At his dying mother's bedside, Jim Beauchamp promised to open a pub bearing her family name — Cunningham; the following year, in 2004, the sign lit up on rue Sainte-Anne.
Jim Beauchamp is the youngest of seven children from Lachute — a stay-at-home mother, a trucker father who crossed Canada. He landed in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue for the police technology program at John Abbott College, but by seventeen he was already working the door at a bar, lying about his age. From 1985 to 1994 he worked every job the street had to offer: the Quai Sera, Annie's, the downtown bars, The Commons in Morin Heights, before buying, in 1994, a little place called The Pub, which he would keep for ten years.
In 2003-2004, he put it to two habitués of his bar: «Je veux ouvrir un pub irlandais. Êtes-vous partants?» They were. But the real reason lay elsewhere: his mother had just died, and he had promised her, at her bedside, to open a pub bearing her name — Cunningham. For Beauchamp, an Irish pub is the place where you feel welcome anywhere in the world; he wanted his to be like that.
Twenty years later — celebrated in 2024 — the house is a village institution: chicken wings whose "world famous" sauces are bottled and sold, fries and pub food honoured in the Best of MTL rankings, live music on stage Fridays and Saturdays, and a constant community anchor — tournaments and fundraisers for local causes. A second room followed, in Hudson. Jim and his wife still arrive at 8:30 in the morning to keep the place running; as he tells The Suburban, the trade is 95 per cent work — and the pleasure of seeing faces smile when the door opens.