Montreal's lost decade? The 1990s in Montreal, Part 2

Generations appear to routinely develop fad retro-crushes on the era two decades prior. The ‘70s worshipped the ‘50s and the ‘60s were repackaged for the ‘80s. So we’re due to be nostalgic for the ‘90s, right? Well, maybe not, at least not for Montrealers. In the 2nd of a 3-part series, writer Kristian Gravenor explains why.




The fall of 1993 was as pleasant as most others in Montreal but by November, cold punishing winds slipped through zippers, seeped through thermal socks and proved that hell is indeed set in a cold climate: the winter of 1993-1994 would prove to be the coldest-ever in Montreal’s recorded history.

As 1994 began, jobs were flowing and money was being made… elsewhere, not here. Montreal limped along with a sky-high unemployment rate of near 14 per cent – almost double that of today – and almost triple the five per cent unemployment rate in the States at the time.

Apartment vacancies diminished slightly from the 7.7 per cent reached in 1992 when 35,000 apartments sat empty. But that only happened as a result of other bad news. Mortgage rates sprung from 6 to 10 per cent in 1994 and many homeowners ditched houses for apartments. Tool belts were closeted, as construction workers stayed home.

Quebecers hunkered down in front of their TVs, watching far more programming than others in Canada. Only a few techno-nerds had even heard of the Internet. Up to mid-1994, the local daily’s tech columnist insisted that people ignore the Net and stick with the more promising bulletin board services, crude messaging services installed in various Montreal apartments.

Business was dismal. The city had a bankruptcy rate twice that of Toronto’s. Foreign escape was difficult, as the dollar had declined to 70 cents, down 20 cents from three years earlier.

Triplexes languished on the market at $90,000 while a sixplex could easily be had for $120,000 (compared to about four times as much today). Yet ownership was still a distant dream for many, as some neighbourhoods saw 40 percent of its residents on welfare. The city ranked tops in unemployment and last for job-creation out of any major city in the U.S. or Canada.

Want more? The City of Montreal had a staggering 41.2 % poverty rate, which means that the person next to you on the bus today might well have suffered malnutrition as a child. People stopped having children; the birthrate dropped by 20 percent from just a few years before.

Some might have fond memories of being a scenester during those years, but talent was thin as there were simply fewer young people here. In 1996 there were 37 per cent fewer Montreal-island residents aged between 15-24 than there had been 20 years earlier. (Elsewhere in Canada that figure had declined by just 14 per cent.)

This, however, did not mean that all Montrealers were fending the wolf from their door. In my case, in spite of having a BA from McGill and an MA from Concordia hanging on my wall, I clung to my entry-level union job at Bell Canada – twice as many young people were in unions compared to today – because it paid around $35,000 a year for a 30-hour work week. I occupied a $300-a-month apartment downtown, leaving me plenty of cash left over. And yet life was unfulfilling and, even with lowered expectations, professionally unsustainable. Indeed, Bell eventually managed to subcontract those same jobs out and the new workers are being paid far less.

Armies of overqualified 90s Montreal Gen-X slackers were similarly hammered by their personal crisis of dashed expectations. At my weekly pickup softball game, frequented by an impressive group of young adults, I never once heard the traditional Toronto "what’s-your-job?" question over two summers worth of dugout chit chat.

The city was, meanwhile, going further down the road to unfettered kitsch and decline. Kétaine businesses such as sexy-serveuse joints saw the nude waitress fad hit town. JoJo Savard was on the cutting edge of the short-lived 976 phone line fad promising to read futures. Self-proclaimed alien cult leader Rael would offer free-love speeches on Sundays. Bikers started shooting each other with a wild bloodlust, launching a war that would eventually lead to 150 deaths.

People continued to flood out of town and the rare souls moving here were treated as oddball curiosities, joining a Montreal where rueful waiters at restaurants hovered over terraces that were a sea of empty tables, as even the dining industry hit the skids.

A labour conflict cancelled the Expos dream 1994 baseball season and left local baseball lovers forever broken-hearted, leading to the team’s eventual demise. A similar deadlock cancelled that hockey season until January 11 and there was no CFL football to fill the gap, as the local CFL team was out of business from 1987-1997.

All of this shambolic dysfunction seemed manageable in comparison to the massive political cloud that covered the city and seemingly infected every conceivable public interaction. The failure of the 1992 Charlottetown Accord fused with a nothing-to-lose attitude to create a potent strain of nationalism that would result in the November 1995 referendum. The referendum scarred a generation. It destroyed the veneer of the joie-de-vivre branding that the city had earned. The nationalist demographic flexed its muscle through its sheer size in numbers, in a way you just don’t see anymore.

The setting aside of the independence issue was expected to wash the city clean of its lingering fractious hysteria but 1996 was to be a year of epic economic disaster in Montreal. Zellers, the CPR and other head offices moved out of town, contributing to a staggering 76,000 lost jobs in a span of two summer months. In 1996, the rest of Canada gained 54,000 jobs while Quebec attracted a mere 9 per cent of investment in the country where it represented a quarter of the population.

Many Montrealers simply gave up hope. There seemed to be nothing on the horizon to suggest that the bleak prospects could ever improve. But suddenly and unexpectedly, a new wind blew into town and rained over the city turning the final years of the 1990s into something radically different than the rest of the decade.


What are your memories of Montreal in the 1990s? Share them with OpenFile Montreal by leaving a comment. On Friday, Journalist Kristian Gravenor will be available to answer your questions from 2-3 p.m. on Twitter. Use the hashtag #90sMTL to follow along. You can also follow Kristian on Twitter: @Kgravy, and OpenFile Montreal: @OpenFileMTL.