Joe Beef

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Charles McKiernan (1835 Belfast, Ireland - January 15 1889, Montreal, Canada) was a well-known Montreal tavern owner, innkeeper and philanthropist.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Charles McKiernan earned the sobriquet "Joe Beef" from his time as a Quartermaster with the British Army during the Crimean War. It's said that whenever his regiment was running low on food, McKiernan had an almost spooky knack of somehow finding meat and provisions, hence the name "Joe Beef".

The man, who would become famous in Montreal as gruff philanthropist, came to the city around 1864 with his artillery regiment and he was put in charge of the main military canteen on Saint Helen's Island. Discharged in 1868, he opened "Joe Beef's Tavern," an inn and tavern soon known throughout North America, located at 201-207 rue de la Commune in what is now Old Montreal. Beef refused service to no one, telling a reporter, "no matter who he is, whether English, French, Irish, Negro, Indian, or what religion he belongs to". Every day at noontime, hundreds of longshoremen, beggars odd-job men and outcasts from Montréal society showed up at his door.[1]

Beef helped Lachine Canal workers during the strike of 1877, provided them with 3,000 loaves of bread and 500 gallons of stew, and paying the travel expenses of their delegation to Ottawa. As they set off, he addressed a crowd of 2,000 in front of his tavern with a rousing speech "delivered in rhymed endings which was heartily applauded."[1] He also assisted strikers at the east-end Hudon textile factory in 1882.

Beef was known for keeping a menagerie of animals in his tavern, including four black bears, ten monkeys, three wild cats, a porcupine and an alligator. It is said he sometimes brought a bear up from the basement to restore order in his tavern. He ran his tavern from 1870 until his death from a heart attack in 1889, at the age of 54. [2]

[edit] Funeral

At his funeral, every office in the business district closed. Fifty labour organizations walked off the job while Joe Beef's casket was drawn through the city by an ornate four-horse hearse, in a procession several blocks long. The newspaper La Minerve reported: "The crowd consisted of Knights of Labour, workers and manual labourers of all classes. All the luckless outcasts to whom the innkeeper-philanthropist had so often extended a helping hand had come forward, eager to pay a last tribute to his memory".[1]

[edit] Legacy

He was a central character in a play by David Fennario, entitled Joe Beef. Restaurant Joe Beef is today named after him.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Montréal's - Saloon Santa Claus (HTML). Tourisme Montréal. Retrieved on 2008-03-24.
  2. ^ Griffintown and Point Saint Charles: Heritage Trail (PDF). Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network. Retrieved on 2008-03-23.
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