All stories about the Dome (that is, when it really was the Dome) begin and end with Bertrand A. Henry – even the “complications” that happened after his retirement. If you want the official version, the respectable version, of Bert’s life, there are at least two obituaries on line with lovely comments from some of his former students. But I have never been a fan of “official” versions. Bert was an amazing guy, in many, many ways. And the stories . . .
How I met Bert
I had been working as the Equity Stage Manager for the second stage company at what was then called the Saidye Bronfman Centre, now the Segal Centre. Our theatre space was in the old YM-YWHA auditorium in what is now the Sylvan-Adams building. It was one of the last raked stages (for those of you who know what those were) in Montreal. The other remaining one (that I know of) is in Victoria Hall, in Westmount. It was also famous for having one of the last Kosher lunch counters in Montreal, where you could still smoke but you had to choose either a red or green ashtray depending on what you were eating.
I was nearing the end of my first season there under artistic director Phillip Coulter (now a Producer at “Ideas”) when we were informed that it was also our last season. The Manager of the Centre had decided that we were too expensive a luxury and we had to go. It was a pity because not only had I gotten an Equity contract (tough to acquire in those days) but I had got to do a little acting and even to direct an evening of one act plays by Brecht – which I loved doing, although almost no one came to see it. So, it was a summer contract at Festival Lennoxville and then a fall of un–employment insurance ahead of me while I looked for new theatre work.
Finding theatre work was a tough task because it was so rare to find any available and so easy because word of mouth was strong in the community. But it was not until August that I heard of a part time technical job at Dawson College’s Theatre Department, for which I applied. At that time (and probably even today) the people who did the technical work in theatre (including the design of lighting, sound, set and costumes) were much more poorly paid than the actors, particularly because at this lower level (Centaur and below) they had no union. In addition, most of the jobs were by show rather than for long term, like a season or a year. But this job at Dawson was to be for the academic year, even though it was only part time, and that meant that I could continue doing summer theatre at Lennoxville and elsewhere.
I got a call from someone at Dawson inviting me to a job interview at 3990 Notre Dame West, at 11 pm on a Friday night. Now I had been living and working and studying (before the Saidye B.) in Lennoxville for the last couple of years but I had lived in the Montreal area before that and I was perfectly well aware that the St. Henri of that time was a rather unsavory area, largely controlled by the Dubois Brothers gang. In fact, just down the street from the Dome Theatre, they had killed a Dawson student and at least one of them was serving time for it in the penitentiary. Also, it was a rather unusual time to be conducting a job interview. The whole thing had a bizarre feel of unreality to it, otherwise known as the Bert Henry touch.
I arrived for my interview on time and was let in to the building immediately(the last time I ever started anything on time that had to do with Bert). The “interview” took place in the second-floor office and I only got a brief sense of the building as an old (1920’s) movie theatre in a state of poor repair. The gentleman interviewing me was a tall, large, black man in a suit with a dickey instead of a tie and he spoke with a distinctive accent that only place as Caribbean. He took his side of the desk, I took the other side and he began to talk. He was a bit hard to see him since his desk was piled high with … piles. Piles of files. And piles of scripts and piles of essays and assignments and a considerable amount of stuff that I could not identify. Piles of piles.
He talked about Dawson’s acting program and how it was run in this building and another one down the street. And how there was no technical program only an acting stream, so he had to hire a part-time technical director to do all the technical work (with the help of the acting students) but that he could sweeten the deal by throwing in the teaching of a technical theatre course on Friday mornings with a 1/8th teacher’s salary. Then he started talking about how he came to Montreal to create this program (and work at Expo ’67) and then he began to tell the story of “the founding” of the Dome.
About two hours later he asked if I had any questions and when I shook my head “no”, he led me down to the front door and let me out. Two hours had passed and I had not said a word except “hello” at my own job interview. A few days later I got a call from Dawson to tell me that I had the job and to please come down and sign some papers. And that’s how I started working at the Dome.
Now here’s another odd thing. All through the interview I had the distinct feeling that I had seen this guy somewhere before; but I couldn’t place where. Bert was a pretty distinctive looking person but I could not remember where and when I had seen him before. After I got home it hit me: three summers before, I was working as an Assistant Director at a Summer Day Camp in Westmount and this tall, black guy – who said he was from New York and that he danced in Broadway Musicals (at that point he had showed us all a few steps) – had arrived to bring his two daughters to go to the summer camp. And he had a rather distinctive (“Hehh, hehh, hehh”) laugh. That, too, had been Bert.
