The shock closure of Cabaret La Tulipe – a legendary theater nestled in the Plateau Mont-Royal since 1913 and long known as the Théâtre des Variétés of the great actor Gilles Latulippe – is the chronicle of a disaster foretold.
The Tribe, owner of the Cabaret, has in fact been trapped for years in a surreal, exhausting and extremely expensive political-judicial saga.
Monday, the final blow. A ruling from the Court of Appeal ordered the Cabaret to cease all audible noise beyond its walls produced “by means of sound devices”. A silent theater? If it existed, it would be known.
The worm in the apple? Several years ago, by an “error” of an official, the City of Montreal, even though it was forbidden to do so, granted the neighbor next door a residential status permit for the commercial building that he wanted to live.
Crazy pointer
And Luc Rabouin, the mayor of the Plateau Mont-Royal borough, also run by Projet Montréal? For years he has been promising a “solution”, which has not come. It’s the house that drives the pointer crazy.
Since this “error”, the stubborn neighbor has increased the number of proceedings against the Cabaret, which he considers too noisy. It’s as absurd as demanding that a cemetery stop doing burials because a new neighbor complains of being afraid of the dead.
You would think that this neighbor allergic to noise would have chosen to live far from a performance hall. However, this was without taking into account the legendary negligence of the Plante administration. In this case, to the point of absurdity.
Wake up late
Result: this ruling also threatens other places of culture as long as a single neighbor complains about the noise. A great waste all round.
Under high pressure and in extremisLuc Rabouin now announces that the noise regulations will be modified to “secure performance halls, bars and restaurants”.
Waking up is terribly late. For Cabaret and La Tribu, the damage, including financial, has been done for a long time…
