Coolopolis

Working Class Unity Bridge still not getting built

2012-02-08T15:30:00.003-05:00

So there is a ton of potential development around the Lachine Canal area but it's still currently designed in a bit of a goofy way.
   Take this example: if you want to cross the 100 metres of the canal around St. Patrick and Angers you need to get yourself into the St. Remi Tunnel and walk through.
   It's about a 800 metre walk, but it's a longer drive as you've got to get all the way down to Church, making it a 1.5 kilometer drive.
    So it's really time to build a new bridge across it now before the yuppies move in and weep about how it'll destroy their view over morning coffee.

The city computer that tells all

2012-02-07T13:59:00.000-05:00

There's a little office in the city courthouse that has a special computer that will tell you all sorts of info on people in this city.

The door says that only lawyers are allowed to use it but anybody seems welcome and if you can figure out the complicated interface (the semi-babe-licious pregnant clerk will help you with a minimum of irritation) you can get quite a lot of info on your co-citizens who have gotten tickets for speeding or tossing garbage out on the wrong day or various other such misdemeanors.

It also has their addresses listed so you can find out where a lot of people live. Somewhere in my pile I have the addresses of where Mom Boucher listed his home, Nick Rizzuto and various other local notables.

Some people I considered dodgy came up clean, others I've known had a long list of infractions including a male stripper/avowed telemarketing fraudster named Jason M. who had a pretty slick technique of nailing me for untold hundreds of dollars over our acquaintanceship. I'd tell you his trick but you'd be tempted to use it.

One woman I knew from that same circle had about 20 arrests for various drunkenness-related stuff.

It got me thinking about her former boyfriend who is a friend that I've lost touch with, probably now living the life of a marginal.

He was a timid little guy. He fathered a son with that hardcore alcoholic, she with the rap sheet of 20 arrests/fines. They had another kid, although he wasn’t the father of the second boy, her dubiously claiming that she had been raped whereas it was likely more of a transaction.

In 2006 or 2007 they partied all summer in Pigeon Park and lived in the streets, while they left the kids with his aging grandparents.

Authorities put their two kids in a foster home. The couple kept drinking and fighting everyday. She pushed him out their apartment window, or maybe he jumped for some drunken reason and he broke his ankle.

They did more drunken fighting and he got sent to jail for the brawls. In his absence she started hanging out with another small, talkative addict and they’d smoke crack together. My friend was arrested again while riding on his bicycle, drunk carrying a beer. He was on my way to my place because I promised him $10.

They put him in jail several months for the parole violation. Now both of his parents, his mom and stepdad Jimmy, have died and he can see his kids once every two weeks if he can get transport to the west island.

He had been delivering pizzas for a while but didn't have a licecense and isn't much of a safe bet to drive safely anyway. Last place he was living that I know of was a tiny rooming house where he had to sleep in a sofa with his legs bent to fit.

When he visits his kids their mom usually simply doesn't come. So tragic, and yet he is still a cheerful guy, very friendly, always laughing. I think he lives down around Tupper street nowadays.

Who is this criminal and what is his legacy?

2012-02-07T09:39:00.000-05:00

This person snatched a purse and then hid as a 39 year old businessman tried to catch him on Sherbrooke in downtown Montreal in 1972.
He leaped out of the bushes and killed the man. He was apprehended and eventually escaped and was re apprehended.
Who is he and why does he matter?

Webster family tragedy

2012-02-04T00:47:00.004-05:00

The Webster family is considered one of Montreal's most successful business families and has donated quite a bit of cash to the city in various forms.
The family accomplishments began when Andrew Webster arrived in Quebec City in 1850 from Scotland. His son Lorne Campbell Webster grew his coal yard and expanded it to over 200 companies. He died wealthy in 1941. He had a son named Colin who then had another son named Lorne.
That Lorne Webster (1928-2004) was well known as a guy instrumental in bringing the Montreal Expos to town. Lorne liked to conduct his meetings in French even though he couldn't speak it much. He liked the sport of rackets, which I have gently mocked somewhere else on this site. I knew a guy who knew him and said that Lorne liked to get a little hammered occasionally every day.
Lorne had an accomplished cousin named Norman and his uncle Howard was majority owner of the Globe & Mail from 1955 to 1980. He had a brother Ben who was an early investor in Velcro and was deemed a genius investor.
So yeah, that's the little bit of the Webster genealogy that I know. Now comes the dark history.
So somewhere around November 18, 1942 George Webster, 14, who lived at 18 Grenville Ave., a posh home in Westmount just up from Murray Park, attacked his mother, brother, sister and Sylvia Cust, 25, a family friend from Australia, with a baseball bat. His brother, Andrew, 8, survived, as did his sister Mina, 12, although both apparently required surgery. Cust said that the youngster entered her room and said, "come quick my mother is hurt" and then proceeded to slug her behind the head with a bat. She was dazed but called police. His mother is only named as Mrs. Andrew R. Webster, because apparently women didn't have first names back then. She was killed dead by her own son's baseball bat rampage. Perhaps worth nothing that George's little brother got his daddy's name, not the elder. Not really sure what happened to any of them after that. Doubt much good happened to George.
Not sure what, if any connection there is between this Westmount family and the other Websters.

Woman decapitated by streetcar in Westmount

2012-02-03T16:45:00.000-05:00

I keep meaning to write a thing about the history of cocaine in Montreal. But somehow can't find the links I had demonstrating the drug busts in bars as early as the 1890s. Cocaine was originally used as an anesthetic. It was made popular during the Civil War. I have a theory that those Southern Gentlemen who hung out in Montreal scheming against the North might have gained a lot of popularity due to their manipulation of this white powder. After about 1920 it was made illegal and you didn't see it mentioned until the 70s.

The other thing I'm working on is the history of food prices. Few have noticed that food prices went way up over the last year and if this trend continues it could devastate the restaurant industry, which has become a fairly huge deal in this city. During the 70s there was a much higher consciousness about the price of food as people spent about 1/4 of their earnings on food, compared to about 1/10 now. We could be returning to that, any instructive comments on those two subjects would be welcome.

But meanwhile I'd like us to remember November 2, 1913 which not one, but two women were killed by streetcar, including Elsie Cairns, 19, who was wiped out at St. Matthew and St. Cat by a driver who assumed she'd clear the tracks on time. And after a day of shopping with a friend, Mrs. J. Rothschild of 323 Grosvenor fell at the tracks near Victoria and St. Catherine and her head was completely severed.

Wednesday? It feels more like a day starting with T.

2012-01-25T10:29:00.000-05:00

Big fan of the work of Montreal cartoonist Michael Em, who has quit all of his other various employments and is now devoting himself solely to his craft. He tells me that he's more of an artist than businessman thus far so he's still trying to figure out how to pull off the logistics of his pursuit. Check out his very impressive site here.

I sometimes write articles in places other than this, and then forget to link to them here. This one on Openfile tells of how Montreal visionary of the interwebs Kyle MacDonald managed to sell a worthless old bag for $10,000, with the purchaser being delighted at the result.

Just let the photos tell the story wontcha?

2012-01-24T11:26:00.000-05:00

Looks like LCC, not sure when. The thing of note is the caretaker clad all out in Habs gear on the right.

Dany Villaneuva's tattoo of his younger brother, Fredy who was killed in an altercation with Montreal police.

A photo that Kate took on Mount Royal some time ago. One of my faves.

This photo found on the mind-bending site internetkhole.com

No idea of where this was taken but I'm deciding that maybe it's Montreal.

Same as above.

Darren Becker, press attache to Mayor Tremblay. Good guy.

One of the apartments I owned in Verdun. Put some effort into dolling it up, but then a friend persuaded me to rent to his friend who turned out to be a prostitute running her operations out of the building. Then the janitor allegedly stole $400 from the apartment just as I was kicking her out. Total headache Verdun, everything about the place.

Some sorta fashion thing that happened in Montreal.

NDG's Frank Orsini with his dad shoveling after that famous 1971 snowstorm.

Chris Nilan apparently stirring things up at Momesso's, I'm thinking this is late 86.

Frontenac looking south from Sherbrooke 1952.

Former Montreal artist Monty Cantsin's artwork.

A nude shot by Conrad Poirier 75 years ago almost to the date.

St. Catherine St. in the 1950s.

The couple that mysteriously drove their car into the river from the south shore.

Woman who was attacked by a pit bull not far from Montreal. Did I mention that I don't like pit bulls?

Molson Cam beer. I might've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Cam Connor recently told an Edmonton radio station that during his time in Montreal Molson's would deliver complimentary beer to every player, something like a case a day. Wondering if they still do it.

The 10 best, worst Montreal city councillors

2012-01-18T12:40:00.003-05:00

Coolopolis has a lot of compassion for city councillors. Nowadays you work about three hours a week and collect $75,000. But you really want to get onto the Executive Council so you try to figure up stunts that will get you off the backbenches and next thing you're gladhanding at random photo-ops like the Save the Tortoises Foundation and Aunts Against Meth Driving Knitting League Marathons.

So here's a list of the all-time best, and worst of the city of Montreal. Note that we don't include borough mayors, or politicians from municipalities that were not the official City of Montreal.

I've got to run some errands, so I'm writing this sorta quick, please put some comments in the box below and I'll improve the thing.

Ames

1-Herbert Ames, around 1890 this businessman got into city politics and wrote a series of books examining the detailed living conditions in Griffintown. He counted the number of bathrooms in each house and the whole shebang and even later built housing in the area on his own nickel.

Fainstat

2-Michael Fainstat - served nobly as a one-man opposition to the Drapeau steamroller when the city was soaked in Olympic debt.

3-Marcel Sevigny - a forward-looking thinker who penned a book and kicked some butt down in Lowerland, quit the Dore team along with a few others to protest the abusive demolition of Overdale.

4-Germain Pregent - This Civic Party councillor was a lounge singer before getting into St. Henry where everybody knew and respected him, a solid guy with a folksy style.

Hanley

5-Frank Hanley - was a thorn in the side of Drapeau who coveted his embattled Griffintown/Point fiefdom. He'd ride down Wellington with boxing champs and also represented his district in the provincial levels. The area declined during his long reign and he was sometimes accused of sleaziness but he was a lively guy full of ideas.

6-Therese Daviau - a pioneering member of the MCM before they lost their lustre, she was elected in her twenties and quit to return to school and was back in between 1990-1998 before becoming an anti-gun advocate.

McShane

7-Jimmy McShane - Mr. Clean was an alderman from around 1875-1895 and was recognized as a rare unbribe-able councillor.

8-Gerry Snyder - Although this west end sports store merchant supported the regrettably-designed Decarie Expressway, he also helped get the Montreal Expos to this city, which was just about as good as it gets.

9-Arnold Bennett - An inexhaustible resource for embattled tenants for decades, he served as a councillor downtown for a few years, eventually getting beaten by Nick auf der Maur who credited the support from the then-not-empty Grey Nuns for the victory.

10-? - I shall leave this blank for reader's suggestions. I was thinking of putting that anglo guy whose name escapes me. He was in city council in the late 60s and later became a senator, from the Townships, he was a whirlwind of great ideas but I am blanking out on his name.

Please suggest your candidates in the box below.

Now for the ahem.. least-good city councillor list

1- Sofoklis Rasoulis plead guilty of defrauding the municipal administration of $13,136 in 1989, then attempted a comeback in 2001 and lost but tried to block the victor Mary Deros by arguing in court that she wasn't using her legal name.

2-Konstantinos Georgoulis, City Councillor for Park Extension plead guilty of stealing $200,000 from the Hellenic Association in 1997.

3-Laurent Dugas, Verdun. This enthusiastic school administrator organized a balloon festival to bring some life to a sometimes too-quiet area but alas saw his career end abruptly when accused of sexually molesting a 17 year old in a single incident in October 2003. I'm not a big fan of Verdun city politics, by the way, and I have some first-hand knowledge of it.

4-Nick Auf der Maur. The well-loved man-about-town and city columnist didn't match up in his civic duties. Although he started off strong with an excellent book critiquing overspending in the Olympics, he eventually sold out his constituents by siding with the demolition of the Overdale neighbourhood, as a result 87 tenants saw their homes demolished for a parking lot.

5-Irving Grundman - the former Habs' GM became a councillor in St. Laurent which became Montreal during the one-island-one-city merger. During that time he was found guilty of accepting a large bribe from a construction company along with his partner Rene Dussault. Grundman, then 76, was sentenced to 23 months probation in 2005.

6-Montreal city councillor Robert Gagnon managed a Caisse Populaire which gave out bizarre loans, leading the province to take over its management in 1996.

