My dad killed Montreal English-language theatre by demolishing its playhouse

Navy League building on Closse 1957

   My father, Colin Gravenor demolished the Navy League's Montreal office, to create a parking lot.
   The Navy League building on Closse, across from the Old Forum, started hosting the Montreal Repertory Theatre (1930-1961) in November 1957
   They spent $12,000 on renovations yet the acoustics and viewing were not ideal, with some seats crumbling.
   Its maiden performance was Venus Observed by Christopher Fry.
    The MRT was founded buy Martha Allan (1895-1942), heir to the the famous Allan shipping family. She was born in the Ravenscrag mansion, what became the Allan Memorial Hospital.
   Allan drove an ambulance in World War I, in a conflict that saw her two sisters and brothers die. Martha herself was badly injured by shrapnel. (How is there no street named after her? -- Chimples)
    William Shatner and Christopher Plummer plied their trade for the MRT at the Guy Street Playhouse which was based on the west side of Guy just south of Sherbrooke from 1942 to 1952.

Navy League on Closse demolished in 1961

   A fire in March 1952 killed two, Marie Mahaffey and Carrie Perkins, 30. It was likely arson. The MRT had to move and so they ended up renting premises in the Navy League building on Closse in 1957.
   In August 1961 the building on Closse was demolished by its new owner, my father Colin A. Gravenor.
    In its place was put - well, nothing.
   It became a parking lot which turned out to be a lucrative cash business, making big money off people attending hockey games and other events at the nearby Forum.
   It became even more profitable in the mid-1960s when the parking lot west of the Forum closed for the construction of the Atwater metro and Alexis Nihon Plaza.
   The MRT went extinct after its space was demolished in 1961 and the local English theatre scene was moribund thereafter. It has rebounded since.