Ouimetoscope
Encyclopedia
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
theater
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
dedicated exclusively to showing movies.
Inaugurated on January 1, 1906 at the corner of Saint Catherine
Saint Catherine Street
This article is about the street in Montreal called the rue Sainte-Catherine in French. For other streets of this name, see Rue Sainte-Catherine ....
and Montcalm Streets, in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Canada from a converted cabaret with 500 seats and a small screen, it was demolished to be replaced with a luxurious 1,200 seat movie palace
Movie palace
A movie palace is a term used to refer to the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opened every year between 1925 and 1930.There are three building types in particular which can be subsumed...
that featured air conditioning.
For eighteen years, the Ouimetoscope was the venue for French and American cinema supplemented with local production, accompanied by live musicians.
History
Encouraged by his 1904 success at showing moving pictures with a projector of his devising, Electrical engineer Léo-Ernest OuimetLéo-Ernest Ouimet
Léo-Ernest Ouimet was a Canadian film pioneer.- Early life :Ouimet was born on March 16, 1877 in Laval, Quebec. He planned a career in electrical engineering but stumbled upon showbusiness by chance in 1901, when Le Theatre National in Montreal asked him to rewire the theatre building...
invested his life savings of $
Canadian dollar
The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...
75 into converting an ailing cabaret theater in Montreal's downtown into the first theater dedicated to showing moving pictures of Canada, the Ouimetoscope. Despite the small screen, the theater was an instant success, keeping its 500 seats filled at every showing.
One year later, he reinvested his profits to construct a 1,200 seat amphitheater with plush seating and air conditioning, a rarity at the time, making it one of the very first movie palace
Movie palace
A movie palace is a term used to refer to the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opened every year between 1925 and 1930.There are three building types in particular which can be subsumed...
s. Despite the large investment and the luxurious venue, admission ranging from ten to thirty cents allowed even the working class man and woman to attend (in separated seating sections).
Showing local productions, including his own, news movies, French and translated American movies, the theater would remain open for eighteen years until, in 1922, Ouimet's financial difficulties forced him to sell the Ouimetoscope, which closed two years later.