List to be completed later.. still mulling over whether these belong:

Line Hamel - As Jose Theodore learned, the sins of the father shall be passed down to the son, and you've got to feel a bit bad for Line Hamel, whose father went around asking for bribes. Her father was busted in 2007 for asking for a $75,000 kickback from a developer, presumably because he would then be able to get his daughter to put it through. Her career ended soon after, possibly through no fault of her own.

Robert Magnan, tavern owner who arranged for there to be no other taverns allowed open near the one he owned.

January 18, 2012. What a day!

2012-01-18T11:30:00.001-05:00

This fascinating Conrad Poirier photo shows how Montreal actually had a knife sharpener who'd sharpen your knives right in the street downtown. This was very convenient for the knife-wielding criminal class and undoubtedly contributed massively to the sense of security of those wielding switchblades around town.

Now yes it is sometimes said that Habs' legend Maurice Richard was an overrated ankle skating draft-dodger (Huh!? - not it isn't -- Chimples). But deservedly or not, he has ascended to the pantheon of hockey gods and is decidedly upset at the lack of tribute to his shrine and has thus disempowered this year's edition with strife and heartbreak. If you get a chance please go to the Cote des Neiges cemetery and lay a rubber offering on his grave to give our team a chance in the playoffs.

The aforementioned David McGimpsey (When did you ever mention him, are you freakin drunk at 11 a.m.?! - Chimples) has put out a book of poems so clever and subversive that it threatens to forever enshrine him as the reigning leader of the whimsical hipster movement.(Whimster?-- Chimples). I'd quote from it but it's very little and I'm constantly misplacing it. The only book that I keep finding instead is Montreal 24 by Bill Brownstein which I can tell you has a black cover. So yeah buy McGimpsey's Lil Bastards if youze get a chance.

Lamb murder party: $50 and you get to commit chainsaw massacre

2012-01-10T11:29:00.001-05:00

Farmer Gilles Fortin welcomed some religious Muslims onto his farm to celebrate a religious services December 8, 2008.
The group arranged to give him $50 for every one of his lambs that he would allow them to kill themselves.
So about 20 of these people went at those little beasts with electric saws. An inspector came by and closed the joyous party right down. Last October in an Iberville courtroom a judge fined Fortin $5,000 for the party which earned him $1,000.
He was guilty of operating a slaughterhouse without a license.

Greatest Montreal crime photo ever

2012-01-06T14:58:00.000-05:00

Here is a lovely photo of a couple who met in Viger Square and wandered east until he murdered her at Notre Dame and Hickson. The man killed the woman and hung around only because he was too drunk to move according to the article from 1954 in Allo Police.

He was Leo Poitras, 51, she was Raymonde Rousseau. She lived at Dorchester and St. Elizabeth, he at 1002 St. Dominique, so they were practically neighbours.

Poitras had been committing various crimes since his teens and had been suspected of committing a terrible murder in Calgary. The Allo Police was less than a year old when they covered this story.

Montreal's top 10 cops of all time - some candidates

2012-01-03T14:33:00.003-05:00

Coolopolis likes its cops old-style, not scared to get their nose dirty or to know who's the good guy and who's the average citizen. The art seems lost on today's cop who can seem irritable and bureaucratic and averse to talking to the press.

Here's an initial attempt at establishing some candidates for a top 10 list. Please provide your input in the comments below.

- Henry Bond was one of 16 kids born to a family in the Gaspe – although he had no kids of his own. He joined the Montreal police force at age 20, and served until his premature death at age 59. In his early days Bond & Bedard became known as one of the best cop duos in the city. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1950 and scored a big takedown when he found Gerry McKuhen, who had committed a murder during a heist in the Lutin Qui Bouffe restaurant and had started a new life in Texas. Bond’s team wanted to wiretap McKuhen’s father but were unable to as the old man didn’t have a phone. They figured he was using his neighbour’s phone and they were right. They tapped that one and voila, they got his location through phone records.

- Julien Giguere managed informants for the Montreal police force in the early 70s and neutralize crime organizations such as the FLQ. The police controller was so knowledgeable that he was referred to as the human computer due to his incredible memory. He was also trusted by his informants, who included Carole Devault.

Rene Duperron was the sheriff of the Main, covering the tenderloin turf of St. Lawrence below Sherbrooke in its rough years. He was better known by his nickname Cartouche, from Cartridge, a reference to the gun he openly wielded. His career spanned 1949 to 1979, the last two decades of which were on his special beat. When the police replaced their badges with name tags Duperron’s read Cartouche as a sign of respect to the reputation he had earned.

- Steve Olynyk – known as the Ukrainian cop who kicked down doors and trashed pinball machines. Around 1968 he - with the help of his eagle-eyed son – also uncovered a timeclock scandal involving the Canadiens. He became a south shore mayor before retiring and recently passing away.

- Dave Adamo. Downtown Station 10 in the 70s and 80s was full of high-profile gangbusters such as Kevin McGarr who once got his skull split open by West End Gang members before retiring and heading CATSA. But Adamo, from the Griff, was the key man in that era. Adamo, who has since retired and moved out west, started on a squad that openly took graft and but he stubbornly refused. Two of his Special Team partners were suspended after looking the other way when the Chez Paree was trashed. Adamo, according to one colleague was so thorough and ingenious that when seeking evidence of a possible murder that had been placed in a dumpster, managed to persuade a reluctant truck driver into tipping it over. His trick was to tell him that there was possibly $10,000 in cash dumped in the garbage. Adamo fingered some high profile loan sharks such as Gary Ball.

- Robert Menard served in the Night Squad which managed to get confessions out of anybody they crossed. When that was disbanded after a Dubois was badly beaten (and apparently dangled in the river) he was sent to the holdup squad where he claims to have gunned down many-a-robber (although examples of this do not immediately come to mind). He then did undercover work which led him onto the trail of Paolo Violi who was discredited by his peers and eventually assassinated in the Sicilian Rizzuto takeover.

- John Spedding patrolled parts of what’s now called The Plateau in the mid 19^th century, living next to the fire station at Laurier and St. Denis, which he also headed. He was not allowed to patrol on the other side of Mount Royal and one day got sick of one of the drunks who dashed over and taunted him from the other side. So he ran home, changed and then thrashed the man, earning himself an $8 fine. A while later he was confronted by a group of rowdy picnicking longshoremen and who came to his rescue – the same man that he beat.

- Robert Cote headed Montreal’s antibomb squad between 1963 and 1976, earning himself an Order of Canada for his troubles. He was not involved in the infamous Westmount bombings which so tragically damaged Walter Leja in 1963, as that part of town had its own police force. Cote grew up in the Point and became a Montreal city councillor for a while after retiring, he remains active in the local police museum.

- Pablo Palacios, the intelligent, articulate Casillian developed a reputation as a sort of Little Burgundy Rambo when he took on the crack dens that had spread throughout that part of town in the early 90s. He would have pointed questions of young men hanging around parks in expensive vehicles, which was effective police work but struck some as racial profiling. After a kid was killed by his own gun Palacios invited a TV crew to come along with him on his patrol, and they showed him entering a crackhouse in uniform, after entering with the correct password, Pizza. He cultivated an crack dealing informant who became suspected in the area, as he appeared invulnerable to arrest. That informant couldn't get fronted drugs and ended up shooting a south American in a drug burn. Police then sought him and ended up shooting the wrong guy, Marcellus Francois in his place. Palacois was then charged with assault after men under his command claimed he had slapped a Crescent St. businessman in an alleyway. He was acquitted and has been working a desk job since.

- Albert Lysacek – although a member of the provincial police and not technically a Montreal cop, this strapping hulk of a cop had every hood looking for him. He’d walk his dog near his home at Fort and St. Catherine with his wife 10 steps behind carrying a gun. He was sometimes credited with killing Richard Blass but in fact was only on the scene when it happened. His role in the FLQ crisis was considered far more important than any other officer.

Some other candidates: Louis Fourcaudot (arson squad chief early 70s who oversaw several arson crises), Louis Cyr, Cinq Mars, Savard, Claude Aubin, Steve Roberts, Andre Bouchard, Savaria, Bumbray, Springate, John Parker.

Coolopolis quiz: what's the most interesting (only interesting?) thing that ever happened in Cartierville?

2011-12-31T14:02:00.008-05:00

Graham survived the dynamiting & died in '38

So yeah, that's the question. Cartierville, known for little more than its occasional spontaneously-weeping Jesus statues.

One thing happened there quite some time ago that seems to have been forgotten by history (you mean you?- Chimples).

Excellent replies. The answer, of course, is that anti-conscription activists blasted Lord Atholstan's Cartierville country mansion at 4 am August 9, 1917. That was the fancy name of a guy named Hugh Graham who happened to own the Montreal Star at the time. He supported conscription and it went through, leading many young Canadians to either do something very noble and fight for their country, or do something very stupid, and lose their lives in the dumb World War I.

     Graham was given his Lordship a few years before and it's easy to see that opponents might have seen this as him selling out young Canadians in order to get a title. It was the last title given in Canada before the Nickle resolution set in, so you could say he wrecked it. Herbert Ames was also very supportive of conscription.
    Now those who attacked Graham's Cartierville mansion did not succeed in killing him and were not that hard to find. They had held many anti-conscription rallies.
   The main schemers, Ellie Lalumiere and one of his cohorts Tancrede Marsil had been in trouble a few years earlier on charges of extortion and Marsil, who got beaten up pretty good by some soldiers, libel. But they sometimes managed to get 3,000 at their anti-conscription rallies where some urged those conscription to simply murder any authority that comes to bring them to war.
    Others disassociated themselves from this hard line and said that the Brits should simply find Brits that went AWOL in the states rather than conscript Canadians. They seemed to think there were countless such people.
   The Google-scanned Montreal Gazettes are not available for the dates in question so reporting on the event is spotty and it's unclear to me right now what sentence they received.We know that seven were arrested September 1, four more on September 4 as the plot to kill PM Borden and Parliament was exposed. Fellow-conspirator Joseph Luduc shot himself in Lachute a few days later as he was being apprehended. Joseph Tremblay admitted that the gang had a long list of targets.
In the spring of 1918 nine went on trial and five were immediately dismissed, including one named Romeo Wisintainer. The jury had trouble deciding the fate of the other four.
    Strangely some were described as cocaine addicts.
Lalumiere seems to have co-operated with the authorities to great lengths, in fact he supposedly even removed the bullets from his co-conspirators' weapons before an attempted assassination.
Atholstam's place in Cartierville is now a park, called Beausejour Park.

Gravenor in 1939

2011-12-24T15:05:00.005-05:00

This photo by Conrad Poirier shows young promoter Colin Gravenor interviewing the famous Rudy Vallee who was visiting Montreal. The photo series also includes a motorcade for the visiting singer leaving Windsor Station on March 31, 1939, so Gravenor, who was around 29 at the time, was pulling out all the stops.

The shot is part of a collection of 24,000 photos taken by the great Poirier that were donated to a museum and many of them are online.
Poirier died in 1968, Vallee in 1986 and Gravenor in 1994.

Yes the world is still a terrible place

2011-12-15T12:03:00.001-05:00

Every folk...kids ring your bell and sing praises to baby Jesus, Santa hauls out his gift bag and sneaks down your chimney ...and everybody eats tangerines in a happy Christmas glow.
It's easy to forget that the world is still an evil place with tons o' bad stuff going on. Here's a pictorial to illustrate some wickedness in the Kweeb.
This woman is one of the many people who have been disfigured by pit bulls. Her face was chewed right off and now she's suing for a hefty sum. Hopefully Quebec will ban dangerous dogs for once and for all. As 2 $hort one rapped, "what're you doing with a pit-bull if you're not selling cocaine?"

The shot on the left is of a woman who took part in a threesome with a man and his wife, er, in 1995. The wife apparently had some regrets and killed her hubby the next day.

The photo at right is of a woman whose niece Melanie Cabay was abducted in Ahuntsic in 1994 and found dead in Mascouche. The young girl's killer has never been found.

The guy on the left was photographed groping a woman's buttocks without government permission. We at Coolopolis want to see written proof of consent. He's clearly having too much fun.

The guy at the right lit up a Christmas tree in Abitibi and 46 people died in the ensuing blaze.

So happy holidays but remember the world is still a terrible place!

