Mount Royal suggests that longtime local blue-shirt fascist leader Adrien Arcand - then about 75 - might have still been going strong even at that advanced age.
   Arcand died a couple of years later during Expo 67,
   But what could have possibly attracted Montrealers to Nazism during a period when rock and roll was starting to catch on and young people were letting their hair grow?
   One possible factor might have been incredible poverty in Montreal. Some areas were practically starving while others were wealthy. Only a tiny percentage of Montrealers owned their homes and the quality of their apartments was often abysmal. Young women would routinely turn to prostitution to make ends meet.
  Some of these injustices remain true today. But people have found solace in their TV programs and Internet games.
  Arcand is not entirely forgotten. He is now seen as a buffoon, indeed a recent movie portrayed him in a comical fashion, with actor Haley Osment describing him as a "total nutcase."

Exactly where?

   If you're obsessive about knowing exact locations, as I am, let us speculate together where exactly this meeting took place.
  What is now the Boite Noire movie rental joint was a grocery store until about 2006. In the 60s it was known as Boxer's Groceries.
  Right next door, adjacent to the west, was the Chateau Madrid Restaurant, which was a popular eatery from 1960 to the mid-70s.
   The next building over was a dry goods store and then next one to the west - the Bily Kun brewpub as well as the show bar upstairs known as the O Patro Vys - sat vacant.
    So the meeting was held in either what is now the O Patro Vys or one of the two upstairs places immediately to the east.