The story of Montreal’s Joe Beef (the man, not the restaurant)

A lot of time’s passed since Montreal’s industrial boom in the 19^th century, so let’s paint a picture.

Think cobblestone streets lined with brick warehouses full of an economic expansion’s grinding gears. Shipyard tools sharply clang and echo off a harbour and a steady stream of workers haul goods along the Lachine Canal. Griffintown, then the city’s working-class heart, is full of factories that belch smoke into the air and labourers are packed into tight, damp quarters. This was a city split in two—grandeur above, grit below. 

While the affluent enjoyed sprawling parks and grand cathedrals, the working poor found their reprieve in dimly lit taverns and makeshift gathering spots. In this starkly divided urban landscape, places like Joe Beef’s Canteen offered an escape—where overlooked folks could eat, drink, and be seen, if not respected.

It was from this old haunt that a figure larger than life emerged to champion the city’s working class: Charles McKiernan—better known as “Joe Beef”—became a symbol of rebellion and refuge, carving out a legacy as the rough-edged patriarch of Montreal’s waterfront.

His tavern would not only be a watering hole, but also a sanctuary for the downtrodden, a stage for dissent, and a microcosm of the city’s social tensions.

Cheap food and strong drink

Born in County Cavan, Ireland, in 1835, McKiernan was trained as a quartermaster (an officer responsible for providing rations) in the British Army during the Crimean War. He earned his nickname by securing provisions for his regiment under dire circumstances. 

After arriving in Montreal in 1864 with his artillery unit, he took charge of a military canteen on Île Sainte-Hélène, eventually leaving the army to open his own place in what’s now known as Old Montreal.

His canteen near the city’s docks catered to a clientele often ignored—if not outright despised—by polite society: Sailors, longshoremen, and itinerant labourers filled its wooden benches for cheap food, strong drink, and McKiernan’s no-questions-asked hospitality.

His rules were simple: all were welcome, regardless of race, creed, or station. At the height of operations, over 300 workers, beggars, and odd-job men would pass through his doors daily. The menu was a study in class division: the wealthier patrons got steak and onions for ten cents, while the poorest were handed a bowl of soup and bread. His canteen required 200 pounds of meat and 300 pounds of bread a day just to keep up. Some customers were so ravenous they inhaled their food; reports from the time mention several deaths by asphyxiation due to people eating too quickly.

By extending a hand to those shunned by Montreal’s moralistic elite, Joe Beef fostered a community where the rigid hierarchies of Victorian society could dissolve, if only temporarily. He once told a journalist, “I never refuse a meal to a poor man. No matter who he is, whether English, French, Irish, Negro, Indian, or what religion he belongs to, he’s sure to get a free meal at my place if he can’t afford to pay for it.”

But this wasn’t charity as much as it was defiance. Joe Beef relished his role as a provocateur, openly mocking the city’s religious and civic leaders. His disdain for authority was immortalized in handbills advertising his establishment, which brazenly declared things like:

“He cares not for Pope, Priest, Parson, or King William of the Boyne; all Joe wants is the Coin. He trusts in God in summer time to keep him from all harm; when he sees the first frost and snow poor old Joe trusts to the Almighty Dollar and good old maple wood to keep his belly warm.”

His tavern was as much a space for resistance as it was for revelry, hosting striking canal workers, labour activists, and political debates. During the Lachine Canal strike of 1877, for example, McKiernan famously fed thousands of workers with loaves of bread and gallons of soup, proving that his allegiance lay firmly with the working class. He even paid the travel expenses for workers’ delegations to Ottawa to fight for better wages and conditions.

Dinner and a show

The tavern’s infamy wasn’t confined to its politics. McKiernan cultivated an atmosphere of wild eccentricity that blurred the line between pub and sideshow. The canteen housed a bizarre menagerie of animals like bears, monkeys, and even a porcupine which would add this carnivalesque air to the address’ gritty surroundings. Regulars, some say, might witness a bear sipping beer or challenging McKiernan to a game of billiards.

He also ran a farm at Longue-Pointe, supplying the canteen with livestock. Every day, he’d buy 300 to 400 pounds of leftover bread from Montreal bakers, feeding the stale pieces to his animals in the cellar—where a buffalo, wolves, and wild cats also resided.

Despite his rough exterior and crude sense of humour, McKiernan took his role as a benefactor seriously. Beyond providing meals and shelter, he patrolled the streets at night looking for drunk or freezing workers, pulling them from snowbanks to prevent their deaths. If they couldn’t pay for a bed, he let them stay anyway, enforcing a strict set of dormitory rules: silence after 11 p.m., mandatory baths for the unwashed, and insecticide powder sprinkled over every guest before bed.

Unsurprisingly, the city’s middle class viewed him as a threat. Reformers painted the canteen as a cesspool of vice, a den of drunkenness and depravity. The New York Times called his establishment a “den of filth”, while Montreal’s Daily Witness denounced it as “a place of ill fame.” A lot of smear campaigns.

Yet, McKiernan’s defiance only amplified his appeal among Montreal’s marginalized communities. To them, he was more of a champion of their struggles and a voice for their frustrations than he was a tavern keeper.

Line-ups in life and death 

When McKiernan died suddenly in 1889 at the age of 54, the city he had both mocked and served came to a standstill. His funeral drew thousands, including labourers, activists, and everyday citizens who had found solace within the walls of his canteen.

Fifty labour organizations halted work to honour him, and the procession stretched for blocks, a testament to his impact on the working class. While some saw him as a rogue, others recognized him as a man who had dared to create a space where dignity and humour could thrive amidst hardship.

Joe Beef’s death marked the beginning of the end for his infamous tavern. The forces of industrial capitalism and urban reform reshaped Montreal, leaving less room for institutions like the canteen. His legacy endures, though, whether it’s through the name of a city park or a collection of restaurants that live up to the name.

McKiernan’s name lives on in Montreal’s cultural consciousness, immortalized by the restaurant Joe Beef in Little Burgundy at McKiernan Rôtisserie in the Sud-Ouest. But the original Joe Beef was more than a name; he was a force of nature—a man who turned his tavern into a refuge, a theatre, and a tinder box of social justice.

In a city striving to balance progress with its human costs, McKiernan’s story is a reminder that true community thrives not in grandeur, but down in the grit.