Rainbow Bar & Grill

1. Overview

Some establishments transcend their original purpose and become places of memory. For a generation of Montrealers, the Rainbow Bar & Grill was one of them. Opened in 1972 at 1430 Stanley Street, it was at once a bar, restaurant, gathering place, conversation space, game room, improvised cinema and music venue.

The Rainbow was therefore not primarily a concert venue. Its distinctiveness lay instead in the mixture of functions and people it brought together. Customers could come to eat, drink, read, talk, play backgammon or chess, watch a film or listen to musicians. Businessmen mingled with artists, journalists, writers, academics, activists and political figures.

A retrospective published by The Gazette in 1989 summed up this reputation by describing the Rainbow as a bar that attracted both “the famous and the offbeat.”

2. Stanley Street

By the time the Rainbow opened, Stanley Street already had several decades of nightlife history behind it. As early as the 1920s and 1930s, clubs, dance halls and cabarets established themselves along the street, including the Carlton Club, Lido-Venice, Kit Kat and Palais d’Or.

The street also holds an important place in Montreal’s LGBTQ+ history. For several decades, Stanley Street and the surrounding area formed one of the principal centres of gay social life in Montreal, before much of that nightlife gradually shifted eastward during the 1980s.

It was within this environment of bars, restaurants, clubs, bookstores and coffee houses that 1430 Stanley developed its particularly distinctive identity.

3. Before the Rainbow: The Seven Steps

The cultural history of 1430 Stanley began long before the Rainbow. The old house featured an architectural detail that would even inspire one of its earliest names: seven steps separated the sidewalk from the entrance.

In 1960, Bob “Bicycle Bob” Silverman opened the Seven Steps Bookstore there. Located near Sir George Williams University, the bookstore attracted students, intellectuals, activists and eccentric characters. Silverman, little concerned with conventional business practices, readily lent books to customers and transformed the bookstore into as much a gathering place as a commercial enterprise.

In October 1961, the Ember Book Shop and its Flaming Ember Coffee House took over the premises. The format — bookstore in front, café and performances in the back — already foreshadowed the cultural role the address would play for years to come.

In 1962, the establishment became the Pot Pourri, operated by Moishe Feinberg and Mary Parr. Folk, jazz and blues shared the premises with books. From June 28 to July 1, 1962, a 21-year-old Bob Dylan performed what is documented as his first Canadian engagement before an extremely small audience.

After the Pot Pourri came Chez Jacques Labrecque, followed by a succession of clubs reflecting the transformation of nightlife culture during the 1960s: Sans Souci, La Lune Rousse, Jerry’s Go-Go Club and Le Gai Piano.

In 1970, the seven-step name reappeared with the Seven Steps Pub. Following several violent incidents and problems with authorities, the establishment was closed in January 1972. A few months later, a new chapter began: the Rainbow Bar & Grill.

4. A Second History in the Basement

The chronology becomes even more remarkable when the ground floor is separated from the basement of 1430 Stanley, which had its own musical history.

In 1965, Manny De Abravanel opened the Blue Lantern there, a small coffee house with a capacity of about 60 devoted to jazz, blues and folk. The establishment had a brief existence.

In 1966, Gary Eisenkraft temporarily moved his New Penelope into the basement. Gordon Lightfoot, Richie Havens and the Mountain City Four were among the performers associated with this period. Eisenkraft later moved the New Penelope to Sherbrooke Street, where the club became one of the important venues of Montreal’s musical counterculture.

The basement subsequently housed the Dante café, Totem Pole and eventually the El Parador restaurant, which remained there from 1969 until the 1981 fire.

5. The Birth of the Rainbow

The Rainbow Bar & Grill was founded in 1972 by Judy Ponting, Don Woodward, Wayne Kratch and Colin Nelson. Several of them had previously worked at the Sir Winston Churchill Pub on Crescent Street and therefore already had experience in Montreal’s bar industry.

Judy Ponting and Don Woodward began with an investment of approximately $5,000. With assistance from relatives, friends and a bank, the available capital was substantially increased. Friends then helped physically build the bar, with some receiving shares in the business as payment.

Their former employer, John Vago of the Sir Winston Churchill Pub, also offered advice. The result was an establishment deliberately intended to differ from the traditional commercial bar model.

6. An Almost Community-Based Model

The press in 1972 presented the Rainbow as an unusual experiment in community “barmanship.” Although it was not formally a cooperative, the establishment adopted some cooperative principles.

Prices were deliberately kept affordable. Dishes such as rack of lamb and filet of sole were offered for approximately $1.75. Employees also benefited from an unusual system: they received a share equivalent to 3% of their sales.

This philosophy helped create a distinctive relationship among owners, employees and regular customers. Several former employees would later describe the Rainbow less as a conventional workplace than as a community.

7. A Place to Live and Gather

The Rainbow consisted of two principal spaces: the front bar and a more flexible back room. The latter hosted conversations, games, meetings, performances and various other activities. On Sundays, old films were screened there.