QDF Theatre preview

2011-12-13T18:32:00.002-05:00

One of Montrealer's newest and most underrated traditions is the QDF Theatre preview. The various theatre troupes do about 5 minutes of their upcoming shows a couple of times a year. I attended an excellent one at the Mainline, perhaps it was the first-ever and got a big time kick out of it. And last night I went to the one at the Rialto and it was pretty cool too. The Rialto is a great space but almost too big. The Mainline was packed and that made for a great atmosphere, no need for mikes, etc. And the host was very acerbic, making fun of people to their face. Last night a couple of those elements were missing but there was still a free beer stub and I got two, so I was happy as were the vagrants at the next table. Seriously.

The MC Quincy Armorer is a very cool guy, he runs the Black Theatre Workshop but I find him a bit insipid as MC, I felt that I was going to throw up when he told Leni Parker that he thought she's beautiful. If he were any more inoffensive I'd suspect he's angling for a job on CBC radio. The public should attend these things but it seems mainly attended by theatre actors. So a large part of the crowd was actors waiting to go on. That needs to be repaired. So yeah, I'm doing my bit to promote it a bit more.

So I shot a little illegal video of the event and pop it here for your general perusal and enjoyment. The most eyecatching was probably the Brett Watson thing, which you'll see here but there were other promising ones too.

Girouard highway entrance, open only for cops!

2011-12-13T15:10:00.000-05:00

Coolopolis pointed out a couple of weeks ago that the closure of the entrance to highway 15 south on Girouard has launched a world-ending traffic cataclysm in the West End. So yeah, as we can see here, it's still entirely possible to get on the highway, but only legal if you're a cop!

Chris Barry solo show 2nite $6 only

2011-12-10T13:14:00.001-05:00

The studly and alluring Chris Barry is pulling an Occupy Petit Campus tonght and it’ll only cost youze six bucks to hear all da hits.
Barry, a curious fellow with a twisted sense of humour that some (ok, all?) can’t appreciate, has been astonished to discover that the world has suddenly considered his music quite brilliant.
“I don’t know if it’s because of the 222s or what but I must get about two emails a week from people who just discovered my stuff now and love it. It's crazy. All my old records, including the Pillbox record that I made a million years go and sold 5,000.”

"My friend got it for $2.99 but now I see it on Amazon UK for 76 pounds and people are buyin’ em. Slip Into the Crowd, the 222s first single, I saw somebody sold it recently for $130,” he told Coolopolis.
So yeah, the point is, hurry up and get your ticket because with the way stuff has been inflating around this guy you’ll be paying $400 to get in if you wait.

Musing about immigration

2011-12-05T12:54:00.002-05:00

Next time youze wanna gripe about living in Canada, give some thought to tens of millions, even billions, who would give their right thumb for the right to live here. Many Canadians never give a thought to the way we choose our immigrants and whatever we choose, it will be a system that's bound to leave people unhappy.
If the candidate has good education, language skills a young age and so forth, they're likely to be accepted on the point system. But that could be argued to be unethical as we are effectively raiding talent from others countries which invested in these people
If we take refugees, or do some other sort of lottery, then that also has its inherent degree of unfairness.
Some people can get a tourist visa to Canada and decide they like it and then try to stay as refugees. They can work for the two-or-so years until their hearing comes up, or even go on welfare. I know Russian who came here via Israel who bumped into Toronto Mayor David Miller and got public housing until he was kicked out back to Israel.
Of course, one has to get in the country first to get a good crack at doing that and people from many countries simply can't get in. Haitians, for example, have a very hard time getting a visa here, wheras people from some place like St. Lucia or Grenada can come up fairly easily.
And while each individual immigration story might be insignificant for the public, they are massively important to them and their families. Take for example Vernette Emile who was headed towards becoming a citizen by marrying Jason Lesage in the Ottawa area. Alas Jason was stabbed to death in his apartment in 2009 before her papers could come through and her attempts to stay due to a threatening ex-boyfriend named Dale back home were rejected because St. Lucia police arrested Dale. Her attempt to appeal the judgment also failed.
Another interesting example: Roma (aka gypsies) from the Czech Republic had been coming to Canada and getting accepted as refugees under the explanation that they were being targeted by skinheads back home. Canada accepted 94 percent of those who used this excuse until 2009 when the Federal Immigration Minister was quoted as saying that .."it’s hard to believe that the Czech Republic is an island of persecution in Europe.”
After that, the total went down to zero percent and as you could see here, their attempts to appeal those rulings also failed.
Speaking of the Roma, I had recently been told of a father who sends his 10-year-old son to ask people on the street for 50 cents to use the phone to call his parents, a well-dressed guy right in front of the Cote-des-Neiges plaza. In another west end metro station a mother sat on the floor begging with her young daughter for change.
So yeah, Canada is a vast and relatively empty-country which could really use a lot more people to fill up all that space, especially Manitoba. However there needs to be a better public dialogue on exactly how this can be most effectively done.

Cadillac Willile rolls out of town

2011-12-03T23:31:00.000-05:00

Cadillac Willie rolled out of Montreal at 6 am this morning for the last time.

The longtime entertainer from Los Angeles was recently widowed and living at 71 Prospect in Westmount. He was a veteran magician/mc/comedian/drummer who toured around all over North America but rarely played Montreal.
The photos are from a collection which include amazingly brilliant shots of some of the semi-clad women has has gotten to know mixed in with all sorts of other shots of his kids.
Willie got his nickname from the Cadillacs he constantly owned and when he drove off to Toronto this morning it was, of course in a Cadillac car.

He is quite close to his son, a fireman in New York who happens to be married to Aretha Franklin. He has loads of photos of his son and himself at various parties with other famous celebrities.
I did not know him well but he is a great storyteller and had a tale of meeting his long-time wife. She was apparently pretty hammered and he tended her to health. He himself is a non-drinker and is religious enough to have a unique phrase that he utters each time he answers the phone, as you can hear below.
Alas my camera battery died on me when I went to see him so I couldn't do many copy-shots of his great photo collection and of course I didn't have the scanner handy but if anybody ever crosses paths with him please try to get his memorabilia recorded for posterity.
One of his business cards had his image on one side and a some sort of escort on the other. He explained that if a man's wife caught him with the woman's card, he could flip it over and say, "no honey that's just Cadillac Willie's card."
He is now well into his 80s and has lived a full life and was rarely lonely. "I've had enough p.... for many lifetimes," he told me.

Gangstas in wheelchairs

2011-11-29T13:49:00.000-05:00

I was chatting with a friend of Coolopolis a few months ago who told me about a guy in a wheelchair here in Montreal who was left disabled after a motorcycle accident about 15 years ago. (Can't seem to find your # if you're reading this, gimme a shout). The kid claims to be the love child of legendary West End Gang boss Duney Ryan. From what I was told he's a pretty tough guy in spite of being in a chair and seems to love confrontation.

Then a few days I heard from another source that an Irish Montreal guy who has been in a wheelchair for the last 15 years after a motorcycle mishap is being charged in court for allegedly persuading some Hells Angels buddies to beat up a police surveillance guy who was shooting photos of the group while partying in Mexico.

Must be the same guy, no?

The case was going to be reported in the local media but the lack of a photo of the accused lead the story to be shelved into such image could be produced. So .. um.. anybody with a photo of a guy named Shane Maloney?

Favoritism in the justice system?

2011-11-28T15:07:00.003-05:00

You realize pretty quickly that the justice system favours some over others.
One example: the former king of the city, Saku Koivu. The longtime Canadiens captain was a God in the spring of 2002 when he returned from cancer and led the Habs over the Bruins in the playoffs until his team was wiped out by the Hurricanes. Koivu lived at 34 des Tourterelles in Nun's Island, Verdun. In 2002 he must've gotten a nice fancy car because he received five speeding tickets, on June 18, August 20, September 3, October 28 and November 19. The first three were rescinded.

The June and September tickets were retracted by prosecutor Rene Boucher in November 2005. There's no other explanation but the clerk told me that this usually means that the accused is out of town or too much time has elapsed.
The August ticket was tossed out by judge Pierre D Denault in June 2009. The final two seem to have been paid and there were no further tickets, so presumably Captain K got the message to finally slow down.
Compare that to the tickets received by brothers Tony Magi and Rino Magi who have been repeatedly described in the press as possibly being involved with mobsters. Amazingly, neither apparently has a criminal record.
But you get the idea that they haven't been given an easy time with the local cops. Tony was given a ticket on May 18, 2009 for having "sali les pavages" at 5666 Upper Lachine, ie, they ticketed him for tossing a cigarette on the sidewalk. Alberino Magi was nailed for walking his dog without a leash at Trenholme Park. Also a bar on Upper Lachine called The Jungle Bar was denied a permit in January partly because Tony Magi was seen on the premises.

Where that?

2011-11-28T11:36:00.002-05:00

Anybody know where on this Plateau this fine old building once stood?

Sal The Ironworker sleeping with the fishes

2011-11-25T14:55:00.004-05:00

Lots of questions concerning the unnatural demise of Salvatore Montagna Thursday morning in Charlemagne, which just across the river east of Montreal.
Montagna was mocked in the New York press for being "sent to the boonies" when deported to Canada and resettling in his former home town of Montreal.
One report criticized authorities for believing that the former NYC Bonnano family boss was attempting to go straight. Yet becoming a legit businessman would seem like a logical thing to do considering that the local Sicilian mobsters have been dropping like flies and as an entrepreneur in the metal business such as himself had a path to a quieter life. Also there's no point in getting killed when you have a wife and three kids.
Montagna did not live at the house he was shot at. His car was not there, so he was given a lift. The house is rented by a guy in his 60s who is known to the police but his name was not revealed. It's not clear whether Montagna came willingly or not.
It seems that he was chased towards the water by a gunman who shot him. The little creek near the crime scene is shallow, and he got to the other side, so his knowledge of the terrain suggests that he probably knew the spot.

The funeral (from CTV Mtl)

Initial reports made mention of a white van leaving the scene.
And so who killed Montagna? Some theories: the Toronto mob wants to make Montreal a branch of their own operation, Montagna was supposedly in discussions with Raynald Desjardins (who had also been targeted for assassination) and Joe Di Maulo. It's possible that the Hells Angels could have simply been trying to get the Mafia out of the way. We know that the Rizzutos empowered the Hells by hiring them to distribute their drugs but the bikers became far more powerful. The ensuing biker war surely honed some murderous skills, so the daring killing is not necessarily beyond them. There's also some mention of street gangs, but that seems a little dubious and then there's always the possibility of local infighting or orders from New York, which seems less likely because the Bonnanos have apparently lost their grip on the local mob and don't even collect tributes anymore.
TVA reported Friday that Handsome Tony Mucci had been seen in the area near the house recently. Mucci is thought to be the acting street boss for the Rizzuto family and spent a month in jail last fall for carrying a gun and a taser designed to look like like a cell phone. His bodyguard Carmine Serino was also convicted of weapons charges.
Mucci, 57, first hit the stand at age 17 in a tavern shooting in which he recanted his witness report. He was accused of trying to extort a pizzeria owner of $5,000 and then he attacked Harry Ship's two sons with a knife outside a nightclub as well. Two years later the then long-haired St. Michel barman made his name by shooting Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, crime reporter at Le Devoir, in 1974. Charbonneau survived and became a PQ MNA. For those two crimes he was sentenced to eight years in prison. He probably deserved a bit more than that.

Study proves that Cavendish can be extended south

2011-11-22T12:34:00.001-05:00

The photo panorama at left offers proof that Cavendish could be extended from St. James to that weird little street below the hill (Pullman). It shows two responsible-men driving muscle cars in a very safe and respectful manner down the hill.

It's a scene from a film called A Special Magnum, which has been described as one of the greatest car chase scenes ever but I don't know why because it's pretty much the way I always drive.

So as we know, Cavendish was supposed to get extended to the north but Cote St. Lunatic has blocked that exquisite plan that would allow drivers to get to Ikea more easily.

If they were to respect motorists they could allow people to get from the Angrignon Mall to Ikea in just a few minutes, especially if you drive the clever way these gentlemen are rolling.

Why is this spot so mysterious?

2011-11-21T15:20:00.001-05:00

One of the most mysterious local unexplained events of the millennium occurred around this spot close to Montreal southward last year. Can anybody name it, or perhaps more importantly try to figure what happened?

At this spot in the south shore west of the island of Montreal a lovely young couple in their 20s drove straight into the water and drowned one summer night. Nobody has ever presented a theory or offered any insight into how or why this couple from the area would have drowned in such a senseless way. Perhaps I'll get a copy of the coroner's report to see if it offers any ideas. I'll present more info when available.

Top 10 movies shot in Montreal

2011-11-20T17:09:00.007-05:00

Coolopolis, as you know, surpasses comparable sites due to one secret weapon. We own a swaggerin' simian with swappable brain implants. As long as Chimples avoids moving his head too quickly the result can be spectacular. So we harnessed that super-computer brain to um deconstruct uh logorhythms to get us a definitive list of the best 10 films shot in Montreal. There is no disputing this list but you are free to try in the comments section.

