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Stroll, who died last week at 95, helped ensure his family business on Ste-Catherine St. E. is more than just a store.
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Sam Stroll, longtime patriarch of a family business described by Montreal filmmaker and photographer Ezra Soiferman as “wall-to-wall pants and wall-to-wall Montreal history,” has died. He was 95.
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For more than 80 years, he was a near-constant presence at the store known officially as Pantalons Supérieur, as the sign at 69 Ste-Catherine St. E. says, but referred to by its legions of devotees as Superior Pants or Superior Jeans.
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“I was first introduced to Superior Jeans, as everyone called it, back in high school when I was learning Yiddish and learning my way around the streets of downtown Montreal solo and with my buddies,” Soiferman, 51, recalled in a Facebook post.
“We used to drop in to the bustling place for our new Levi’s and then have them hemmed for free, on the spot, right in front of our eyes. It was a bargain and a magic show all at once.”
Tributes on the Paperman & Sons website following Stroll’s death on Friday describe his prodigious memory for customers’ names, his kindness, warmth, humour and abiding interest in his family.
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Stroll “was witty and sharp and there was so much to admire about him,” said Jack Jedwab, who worked part time at the store from age 16 through his early 20s.
“Sam was an extraordinary person with a colourful sense of humour. He taught you how to interact with people and make them feel good about what they’re wearing,” he said. “You learned good sales techniques and you learned to interact with people.”
If someone wanted to buy a single pair of pants, “Sam would say, ‘I’ll give you a good deal on two — or three,’” recalled Jedwab, 64.
The store was always crowded and was a kind of hangout, he said. People would congregate while waiting for their pants to be hemmed on the spot, a service still offered.
“His store represented an opening to diversity and engaging with people of all backgrounds — people with disabilities, street people, everyone,” Jedwab recalled. “He was able to interact with everybody across all these boundaries.
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Staff would speak English and French with customers — and “working there is where I really learned French.”
Working there also made him less shy. “For me, it was extremely formative and it defined me,” said Jedwab, who went on to earn a PhD in Canadian history. Today he is president of the Association for Canadian Studies and has written or edited 10 books.
Stroll had interests beside Superior Pants: In the 1940s, he was a semi-professional boxer who fought in bouts across Quebec, and later he trained and owned racehorses who competed at Blue Bonnets until thoroughbred racing was discontinued in the early 1970s. “Sam had a passion for racing — and he was a horse-training genius,” recalled Jedwab, whose father owned two horses with Stroll.
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To walk into Superior Pants is to walk back into the 1970s, said Soiferman, who photographed Stroll there several times. “It has a linoleum countertop, it’s got jeans everywhere, two old sewing machines that work, worn-out carpets and family guys running the place. It’s a true Montreal holdover — and one of the best remaining.”
When Soiferman took pants in to be shortened, Stroll would invite him to sit with him as he waited “and we would talk in Yiddish and English and catch up.” Stroll would reminisce and show Soiferman his boxing trophies. He told Soiferman how he met his wife: It was at a wedding and he was too shy to talk to Bertha Rosen, so he “accidentally” spilled a drink on her dress. “It started a conversation and they hit it off,” Soiferman said. When Bertha died in October 2021, they had been married for more than 71 years.
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He missed her terribly, Stroll told Soiferman, but being at the store, with family, and helping customers from the comfort of his “rickety office-chair throne” kept him busy.
Superior Pants was launched by Stroll’s father, Charlie, in 1924, and Stroll was 14 when he began to work there during the Second World War. “I didn’t want to go to school and I was too young to go to war. My father was a sick man and I stayed in the store to help him out. By the time I was 17, the war was over and I started working full time,” he told an interviewer for a 2016 story in the Montreal Gazette.
“Back then, we didn’t sell jeans — just pants,” Stroll said. “The only ones who wore jeans were workers on the railroad tracks and farmers. People who bought suits usually only bought one pair of pants, so we’d take the vests to the cloth suppliers and match the cloth to the vest, then we’d make the pants.”
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The 1950s brought big changes as cultural icons like Marlon Brando and James Dean wore jeans in their movies — Brando starred in The Wild One (1953) and Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) — and “suddenly, jeans weren’t just for farmers anymore. In the 1950s, everybody started wearing jeans.”
When his father died in 1952 at 56, Stroll, still in his 20s, took over Superior Pants. He and Bertha had three sons, one of whom, Owen, joined the business at 18. The two always operated as partners, said Owen’s son Mitchell, who also works at Superior. “We are one big family and want to keep that legacy going,” he said.
His grandfather lived independently until he slipped and fell in the bathroom this past February and broke a hip. “This was the one that knocked him out,” said Mitchell, 48.
Although the surgery went well, “everything declined after that.” Yet during his long hospital stay, Stroll still managed to charm the staff — and what comforted Mitchell during his grandfather’s decline was his attitude.
“He would say, ‘Mitchell, I have had a wonderful, full life — and I had fun in my life.’”
sschwartz@postmedia.com
Family business is in the jeans at Montreal’s Pantalons Supérieur
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