tramway crossing under construction in Montreal at
Sainte Catherine and Saint Lawrence Street in 1893. The Jewish community on the Main sprang up after the heavy immigration of the early to mid-1900s. Jewish settlement occurred first on the lower Main, in a section that now is part of
Montreal's Chinatown.s, 1905.By 1871 a Jewish enclave numbering just over 400 people had formed by the corner of St. Lawrence and
Dorchester Street, with the first Jewish educational institution, the Talmud Torah, located at the corner of
Saint Urbain Street and
De la Gauchetière Street. Middle-class members of the community were already beginning to move up the Main towards
Sherbrooke and Prince Arthur Streets, while further west, a small number of well-off Jews lived near
McGill University. Culinary landmarks on Saint Laurent that bear witness to this historic community include
Schwartz's and
Moishes Steakhouse.
Yiddish was the common language in the Jewish district on Saint Laurent Boulevard, with many Jewish immigrants working in clothing factories, once the street's main industry. Other cultural institutions such as the
Jewish Public Library operated in more than one language.
Culture seen in 2014, was the first cinema in North America. It burned down in 2016. Montreal featured the fifth-largest population of
Yiddish speakers in the Americas, after New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Buenos Aires; by 1930, 60,000 Yiddish speakers lived on or around The Main. The district was home to the second-largest
Yiddish theatre in North America from 1896 to the 1940s, with shows at vaudeville houses along the Main as well as the
Monument-National, now a National Historic Site and part of the
National Theatre School of Canada. The Main was also a centre of Jewish publishing. In 1907 a young Polish Jewish immigrant,
Hirsch Wolofsky, started the Yiddish-language daily newspaper
Keneder Adler (English:
Canadian Eagle). The paper was initially published from an office on St. Lawrence near Ontario Street. However, when the
Adler became successful, Wolofsky moved the paper to its own building at 4075 St. Lawrence, near Duluth Street. The paper would publish for more than 80 years. Today Wolofsky is remembered with a small park in his honour on Rue Coloniale, between Prince-Arthur and Sherbrooke.
Politics The poor Jewish quarter had a distinctly left-wing slant.
Fred Rose represented the Main's Cartier riding until 1947, when he was expelled from the
House of Commons after a controversial conviction on charges of spying for the
Soviet Union. To this day the Main remains the only part of Canada ever represented in Parliament by an openly Communist MP. Area city councillor
Joseph Schubert, a Romanian Jew, was a socialist and admirer of
Karl Marx. Elected to Montreal City Council in 1924, he was the council's most prominent advocate of worker's rights for 15 years. In 1931, he built a public bathhouse at the corner of Bagg and St. Lawrence, which still stands today as the Schubert Bath (official French name:
Bain Schubert).
Decline By the 1950s many Jews had moved to other communities, and most synagogues were demolished or converted to other uses. Another supermarket, Warshaw's, was the subject of controversy when the city of Montreal was forced to pay damages after first approving and then rejecting changes to its iconic storefront. The exterior signage for Warshaw's is on permanent display as part of the Montreal Signs Project at
Concordia University's Loyola campus. As of 2003 fewer than 10 Jewish-owned and family-run businesses remained on the Main between
Sherbrooke Street and
Mount Royal Avenue. ==Neighbourhoods==