When Alfred Bohns came to Montreal from small-town Germany in 1958 he would prowl the streets, snapping images of the city. It was a place filled with ambulances shaped like shiny metal shoeboxes, cops clad in double-breasted wool suits with brass buttons, diners chowing down at lunch counters at the five-and-dimes and cars with tailfins that would make the Batmobile look conservative.
Now, fifty-three years after arriving in Montreal to work as a hat-maker for 23 cents an hour, Bohns has unveiled a stunning private collection of street photos that paint a rarely-seen portrait of the city of Montreal from 1958 to 1960.
Bohns, his wife Hannelore, and four European neighbours who lived near the couple’s apartment at 3636 Clark spent their free time shooting snaps of their adopted city.
“We were three couples,” said Bohns, 78. “We’d spend our days walking and walking because we didn’t have cars and we all lived in the same area and we all had empty jobs.”
Bohns liked the laid-back polyglot style the city offered and chose it over Toronto and New York. “When we came here there was a good atmosphere, there was none of that French-English animosity that came later. It was a nice way of living, not working too hard, and having free time and some money to spend,” said Bohns, who now lives in Laval.
He only recently had the idea of going through his slides, cleaning up the rot with Photoshop and sharing over 100 of them on Flickr. They include an instantly iconic, brightly-coloured daytime street-level shot of The Main and Ste-Catherine back when the neon-lit Lower Main was peopled by toughs and sailors who packed theatres and bars.
Two theatres have facades elaborately decked out to promote second-run movies released several years before.
“Those theatres were where my wife learned to speak English,” says Bohns. “It cost 25 cents to get in if you got there before noon and then after you could eat at a hot dog shop across the street.”
Snapping street photos on 35 mm film was a financial commitment and every shot of Kodachrome passing through his Kodak Retina 35 mm would cost a good chunk of change from Bohns' two-bucks-a-day union job at Kate’s Millinery on
Mayor St..
He’d often try to get some cheap outdated black and white film from the bargain bin at local camera shops or else dig into a box of slides which could cost $16 or $18 to develop.
Bohns’ early years in shmatte led to a stint as an import controller, overseeing the clearance of goods for a needletrade company through customs. One overhead shot of a huge parking lot full of newly-arrived cars tells of a tense period when imported cars were not welcome.
“People were upset at imported cars from Germany and they’d put stickers on the cars saying ‘These were made in the Black Forest by dwarfs.’ Canada tried to prohibit the importation of Volkswagens but the Germans said that they’d block the sale of Canadian chickens in Germany, so the Canadians let the German cars in after all,” said Bohns.
Bohns’ photos include many other vivid streetscapes from an era where men wore hats and ties, women were decked out in furs and kids chased pigeons rather than video game ghouls.
One particularly poignant shot features three hockey players from behind sizing up other players outside the outdoor rink at Lafontaine Park.
After two years of shooting the city, Bohns switched over to family photos and other travel shots in the early 60s. But he says he’ll post more photos of the city, as he has plenty more black and white in particular.
He confesses that he doesn’t know what became of the photos shot by his friends, but he’s still in contact with them and promises to ask whether they’ve still got the sum of their work somewhere.
If he can find time, that is. Although his two children grew up long ago, Bohn, along with Hannelore, 77, have raised their grandchildren for a decade after their daughter passed away. “It’s not always easy when they’re teenagers,” he said.
