{"id":67796,"date":"2025-08-14T01:06:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T01:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/67796\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T01:06:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T01:06:20","slug":"montreal-used-to-be-canadas-sin-city-what-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/67796\/","title":{"rendered":"Montr\u00e9al Used to Be Canada’s ‘Sin City.’ What Happened?"},"content":{"rendered":"

click to enlarge
\n \"Super <\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Paul Mckinnon | Dreamstime Super Sexe strip club in Montr\u00e9al, 2015 <\/p>\n

\n Three years ago, a trio of Montr\u00e9al superheroes went up in smoke. The women of the Super Sexe strip club sign \u2014 clad in high heels, black bikinis and red capes \u2014 had brazenly soared over rue Sainte-Catherine for decades, flickering symbols of Montr\u00e9al’s libertine spirit. That is, until meeting their demise in October 2021 at the hands of a suspected arsonist.\n<\/p>\n

\n Super Sexe opened in 1978. In the four years between its 2017 closure and the fire, some asked whether the club’s landmark beacon should be conserved. Instead, it was left to its fate. To the Montr\u00e9alers who mourned its loss, the sign’s demise was a sign of the times.\n<\/p>\n

\n Since the early 20th century, when Prohibition dried out cities across the U.S. and, briefly, Canada, Montr\u00e9al’s red-light district beckoned those seeking pleasure and vice. Americans \u2014 including many Vermonters \u2014 flocked to places where alcohol flowed and nightlife sparkled.\n<\/p>\n

\n That era has long passed, ushered out in part by the internet and websites such as Pornhub, which is headquartered in Montr\u00e9al. But the city’s tourism industry still leans on its sexy spirit, even as today’s sex workers have been pushed to the margins of the city. Yet there are signs that how this history is told, and by whom, is changing \u2014 from a new walking tour to an upcoming museum exhibit exploring Montr\u00e9al’s scandalous past.\n<\/p>\n

\n Alex Tigchelaar met plenty of Vermonters during her time working in Montr\u00e9al strip clubs throughout the 1980s and ’90s, she said. Those included the “best and worst” establishments, from glitzy gentlemen’s clubs to a dive bar with a boarded-up window and sheet-metal stage.\n<\/p>\n

click to enlarge
\n \"Th\u00e9\u00e2tre <\/a><\/p>\n

Biblioth\u00e8que Nationale Du Qu\u00e9bec Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Gayety, circa 1946 <\/p>\n

\n “The clubs were famous,” she told me. “Men came [to Montr\u00e9al] to see us.” They traveled from Vermont, Boston and beyond to shower the strippers with attention \u2014 and money \u2014 she recalled, “thinking you were so exotic: You were this Montr\u00e9al girl.”\n<\/p>\n

\n Sex work has long been connected to the city’s tourism economy, argues Tigchelaar, now a PhD candidate at Concordia University, whose doctoral thesis focuses on how sex work has shaped Montr\u00e9al’s urban spaces and infrastructure. “In the early 1800s, who was showing the sailors around?” she asked. “Who was bringing them to the taverns? Who was telling them where the hotels were?”\n<\/p>\n

\n Had the Super Sexe sign signaled a different kind of heritage, it likely would have been protected, she suggested. But sex worker history is seen differently. “That sign should have been saved,” Tigchelaar said. “We are so useful and important to a city,” she said of sex workers, “but at the same time we can’t be acknowledged properly.”\n<\/p>\n

\n Curious to see for myself how Montr\u00e9al presents that history, I browsed the handful of walking tours of the red-light district. I landed on MTL Detours’ Montr\u00e9al’s Sin City Golden Age Era & The Red Light District<\/a> (CA$39), launched last summer. A portion of tour proceeds goes to Stella<\/a> a community-based organization that advocates for sex workers’ rights.\n<\/p>\n

\n My guide, Isabelle, began by tracing the red-light district’s rise, from its proximity to the port to the impact of Prohibition, which triggered Montr\u00e9al’s so-called Golden Age. “You could get plastered with impunity” in Montr\u00e9al, she explained, “so the whole United States [showed] up to party.”\n<\/p>\n

