Banned from accessing his restaurant for a month after the fire in Old Montreal

A restaurateur neighboring the heritage building destroyed by a fatal fire in Old Montreal was not only prohibited from accessing his business for a month, but he was also abandoned by the City, which left him in the nothing.

“I feel like a ball that everyone is kicking around from department to department of the City,” says Lenon So, owner of Muru Crêpe with his family.

Its lunch restaurant is opposite the building which was engulfed in flames on the night of October 4. The fire, which took 16 hours to control, claimed the lives of a French tourist and her 7-year-old daughter.

In the following days, Mr. So was able to have brief access to his restaurant, which had been established in the neighborhood for a decade. Just enough time to pick up some documents and some still fresh fruit.

A few meters away

At that time, no one warned him that he would not be able to return there for a month. The fence that demarcates the security perimeter stopped just a few meters from its entrance. “Just a little pedestrian crossing… and all that would have been sorted,” he says.

For its part, the City indicated by email that it was not possible to allow access to the business without ensuring public safety.

Lenon So, who manages the establishment with his wife Yue Zeng, has not received any communication from the City of Montreal. “No calls, not even an email. Usually, when a street closes, we receive a pamphlet to warn us, but here, we were isolated and abandoned,” he laments strongly.

Every morning, he went there to talk with the authorities and see if he could finally access his restaurant. Without news from the City, the couple decided to go in search of information themselves. “I didn’t even know where to start, who to contact,” Mr. So said.

Still no news

His efforts led him into the maze of bureaucracy. His story is worthy of Twelve Labors of Asterix. Just to get an incident number for his insurance, he was redirected through, at least, four services… finally being sent back to the first one he contacted.

Seeing that nothing was moving, the owners themselves proposed to the City a plan, made by hand, including the addition of a pedestrian crossing to access the restaurant. “An in-depth assessment had to be carried out in order to develop an alternative means of access to the business,” indicates the municipality. They finally got the green light on November 6.

“When we came back after a month, it was hell,” Mr. So recalls with despondency. Tons of fruit flies were flying through a foul smell of rot.

They took no chances and threw away all the food, filling two large black trash cans. After putting on a white suit, they thoroughly cleaned every corner of the establishment, in addition to hiring exterminators.

If it were not for his insistence, the restaurateur believes that his business would still be inaccessible today.

Exorbitant costs

The owner has spent tens of thousands of dollars since the start of this saga, notably to clean and buy the food. He still does not know when or how much the insurance companies will reimburse them.

Lenon So is saddened to have lost his boss of the last eight years, who could not remain without salary for an indefinite period.

“If at least we had been kept informed, we could have made arrangements accordingly. Put our employees on unemployment. The City should work for its citizens, right?” he says.

Since the reopening of Muru Crêpe, business has been bad, because the imposing security perimeter around the construction site on rue Notre-Dame repels pedestrians and tourists. “Today we had three or four customers,” he said, looking at his almost empty establishment.