Let's start at the beginning, 30 years ago.
Back then, according to the man who started it all - Garth Gilker - the idea wasn't to open a restaurant. The idea was to stop a block of buildings on St. Urbain Street from being demolished.
Now this isn't quite a Cinderella story about the hippy-dippy restaurant that made it. It is doubtful that Santropol will set up franchises like The Body Shop or Ben & Jerry's (although Garth Gilker, Jennifer Luczynski, and James Solkin set up their restaurant at about the same time). But Café Santropol does prove that even a small business can have a large impact.
In the beginning there was Gilker, a man in a flat in a row of decrepit buildings owned by the Religieuses Hopitaliers. This is the same order of nuns which, under Jeanne Mance, founded Montreal's first hospital, Hotel Dieu, in 1645. The hospital is still around the corner, but by the mid-1970s many of the row houses in the immediate area had been demolished. The block of buildings at the corner of St. Urbain and Duluth Streets, where Gilker lived, was next.
Gilker, who had moved into the area recently, figured that a building with a going concern in it would be harder to tear down than an unoccupied one. The first floor had been a thriving plumbing business, but the owner had died and the family boarded up the shop. Although Gilker owed nine months rent on his upstairs flat, he took over the first floor for $50 a month.
He began with few ideas and no assets. He cleaned out the premises, painted everything white, sat in the shop during the winter and thought about what to do. In the meantime, he scrounged the alleys for discarded furniture. By the spring of 1976, he knew what he wanted.
"The city had few alternative cafés," he said. With McGill, UQAM, and other schools in the area, this part of the city, the west end of the Plateau Mont Royal, has always had a large student population. The area was ripe for restaurants, but Gilker couldn't afford to put in a grill or any other usual kitchen equipment.
"We had to have stuff that didn't require cooking." The permit then, as now, lets the café boil water. Gilker started with sandwiches, salads and soups. Bakers in the area brought in desserts, quiches and bread.
About a year after the café Santropol's opening, James Solkin and Jennifer Luczynski joined in and the trio have been partners in buisness for nearly 30 years.
Café Santropol became known as a quirky restaurant with a simple menu and comfortable eclectic decor.
"Our first regulars came from a few blocks away," said Solkin. "They were patients at the Allen Memorial. Many of them had psychiatric problems. They would sit for a long time and stare out the window. It wasn't conducive to creating an upscale clientele, but they helped the café survive its rough beginning and established it as a place where anyone in the community would feel comfortable". "Any initial analysis would have proved that the whole idea was impossible," said Gilker. "Our business sense was the last thing we learned" added Solkin. "For the first year or two I worked as a taxi driver and a musician" Solkin said. "It took five or six years before we could really pay the bills. We sold some stuff for years at less than cost and didn't know it."
As the café became established, the threat of demolition receded. The block of housing became a co-operative. Several of the nuns continued to live there until recently. The restaurant expanded and now accommodates about 50 people.
The wonderful back garden, created, maintained, and periodically renewed by Gilker, can sit an additionnal 30 people weather permitting. It has been voted best terrace in Montreal many times over by alternative newspapers, and is extremely popular with tourists as well as Montrealers. People can sit amongst a wide variety of wild flowers and indigenous plants, under the trees, or around the fish pond. When the weather becomes a little too brisk, outdoors heaters are lit up, and customers can often be seen sipping a hot café latté in the garden on a sunny february afternoon...
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