1-300 (2005) THIS...IS.. SPARTA!!

2-Wait Until Dark (1967) Blind Hepburn smashes light bulbs with her cane.

3-Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

4-Montreal Main (1974) "Y'from this district? You from NDG-way, Snowdon?"

5-The Score (2001) Brandon, De Niro, Norton, celebs-a-plenty!

6-J'ai tué ma mère (2007) Cuz he's so ferny!

7-The Apprenciceship of Duddy Kravitz (1974) Yummy! Wilensky's Light Lunch

8-The Aviator (2004) Leo!

9-Catch me if you can (2002) More Leo Di Caprio goodness

10- ~~Shattered Glass~~ ~~(2003) A movie about plagiarism!~~ The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964) Porn for historical streetscape rubberneckers

Honourable mentions: Deadbolt with Justine Bateman, The Trotsky, Blades of Glory,

Didn't make the cut cuz Coopolis found them annoying: Benjamin Button, Jesus de Montreal, Funkytown.

Who is this dude?

2011-11-18T19:39:00.001-05:00

This old time newspaperman moved from New York to Montreal in the late 60s or early 70s and was, rather strangely, known for a scintillating love affair more than any other accomplishment in the realm of banging away on Underwoods which he did for several decades, can anyone name him and perhaps more importantly, his well-known on-again-off-again lover?

Answer: Yes Harold nailed it, it's Nat Perlow, editor of the Police Gazette, supposedly the world's-first tabloid. H came to Montreal when Joe Azaria bought the struggling publication in the early 70s. Perlow was the longtime on-again-off-again lover of legendary movie star Veronica Lake and the lived together on Queen Mary in the 1970s. He transported her dead body over the border to Vermont in 1973, pretending she was still alive because he wanted to respect her wish that her death be reported to have taken place in a wholesome environment. Perlow died in1988.

Quiz of the day - who is this guy then?

2011-11-15T00:06:00.008-05:00

This guy moved to Montreal at a young age and stayed here the rest of his life, making a big-time name for himself around the world and in this town. Anybody? Hint. He went to Germany in the mid-30s and might even have shook Hitler's hand. Hint2: He was also closely associated with Dr. Ewan Cameron. Hint 3: He and his brother were both doctors. Hint 4: He was one of the fastest runners in the history of Canada.

Yes we have a correct answer. It's Phil Edwards, born in Guyana, came to Montreal via New York, was a McGill med student who could run fast enough to bag five bronze medals for Canada in the '28 Amsterdam, '32 Los Angeles & '36 Berlin Olympics. Edwards became a doctor at the Royal Victoria hospital where he specialized in tropical diseases. Although he was there at the same time as the infamous Ewan Cameron, they were not actually all that closely associated, so the clue was a little misleading.

Historic Montreal pics from the age of the tailfin

2011-11-14T13:32:00.000-05:00

In case you missed it, these are photos from an amazing collection recently posted on Flickr by 78-year-old Alfred Bohns of Laval.
He shot a ton of photos when he arrived here from Germany in 1958 but stopped around 1960.

I interviewed Bohns recently for an article I wrote on openfile, click here to have a peek.

This shot of Al Palmer Boulevard, aka Dorchester, shows an old-timer probably no-longer alive, dapper as can be. The pic below was shot, well nobody is sure where, but the image really proves that tailfins were a very important part of the cityscape for a few years.

Quiz of the day - who is this?

2011-11-14T10:16:00.001-05:00

This fellah moved to Montreal and stayed for a few years around 1900, that's a photo from him in his time here. He went on to live a very strange life, moving many different places and radically changing his look, as you can see on the left. His existence was considered sufficiently notable to be written up in a couple of autobiographies.

It is indeed Ignatius Timoty Trebisch-Lincoln who came to Montreal after kicking around Europe. He was born Jewish but switched to Protestantism and was involved in a local Presbyterian movement aimed at turning Jews into Christians. He left after a few years and became a British MP and then moved to Asian and became a Buddhist monk, all the while engaging in various spying and counter-spying stuff. He lived in Montreal from about 1900-1903 but I haven't seen the books about him.

Claudio Di Giambattista, incompetence in landlording

2011-11-11T14:32:00.000-05:00

Land Claudio Di Giambattista (at left, taken from a screen grab from a CTV Montreal story) has consistently proven unwilling to repair apartments when they fall into disrepair. Yesterday the city ordered tenants at his Stuart Ave. building evicted due to the fact that they had become unliveable. He explained to Maya Johnson on camera that he did not do the repairs because tenants were not paying rent.
And in a sense he is right. Many tenants at his building appear to have simply stopped paying, however he himself is to blame. He has taken nine tenants to the rental board this year and missed every single one of the four dates that he had been given. When this happens the attempt to recoup unpaid rent is simply put aside.
Now, it seems that the if the tenants are living for free they might have kept their good thing going by simply trying to undertake to do the repairs on their own without blowing the whistle. As for the landlord himself, I wonder if he has ever been considered for public curatorship as he apparently has had difficult managing his affairs for many years now.

A never-been-told story about Quebec's only terrorist assassination

2011-11-11T14:11:00.001-05:00

The only real big-time political assassination in modern-day Quebec took place at 5630 Bachand in St. Hubert on the South Shore (it was 5630 Armstrong but the city fathers changed it to Bachand. Not a great choice since Mario Bachand was one of the founders of the FLQ). It has been widely known that the FLQ did not actually mean to kill Laporte but once he died they made it look like part of their strategy.

But there's an untold story about the night of October 17, 1970 that Bourassa Liberal Cabinet Minister Pierre Laporte was strangled to death by Paul Rose and . Three journalists, a guy named Charlie from Pulse News (now CTV Montreal), photographer Aussie Whiting and a newspaper reporter named Ted Church decided to play sleuth on that evening.

They drove around the South Shore and eventually stopped and parked on that very same little street that Laporte was being killed in at that very moment. They sat there for some time and even dozed off for a while. They eventually returned home and heard the next day that they were actually unknowingly just a stone's throw away from where one of the most famous moments of Quebec history was taking place.

(Of course the War Measures Act was called and many well-known celebrities were hauled in and the army was summoned and many soldiers camped out in temporary makeshift barracks at the post office on Peel and St. Antoine.

When I was growing up, there were no shortage of people who'd complain about being jailed during the WMA, including Nick auf der Maur and Donald Peacock. Even people running for city council were jailed, including Dr. Denis Bellemare, who ran against Drapeau for the FRAP Party. Their leader Paul Cliche refused to denounce tererorism, which was pretty stupid. His party fared very poorly in the election and you could pratically see Bellemare shaking his head in the background as the nervous-looking Cliche answers questions in this photo.).

The secret history of the Champlain Bridge

2011-11-04T15:40:00.004-04:00

Louis St. Laurent was known for his wicked high-fives

I like Louis St. Laurent.
In fact, I owe my life to former Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent because one of his decisions put a lot of money in my father's pocket, without which dad might not have sought to have a larger family, and I might not have been born.
Canada's PM from '48 to '57 was born in the Townships with an Irish Canadian mom and a French Canadian dad. He was bright enough to win a Rhodes scholarship but turned it down and became a corporate lawyer. He headed the national bar association but had no interest in politics until Mackenzie King begged him to join the Liberals to fill up a gaping need for Quebec talent. He was already quite well advanced in age when voted in as PM in 1948 and presided in an age of relative wealth. Quebec could thank him for being the father of equalization payments.
St. Laurent was also the father of the Champlain Bridge, which he announced and funded in the late 50s. The bridge, which spans his great watery namesake river, is Canada's busiest but it was built in a counter-intuitive spot. Logically, it should have been placed further east where the crossing is much shorter.
My father, however, lobbied hard to have the new bridge built through Nun's Island, which was considered to have no value as it was swamped annually with ice. He had purchased the largely-vacant island on $5,000 of borrowed money a few months before. So with a deadline looming on a second much-larger payment, my father Colin Gravenor kept banging away letters under fake names to newspapers lobbying for the bridge in the area it ended up. His argument was that it would be a longer bridge and therefore more expensive, but the vacant land at both ends would be cheap to expropriate so that would lower the cost.
To his delight, St. Laurent sided with that view and announced that the bridge would go through this location west of downtown, along with an ice-bridge, and it would even have an exit to his Nun's Island. This decision made my father's property considerably more valuable and he sold out for a profit of $2 million. My father died a rich man, although I never got any of his money.
And yet there's a spicier version of that story. Another version that my father told others, but not myself, was that he blackmailed Prime Minister St. Laurent, saying that he would expose his fondness for young men if he did not put the bridge in that spot. I do not know whether this was true or not, but my father was quoted in Time Magazine in that era boasting that he knew where a lot of bodies were buried, as he had been involved in the Midnight tabloid.
Louis St. Laurent died at 91 at his home in Quebec City and was never involved in any known public scandals.
The new plan to demolish the bridge doesn't make much sense to me. The better and cheaper option would be to build a structure alongside this while it's being repaired, and leaving a wider bridge in the end.

Drinking for the reproletarianization

2011-11-02T17:41:00.000-04:00

News from the class war

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

I’ve seen my future and it’s chips and bingo and bowling and beer and wet T-shirt contests and more beer and drunken wife beating. I just needed to find a nice local place to help me get used to the idea.

Consider me one of those local anglos in full socio-economic freefall, having discovered that the cherished principle of social mobility carries the less talked-about possibility of downward movement. And the New World concept of meritocracy, which means that you’ll do ok if you’re not totally useless, has turned out to be bad news for me.

You see, thanks to a flukey real estate deal my family pulled off in the 50s, I was raised among society’s cream high on the hill in Westmount.

But perpetuating my role among the privileged elite has turned out to be an unsustainable project. I now find myself living in a part of town where the neighbours recently set their home on fire because they were too stoned to turn off the oven. A few doors down is a basement den where drunks come and go with their two-fours, their paper-bag-sipping leader saving on laundry by sauntering around shirtless from May to September. Around here garbage is disposed of in the old fashioned-way: it’s tossed into the back yard.

As comeuppance for being a slapped-down arriviste, I suffer severe class disorientation. On one hand, I’m not with the rich folks who blather on with their idiotically self-important ideas in their condescending Martha Stewart aristocrockery accents. And yet meanwhile, my irreversible snobbery would seemingly doom any effort to join the WWF-watching working class as they grunt in their 12 word vocabularies, sporting polyester sweat pants, dreaming crap dreams abut winning the lotto and generally being too dumb to stand upright.

Academics call my situation proletarianization, a term I learnt in a biography of Hitler, as the author blamed the little Austrian’s pesky nature on his expulsion from the upper classes. Theoretically, the city is full of walking-time bomb in cardigan sweaters. And the fear of social decline is, of course, the inspiration of the notion of Hell which, of course, was drawn up to exploit our fears of being forced to move into a freezing one and a half in St. Henri.

So to face my destiny I went drinking in the toughest bar in the fabled working class area of Pointe St. Charles. The Do Drop Inn on Wellington is said to the kind of place where they’ll beat you and toss you out if they don’t like your face. Don’t be fooled by the pleasantly exposed wood beams and charming halogen track lighting, this is a rough joint that – judging by its hardcore patrons - would more suitably be called, The Do Drop Out.

Ready to earn my working class stripes, I stomped into the bar and sat next to a guy named Wilkie, or maybe it was Alkie. Down the bar a scary-looking Neanderthal with an albino tan kept urging the curvy, attitudinally challenged barmaid to tell the frequent phone callers that he wasn’t there. Baseball caps and beards were sported by just about everyone except the lone woman patron who wore a locally inspired “hair helmet” cut.

Judging by the large heads, squeaky voices and cheap babble, I was among the genuine Irish working class. I studied the witty banter and waited for my chance to wade in with my own bonehead commentary. Soon the place started to feel like home. I wondered: could I finally have found my social equals? Were these my true brothers in jolly deprivation? Could I be accepted as a full-fledged member of the working class?

At this moment, a rude-talking loud guy with a major beer gut noticed me. I waited anxiously as he read me with his eyes. “How’s about it Sir,” he said, “don’t you think you should buy a round for the house?”

Larry Lopresti and intergenerational gangster values

2011-11-01T16:35:00.004-04:00

Lorenzo Lopresti's father Joe

The year Larry Lopresti was born, an American sociologist naively concluded that the Mafia didn’t exist because the new generation didn’t care to take part in illegal activities.

