Burying the Past, Digging Up the Future

The transformation of a neighbourhood

A walk through some of Montreal's neighbourhoods is a trip back in time. But in downtown's Shaughnessy Village something overpowering resists history. The many historic homes in the area remind you of what once was, but you're quickly pulled back into the shadow of this neighbourhood's slow demise. A couple of recent blows, and freshly opened wounds tell of what's to come.

A block of Ste. Catherine St. that once housed a couple of bars, brownstones, stores, and Montreal's storied Seville Theatre, is finally being demolished, from west to east, leaving the crumbling ghost of The Seville for last, to make way for an ambitious condo project, Le Seville, named for the legendary landmark.

The Seville has been a cracked empty shell for years, home to pigeons and squatters. Previous owners' hopes of developing the area were stymied by heritage activists and authorities who had the The Seville declared a heritage site. A couple of successive owners didn't even want the facade, and just let it fall apart. At this stage there is simply nothing left to save. With the approval of the Le Seville project, the city has officially pulled the plug on the dying theatre.

The Seville, so named for its Spanish style, was built in 1929, spent time as a movie theatre, and later a Vaudeville house. The Sound of Music, with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, had a very successful run there. My older brother used to go to The Seville to see The Rocky Horror Picture show every Friday night during its inception as a repertory house.

The theatre finally shut down in 1985. Then, slowly, over the following 2 decades, the neighbourhood fell apart. The final blow was the closing of the storied Montreal Forum, home, for 70 years, of the once mighty Montreal Canadiens. They've since moved on to the Bell Centre. Shaughnessy Village began to fold in upon itself like a house of cards. But soon the former Montreal Form was reborn as The Pepsi Forum, an entertainment complex that houses the AMC multiplex movie theatre, a handful of restaurants, a cafe, a SAAQ (Quebec Liquor Commission), and a comedy club, Ernie Butler's Comedy Nest.

There had once been plans for student housing on the Seville Block, as that stretch of Ste. Catherine St is sometimes called. But those plans never came to fruition.

Once the demolition of the Seville Block is done, and the Le Seville complexe takes its imposing place, overshadowing anything and everything else in the neighbourhood, the transformation of Shaughnessy Village will be nearly complete. Residents of the future Le Seville will live just across the park from the Montreal Children's Hospital. But that, too, will eventually be uprooted. Condo denizens will move in. The homeless characters who now skulk around the neighbourhood begging for change will be pushed out. The ashes of The Seville Theatre will have been scattered to the wind, and the legend will remain just a memory.

* Photo Credit: Picture of the Seville taken by Gerald A. DeLuca in 1989 and posted by Italiangerry.

Dan Laxer is an announcer at Montreal's CJAD Radio, a budding stand-up comedian, and a writer. He is Citeeze's entertainment writer.