Faces of Montreal | Market devotees

The Jean-Talon market is changing, but faces remain. Here are four characters who, through their loyalty, their authenticity and their kindness, contribute to making the Jean-Talon market.

Catherine Handfield
The Press

Jacques and Patrick Remillard

Jacques Rémillard is 72 years old, but behind his stall overflowing with vegetables, he deploys the energy of a young man in the prime of life.

On this early Friday morning in October, one customer is not waiting for the other at the Ferme Jacques et Diane kiosk. Cristina Anton, of Romanian origin, comes to stock up on carrots and lovage. Khadija Iran leaves with a bunch of marjoram to make the tea. Diane Cécil buys vegetables for her boiled meat, and Josée Lalancette, varieties of onions that she cannot find elsewhere.

Here, customers line up spring, summer and autumn, attracted by the variety of vegetables, the generosity of the portions, and the kindness of Jacques, his wife Diane and their 38-year-old son Patrick. “Each country has its own vegetables,” says Jacques, a market gardener from Saint-Michel, in Montérégie. When people tell us they like a vegetable, we try to find it. »

Over the decades, by listening to their customers, the trio discovered (and made known!) a variety of vegetables, from tomatoes of all kinds to root parsley and Jerusalem artichokes. On the way from The Press, it was the festival of root vegetables: white, yellow and pink turnips, turnips, watermelon radishes, purple radishes, multicolored carrots. With his small knife, Jacques gave the customers a taste.

What excites him so much? “Try something new,” says the bright-eyed septuagenarian. “Cipollini, you know that? asks Jacques, handing us a bag of small Italian onions. With him, impossible, but impossible to leave empty-handed.

Lino Birri

With his white mustache, piercing blue eyes and iconic green overalls, Lino Birri is a monument at the Jean-Talon market. He gives off a joie de vivre (he always smiles), but also a form of wisdom, a quiet authority.

It’s been nearly 50 years since Lino and his big brother Bruno went into business at the Jean-Talon market, selling quality vegetables grown by local producers and farmers. And it is since 1989 that their company, Birri, welcomes individuals (and many restaurateurs) at its current address.

But the story of the Birri brothers at the Jean-Talon market began even earlier than that, when Lino was 9 and Bruno was 10 or 11. To help support the family, the Birri brothers sold vegetables for a market producer. They lived a stone’s throw away, in an apartment on rue Drolet. On Sunday, when the producers had returned to the fields, the market became their playground.

When they opened their own business, the Birri brothers began to offer products that appealed to their Italian clientele: Swiss chard, arugula, red peppers, courgette flowers… “The first time that we put aubergines on the market, what a scandal! says the smiling Lino Birri, who has helped introduce many vegetables to Quebecers over the decades.

Birri is Lino and Bruno, of course, but they are also loyal employees who come back year after year, proudly wearing the famous green overalls. The secret to keeping them? “It’s to be happy in what we do, to feel good in our place”, says Lino simply.

Isabelle Lacroix

For the Lacroix family, the Jean-Talon market is a family affair.

There was Paul, the father, who sold his produce at the Jean-Talon market in the 1950s. Today, not one, not two, but six of his children have taken over the family land in the Fabreville district, downstream. And some of their faces are well known at the Jean-Talon market… including Isabelle’s.

Isabelle Lacroix is ​​the smiling blonde who sells multicolored flowers and seasonal vegetables at the Serres Louis-Philippe Lacroix kiosk, faithful to the post six days a week, from May to October.

“In the 1970s, I came with my father, who had the location,” says Isabelle Lacroix. Back then, she says, the market was open three days a week. “We mainly produced corn, and also tomatoes, cabbage. A little about what people ate at that time. Production has changed quite a bit since then. »

Isabelle and her brother Jean-Philippe are known for their flower pots (including their pretty fall chrysanthemums), their potted herbs and their variety of lettuces in the summer.

You can hear it when you talk to her: the Jean-Talon market, Isabelle Lacroix carries it in her heart. “I love the Jean-Talon market,” she sums up. The atmosphere, the people around us, the clientele. Look, I’m off today. Where am I ? Here. »

Daniel Brais and Judith Canaff

With his black jacket and small glasses, Daniel Brais, 56, could very well pass for an office worker. He was, moreover, for a few years, after his bachelor’s degree in administration at HEC Montréal.

But the call of horticulture was felt for Daniel, who spent his childhood summers between the farm and the market. At the end of his twenties, tired of working indoors, he bought his parents’ land, in Montérégie, with his wife Judith Canaff.

Their business, Ferme des Moissons, specializes in garlic. The couple harvests various varieties from mid-June until September. “A summer garlic will be softer, more delicate. A garlic with a hard neck will be more robust, stronger. A garlic that we call winter garlic – the one we braid – will be explosive in flavor and suppleness”, explains Daniel, who talks about garlic like a sommelier talks about wine.

If there are major garlic producers in Quebec today, the Ferme des Moissons can always count on its loyal customers, whom Daniel Brais cherishes.

“The market is like a small village,” he says. It’s the customers, it’s interacting with people, it’s liking and praising our products. And it also means receiving compliments from people who are happy. With the hours we work, if we don’t have the passion, we’re going to be unhappy. You have to keep the passion. »