This was a hopeful assessment. However it was wrong. Many – not all – children of Mafioso take up the torch, even when everything suggests that it’s a bad idea.

Is that Lorenzo, third from right on the top row?

Lorenzo Lopresti, aka Larry Lopresti, aka Enzo Lopresti was shot dead on his first floor concrete balcony in St. Laurent City on Monday October 26, at 8:20 p.m. He exited his apartment because, for health reasons, he didn't want to smoke inside.
The 40-year-old Lopresti had reportedly sought to emulate his father, who was vital to the drug-pipeline that connected Montreal to the Gotti New York.
The Zips, as the Sicilian Mafia ruling clique is known, was a lot more receptive to dealing drugs than their Calabrian predecessors. And of course dealing drugs comes with longer drug sentences, which means that more will snitch, which means more killing people you think might turn you in.
Larry Lopresti was a mere 21-year-old when his father’s body was brought to the city morgue. Big Joe Lopresti, 44, was found dead at this spot in the evening of April 29, 1992. He had recently been acquitted on heavy criminal charges as the prosecutor's case fell apart.
Giusseppe Lopresti’s funeral was attended by many, including cheese magnate Lino Saputo, now one of Canada’s richest men. Lopresti had previously, allegedly introduced federal MP Alfonso Gagliano, who was then an accountant, as a soldier for the Bonano crew. Of course Gagliano denied it.
One might think that the son of a slain gangster would steer clear of a world of crime but authorities indicate that he failed to do so and it cost him his life.
Lorenzo appeared determined to continue in crime even before his father was killed. He wrote in his graduation profile in the Father MacDonald Comprehensive Yearbook of 1989 that he wanted to emulate his father.
It might have been understandable that a new immigrant, shut out from so many avenues to professional success, can turn to crime. But their children do not have that same excuse.
Larry Lopresti grew up on Rizzuto Row and his mother Giuseppina Sottile also had roots in the mob, as her mom was from the Mongiovi clan. Joe Loopresti told the FBI that one of his two kids, both sons, had some sort of bone cancer.
Lopresti's activities maybe or may not have included running a bar. A person with the name Lorenzo Lopresti ran the Yacht Club in a strip mall, it might have been amongst the worst-run bars in the city. It was rarely open, had no operating fridge, people ignored the no-smoking ban, its waitress got hammered and so on. It was shut down October 12 by the RACJQ officials who noted that a certain Antonio Lopresti, possibly his brother, was also in the bar quite often. The year before, when it was called the Leger Bar, it also had its license suspended.
Lopresti was likely killed for the same reason the other zips were iced, and nobody knows what that exact reason is right now. Speculation is rife and one clue is that he was very close to Federico Del Peschio, who was a close friend of Nick Rizzuto Sr. before being killed in 2010 at age 59.
Without a complete genealogical chart, it’s hard to know if the various patronymic namesakes are related to those who of an earlier generation that had ties to the mob.
But some names, such as his Larry Lopresti's mom's maiden name, Sottile seem to come up in court files. There was an Armand Sottile who recently had his bar license revoked at 6900 Park Avenue. It's unclear whether there is any family connection.
One could spend countless hours trying to connect family ties onto new and old Mafia misdeeds.
Take Roberto Pannunzio, for example. He was busted for selling drugs in 2006 from the now-closed Nostalgia Bar on Sauve East where cocaine was hidden in the ceiling. Was he the son, nephew or other clansman of Roger Pannunzio, who was once accused in mid-70s of helping launder mafia money with Willie Obront?
Just last week, Francesco Cotroni and Bruno Cotroni were sentenced to six months for running a 900-plant marijuana grow-op in La Tuque. The brothers, both grandsons of Violi-supporting Calabrian Frank Cotroni, who died a peaceful death four years ago, both have criminal records.
Once again, not all people with the same names as gangsters have gangster roots and even those who descend from gangsters do not always become gangsters. That cannot be stressed enough, one must never prejudge someone based on such wild guesses.
But once a generation of criminals has passed, society must do its all to make sure their children do not continue the legacy of crime.
One would think that seeing your father killed would be sufficient disincentive for a guy like Larry Lopresti. It’s time for the authorities to use whatever means necessary to look in on criminal families and make absolutely certain that all measures are taken to avoid perpetuating those terrible values onto the next generation.

Christine Atallah RIP

2011-10-31T11:25:00.002-04:00

Sad news about talented and well-loved Montreal singer and musician Christine Atallah who died while performing in St. Jean sur Richelieu just south of Montreal Friday night in a show she was performing with Jim Zeller.

Atallah was 46 and the death came as a horrible shock and surprise. Her band the Bassalindos travelled the world many times. She was particularly well-known in the Lebanese community.

Vin Diesel and his Montreal woes

2011-10-29T13:10:00.002-04:00

Vin Diesel and the guy that might replace him

A friend of mine, who has asked that his name not be revealed on Coolopolis, but was refused, because it's Patrick Shearing, was waiting for a friend in a car at Sherbrooke and Victoria in poshalisticfantasticismo Westmount Kweebeck in mid-September when some bald guy comes up to the window and looks at the book he is reading.
The man whose name will not be revealed her except to say that it's Patrick Shearing, looked up and realized that the nosy interloper was none other than megamovie star Vin Diesel. So the anonymous person who I cannot name even though it's Patrick Shearing, said, "hey..aren't you...?" And the Dieseltastic movie star interrupted him and replied, "Yes, that's who I am." Within seconds he scooted off.
So we weren't sure what to make of that story, which took place during Comiccon weekend. But now we can tell youze that Diesel has been in town filming Chronicles of Riddick Dead Man Stalking on an independent (read shoestring) budget, I guess the investors of the earlier one weren't too keen to invest because the first one barely made its money back and got bad reviews and sequels traditionally make less than originals.
But the plot is said to be about man who has been "ostracized from society on a planet where he must fight its vicious inhabitants to survive." So I'm assuming that's Quebec after the Yes side wins the referendum. You can even get a role in the movie if you want to be an extra.
Diesel is working with a Pointe-Claire product, his Greekbastic buddy George Zakk, who went to St. Thomas High, the same school as Sonali Karnick and Autumn Kelly as well as many other all-time greats.
The latest newz now is that production has shut down because producers can't meet payroll and Michel Trudel has pulled his lads from the set due to non-payment for a couple of weeks.

Montreal's fruit fly police

2011-10-29T00:33:00.002-04:00

The shocking photo at left portrays something that occurs with great frequency in Montreal bars: a fruit fly is getting loaded on sweet liqueur at a bar.
At least once a year all bars are supposed to be inspected by police officers. One of the things they look for is the presence of fruit flies in booze. Those little nasties are so small that they can fly down the tiny slot in the bar pouring mechanism. It happens all over the place at such joints as 3 Brasseurs, St. Hubert and Alpenhaus.
If bugs are found, the bar gets a warning but if they are found again, the bar goes to the liquor board and could have its license suspended or even shut down. It happens quite often as you can see by clicking here. The cops sometimes even count the number of fruit flies that died a happy death by drowning in sweet booze. Unlike most fruit flies who live and die in anonymity, these bugs achieve a modicum of fame, being written up in the Quebec provincial bureaucratic reports.
The reference to insects in bottles reported in those inspections is rather vague but an official from the RACJQ told me today that they are not referring to cockroaches, houseflies, earwigs or bedbugs. They are always referring specifically to fruit flies. Of course we know that fruit flies can nest in your intestines and cause your body to explode like that movie Alien... either that or they're harmless and possibly even a solid form of protein... trying to remember which one exactly.

Westmount's newest diabolical scheme to keep riff-raff out

2011-10-28T16:19:00.006-04:00

Much hilarity nowadays on Landsdowne below the Glen as cars are now forced to wait through several traffic cycles due to the fact that a large portion of the roadway has been recently devoted to cyclists and parking. Mayor Peter Trent wants to inconvenience cars around there because he feels that Westmount has become a "traffic sewer." As you can see, there is a line on the left which is given over to the cyclists barreling downhill. That one seems sufficient. But on the right there is now an additional eight-or-so feet. A councillor named Gary Ikeman told me later that one of those lanes is actually meant for parking. Wesmount was pressured to provide the bike path by the City of Montreal who sought to connect the de Maisonneuve and Lachine Canal bike paths. Westmount has some studies online concerning their own bike paths but nobody knows how many people use this particular path.

Montreal's Top 10 gangland murders: #1 Nick Rizzuto

2011-10-28T14:52:00.004-04:00

Of all the rub-outs, icings, hits, murders, slayings committed by underworld sleazebags in this burg, the most epic is undeniably the one that occurred almost precisely one year ago.
Sicialian Nick Rizzuto climbed his way to the top of the ridiculously wealthy cut-throat world of graft, extortion, drug importation and bullying that is the Mafia by knocking off the previous overlords run by the Calabrian Paolo Violi.
His multi-decade reign ended when a sniper shot blasted through the window of his solarium of his house one of the dozen ornate houses on on Rizzuto Row (Antoine-Berthelet Avenue). It came from a hunting rifle set up in the adjacent Saraguay woods, just as the 86-year-old was chowing down for supper on Wednesday November 10, 2010, apparently with blinds wide open.
Unlike the other murders on this list, the killer here remains unknown. The poetic irony in the killing of the Rizzutos lie in the fact that they reflect their heavy-handed evisceration of the Violi clan that they replaced. Not only was leader Paolo Violi killed, so too were his two brothers, the last of which was done in a very similar fashion as this, at home by sniper-shot, something that goes against the customs of the Mafia.

Nick Rizzuto bought his house in 1981 for $33,654.
It's now evaluated at $714,000

Rizzuto, a onetime avid golfer, was struck in the jaw by a .300-calbre bullet, which pierced the double-glass of his home, narrowly missing his wife Libertina. His daughter Maria (whose hubby Paolo Renda has also been missing and presumbly killed) was also in the home. The slug itself did not do much damage to the old man but the jacket cut his aorta. The bullet, which would usually be used to take down a moose, killed the old retired Montreal Mafia chief on impact.
So many of the Rizzuto gang have been killed over the last while that it is hard to keep count. The latest being Larry Lopresti, aka Lorenzo Lopresto whose father Giusseppe, Big Joe, was also killed in 1992 (and whose funeral was attended by Lino Saputo).
The reason the Rizzutos are being killed remains unclear. It seems highly-unlikely that street gangs could have organized such a professional hit. Whatever Mafiosi that has benefited from their demise would possibly be a good place to start investigating.
One theory has it that rival Mafioso suspect that his son Vito rolled on others in an effort to shorten his sentence, which ends next year in Colorado. When the former leader of the Montreal Mafia gets out, he will be without both Nicks, his son and father, who were both killed in the gang war.

Montreal's Top 10 gangland murders: #2 Paolo Violi

2011-10-27T12:08:00.000-04:00

Paolo Violi was a pudgy father of five who was known to do the kind of things Jesus would hate, like having people beaten up until they'd sign over their businesses and so forth. He lead the local mob but befriended something worse than a rat or police informant, he made friends with an actual undercover cop in the form of Bob Menard, who lived upstairs from Violi's cafe and managed to bug the place. So when the Crime Commission brought its evidence against Violi, you can just imagine that his various gossip irritated people within the Mafia. Members of his close inner circle were getting pegged off while he was in prison for various small crimes including refusing to testify before the commission. So when he was invited to play cards at his former cafe at 5884 Jean Talon East on January 22, 1978 he was shot in the head by from behind. The Sicilian Rizzutos took over the local mob from that day onwards. His brothers Rocco and Francesco were also killed in the purge. No idea what happened to his kids but it would appear that they had the wisdom of avoiding participation in the Mafia, a lethal, thuggish and immoral career choice, if there ever was one. For more gory detail click here.

Disenfranchising property owners contributes to corrupt city politics

2011-10-25T14:35:00.000-04:00

Occasionally a strange idea takes hold and gets political support. For example in 1985 the PQ passed Bill 29 which banned Jews and Muslims and other non-Protestants from voting in PSBGM board elections. Similarly only Catholics were to be allowed to vote in Catholic School Board elections. Those boards are history, of course, as the boards are based on language now.

Here's another: on June 29, 1999 Mayor Bourque heard from a committee that recommended fines for people who allowed their dogs to pee on private property. The urine was to be classified as pollution, according to Councillor Sylvain Lachance, who headed the committee. That one did not go through, I don't believe.

