Pointe-Saint-Charles establishment Quebec Smoked Meat closing after 73 years

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After 73 years promoting deli meats ready in their very own smokehouses in Pointe-Saint-Charles, the purveyors at Quebec Smoked Meats are hanging up their aprons and shutting their doorways.

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It was the mixture of rising prices, labour shortages, arthritic joints and the altering tastes of a brand new technology that caused its demise, proprietor Richard Nower mentioned.

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It was the second institution specializing in a beloved Montreal delicacy to announce its closing in the identical week. The Primary Deli on St. Laurent Blvd. closed its doorways on Monday after 50 years.

A vestige of occasions previous, slabs of maple smoked ham and Windsor again bacon nonetheless hobnob with Knackwurst German sausage, Polish kielbasa and cotto salami within the glass-walled entrance counter of the enterprise that has stood in the identical Centre St. location since 1950. Jars of Putter’s pickles line the cabinets alongside the sauerkraut and pickled herring.

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“We nonetheless use the identical recipes my father created when he began the enterprise,” mentioned Richard Nower, son of Ben and brother to Mark, a earlier co-owner. “You’ll by no means get bacon anyplace else like ours — it doesn’t shrink if you cook dinner it.” Grocery retailer bacon, Nower says, is pumped filled with water to provide it heft.

“You’re paying for water.”

Lots of his 10 staff have been there greater than 25 years. One is 69 and nonetheless is available in three days per week. His bookkeeper turns 75 subsequent February. Each have been planning to retire. Along with his knees and elbows infected by arthritis after 46 years of standing for lengthy hours and shifting from the warmth of the smokehouses to the chilly of the freezers, “I can’t do it anymore,” Nower mentioned.  It took him two years to discover a supply driver.

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“And I can’t preserve looking for folks to exchange them.”

Prices for meat and packaging supplies like waxed paper have skyrocketed for the reason that pandemic. Belts for the smokehouse air flow system that used to go for $10 apiece are actually $30. Discovering alternative components for his growing old tools is getting tougher.

The son of Ukrainian immigrants, Ben Nower began the enterprise as a wholesaler, then opened the retail portion of the store within the mid-Nineteen Sixties, slowly rising it by means of phrase of mouth. He retired at 62 due to arthritis, however nonetheless got here in on Fridays for years to verify issues have been performed proper.

A framed image of former prime minister Jean Chrétien posing with a beaming Ben Nower sits within the entrance window of the shop, the picture’s colors bleached to black and white by solar and time.

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“Congratulations to Ben, Mark and Richard for the Greatest Smoked Meat in Canada,” reads the inscription.

Sons Mark and Richard, who labored summers within the store since they have been 10, took over within the Eighties, ultimately including an internet site and increasing buyer deliveries.

On a quiet Wednesday afternoon, Pierre Lavoie stopped in after his shift with CN Rail within the Level as he’s performed for 30 years to peruse the half-empty cabinets and order his favorite, Polish kielbasa.

“It’s unhappy,” he mentioned. “It’s the one place I do know of that also sells these Outdated World sort of meals. I mentioned I must go to Slovenia’s on St-Laurent, however then I heard that closed, too. (The Slovenia butcher store closed in 2022 after 50 years.) “I’m undecided the place I’ll go now.”

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Iouri Stassiouk palms a patron a slice of their old style smoked meat, lean and completely salted, cured on the premises.

“It’s higher than Schwartz’s,” he says, referring to Montreal’s most well-known smoked meat restaurant, with the pleasure of somebody who has labored on the identical spot for 35 years. Schwartz’s used to promote the identical sort of old style meat, which loses 30 per cent of its bulk within the curing course of, however now not does “ever since Céline Dion purchased it,” he says. “Now it’s extra like corned beef.”

Stassiouk, 59, isn’t certain the place he’ll go subsequent.

“However that is life,” he mentioned. “And life is just not completed.”

The youthful technology prefers to eat at McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Subways than locations like his, Nower says. With the price of every thing rising, additionally they have much less money to spend on smoked meat that used to promote for $12 a pound and now goes for $20.

It’s arduous, he mentioned, saying goodbye to one thing that has been his life for almost a half century and supplied a residing to boost 4 kids. However three of the 4 dwell in Alberta now, and none are concerned with taking on the enterprise.

“It’s been very emotional,” he mentioned. “I instructed my workers and everybody else.

“Hear, they perceive. It’s time to let it go.

“Every part involves an finish. That’s what occurs.”

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