Serving at The New Penelope
Image: Screenshot captured during the virtual interview by ARCMTL with Suzanne McCarrey, March 3, 2021.
Credit: ARCMTL collection. Interview was conducted in Montreal on March 3, 2021 with Suzanne McCarrey by Maïa Djambazian, Archival technician at ARCMTL, and Louis Rastelli, Director of ARCMTL.
Duration: 1:21 min
Suzanne McCarrey worked as a waitress at The New Penelope on Sherbrooke Street at the age of 16. In this audio clip, she explains the challenges of serving refreshments in this very peculiar space!
Transcription:
Suzanne McCarrey: You know, you’d go in there, the coffee house bringing in big bands like that, sitting on uncomfortable bleachers, ordering coffees and smoking cigarettes. You know, emptying the ash trays. I mean, you went around emptying ash trays! (Laughs.) These little tin ashtrays and the little glass ones, you know, cause sometimes they fall on the floor and it was a mess and the bleachers were, jeez! It would be really nice to know the size of it now! Because I remember when you’d come in the front door, there was a hallway and then you got to the bleachers, you know. And they were… It was full and you had standing room and the kitchen was in the back. It was a little kitchen and, uh, yeah.
Louis Rastelli: So you had to squeeze past people to go and get a coffee or a hot chocolate.
Suzanne McCarrey: Yep! Oh yeah, yeah.
Maïa Djambazian: But you served at the tables?
Suzanne McCarrey: Yep!
Maïa Djambazian: Ok. And how were people? What was the atmosphere with the clients and the musicians? What’s the dynamic?
Suzanne McCarrey: They were all hippies at that time, they were all hippies! (Laughs.) You know, they were in university, okay, because McGill was right around the corner and then you had the little ghetto area. Um, the Durocher Street, all those little streets around there, it was quite a lot of students from there. Montreal was so vibrant at that time!