[URBAN NOTE] "Montrealers mull over best way to pay tribute to Leonard Cohen"

[rfmcdonald]

Allan Woods at the Toronto Star reports on the debate in Montréal as how to best memorialize Leonard Cohen.

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, who was in Jerusalem when the news emerged, wrote on Twitter Thursday night that the city would honour one of its best-known citizens, one of the few who was able to straddle the city’s linguistic divide.

Coderre wrote that, in the meantime, “I will profit from my voyage to say a prayer for Monsieur Cohen at the Wailing Wall and bring back a rock from Jerusalem out of respect.”

Outside Cohen’s Montreal home, which overlooks a small park and is several strides from the city’s main street, Saint-Laurent Boulevard, fans contributed flowers, photographs, fedoras, candles, cards, cassettes and even a Montreal bagel, to a makeshift memorial.

[. . .]

“It’s a good question that we’re all kind of thinking about. It’s on my mind, too. I’m struggling to come up with an answer for it,” said Zev Moses, executive director of the Museum of Jewish Montreal.

For Montreal Jews, Cohen was a figure who challenged its religious traditions, but went on to become a source of pride, giving other Jews a sense that they were “cool,” Moses said.

“What do you even say about this giant and what he meant for the Jewish community, to the country and to so many people around the world?”