Most Montrealers are unaware of this, but the face of their city at night is changing.
Last May, the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) hosted a party that started at 10 p.m. on Saturday and ended at 3 a.m.… the following Monday. The bar remained open throughout this period.
We reassure the worried: the city has not sunk into anarchy, and the Earth has continued its tireless rotation around the Sun.
This year, no less than 10 similar events have already taken place. That’s not counting the Nuit blanche, during which 51 bars and nightclubs ignored (legally!) the famous last call to prolong the pleasure until sunrise.
These initiatives are largely due to the efforts of Mathieu Grondin.
There is a wind right now. It’s going fast, maybe even faster than I had expected. Even internationally, Montreal attracts attention because it’s rare that we succeed in pushing back a curfew or a last call.
Mathieu Grondin
The CEO of Montreal 24/24 is not the kind of guy you meet in a light-filled cafe at 11:30 in the morning. Or, in any case, it would have seemed to me to betray a certain concept.
So I catch the night owl on a Friday night at the SAT, where he has just performed on the decks as a DJ. Given the time, we swap espressos for cans of beer.
At 43, Mathieu says he has always been “a night owl and a late riser”. When he was a child, his father, former radio host Denis Grondin, sometimes took him to the studio at night.
“What fascinated me were the people calling. They were often truckers and my father could take the time to chat with them. Even today, for me, the night is a horizontal space”, he says.
Horizontal ?
During the day, on the radio, there are ads, everything is timed, he explains. And it’s the same everywhere. At night, the structure evaporates, another rhythm sets in. There are things you can say and do at night… You can reinvent yourself, change your identity, discover new ones – sexual ones, among others! For me, the night is a very special space of freedom.
Mathieu Grondin
As a teenager, Mathieu Grondin seeks to display his marginality. But with a radio host father and a mother who plays drums in a band, stepping out of line is less obvious.
It’s when he arrives in his first ravein third secondary, that he has a revelation.
“When I stepped foot in there and heard that… It was dance, but dance punk. And I immediately thought: wow. My parents will never understand,” he says.
At 17, with friends, he organized his first night of electronic music in a disused industrial laundry in the Rosemont district. The event attracts 1200 people. “Security was the Cégep du Vieux Montréal football team! “, he recalls.
He will never stop, organizing both legal and illegal events (he found himself in court three times, managing to get away with it each time).
In the middle, it obviously grumbles against the constraints of hours. Especially since Montreal night owls travel and see that in Europe, the night never ends.
“The first time I went to Berlin, I said: wow. What is happening here ? It does not stop, it does not close and everyone is cool. There are no battles, there are no drunk people,” he says.
Mathieu Grondin is an activist at heart. But he understands instinctively that it is not through demonstrations and protests that he will succeed in prolonging Montreal nights.
In 2017, with Alexis Simoneau and G.-Vincent Melo, he founded Montréal 24/24 – a non-profit organization aimed at promoting the rights of night owls.
Mathieu Grondin shows up at city council meetings and asks questions. He ends up establishing a dialogue with the politicians.
His message: leaving bars open longer, far from exacerbating the problems, alleviates them.
I know it’s counter-intuitive. But the last call at 3 a.m. encourages people to drink quickly and creates a rush hour at the exit of bars. Everyone finds themselves fighting for the same shish-taouk and the same taxi. This is where the problems arise.
Mathieu Grondin
His message: Let’s keep people indoors until they burn out. “When you leave a nightclub at 6 a.m., you just have one thing in mind: go to bed,” he says. In addition, partygoers can take advantage of the reopening of the metro.
For the moment, the dozen pilot projects carried out in Montreal seem to prove him right, not having caused any notable problems. It must be said that Montreal 24/24 keeps watch with “mitigation squads”.
“Montréal 24/24’s major mandate is still to educate the public and decision-makers about the reality of the night,” continues Mathieu Grondin. On the fact that it is about culture, that it contributes to the economic development of the city and its potential for tourist attractiveness. »
The message gets through so well that he now considers Mayor Valérie Plante a “great ally”.
Does he fear that an event will degenerate and erase the gains? “Something will eventually happen,” he predicts. But when someone gets shot in a pizzeria in the Latin Quarter at noon, do we close all the pizzerias at noon? »
His next fight: that Montreal adopt a governance structure dedicated to the night and integrated into the municipal apparatus. He cites as examples the New York City Office of Nightlife, the night councils of several French cities and even the “night mayors” found in certain Dutch cities.
When we met, Mathieu Grondin was about to speak about nightlife at conferences in Texas, New York and Australia.
Ironically, this commitment encroaches… on his own nightlife.
“Since I founded Montréal 24/24 to talk about the night, I get up at 7 a.m. to meet with city officials at 8 a.m.,” he laughs.
On Friday evening, exhausted, he admits going to bed at 8 p.m. But it’s better to get up at 1 a.m. and celebrate until 6 a.m.
Questionnaire without filter
Coffee and me: I don’t really like sour stuff made by mustachioed Australian third wave baristas. I like my Italian coffee: a ristretto at the end of lunch or supper. But no cappuccino after 11 a.m. or I’ll judge you.
My favorite night city: Before the war, it was Kyiv! A dynamic, emerging scene where going out at night is a political gesture and not just a hedonistic outlet. Berlin remains the Mecca of electronic music and experimental nightclubs. Amsterdam is also an excellent practical example of nocturnal governance.
My ideal night: A barbecue with friends, then a scooter ride to an abandoned warehouse from which resonates the tempo of a repetitive bass. Inside, a colorful crowd from the counter-culture, people transformed into characters who reinvent their identities. In the morning, a party that continues under the sun. Laughter, exhausted bodies, eyes that shine from having lived a night out of this world.
People, dead or alive, that I would like to spend a night with: I would have liked to spend a night at the Loft with DJ David Mancuso in the late 1970s or with Dimitri Hegemann at Club Trésor in the 1990s.
A trip I dream of: Tbilisi in Georgia for Club Bassiani or the Dekmantel Selectors festival in Croatia. Or a night in a tent on a Mongolian steppe watching the stars.
Who is Mathieu Grondin?
- Born in Montreal in 1979
- Actor from a young ageThe revolving doors, Zap, A grenade with that and many others). Yes, he is the brother of actor Marc-André Grondin.
- A graduate of Concordia University in cinema, he has directed and edited several music videos, films and commercials.
- A former event programmer at the Festival du nouveau cinema and the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, he has produced more than a hundred festive events.
- Co-founder and general manager of Montreal 24/24.