And In July 1970 for the first time in Montreal, Canadian citizens over 18 were allowed to vote in city elections. Previously only landowners and leaseholders could vote. So that meant one vote per household and usually the women did not have the lease under their name, so not many were allowed to vote. So everything changed after that. The 1970 election saw a massive Drapeau majority, largely thanks to the fact that the opposition FRAP refused to denounce the FLQ terrorists at the time of the October Crisis, but once 1974 came around, the city started getting women into power, Therese Daviau being the first. So overall it was good but it also had one fatal flaw.

From what I could tell, the move disenfranchised non-resident property owners. So let's say you own a triplex that you rent out, you pay taxes on that property but you don't get a vote to what goes on in that neighbourhood. This is of course, taxation without representation. A property owner, whether he actually lives in his property or not, is highly-motivated to make his neighbourhood better and rebuffing them a say in the vote seems bizarre. I would also submit that it contributes to the graft in city politics, as banning property owners from the voting booth removes their legitimate political access to the politicians, as they are left voteless. It's time to re-institute the right to vote to owners of property who don't actually live in their building.

Rapists can get refugee status

2011-10-25T00:37:00.002-04:00

Photo from the Odyssey Showgirls Lounge website

Here's a relatively recent and rather shocking story that seems to have gone un(der?)reported. One month ago a decision was rendered in a case involving a refugee applicant named Hassan Ammar, 38. He is Lebanese but before living in Canada was living in Michigan where he allegedly attempted to rape a stripper in 2006.

Here's exactly what Hassan Ammar is accused of doing: in November 2006 he went to the Odyssey Showgirls Lounge in Jackson Michigan and allegedly waited for a dancer named Klahn to leave the club, he followed her in his car to a convenience store and tracked her down and brought her to a room in the back of the store and attempted to force her to fellate him. He then attempted to penetrate her with his fingers, she resisted and fled and complained to police.

Ammar was arrested and charged with criminal sexual conduct in the fourth degree. Sounds serious but but according to 750.520e(1) of the Michigan Penal Code, it is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for two years or less, and/or a fine of $500 or less.

Before the case could go to trial, Ammar fled to Windsor Ontario and applied for refugee status, claiming that he was at risk of attack by Lebanese political forces both in the U.S. and Lebanon.

Canada's public security minister asked that Ammar not be considered for a refugee hearing, as he had allegedly committed a serious crime and fled his trial. However the refugee commission pointed out that his alleged sex attack was merely a misdemeanor under Michigan law.

A judge named Scott heard both sides in August and on September 23 in Montreal sided with the commission. Nothing in the judgement makes reference to whether he has been accepted as a refugee or not, even though four years is quite a wait. So at the very least, Ammar will indeed be allowed to stay in Canada until his refugee hearing is heard.

Montreal's Top 10 gangland murders: #3 Richard Blass

2011-10-24T12:05:00.010-04:00

Richard Blass

Richard Blass was a SuperPest.
Raised in Rosemont beside at least two brothers (one of whom, Michel, was a killer as well), Blass took on the local Mafia singlehandedly because he did not want to give a cut to the mob. He tried to kill Frank Cotroni and then survived four subsequent ambushes, one involving two bullets to the head and two to the back, earning him the nickname Cat, or Weasel, depending on whom you asked.

The Val David Chalet

Blass robbed banks and killed people the way others would make their toast. His lawyer struck a deal in which he would avoid being labelled a dangerous offender but the judge died during the trial and all bets were off, leaving him vulnerable to an endless life behind bars. During the FLQ crisis Blass offered a prison warden to take FLQ detainees prisoner in a way to get the FLQ to give up their detainees but that was shot down. He escaped jail twice, once with the assistance of Jacques Mesrine's female accomplice. He loved publicity and even furnished notes and photos to the media, including one taunting the hulking, bald, fearsome QPP cop Albert Lysecek.

Frank Shoofey

Richard Blass, dead

Blass committed the unspeakable crime of setting a fire in a bar and barricading the customers inside, thus killing 13 in the Gargantua Bar. He then escaped to a ski Chalet in Val David with a crony and two women. Somebody tipped off he cops of his presence. Police rushed up to the chalet and shot Blass dead with 27 bullets. He died from lead poisoning January 24, 1975, surrounded by seven weapons, gas masks and ammunition.
A gun was in his right hand on which there were no finger prints. Blass was a lefty. His lawyer Frank Shoofey said it was proof cops simply executed him. His killer was said to be Lysacek but police put out word that Lysacek did not personally shoot him dead. Perhaps they feared retribution against the maverick officer.
Blass was a mama's boy. His father had left the home when he was a small child. She killed herself a few years later. He is buried in the Cote-des-Neiges cemetery, his headstone bearing the inscription, "freed for God, freed from mankind."

Montreal's Top 10 gangland murders: #4 The Lennoxville Massacre

2011-10-22T10:43:00.006-04:00

Jean Pierre Mathieu, 35, Laurent Viau, 33, Guy Louis Adam, 31, Michel Mayrand, 29 and Jean-Guy Geoffion, 40


The Lennoxville Hells clubhouse

   The Hells Angels have three rules. No swindles, no shooting (intravenous drugs) and no rape. Technically Yves Apache Trudeau's Laval chapter might not have been violating those rules when they snorted tons of the cocaine they were meant to be distributing.
   But they also surely know that there had been about seven others who had been summarily executed by their own guys for being drugged-out lunatics (including Charlie Hachez and Dennis Kennedy). The Sorel Hells adamantly opposed cocaine so on March 24, 1985 the Laval chapter was lured to a party in Lennoxville and summarily shot dead by colleagues.
    Usually these radical purges require a unanimous vote but it's unclear whether these guys got a fair hearing or if they were ambushed. The five, Jean-Pierre Mathieu, Laurent Viau, Guy Louis Adam, Michel Mayrand and Jean-Guy Geoffrion were killed on the spot and another was beaten to death. Their bodies were dumped into the St. Lawrence River and recovered a few weeks later.
Laval's Yves "Apache" Trudeau, the first Quebec Hells to earn a Filthy Few status by killing someone after gang came to Quebec in 1977, escaped because he was in rehab at the time.
He was later asked to kill a fellow Laval biker, declined and was given another person to kill, which he did.
When Trudeau heard that the Hells had a contract out on his head, he turned informant, which led to the arrest and convictions of three bikers connected to this massacre: Robert "Tiny" Richard, Jacques Pelletier, Luc "Sam" Michaud, and Réjean "Zig-Zag" Lessard.
Richard has since died and the other two were released from prison about five years ago. Lessard, who came from a wealthy family, turned into a Buddhist.
The killing brought a lot of heat on the Hells, as cops raided all of their clubhouses and arrested dozens.
The gang sold their Lennoxville clubhouse, or made it appear that they did anyway, as they apparently still own it today.
As a result of the barbaric behaviour, rising biker talent Salvatore Cazzetta refused to join the Hells and started up a rival gang that turned into the Rock Machine, with whom the Hells would later wage a costly war.
Maurice Boucher would join the Hells soon after this however in spite of the fact that he had already been convicted of sexual assault, which might otherwise have been interpreted to be a violation of one of the three cardinal Hells rules.

Montreal's Top 10 gangland murders: # 5 West End Gang boss Duney Ryan slain

2011-10-21T13:13:00.001-04:00

Hashish and cocaine kingpin and leader of the West End Gang Duney Ryan, 42, was invited into room 40 of Nittolo's Motel on St. James St. W on Nov. 12, 1984.
Ryan was a generous soul who was known for doling out cash to friends without hesitation. But others were jealous of his fame and felt oppressed by by their growing debts to Ryan, whose muscle came from killers such as Apache Trudeau, Jackie McLaughlin and supposedly the IRA, if needed.
Ryan was apparently lured to the room at news of a sexy babe awaiting him. However, inside the room were familiar faces: Paul April, who dealt Ryan's drugs in Montreal's east end and owed Ryan $200,000. Also present was Bob Lelievre, who was once in Machine Gun Molly's holdup gang. Eddie Phillips, Ryan's errand boy was there too as was Alan Rose and possibly Larry Schlaer. Ryan was shot dead with a shot to the chest from a 12-guage Browning shotgun loaded with SSG slugs and a .45-calibre bullet through his cheek.
The shooters were April and Phillips. The killers did not rifle through the $6,500 in Ryan's pockets and his body was found after a housekeeper heard the shotguns after 8 p.m. There was talk that Billy McAllister had been a supporter of the killing but that hasn't been confirmed and McAllister only recently got out of prison and is now living up north trying to stay out of trouble. Alan Ross, Yves Trudeau, Michel Blass, Laurent Viau - who will appear later in this list - discussed affairs at Ross's funeral, which led to the explosive revenge described earlier on this list. Ryan's orphaned son and daughter are now adults and said to be successful professionals with no ties to crime.

More on the Lafontaine mansion

2011-10-21T10:52:00.002-04:00

We mentioned that the Chinese Kheng Ly bought the 140,000 square foot Overdale property recently for $28 million. Ly was accused of money laundering, marijuana and ecstasy dealing in 2004 but charges were dropped.

He is now going to China to get the money and organize a mortgage on the property. The city has said it will allow even more densification of whatever gets developed there. Some think he's just going to try to flip it for a profit.

Meanwhile John Raulston Saul, in the photo to the left (done by Gabrielle Cauchy of Dimedia) said in a public lecture recently that the Lafontaine House, built in 1846 is the most important heritage home for all of French Canada. He mentions the house 20 times in his new book. The new owner, as we mentioned, has said that he's in favour of keeping it on the site but it's not clear in what form, whether they'll be apartments, or condos or a museum, etc.

Club 888, how I wrote the top story of 1993

2011-10-19T15:25:00.003-04:00

This article I wrote December 2, 1993 turned out to be a pretty big deal at the time. I sorta cringe at it now because the editor added all sorts of shrill stuff about as subtle as a cucumber in the eye. For example the penultimate paragraph is not my kind of writing, kids. I was seeking to write in a sorta wistful laddish way but got my arm twisted. A DJ at the Biftheque bar on the Main later told me that they studied this article in their journalism class and I'm sure they noticed that it looks like it was written by two different people. Anyway, maybe worth a read, it seemed to be a big deal when it came out. Much love to the late Montreal cop William Livesey (aka Bill Livesey) who gave me great quotes for the story and my good friend the journalist Dan Burke, now a Toronto music promoter, who also aimed me in the right directions. Needless to say the operation was busted a few months later and immigration law later changed to make it difficult for such performers to get into the country.

The first time I went to Club 888 in the spring of ’92, shortly after it opened, I was greeted at the door by two Asian strippers who playfully stroked me with a metal detector. When I decided not to go in, one said: “You got girlfriend? I no have boyfriend.” As I walked away, she called out: “Come back soon I lo-o-o-ove you.”

Club 888, at the corner of Ste. Catherine and Drummond, is named after the ultimate lucky number in some Asian countries. It was started up in February by Clive Didier Serre, a middle-aged businessman who has perfected a Saturday Night Fever look in the best ready-to-wear fabrics. Serre’s club is the former Millionaires Club, the owner of which was murdered.

Serre figured his luck would be better when he opened the 888. He had already developed a formula for success at the Fairbank Hotel in Toronto, a classy-looking strip club appealing to clientele with a thing for Asian women. The formula- which sources in Canada’s External Affairs department say is the one used by strip clubs in Bangkok that employ women from the countryside - involves importing women from Thailand and the Phillipines, taking their passports away, providing them with food and housing, keeping them under close watch and then shipping them back home.

Serre isn’t breaking any laws. He’s just capitalizing on the financial desperation of Thai and Filipino women who have no other way to make a living. And he is exploiting them with the help of lax Canadian immigration rules.

The men who manage Club 888 maintain they’re doing these imported dancers a favour. “You have to understand these girls come from poor backgrounds to support their families,” said Ben, an assistant manager at the club (manager Dan Hall wouldn’t divulge his assistant’s full name). “You may think they’re exploited but you should see where they come from.”

According to club management, each dancer can stay as long as she wants but the average is six months. A paid advertising feature the club bought in Allo Police shortly after it opened last spring states that the girls are under six-month contracts. Between the Toronto and Montreal clubs, management says there are about 50 imported employees at any given point. That means Serre has brought in and sent home hundreds of women from Thailand and the Phillipines in the few years he’s been in operation.

It all starts in Hong Kong. That’s where these dancers are recruited, according to the Allo Police piece. The advertising featured reported that dancers get two years of training in English, psychology, dancing and, of course, flirting, before Serre signs contracts with them to come to Canada. He boasts that his dancers lovingly call him “Papa.”

The women are brought to Canada on work visas, an amazingly simple process thanks to Canada's Immigration rules. Exotic dancers are excluded from the clause in the Immigration Act which requires those entering the country on work visas to prove their position can’t be filled by a Canadian. “People say it’s too easy to get these work contracts,” said Richard St. Louis, a local immigration officer. “We are not completely naïve to the possibility of exploitation. Maybe our rules should be changed.”

