Montreal mourns community grocery store lost to fire

Julio Rivera says it felt like a piece of his soul left his body when he found the wreckage of his community grocery store in Montreal's Saint-Laurent borough after it went up in flames Thursday morning.

"I was in total shock, it's a nightmare," said Rivera, the director of Cocla.

"The tears just fell. I asked myself, 'What did I do to deserve this?'"

He says Cocla is an organization that responds to families' most fundamental need — food.

The store would offer groceries at a discounted price, which many low-income families relied on with inflation being so high. According to a Cocla outreach worker, the store fed up to 200 households per day.

Cocla has been running for 44 years and used to be a restaurant until the pandemic hit, when it transformed into a community grocery store the neighbourhood relied on.

Joanne Schlyburt would pass by Cocla twice a week and said she cried when she heard about the fire. She says she relied on the store's low prices.

"I can't go to the normal grocery store, you'll go for one or two articles but you look at the prices and oh my God. You can't. I'm 76, I'm not 20 years old and my budget is tight," she said.

Schlyburt volunteers by delivering groceries to families in the area and says she knows many people in the borough are in need.

"There's a lot of immigrants that come in, and they need help," she said.

"It breaks your heart to see."

Cocla also held activities for seniors on its second floor to help break isolation.

Cause of fire unknown

Jessica Sbarra, an outreach worker with Cocla, said it isn't clear how the fire started.

She says the fire department told her the fire broke out on the second floor just before 7 a.m. Thursday.

Some neighbouring buildings are also a total loss, like hair salon Coiffeur Adam.

"It's a disaster. You know, I've been here 19 years and now I'm off work," said owner Adam Habib.

Habib says he's waiting to see what his insurance can do and that he's grateful to be alive, but he's eager to get his business back on its feet.

But despite the loss, Cocla has a second location on Saint-Louis Street — a short drive away from the one on Decarie Boulevard. Sbarra says the organization will keep serving the community from there until it can relocate and get back on its feet.

"It's very difficult for all of us but we will get through this," she said.

"Our purpose is to break the isolation of seniors and also to feed the population so that they can eat well and live with dignity because it's not easy today."