At lunchtime, the bar could be packed with businessmen joining a much more eclectic group of regulars: filmmakers, writers, academics, artists and neighbourhood personalities. People played backgammon, read the New York Times, drank wine and talked at length.

Wayne Pavey, a bartender when the Rainbow opened, would later describe it as “a product of its time, of a generation”: young adults still inspired by the optimism of Expo 67 and convinced that they could invent their own way of living.

8. Politics, Culture and Society

Political conversation occupied an important place in the life of the Rainbow. The establishment became notably associated with the early years of the Montreal Citizens’ Movement (RCM), the municipal political movement that would later bring Jean Doré to the mayor’s office.

Journalist and future city councillor Nick Auf der Maur became so closely associated with the venue that he was given office space upstairs. He even used the Rainbow as headquarters during his first election campaign in 1974.

The connection is all the more remarkable because Auf der Maur had already worked, fourteen years earlier, at Bob Silverman’s Seven Steps Bookstore in the same building. His career therefore links two very different eras of 1430 Stanley.

9. Music and Performances

Although the Rainbow was not primarily conceived as a concert venue, music formed an integral part of its identity. A Montreal alternative guide from the period advertised live entertainment on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with no cover charge.

Programming documented in the MCPA archives demonstrates the importance of blues, folk, rock and local music at the venue during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Performers and groups documented at the Rainbow include Stephen Barry Band, Morgan Davis, Karen Young, Danny Greenspoon, Eddie Kirkland, Captain Harmonica, Highstreet, Humber River Valley Boys and several local groups.

During the summer of 1980, American bluesman Eddie Kirkland performed a series of shows there, further indicating that the Rainbow held a genuine place within Montreal’s circuit of small music venues.

10. The 1981 Fire

In May 1981, a fire originating in the El Parador restaurant in the basement seriously damaged the Rainbow. The establishment was forced to close while repairs, insurance matters and reconstruction proceeded.

The Rainbow eventually reopened, but something had changed. Many regulars had found other places during the closure, and the community that had developed since 1972 had dispersed.

The fire therefore represented a genuine break in the Rainbow’s history: the establishment survived physically, but never completely recovered the social ecosystem that had made it successful.

11. After the Rainbow

The Rainbow Bar & Grill closed permanently around 1984. The address nevertheless continued its long succession of transformations.

Over the years, the premises subsequently housed Le Steak qui Rit, the Mercury Grill, Chez Better, the International Resto-Bistro, Chez Joe’s Steakhouse and the Taj Mahal.

By then, the cultural cycle that had begun with Seven Steps in 1960 largely belonged to the past, while the geography of downtown Montreal nightlife was itself undergoing significant change.

12. Legacy

The importance of the Rainbow Bar & Grill cannot be measured solely by the number of concerts presented there. Its true legacy lies in its function as a social gathering place.

For approximately twelve years, it created a space in which the boundaries between bar, restaurant, living room, club, performance venue, cinema and political meeting place were deliberately blurred. Its clientele reflected part of 1970s Montreal: cosmopolitan, intellectual, artistic, political and still deeply influenced by the counterculture of the previous decade.

But the Rainbow also represented the final major chapter in a story that had begun long before it. Between 1960 and 1984, 1430 Stanley housed bookstores, coffee houses, folk, jazz, blues, Quebec chanson, go-go clubs, municipal politics, film and live music.

Few Montreal addresses make it possible to follow with such continuity the evolution of alternative culture from the beginning of the 1960s to the mid-1980s.

For nearly a quarter of a century, the seven steps at 1430 Stanley led to a succession of places where Montreal came to read, listen, debate, experiment and gather.

13. Timeline

June 13, 1960 — Bob Silverman opens the Seven Steps Bookstore.

October 21, 1961 — The Ember Book Shop and Flaming Ember Coffee House open.

1962–1963 — Moishe Feinberg and Mary Parr operate the Pot Pourri.

June 28 – July 1, 1962 — Bob Dylan performs his first documented Canadian engagement.

1963–1965 — Chez Jacques Labrecque.

1965 — Blue Lantern opens in the basement.

1966 — Gary Eisenkraft’s New Penelope operates in the basement.

1966–1969 — Sans Souci, La Lune Rousse, Jerry’s Go-Go Club and Le Gai Piano successively occupy the main level.

1969–1981 — El Parador occupies the basement.

1970–1972 — Seven Steps Pub.

January 1972 — Authorities close the Seven Steps Pub.

1972 — Rainbow Bar & Grill founded by Judy Ponting, Don Woodward, Wayne Kratch and Colin Nelson.

1974 — Nick Auf der Maur uses the Rainbow as his campaign headquarters.

1979–1980 — Numerous folk, blues and rock performances are documented in the MCPA archives.

May 1981 — Fire originating at El Parador; the Rainbow closes and is rebuilt.

1984 — End of the Rainbow Bar & Grill.