BURST
John McGinnis took some of the most historic music photos in Vancouver.
In 1949, he photographed jazz great Louis Armstrong sitting on a suitcase playing his trumpet after Armstrong was denied a room at the Hotel Vancouver because he was black.
In 1956, he shot Bill Haley and the Comets at the Kerrisdale Arena, Vancouver’s first rock ‘n’ roll show. McGinnis promoted the show with his friend, disc jockey Jack Cullen.
But his best music photo is of a relatively unknown local musician, Rudy Morin, and his trio at Morin’s family supper club, the Gai Paree.
The bespectacled Rudy is sitting behind a Hammond organ. A mirror is placed behind him and angled down, so you can see his fingers play the banks of keys on the Hammond.
Trumpet player John Goudie stands to his left, tilting up with his instrument. Drummer Boris Hocaluk leans over his kit, playing along. They’re all identified in a sign at the side of the stage, which proudly announces that all three are members of the Musicians Union Local 145.
It doesn’t say it on the sign, but in the early 1950s, the name of the trio was Rudy Morin and His Morons.
They had other names as well, starting with Pierre and His Gai Paree Orchestra in 1948. They became Rudy Morin and His Debonairs in 1949, then Rudy Morin and His Morons in 1950.
The Gai Paree supper club opened on Nov. 28, 1947, at 6669 Kingsway at Sperling in Burnaby. The location was far from the big downtown clubs like the Cave and the Palomar, but the Gai Paree played it up, calling itself an “intercity rendezvous.”
The liquor laws at the time didn’t allow public clubs to sell hard liquor, so they sold food and patrons hid their bottles under the table. This is why it was called a supper club, rather than a nightclub.
It was dubbed the Gai Paree because its owners were from France. Rene and Anne Marie Morin were born in Brittany, where they were both orphaned while young. They migrated to the Channel Islands — which are British Crown Dependencies — off the coast of France for work, and married on the island of Jersey in 1903.
The Morins immigrated to Canada in 1912, settling in Edmonton. Rene worked for the Canadian National Railway, Anne Marie ran a grocery store. In 1942, they moved to Burnaby, when their daughter Adele developed health issues.
The family built the Gai Paree themselves, with the help of their sons Rene and Rudy, and Adele’s son Severin, known as Sev.
“The whole family worked tirelessly, digging the basement, carrying bricks and mixing cement,” said a 1953 story in The Sun.
Rene and Rudy gave up promising careers as hockey coaches to work at the Gai Paree. Rene had been coach of the Trail Smoke Eaters and owned the Spokane Spartans, while Rudy coached the Rossland Ramblers.
Rudy and Sev worked for Nat Bailey at White Spot to learn the restaurant business, and when it opened the Gai Paree offered “drive-in car service” for its food as well as in-person dining and dancing. It was initially open three nights a week.
To lure Vancouverites out to the wilds of Burnaby, in the late 40s it had a “free bus offer back to Vancouver” on Saturday nights. The catch was the bus left at 2 a.m. But it still sounds like a bargain: a July 17, 1948 ad stated the $1.50 admission price “includes a good dinner.”
Whoever drew up their ads had a sense of style, and humour. The July 17, 1948 ad featured an illustration of the Eiffel Tower surrounded by music notes, a Gai Paree Supper Club logo that looked like a crest from a 1940s sports team, and an illustration of a bus.
The Gai Paree was busted for booze in 1948 and for selling “untagged” potatoes in 1951. But it thrived, becoming a popular venue for weddings and events.
When it closed in 1975, it claimed to have held 6,000 weddings. That year, it was the site of the provincial NDP’s election night party/wake after Dave Barrett lost to Bill Bennett and the Socreds.
In 1976, Sev rebranded the old Gai Paree as Severin’s, then Diego’s, and it ran for two more decades. It closed in 1994.
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