Eric Andrew-Gee Published 16 minutes ago

The ninth-floor restaurant in the Montreal Eaton Centre harkens back to the heyday of Canadian department stores, when every city's downtown was anchored by one.

When the debonair neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield wanted to treat his wife to a nice meal in 1930s Montreal, he knew just where to take her.

“Welcome home girl,” he wrote in one letter. “I’d like to have lunch with you at Eaton’s.”

The Penfields were not planning to dine at a food court Manchu Wok, ordering something fried and served on a plastic tray under fluorescent lighting.

No, this was the golden era of Canadian department stores, when palaces of commerce served up a vision of the good life to the nation’s middle class. In Montreal’s jazz age heyday, the ninth-floor restaurant o

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