\n Our small group giggled as she showed us copies of tourism advertisements encouraging Americans over the border to drink, but Isabelle got serious when her spiel turned to sex work. “I will talk about sex workers,” she said. “This is not to glorify sex workers or the conditions in which they were living [but] to talk about a big part of our past that was erased.”\n<\/p>\n

\n The district \u2014 a roughly 10-block downtown stretch known as “the Main” \u2014 began its decline in 1954, she explained, when mayor Jean Drapeau’s morality squad “cleaned it up.” It hung on, much diminished but still shimmying, until 2007, when, with the expropriation of a building that housed a peep show at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Laurent and rue Sainte-Catherine, what was left of the red-light district was transformed into the festival- and tourism-focused Quartier des Spectacles.\n<\/p>\n

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\n \"Caf\u00e9 <\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Michel Bussieres | Dreamstime Caf\u00e9 Cl\u00e9op\u00e2tre <\/p>\n

\n Next, we stopped outside Caf\u00e9 Cl\u00e9op\u00e2tre<\/a> (1230 Boulevard Saint-Laurent), one of just a handful remaining of the dozens of strip clubs that peppered the area in the ’90s. Its cartoonish sign’s topless ladies and promise of “spectacles continuels” still tempts in the now-gentrified neighborhood. Open since 1976, Cl\u00e9op\u00e2tre is a “David-against-Goliath story,” Isabelle said, referring to its resistance to real estate developers’ efforts to take over its 1899 building, which has nearly always been home to erotic entertainment.\n<\/p>\n

\n Contrary to a developer’s opinion that it is “just a nude dance club,” Cl\u00e9op\u00e2tre is an unapologetically unique Montr\u00e9al establishment where you can watch female strippers in the first-floor gentleman’s club, then head upstairs to the cabaret for an evening of drag, burlesque, comedy and “bareoke.”\n<\/p>\n

\n Not to be confused with “stripparaoke,” where strippers undress \u2014 you should go to Portland, Ore., for that \u2014 bareoke involves customers stripping down while belting out songs. That all bodies are welcomed and celebrated at bareoke is a reflection of Cl\u00e9o’s inclusivity and its reputation as an LGBTQ+ sanctuary.\n<\/p>\n

\n Mostly, though, my tour focused on the more polished and glamorous establishments of the midcentury era, such as the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre du Nouveau Monde<\/a> (84 rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest). Back when it housed the Gayety Theatre, this was where burlesque artist Lili St. Cyr made a big splash in the city with her inventive use of props such as chastity belts and bubble baths.\n<\/p>\n

\n “Yes, it was undressing on stage,” Isabelle said, “but it’s not like the strip joints [of] today.” Her comment stung slightly, reminding me of Tigchelaar’s explanation for why only the midcentury era of Montr\u00e9al’s red-light district is celebrated: aesthetics. People “can imagine themselves at a cocktail lounge watching Lili St. Cyr,” she told me. “It’s very glamorous, and that is not necessarily the case [for] their vision of other areas of sex work.”\n<\/p>\n

\n My tour passed lightly over Lili St. Cyr’s modern-day counterparts. While Isabelle mentioned the impact of the pandemic on sex workers \u2014 who were left without financial support \u2014 and highlighted the efforts of Stella, the sex-worker advocacy group, to protect their “health and safety,” she did so cautiously.\n<\/p>\n

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\n \"Lili <\/a><\/p>\n

Archives Nationales Du Canada Lili St. Cyr <\/p>\n

\n Perhaps this was part of her effort not to “glorify” sex work. But it felt like an overcorrection when she repeated the dubious claim that Montr\u00e9al’s annual Formula One weekend increases human trafficking to the city. (Ironically, Stella has rebuked this claim, arguing that increased surveillance during F1 puts sex workers in greater danger.)\n<\/p>\n

\n Isabelle was at her best when furiously describing the morality squad’s sanitation of the district in the 1950s. They “not only cleaned it,” she said, “they disinfected it and destroyed everything that was good and everything that was bad.”\n<\/p>\n

