Thank The Dinosaurers In The Labour Movement

How many other family run businesses have bit the bullet because of these dinosaurers?

Deli owners shut Ben's
Smoked-meat `temple' closes after lengthy strike
Dec. 16, 2006. 01:00 AM
SEAN GORDON
QUEBEC BUREAU CHIEF

MONTREAL—Ben's Deluxe Restaurant and Delicatessen, downtown Montreal's legendary smoked-meat emporium and kitsch palace, has likely served its last sandwich.

The owners of the delicatessen, which in its 98 years of business has gained the status of cultural institution, have opted to close its doors as the final act in a messy labour dispute with 22 unionized employees who have been on strike since July.

The landmark deli, where poet and singer Leonard Cohen frequently noshed and former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau stopped in for a bite, is a testament to the glory days of the 1940s and '50s, its yellowing wall of black-and-white snapshots featuring the most famous faces in Canada.

"Through those doors passed the entire 20th-century history of Montreal. ...

"In appreciation, we have an agreement in principle with a well-known institution to preserve what we consider an essential part of Quebec's modern urban collective heritage," read a statement issued by the restaurant's owners.

And the tale goes on......