A Quebec immigration official said that long with a federal work permit, foreigners working in the province must have a “Quebec acceptation certificate.” This is granted only if an employer can prove there’s a labour shortage in his line of business. “I never heard of exotic dancers being considered a ‘shortage profession’ in Quebec,”’ said Andre Gamache of the Quebec Immigration and Cultural communities’ ministry.

But police both in Quebec and Ontario have checked the papers and deemed them in order.

Legal or not, Serre’s conditions are definitely restrictive. The reign of control begins with a clause in the contract requiring his dancers hand over their passports, making it impossible for them to travel or leave the country without first consulting club management. Serre was out of the country while the Mirror conducted its investigation. Hall, the club manager we interviewed, refused to comment on why passports are taken away from the dancers.

The dancers’ mobility and freedom is further restricted by tightly controlled work and social schedule. Inside the club, dancers are kept under close watch. While dancers in most Montreal clubs are customarily free to roam around and start up conversations with clients, in 888 unoccupied dancers sit in a corner until a customer selects them from a photographic menu for a table dance.

During one brief encounter with a reporter, a dancer from Thailand was called away for a phone call as soon as she was spotted mingling. She returned only seconds later but walked right past, refusing to make eye contact.

The club’s manager refused to grand the Mirror private interviews with any of the dancers. Hall said he wanted to protect them. But when pressed on what the dancers needed protection from, he grabbed the tape recorder and ended that portion of the interview.

As a result, the interviews I could get cost $5 a crack- the price of a tale dance. During one such exchange, a Filipino dancer said, “We are now allowed out. It is very strict.”

Hall denied the charge. These ladies come and go as they please,” he said. “They are not under lock and key.” However, Serre boasted to Allo Police that anybody calling on his women for a date get a rigorous interrogation.

And Hall later admitted that the club monitors the dancers’ social lives. “We don’t want any of the girls getting hooked up with any of the Mafia, any drug dealers,” he said. “We do checks on the customers and we tell them that. Like the club has no drugs- no problems with that at all – neither at their residence.” When asked how the club can keep such close tabs on the dancers’ social lives, he said, “They usually ask us, you know ‘who is this guy?’”

Controlling the dancers can’t be too hard. Immediately after every shift, they are driven by club staff to apartments rented by the club at Durocher and Sherbrooke. They all live on the seventh floor. “Just try getting in there,” said Sgt-Detective William Livesey of the MUC police gang squad, “And I’ll call you in the hospital.” While admitting he may be exaggerating a bit, he did insist that any interloper would be greeted aggressively by guards on Serre’s payroll.

“They have transportation with us,” Hall said. “They have apartments. All their food and everything, their health care, everything is taken care of with us.” When asked if these arrangements were part of the contracts, he said they were “extras.”

Police suspect the dances are overworked and ripped off. Hall wouldn’t divulge the details of the contracts, simply stating that their contracts were “not anybody’s business.”

But when I asked a dancer if she had been working a lot, she looked both ways then turned to me and said “Too much,” A number of dancers supported the claim, saying they work 12 hours a day, six days a week –exactly 28 more hours than the standard work week under Quebec labour laws. Hall refused to say how many hours the dancers put in. As far as exceeding the accepted standard, he said “that depends on the employee and if they want to.”

Hall added that if the dancers were unhappy, it would show. “If we were seeing slaves, we’d see a lot of unhappy women working on these floors,” he said. “There’d be no smiles.

I didn’t see any carefree laughter during a recent visit to the club. Nor did the dancers blow any kisses my way. And saddest of all, Layla, the Thai woman who once professed her love for me, didn’t even recognize me.

The solemn mood, however, didn’t seem to bother the clientele. They overlooked the uninspired dancing on the centre stage because virtually every patron has a table dance- a rare event, even for a successful club.

Unlike the fleshpots of Bangkok where stage dancers feature such props as cigarettes, boiled eggs and full, then empty, then full, bottles of soda pop, the acts at Club 888 are tame. While Bangkok strippers use their turn on stage to provide the visuals of a complete gynecological exam, the women performing at Club 888 only display a glimpse of curly hair in the dying seconds of their act.

The real action is up close in the table dances. The women perform a sort of dorsal Braille on the laps of patrons that promotes images of a bad driver’s parallel-parking technique: lots of backing into the nearest object. When a dancer’s knee casually reaches the crotch on a patron’s lap, customers don’t bother to point out that such touching is technically illegal.

The men who frequent the club seem to enjoy these table dances. Even a local radio talk show host know for his diatribes against the harsh manner with which Canada treats its immigrants was spotted at Club 888 with a stunning 90-pound Thai woman on his thigh.

This contact may explain why patrons find the table dances a good deal for $5, but unlike other clubs, where the striper deals directly with the client, at Club 888 the “guy in the red bow tie” takes the $5 for a dance an gives a plastic token to the client which is then given to the dancer.

Without Hall’s cooperation of full-length interview with any dancer, it proved impossible to find out exactly how much the dancers earn. But under the menu system, where cash exchanges are handled by management, they likely make less than strippers at other Quebec clubs.

For putting a $5 rise in a customer’s Levis, one dancer told me under her breath that, in fact, they get half the take. “That’s theft,” said Rene Thibert, a long time strippers’ agent. “The only other place in Quebec which uses such a system is in Three Rivers and they’re always in trouble.”

Thibert, who has organized an association for strip club owners, said a code of honour exists under which owners take the profits from alcohol sales and cover charges while giving cash from table dances directly to the dancers.

Thibert should know. His company sends dancers to clubs that specialize in la danse a dix, $10 dances that involve some touching and, though illegal, flourish in clubs outside the city. So at $2.50 per dances a dix table dances, the imported women at Club 888 receive a quarter of what local gets for the same work.

But this isn’t’ the worst of it. According to MUC police, the biggest rip-off occurs when the dancers are returned to their countries. They say Serre’s employers do not have bank accounts; they rely on being paid upon boarding their flights home. Livesey said police interviews with dancers conducted at the Fairbank Hotel revealed that Serre’s men “take them to the airport and instead of paying them the promised rate, they give them whatever they want and say, ‘take a walk.’” Livesey, an expert in Asian gangs, added that since the club expects those from the Philippines to make the most fuss about underpayment, they get a better deal than the more complacent Thais.

Hall categorically denies the allegations. Even if Club 888 is breaking contracts, Livesey said it would be impossible to do anything about it. “After a dancer has left the country, what can you do?” he asked.

Nothing. These women are being shipped to Montreal as a commodity to be used for the pleasure of men, a practice common in Thailand but which seems depraved in a supposedly modern country like Canada. The women are not being given the opportunity to integrate into Canadian society, nor to apply for permanent residence. Police and immigration officials claim they can’t do anything about it. These women are being left in the dark about their rights, and even if they did try to improve their lot, they’d probably find themselves back in their homeland the next day.

When I expressed my concerns about the treatment of dancers at Club 888 to an 18-year-old Filipino dancer, she just looked confused. “You no like this place?” she asked. “You think is no good?”

Montreal's Top 10 gangland murders: # 6 The hammer death of Rocky Pierson

2011-10-18T10:59:00.003-04:00

Rocky Pierson was a whirlwind of a criminal in the 50s. The former boxer was as tough as nails and would win you an election or get you someone disappeared. That is, until 26 June, 1961 when three of his partners in crime snuck up on him and killed him with a hammer in his office on Chambly Road in Longueuil.

A fourth, Frank Watson, was a police informant, however. When he arrived in the room the others asked to talk to him. He figured that he had been outed and was ready for his buddies to kill him too.

But instead they asked the informant Watson to give Pierson a bang with the hammer so he too would be implicated. Watson later said that Pierson was already dead. He told cops but it took two years for them to finally arrest the three who committed the grisly betrayal: Rosaire Daoust, Armand Larose and Raymond Caza. A well-publicized trial ensued.

Last remaining Overdale building to be saved

2011-10-17T21:02:00.000-04:00

Breaking news: the new owners of the mostly abandoned and demolished Overdale block have vowed to preserve and maintain the historic Lafontaine House as well as a green perimeter around it the future, according to Senator Serge Joyal.

Joyal is one of many who has fought for the preservation of the historic building and this latest development is a massive triumph not only for them but for the city of Montreal in general.

Various notes from Montreal

2011-10-17T12:58:00.000-04:00

This craptastic structure on the north end of Victoria Square has finally been demolished. It was known for a variety of things, including a golf shop, Victory hot dogs, a computer store for a while and a short-lived Russian-Communist themed restaurant. There were loft parties upstairs on the other side for some years.

Some of the other buildings that are supposed to go up soon include the Union Tower, left, about 35 storey on the east side of Phillips Square. A very tall thing atop the Bell Centre and a series of five stubby buildings at University and St. James.

A play you've just gotta see has only a few more days until it shuts down its run. Closer (you might've seen the excellent flick based on the London play) involves a horny young guy who seduces another man's woman and then sees the circle turn square. It has a ton of swearing and other fun stuff. It's on at 4001 Berri 8 p.m. until Oct 22. Just show up to get a ticket. Nice intimate space too.

This disturbing photo of rodents in Montreal shows how successful these crafty beasts have become in navigating the cityscape. I've seen racoons do some pretty clever things, such as open up a camping cooler that required clicking a thing with two hands at once. Outside of Molson football stadium I saw them climb on each others backs to get into a garbage can. But methinks it's time for a major cull. Maybe Europeans will buy hats made of their fur.

The dangers of driving on LSD

2011-10-16T15:17:00.000-04:00

One of the great debates of our era is why crime has declined as much as it has since the 1970s. Among the factors, I believe, was the naivete people had towards drugs. In fact cocaine and LSD were seen as very positive things, advocated by our rock idols along with bisexuality and bellbottoms.
Anyway, on May 14, 1973 Daniel Guerin, 27, of Lasalle (that is him in the souped up photo) took a hit of acid and robbed a restaurant with friends (they got $7 each in the haul) and then took a friends stolen car and drove down highway 20 westbound at speeds of 105 mph, ramming the car belonging to Peter Covo, 54, and killing him. Guerin told a coroners inquest that, "All I can remember is seeing red fire balls shooting through my head."

What to do about the Girouard and Sherbrooke nightmare?

2011-10-15T17:36:00.000-04:00

If you want to reach the upcoming MUHC superhospital from the Decarie Expressway southbound, it requires getting off at the Addington exit, turning right on Sherbrooke, then left on Girouard to St. James, then turning left and and then left up Decarie.

Hospital organizers thought this would overburden Sherbrooke St. traffic so they decided to build a (still unopened) extra exit at Demaisonneuve. Roads would need to be reconfigured to allow cars to drive left (east) on De Maisonneuve and then right (south) on Decarie which are currently one-way streets going the other direction.

This would, in turn, overburden the Decarie-Demaisonneuve intersection, which would have traffic coming from 5 directions. So traffic to that intersection coming from the west was to be banned and rerouted along Crowley or up Girouard, which has become a two-way street with one lane in each direction.

Making Girouard a two-way street between Upper Lachine and Sherbrooke, has meant closing access to the entrance to the southbound Decarie, which is also a way to go to the 40 west. (the red shaded bit in the photo to the left). Those getting on the highway have to find another way and I'm not sure how they're doing it. The one-lane section of Girouard southbound below Sherbrooke has become so overburdened that it frequently causes bottlenecks at Sherbrooke and Girouard.

So the very congestion at Sherbrooke that the hospital organizers had hoped to avoid is currently happening. Former city councillor Jeremy Searle has recommended finding a way to allow cars to get back onto that now-wasted highway entrance and I think that a clever mind could get this done, even if it meant widening a road by demolishing one of those shoebox homes on the east side of Girouard. If anybody has a suggestion on how to make it work, it would be highly appreciated.

Au Lutin Qui Bouffe

2011-10-14T23:26:00.000-04:00

This crazily amazing photo of local restaurant landmark Au Lutin Qui Bouffe was provided by Julie Cohen. It was taken June 1951 at the celebration of her father's completion of medical school. Sadly only one of them at the table is still alive. Such is the passing of time. The restaurant near Laurier and St. Denis was famous for its snap-happy piggy photo-ops. People seemed to love to feed those little piggies. I highly doubt the piglet is still alive.

About 18 months later it would prove the scene of a botched robbery which led to the death of the owner.

Quiz of the day - who is our province's all-time most-evil criminal?

2011-10-14T18:21:00.007-04:00

He died November 17, 1972.

