An ex-Montrealer has turned one of the city’s most famous commodities into a booming business in Burlington, Vt.
Lloyd Squires runs Myer’s Bagel Bakery in Burlington, where he sells Montreal-style bagels made with the same technique he learned at St-Viateur Bagel in the Mile End.
“I’ve probably rolled over 40 million bagels in 30 to 39 years,” Squires told Global News as he rolled bagels at his shop on a Monday morning.
Each individual bagel is hand-rolled, just like they are in the Mile End. They’re then boiled in honey water and put in a custom-made oven that looks markedly similar to the one at St-Viateur Bagel, where he learned his craft as a teen.
“I had been kicked out of the house, I was living in the street,” recounted Squires. “I was going to school and working at a factory at the same time.”
At 15 years old, walking back to where he was staying in the Mile End from his factory job at around three o’clock one morning, Squires ran into St-Viateur Bagel founder Myer Lewkowicz. It was an encounter that changed his life forever.
“He offered me a full-time job and told me he would teach me everything I need to know about making bagels, and that was it,” said Squires.
Lewkowicz knew a thing or two about hard times; he survived the Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
“He was a great guy,” said Squires. “If you didn’t have food and you came in, he’d give you a bagel. He wouldn’t question you.”
Squires perfected his craft at St-Viateur under the business’ current owner Joe Morena.
“Technically, Myer hired him, but I trained him,” Morena told Global News in front of his bagel oven in the Mile End.
After about 15 years at St-Viateur, Squires decided to set up shop in Burlington, Vt., in 1996. He had Morena’s full support.
“I actually went down there and built the oven with him myself. I physically brought in those bricks you see over there. I believed in him,” Morena said.
Squires called it Myer’s Bagel Bakery, naming his shop after the man who gave him a chance all those years ago.
Like his mentors, Squires is a workaholic. He arrives long before the sun comes up and works 12- to 15-hour days. By the time most people’s morning alarms go off, Squires has baked hundreds of bagels.
“I try to get here by two or 2:10 a.m. each day,” he said.
Squires is now shipping bagels all over the U.S. He has regular clients in Florida, California, Texas and more.
“Even two days old, they’re better than what they’re getting in a lot of these places. The Montreal bagel is superior,” Squires said.
In Montreal, the traditional poppyseed bagel is king — but not in Burlington.
“Here, it’s the other way around,” explained Squires. “I sell more Montreal spice bagels. It’s a steak spice blend I perfected.”
It may sound like blasphemy to some.
“You’re not going see me take a bite out of one of those things!” exclaimed Morena back at St-Viateur.
But in Vermont, the customers have spoken.
“I wasn’t expecting to find Montreal-style bagels in Vermont, but they totally nailed it,” said Ottawa native Tyler Levitan as he bit into a bagel at Myer’s. Having been to both St-Viateur and Fairmount Bagel, he called his bagel at Myer’s “just as good.”
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For Squires, bagels are a family affair. His mother and sister got jobs at St-Viateur after him, and both still work there.
“When he comes up to visit, I tell him to come bring me a steak spice bagel!” laughed Lloyd’s sister Gail during her shift at St-Viateur. “He did it. He did it, and I’m very proud of him.”
“It’s a family, it’s a big family,” Squires said.
“I wish him a lot of success. He still comes in to see us. He calls us home,” said Morena.
At 54, Squires has no plans to slow down.
“My success is seeing people happy. I enjoy making people happy. Bagels are a joyful thing,” he told Global News.
If you want to know if a steak spice bagel will bring you that happiness, you’ll just have to make the trip down south to Burlington.
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