Moe Wilensky on right. His brother Archie on left. With customer, ca. 1932.
Photo Credit : The Wilensky family
Harry, father, with Moe and Sylvia Wilensky in Harry's tobacco and barber shop at 4159 St. Laurent ca. mid 1920s.
Photo Credit : The Wilensky family
The Gourmet Association of Canada Certificate, 1968.
Photo Credit : The Wilensky family
Moe Wilensky with second son Bernard in 1972.
Photo Credit : The Wilensky family
Ruth and Moe Wilensky in the mid-1970s.
Photo Credit : The Wilensky family.
1932 -
Wilensky’s Light Lunch
Founded by Moe Wilensky in 1932, Wilensky’s Light Lunch is one of the last bastions of Eastern European Jewish culture in the Mile End – a restaurant famous for its “Wilensky’s Special,” a fried salami and bologna sandwich served with mustard on a pressed roll.
Harry Wilensky, Moe’s father, emigrated from Russia to Montreal around the turn of the 20th century, along with many other Eastern European Jews. Wilensky opened a small barbershop and variety store that relocated several times following the “downtowner” Jewish community as it moved north along the Main. Harry’s sons Moe and Archie joined the family business and Moe convinced his father to start selling sandwiches.
The shop moved to 119 Fairmount O. in 1932, to the corner of Fairmount and St-Urbain in 1935, and to its present location, at the corner of Fairmount and Clark, in 1952. Not much has changed since then, not even the food or the decor.
Wilensky’s was immortalized by Mordecai Richler, a regular at the diner when he was young, as Moe’s Cigar Store in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Several scenes for the novel’s film adaptation were also shot on site at Wilensky’s.
The restaurant is a Jewish Montreal landmark, evoking a time when the city’s immigrant Jewish population lived mostly in the Mile End, subsisting thanks to countless small businesses such as Moe Wilensky’s. In the early 20th century, Mile End eateries also provided many Montrealers with their first exposure to Jewish culture.