\n I found more inclusiveness next door to Caf\u00e9 Cl\u00e9op\u00e2tre at the MEM \u2013 Centre des M\u00e9moires Montr\u00e9alaises<\/a> (some exhibits free, ticketed exhibits CA$6.70-15.50), whose exhibits explore the city’s history through the lens of Montr\u00e9alers themselves. In 2016, in its former incarnation as the Centre d’histoire de Montr\u00e9al in Old Montr\u00e9al, the museum hosted the exhibition “Scandal! Vice, Crime and Morality in Montr\u00e9al, 1940-1960.” Now housed in a building at the very center of the former red-light district, it’s telling a more comprehensive story about sex work in the city.\n<\/p>\n

\n Prior to opening the new museum, a representative from Stella “gave their input and we listened to them,” MEM curator Catherine Charlebois said. “We thought it was very important to have their voice, since we are in this neighborhood.” This year, to mark Stella’s 30-year anniversary, the MEM will open an exhibition in collaboration with Stella (opening date TBD).\n<\/p>\n

\n “They told us that ‘It’s really important that our voices are heard because it was our part of the city and now we’ve been chased away,'” Charlebois said of her discussions with Stella. “As an institution, it’s important that we recognize the people … for whom the neighborhood was and still is important,” she added.\n<\/p>\n

\n Another sign the MEM is listening: In 2023 it hosted the launch of Tigchelaar’s podcast, “Nous Sommes Toujours L\u00e0” (episodes in French and English at noussommestoujoursla.com<\/a>), which she created in collaboration with Stella. Tigchelaar tapped into her community to collect firsthand stories of sex work in the city, from 1960s strippers to contemporary cam girls.\n<\/p>\n

\n Over 12 episodes, the podcast recounts life in the clubs, streets and homes where women have sold sexual services. Because most of these women’s workspaces no longer exist, Tigchelaar invited her guests to share vivid descriptions of the stages, d\u00e9cor and dressing rooms. The podcast argues convincingly that sex workers have deep knowledge of the city’s hidden corners.\n<\/p>\n

\n A visitor to Montr\u00e9al today would struggle to reconcile the colorful downtown of those women’s memories with what it looks like today. The destruction of Super Sexe is just one example of the gentrification that has squeezed the salty charm out of Montr\u00e9al’s downtown, where after-dark decadence has given way to the homogeneity of glass condos and chain stores.\n<\/p>\n

\n Despite this, the history of sex work has proved useful as a winking marketing tool. Walking through the Quartier des Spectacles, it’s impossible to miss the red dots that denote the area’s brand, from those that form a “red carpet” on the sidewalks after dark to those decorating the fa\u00e7ades of countless construction sites. This branding, Tigchelaar wrote in an article for the architecture publication Party Planner, “relies on a longstanding signifier sex workers use to indicate our presence and availability, one that is also a metonym denoting our work sites: the red light.”\n<\/p>\n

\n Podcast guest Carmen described the “insult” of the Quartier’s red-light branding. At the very spot where she was arrested for selling sex, tourists are today invited to snap selfies under the glow of a red light. “They value our signifiers, but they do not value us,” Tigchelaar said.\n<\/p>\n

\n Back at the MEM, under the glow of a light bulb that is half red and half white \u2014 out of respect to sex workers who dislike the red-light branding, Charlebois said \u2014 a video titled “A Changing Neighbourhood” tells the history of the red-light district. In it, Concordia teacher Francine Tremblay described the “relentless drive to get rid of this neighborhood.”\n<\/p>\n

\n But it ends with Johnny Zoumboulakis, the formidable owner of Caf\u00e9 Cl\u00e9op\u00e2tre. When developers came, he fought them and won. In what is surely a signal of changing times, Zoumboulakis described receiving a letter from the city: Cl\u00e9op\u00e2tre’s saucy sign meets the definition of heritage, it said, and so it will be protected and preserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"click to enlarge \u00a9 Paul Mckinnon | Dreamstime …\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,4048,42900,42901,66,42902],"class_list":["post-67796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-history","tag-montral","tag-qubec","tag-science","tag-sex-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}