Bily Kun: Where commies held court

Hokey delivery wagons aside, this stretch of Mount Royal Avenue (south side, just west of St. Denis) hasn't changed a whole lot over the years -- from the outside, that is. But stumble into the building by the middle car -- the one marked Taverne Chez-Soi and Metropole Billiards -- today, and you'll be in the so-hip-it's-not Bily Kun and sister club O Patro Vys upstairs.

But halfway back in time between now and when this shot was taken in Feb. 1952 (which is a really awkward way of saying 1972), the same upstairs premises at 356 Mount Royal, along with another office up the hill a bit at 336 -- was where Samuel Walsh ran the Communist Party of Quebec.


   Here's a shot of the building with the Red banner (a bit hard to read, 'mafraid). At the bottom is Walsh himself, at the far right, along with Soviet boss Leonid Brezhnev (second from right) at an international leftists convention in 1970.

Walsh, who ran the party until the late '80s, used to get his message out by running in as many elections as he could. He basically lost them all -- except for a gig with the Toronto Board of Education in the '50s.
Mike Farber of the Gazette said of Walsh that he's "run for elected office so many times and on so many levels that he long ago lost track of them all." [We need another inch -- ed.] Brezhnev's talking to (far left, in more ways than one) William Kashtan, chief of the Communist party of Canada and fellow party rep Alf Dewhurst.