Back in the late eighties, magazines, real ones printed on actual paper, were entering their last great decade of popularity. City magazines were proliferating and few as much as Montreal’s leading publications, Montreal Ce-Mois-Ci, and Montreal Calendar magazine. Both of these had gone through several owners in their twenty-year run by the late eighties and the last one was a publisher named David, whose money had been earned from selling Baldor electric motors as their Queb

Like so many others, my first job was a summer job. As I was heavily interested in photography, I would go to Simon’s Cameras, Montreal’s oldest and best camera store, then celebrating in 1969 its fortieth year. Located on what used to be called Craig Street next to Old Montreal, it was directly across from the La Presse newspaper, the largest circulation French paper outside of France. It was a small store with products stacked to the ceiling, some dating back to the forties

I’ve been lucky enough to be a baby boomer weaned on the best rock, blues, and jazz music the world has ever known, especially in the 70s and 80s, in my case, back when Montreal was a hotbed of all the great performers, appearing in small intimate venues. It was a city that made them accessible through many old-school venues. Those that stick in my mind are the Esquire Show Bar on Stanley street, Rocky Rockhead’s on St-Antoine at Mountain street, and the Rising Sun on Ste-Cat