Setting the Record Slate

It was a summer day in 1957, with Pat Boone’s “Love Letters in the Sand” and the Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye Love” blasting from car radios across North America, when two buddies took to the highway, Mort at the wheel, Leonard at his side.

Both in their early twenties, both from affluent Jewish families in Montreal, both handsome and rebellious, they had been the best of friends for most of their young lives — at high school, at camp, at university. As teenagers, they used to cruise the rougher districts of the city after dark looking for sex and adventure, drawn by a nostalgie de la boue from their Westmount homes to the strip clubs and all-night diners east of downtown and the smoked-meat delis of the Jewish quarter their families wanted nothing to do with.

This road trip to Mort’s summer house on the southern shore of Lake Massawippi in Quebec’s Eastern Townships was an excuse to hang out together after their longest time apart. Mort had spent...