Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

Modern Quebec stand-up comedy was born on this stage on a Monday night in February 1983. Club Soda opened in November 1982 at 5240 Park Avenue in Montreal, where Guy Gosselin, filmmaker Andre Gagnon and Martin Despres had converted a reception hall into a new kind of cabaret, inaugurated by soul singer Boule Noire. Three months later came the first Lundis des Ha! Ha! hosted by Ding et Dong - the duo of Serge Theriault and Claude Meunier - drawing 700-plus people with 400 more turned away, and launching the weekly laboratory that propelled a generation of Quebec comedians: Daniel Lemire, Andre-Philippe Gagnon, Michel Courtemanche, Rock et Belles Oreilles and many more. Producers Michel Sabourin and Rubin Fogel joined Despres in ownership in 1985, and the Park Avenue room spent the next decade and a half as the melting pot of Quebec entertainment - rock, pop, chanson, world music, electro and humour in a space that could flip between cabaret tables and standing room. Cramped quarters and aging equipment finally closed the original address in July 1999 (the room survives as today's Theatre Fairmount), and Club Soda rose again on 21 March 2000 at 1225 Saint-Laurent Boulevard, a roughly 3.5-million-dollar rebuild custom-designed by celebrated Montreal architect Luc Laporte, opened by comedian Patrick Huard. The new house - about 950 standing or roughly 450 in cabaret format - stands at the corner of Saint-Laurent and Sainte-Catherine in the heart of the Quartier des spectacles, making it a front-line venue for the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Just for Laughs and the city's festival calendar, with thousands of concerts logged across every genre. Ownership passed in 2023 to L-A BE (Let Artists Be), which committed to the same mission of accessible, professional infrastructure for artists and producers. More than forty years after the first cabaret night on Park Avenue, Club Soda remains one of the reference rooms of Canadian live entertainment.