Live from Earth and other curiosities

This photo of the Live From Earth store is from Montreal Insolite, A Guide for Night Owls (1974). This publication is a reference guide for the Montreal nightlife scene of the early 1970s, as well as for underground shops and restaurants.

Live From Earth, located on Prince-Arthur Street, was a typical example of a business found in the Village du Carré Saint-Louis district. You could buy products specific to hippie culture there: leather jackets, tie-dye T-shirts, recycled clothing and smoking accessories.

We opened up Live From Earth in 1970, on Prince Arthur, and we were like the third boutique, third shop on this very dead little street. […] During the 70’s, Prince Arthur was really like a village. In the 80’s they made the mistake of converting it into a pedestrian mall. But in 72 or 73, there was a nice grouping of used clothing stores, head shops, and there was still traffic on the street. When we first started hanging out there in 69 or 70, there were empty stores, old Chinese laundries, old Jewish tailors, and that’s basically what it was. Mazurka was there (the long-running Polish restaurant which sadly just closed in late 2014), the Polish War Veterans’ Hall was there, which is now Café Campus. They’re still in the building, but they owned the whole thing, the space where Campus is. It was a very fun time, and we drew a lot of attention to that part of town.

― Larry Duprey, owner of Live From Earth, one of the first head shops and hemp stores in Montreal in 1970 (interview with ARCMTL, 1999)