The New Penelope: virtual museum pays tribute to 1960s Montreal nightclub

If you were a hip teen or young adult in 1960s Montreal, you might have stepped into several dimly lit downtown spots like the Pot-Pourri on Stanley Street, the nearby Café Andre, or the Finjan Club on Victoria in Côte-des-Neiges with the likes of blues-gospel legend Reverend Gary Davis or a very young Bob Dylan playing in front of young music connoisseurs

Montreal archive centre ARCMTL and its director, Louis Rastelli, delved into this overlooked era of Montreal for the creation of a virtual museum.

"Even in our local history, we have a very baby boomer centric version of the 60s with all the big chapters, the subway, the Expo," said Rastelli, who wasn’t yet born at the time.

"Below the surface, it's just another thing we discovered about the Stanley Street scene. There's all these articles about the Stanley street scene, and nobody thinks of Stanley Street today, but I mean, it was hopping."

A promotional sign for The New Penelope Club. (Source: Gary Eisenkraft Collection)

The big place at the time on Stanley was called the Esquire Showbar, which attracted international jazz and rhythm and blues artists of the time. But it was for adults only.

That’s when a 19-year-old folk singer named Gary Eisenkraft opened the New Penelope Club on Stanley Street above Sainte-Catherine Street. A hole in the wall that could barely seat 60 people. It was an all-ages venue, without a liquor licence.

Rastelli says Eisenkraft's approach to entertainment was ground-breaking at the time, inspired by the emerging counter-culture scene emerging in New York’s Greenwich Village.

"So this guy had the great idea of saying, 'I'm going to bring it to the kids. I'm going to book these amazing bands that none of them are allowed to see now. But I'm going to find a place where they can come and see it,'" Rastelli said.

The initial New Penelope featured local favourites such as the Fugs, the Cavemen, the Sidetracks, or the Mountain City Four, a quartet that included two young sisters named Kate and Anna McGarrigle.

Overwhelmed by its success, the New Penelope moved a few blocks away in 1967 at the corner of Sherbrooke Street and Park Avenue. The interior design was done by famed French artist Francois Dallegret.

There's only one video in existence. It was in a scene shot for a movie called High, shot by avant-garde director Larry Kent, that reflected rebellious youth at the time.

"It wasn’t just about sex. It was sex, drugs and rock and roll, you know," Kent told Rastelli as part of his research on the topic.

For music lovers, the New Penelope was a rare chance to discover up and coming artists.

"That's where you get things like Joni Mitchell and Frank Zappa and Muddy Waters and Penny Lang and Jesse Winchester, Gordon Lightfoot," Rastelli said.

Montreal archivist Louis Rastelli dug into this overlooked era of Montreal for the creation of a virtual museum. (CTV News)

Pierre Huet, a young author who would help form the Quebec legendary 70s band Beau-Dommage years later, says he came of age at the New Penelope.

"It was really a true experience for me. You know, you consider for me getting into Expo 67 was a major day in my life and getting into the New Penelope," Huet said.

He also recalls that the two solitudes of Quebec at the time got along fine at the café.

"There was absolutely no language barrier inside the club," he said.

Rastelli recently invited the former patrons to a recent gathering to present his online museum. Most are in their 80s now, but their memories are very much alive.

Sam Boskey was a McGill University student at the time, before he became a social activist and municipal city councillor for Montreal.

"It was a time again where there was a discovery of not only of white folk music, but a lot of Black blues, which started to become very popular amongst white audiences. And record companies started to be paying attention to this.

Bluesmen like Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Junior Wells all performed at the cafe," Boskey said.

But the low cover charge, changing tastes, lack of alcohol revenues, and the arrival of a less than peaceful crowd of bikers would soon doom the venue. By the end of 1968, Eisenkraft closed the New Penelope.

"There was a constant job of trying to fend off the creditors because between the bands and the rent, they took a lot of people coming through to be able to make ends meet," Boskey recalled.

Eisenkraft died 20 years ago. But Rastelli now hopes the memory of the New Penelope will be an integral part of Montreal's colourful history.

Rastelli’s online museum of the New Penelope is available on communitystories.ca.