Montreal's Mimimelon Friendly Family Gathering Place

"Do I have to worry now for my own personal safety?"

"Is there something directed at me? Is there something directed at my family?"

"It's destroyed. Completely destroyed."

"We're kind of used to the hatred that we get."

"It feels like a scene from some kind of a horror film. I don't feel it's real."

Jennie Volfson, co-owner Mimimelon, Montreal bakery

A man peers inside Mimimelon in Montreal’s St-Laurent borough, which was the target of an arson attack on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette

 

When someone she had never before seen suddenly came through the bakery door and shouted "All the Jews will burn", then left, Jennie Volfson was startled, but didn't give it too much thought. Like other Jews in Quebec, and just about everywhere in Canada this past few years, verbal attacks, threats, even more subtle interactions betraying that old familiar curse of rampant antisemitism have become so commonplace, you just move on and deal with that bad taste of a social compact gone suddenly awry. It was only a few months later that she remembered that brief, unpleasant incident.

 

On Monday of last week, November 2nd, at 11:30 p.m. she had an alert from her security company that someone was tampering with the rear door of her restaurant. Surveillance footage later viewed showed an individual making an effort to enter the bakery but having been foiled. Denied entry the person threw a liquid against the exterior of the building, setting it on fire and swiftly leaving the premises.

 

Firefighters lost no time in responding, and the flames were quickly and efficiently put out before they could spread to the interior. Two days later her security company once again called, on Wednesday, 4th of November. She immediately contacted emergency services to respond, at around 12:30 a.m. The result of this second fire was far more dramatic. Ms. Volfson estimates that her Mimimelon family restaurant has been destroyed.  

 

Jennie Volfson surveys the damage done to her bakery Mimimelon in St-Laurent on Wed., Nov. 4, 2026. It was the second of two arson attempts against the bakery in a span of 48 hours. (Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette)

 

Damage to the building was described as "considerable" by Police spokesperson Raphael Bergeron, who stated that indications were that the fire had been set deliberately. Local surveillance cameras would be examined by police and fire investigators in an effort to  determine all possible circumstances leading up to the fire. Physical circumstances, he most certainly meant to allude to, not the circumstances whereby society is inhabited by those whose unreasoning hatred for a racial minority prompts them to act on their vicious antisemitism.

 

Mimimelon arrived as a family business for Volfson, her husband and father-in-law in January of 2015 when they bought the business and turned it into a kosher bakery specializing in a unique peanut-free,  tree-nut-free and dairy-free producer of specialized products for people with allergies. The restaurant quickly became a favourite eating place with the Jewish community in Montreal. "We see people get engaged, get married, have kids", she reminisced. 

 

But that pleasant time when Mimimelon was known as a friendly gathering place where regular clientele would come by for coffee and pastries, where staff watched families grow over the years is gone. The haters who want to see "Jews burn" have seen to that. Does anyone outside the Jewish community notice? Care? What will it take for authorities at any level to take notice and feel responsible to act to correct the situation? Will they ever? Never?

 

For the second time in two days, Mimimelon, a bakery in the St-Laurent borough, was the site of an arson attack on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette