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It was in the late 1990s when an elderly man first dropped in at Montreal’s famous Boustan restaurant and ordered a chicken sandwich.

Boustan was halfway between the man’s house and his office, so he started making it a regular stop for late lunches while walking home.

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One time, the sister of the owner drove him home. Another time, a Boustan delivery driver got lost in a downtown residential neighbourhood and knocked on a door for directions, only to have it answered by the familiar regular, who let him use the phone.

Boustan founder Imad Smaidi, known locally as Mr. Boustan, is from Lebanon, a country where a political leader would only appear in public with “20 cars in the front, 20 cars in the back and security,” he says.

Thus, he hadn’t immediately realized that the lawyer with drawn features who came in to eat alone was Pierre Elliott Trudeau. As Smaidi said of their first meeting, “it was an old man I did not recognize.”