January 9, 1927: The Laurier Palace Theatre Fire

January 9, 1927: A fire breaks out at the Laurier Palace Theatre in Montreal. There are 78 people killed, nearly all of them children.

The theater was located on the east side of Montreal, at 3215 Saint Catherine Street East. About 250 children, most of them not accompanied by an adult, were attending a performance of the silent film comedy Get 'Em Young. In a tremendous oddity, the film was originally slated to star Oliver Hardy, but he had to drop out, and was replaced by Stan Laurel. Later in 1927, Laurel and Hardy would begin starring together as a comedy team.

The fire was supposedly started by a discarded cigarette. Ushers, not realizing the danger, at first blocked the east balcony exit, and urged the children to return to their seats. And the exit doors opened inward, a fire hazard.

The projectionist, Émile Massicotte, was a hero: He got 30 children away from the locked exit into the projection booth, then passed them out a window onto the marquee above the sidewalk, enabling them to climb down fireman's ladders. Another hero was an usher, Paul Champagne: He helped direct evacuation at the other stairway that was not blocked. Together, Champagne and Massicotte may have prevented over 100 more deaths. It was also lucky that a fire station was just across the street. Of those who were killed, all but 1 were under the age of 16.

With mostly-Francophone Quebec still under the sway, if not the outright control, of the Roman Catholic Church, Father Georges Gauthier, the Archbishop of Montreal, insisted that entertainment should not be allowed on Sundays, and that children should be barred from movie theaters.

A few months later, Judge Louis Boyer (of French descent) recommended that everyone under 16 be forbidden access to cinema screenings. The following year, to appease extremists who wanted the cinema closed to all, such a law was passed, and remained in effect for 33 years, until 1961, early in Quebec's "Quiet Revolution," when things began to be more liberated and sensible.

But before that could happen, in 1954, a church was built on the site of the theater.

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January 9, 1927 was a Sunday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There was 1 game played in the NHL: The New York Rangers beat the Detroit Cougars, 4-1 at Madison Square Garden. This was the building eventually known as "The Old Garden," although it was only a little over a year old at this point. The Cougars would be renamed the Detroit Falcons in 1930, and the Detroit Red Wings in 1932.