The town of Contrecœur

In this video clip, Léopold Hamel sits in front of a white wall recalling what set Contrecœur apart from other villages in the 50s.

Transcript:

My name’s Léopold Hamel. I landed in Contrecœur in 1953.
In footwear, if my memory serves, there were at that point, there were five shoe factories in Contrecœur. For a young man, it was amazing because the world came down to this: Contrecœur versus the region. It was the industrial city.  Even in 1953, Contrecœur was an industrial city, compared to Verchères, Calixa-Lavallée, St-Antoine… Verchères folk came to Contrecœur for a job because on top of that, Contrecœur had something extra; it had something special. It had the Pomme d’or! The Pomme d’or Hotel had a good reputation throughout the province.  What else?  Contrecœur had a theatre. The Rex Theatre.  People from the entire region, I remember this well, people from the whole area came out to the theatre on a Saturday night, on a Sunday.  And we worked back then, kids left school to go work in footwear.  Their first job was in footwear.  The salary, if my memory serves me right, the first pay I got, I worked, the first time I got a job, a real job, it’s a real job, you know, I got 49 cents an hour.