“I grew up in Cote-St-Luc and interestingly, when I moved to Mile-End, I went from one Jewish community to another Jewish community. We lived on Jeanne-Mance where we shared a street with different Hassidim. But our landlords were Greek and in our neighbourhood there’s a Portuguese community and an Italian community.”

“Have you noticed any similarities between the cultures?”

“I think so. There was one year when Passover coincided with Greek Easter. The Hassidic community had services one night and they would walk around the block singing songs and as they were walking up one direction of Jeanne-Mance, the Greek community was having an Easter parade coming down the other side, and I was looking out the window going ‘Uh oh’! And the Greeks had these crosses made out of flowers… and the Hassidim and the Greeks just sort of walked silently past each other. I just thought: that’s a quintessentially Montreal moment right there. Because here are these two cultures who coexist and each one is having their own religious ceremony and they just pass each other by like two ships passing in the night — not acknowledging one another, but leaving plenty of room for each other to be there, to exist at the same time.”

Category: People