It is indeed Leopold Dion who was the Clifford Olson of Quebec in the 60s, killing four boys and sexually molesting 21 in all.* Dion was the poster boy for parole reform, as he had been deemed cured of his rapist pedophilia impulses after being paroled following a pair of sex attack convictions.

Dion, who was born in 1920, was what we would now call a Duplessis Orphan. He was with the nuns until age 11 as they dealt with his tuberculosis. Once cured he returned home, however his parents had separated four days before and returned him to the orphanage.

Leopold Dion

He was busted at 17 for trying to murder a prostitute and sentenced to life imprisonment for rape when he turned 20. He raped a woman near the Plains of Abraham at age 19, and his brother went along with it, raping the woman too, but preventing Leopold from killing her. Both went to jail. Jailers recommended Dion never be paroled. He was a good prisoner at St. Vincent de Paul in Montreal and was rewarded with his release in 1956. After a few days he was returned on a conviction of gross indecency and was now sent to Kingston Penetentiary.

The 220-pound Dion would lure his victims from Quebec City to his cottage at nearby Pont Rouge by pretending to be a photographer for a major American magazine. Before killing his victims he would make them say a prayer just before he offed them.
"These two damn hands of mine have killed four little saints," he said at his trial. "What happened to me today is not my fault. I am 43 years old and have not yet lived."

Dion was defended by young lawyer Guy Bertrand, who later became a minor Quebec celebrity. Dr. Camille Laurin testified that Dion was "a monster with a human face."

The jury took only two minutes to find him criminally responsible for his crimes. Dion sentenced to death in 1963 and tried to escape by taking the prison warden Alphonse Letourneau, 64, hostage by holding a letter opener to him and stabbing him a few times. Letourneau survived the stabbings but Dion was only stopped when he was smacked on the head with guns by two prison cops on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City where the prison was located. He was slated to be hanged June 25, 1965, but he was not. Premier Lesage and Justice Minister Claude Wagner complained about the commutation.

He was constantly mocked, taunted and jeered by his fellow inmates. He bit a guard on the thigh and allegedly ran into a cement wall. This all ended when fellow inmate named Normand Champagne murdered him by smacking him on the head with an iron bar. Champagne was declared insane and wrote a book.

*Dion murdered: Guy Luckenuik, 12, Alain Carrier, 8, Michel Morel, 10 and Pierre Marquis, 13.

New book on The Point

2011-10-14T13:38:00.002-04:00

Had a good yakfest this morn with Kathy Dobson who wrote a recently-penned memoir about growing up in Point St. Charles, she’s about 50 now.

She got the idea to write the book after attending her mother’s funeral and hearing a flood of tributes to her mom Eileen, who had been a big-time activist in the area when she was a child. Eileen raised her six daughters more or less on her own as dad was in and out of the picture.

Mom ended up chasing dad off to Hamilton Ontario around the referendum before dying about 6 years ago. She always regretted leaving Montreal.

The funeral gave Kathy a different perspective on her mom, who never hesitated to put her to use for a political cause.

“I had thought she was a pain in the ass. She was always fighting with school board and city hall. She was using us for her activism. She was in the whole social movement in the Point in the late 60s, with the first CLSC coming to the Point with the students from McGill and social workers,” said Dobson.

The Point was a poor insular place where a lack of education, money and a set of strict geographical boundaries meant that many never left their neighbourhood.

But mom decided to work with the do-gooders to improve conditions and the kids had to take part.

“We’d invade the welfare office until the riot squad would show up. We’d go and lie like a row, forming a carpet because they had denied someone glasses for their seven-year-old or humiliated someone else. They became militant about not taking it anymore people were treating them as if poverty was a choice.”

Eileen sought a better education for her kids and ended up sending Kathy to Westmount Park School. “They dumped us in the school and wondered why we floundered, I thought every other kid was a secret genius,” says Kathy. “The teacher would ask ‘where’s Peru?’ and the other kids could point it on a map. She’d go up and down the rows doing the times table and I thought I'm going to run out of this room when it comes to my turn.”

By comparing herself to the Westmounters, Kathy realized for the first time that she was poor. “We thought it was normal to not have stuff to eat, or to have rats and cockroaches, not having lunch. At Westmount Park, the other kids would say ‘what’s for lunch?” or ‘why would you wear that?’”

Kathy had similar problems at Westmount High School, getting poor marks for a few years before finally quitting altogether. She eventually returned and earned a university degree, something not common for people from the Point which ranked people not on education but on other criteria.

“There’s a hierarchy in the Point based on gangs, it was pretty violent but most of the violence occurred in the home. I wasn’t nervous walking down the street, I knew what to expect, there were people in your own life, more often they were victims of hopelessness, powerlessness and poverty. Everyone knew the pedophile at the end of Liverpool, go down for a bag of chips and he’d try to do things. I think we’re more aware of what went on inside the homes.”

Kathy now lives in Waterloo Ontario and her five sisters live in Hamilton but she is aiming to move back and reacquaint herself to the hometown she left.

In retrospect Kate says that the only regret in any of it is that her mom left the neighbourhood that she had worked so hard to improve. “She ended up still poor but poor without community in Hamilton,” says Kathy.

Montreal's Top 10 gangland murders: # 7 The Demaisonneuve bombing

2011-10-14T12:55:00.000-04:00

Yves "Apache" Trudeau

West End Gang honcho Frank Peter Ryan gained the nickname Dunie based on his mispronunciation of the world Junior. He was named Frank after the father who abandoned him and his mother in the McGill Ghetto at age two. He earned a more telling nickname later in life: Mother, as became the leader and detail-keeper of an entire operation of drug and other contraband selling.

He also had a mean side, as he had a killer for a driver in Jackie Mclaughlin and would make sure to eliminate upstarts such as the McGurnahans when it came time.

After Dunie was murdered by Paul April at Nittolo's Motel on St. James Street West near Cavendish, his sidekick Alan Ross organized a revenge on the assassins, hiring veteran killers Yves Apache Trudeau and Michel Blass (brother of the famous Richard Blass) to deliver a VCR to Paul April at 1645 de Maisonneuve. The building is a concrete highrise near to the Guy metro. The VCR contained a bomb that blew apart everything in the apartment unit on the 9 th floor of the 22 story building. It blew at 4:10 a.m. on November 24, 1984, killing Paul April, 42, Robert Lelievre, 63, as well as Gilles Paquette, 27 and Louis Charles, 54. Cops mistakenly believed that the men died making their own bomb.

Coolopolis Towers intern helps polish gem of an article

2011-10-11T15:46:00.001-04:00

Meet Providence McNally, the intern that has been handling reception duties at Coolopolis Towers. She has also done a crack job of fact-checking and taking care of Chimples, the simian with the brain implant that sometimes gets a lot of work done around here. She has helped a ton with this three-part series appearing today, tomorrow and Thursday on Montreal in the 1990s, appearing on openfile.ca. Today's version deals with the terrible decline that saw the city fall fast down an economic rabbit-hole for the first four years of the decade. Part II deals with how things, rather incredibly, got even worse. And Part III deals with the economic miracle that befell this city between 1997-2000. Please have a peek! I will be discussing this on twitter @kgravy Friday 2- 3 p.m.

Montreal's Top 10 gangland murders: # 8 Andre "Toots" Tousignant

2011-10-11T01:55:00.001-04:00

You can only get so far on bullshit alone. That one was on the famous lessons Dawson Cegep teacher Tony Schwartz once taught me after a flamboyant student and self-proclaimed filmmaker missed yet another class.
Andre "Toots" Tousignant used to tell people that he was a peanut machine vendor. Unlike other Hells Angels he would happily talk to the press and once told me that the guys in the now-demolished biker clubhouse on Bennett liked to listen to classical music. He turned down my request to visit the place to see if it was as spotless as he said.
In fact Andre Tousignant was a highly-motivated career-climbing biker, who teaches the insanity that people would indulge in simply to get a patch. In 1986 he told a newspaper writer that he aspired to join the Hells, whom his wife Susan Beckett described as "great guys." They even dressed their newborn son up in a leather biker jacket.
Toots would become one of Mom Boucher’s top assassins in a biker war that would claim 150 lives in the province between 1994 and around 2003. Of course nobody remembers anybody’s names, not even the seven innocent victims.*
So Toots went with a low-level Hells biker named Godasse Gagne and tried to shoot up a prison guard. Toots, whose license was suspended until 2050, was too fat for the bike. So they regrouped went back and waited for any guard to leave the RdP prison and eventually managed to shoot a random guard, who it turned out was a woman.
Unbeknownst to Toots, Godasse Gagne got his friend Steve Boies involved and let him in on the secret. Word was out on the street that Gagne was involved and when cops caught Boies with drugs he immediately finked on Gagne. So turned informant.
Realizing that Toots could easily do the same, Boucher called him over and the unsuspecting Tousignant, the man who had put into action Boucher's insane campaign to undermine all authority in Quebec to the Hells Angels, was killed. His body was found Feb. 27, 1998 in the woods near Bromont. He had been burned, shot and his fingers chopped off.

*1-Daniel Desrochers, 11, Aug. 9, 1995, by shrapnel from a biker-gang car bomb.
2--Guy Lemay, 48, shot Jan. 7, 1997, at his home, as his neighbour was targeted
3-Pierre Rondeau a Rivieres-des-Prairires prison guard shot dead on Sept. 8, 1997.
4-Diane Lavigne, on June 26, 1997, she was a prison guard murdered while driving away from the Bordeaux jail.
5--Serge Hervieux, Aug. 26, 1999, shot at a car-rental agency as bikers sought his boss, also named Serge..
6- Jean-Pierre Fleury, 42, brother-in-law of Hells Angels leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher who died on Sept. 4, 1999 after being shot on Ontario St. E. near the Olympic Stadium.
7-Marc-Alexandre Chartrand, 17, Oct. 20, 2001, by Benoit Guimond, 29, while waiting to get into the Aria after-hours club near the corner of St. Denis and Ste. Catherine Sts.

Montreal's Top 10 gangland murders: # 9 Richard Desormiers

2011-10-09T22:38:00.000-04:00

Donald Lavoie

On July 22, 1973 Claude Dubeau, 31, Yvon Belzil, 34, and Donald Lavoie walked into the Mon Pays Cabaret (strip club?) on St. Michel Boulevard just prior to 3 a.m. closing and shot Richard Desormiers dead.

Desormiers was a gang rival who they had already tried to kill twice before.

Lavoie watched the crowd while the others shot Desormiers. When waiter Jacques-Andre Bourassa got up, Lavoie shot him dead. Lavoie had participated in something like 27 murders for the Dubois gang, a group of 10 brutal brothers (this was before birth control and abortion) from St-Henri who controled the drug trade and protection rackets and prostitution in the 70s.

Journal de Montreal crime reporter Claude Jodoin had befriended Claude Dubois in the 70s and eventually realized that he was in way too deep. The two had taken trips to Barbados together where Dubois preteded to be a prison warden and Jodoin a lawyer. It wasn't a stretch, as Jodoin had studied law at McGill. But for Dubois it was rather ironic.

Dubois bankrolled a few nightclubs that Jodoin ran and Jodoin wrote a book about the brothers and even coached them on how to testify to stay out of jail, thus learning the deep secrets of the gang.

Anyway, Jodoin’s testimony wasn’t enough to get the Dubois brothers into jail. Prosecutors would get that nine years after the murder. Lavoie was at a wedding of one of the Dubois gang members and overheard Claude planning to have him killed. Lavoie escaped the Sherbrooke St. E Quality in from a laundry chute as Dubois and a friend hunted him at the wedding. So Lavoie escaped and planned his pre-emptive assassination of Claude Dubois.

In the interval Lavoie did a home invasion on a bank manager and robbed him of $135,000. Cops nabbed Lavoie and he went informant too. His testimony against Dubois landed the leader 10 years in jail and pretty much put an end to the gang that terrorizing St. Henri and beyond for much of the seventies. Lavoie helped in the solving of dozens of murders and supposedly returned to a normal life in anonymity.

Montreal's Top 10 gangland murders: # 10 Harry Davis

2011-10-08T18:08:00.002-04:00

Harry Davis

The killing of Harry Davis wasn’t the first gangland slaying in this city. That distinction would go to a killing Davis ordered, that of informant Charles Feigenbaum on Esplanade across from Fletcher's Field in 1934, as his info had landed Davis into a 14 year sentence for morphine smuggling.
Davis was also whipped with a dozen lashes. When Davis, a Romanian immigrant, got out, he became the king of the city’s postwar gambling trade. The reign ended Thursday July 25, 1946 when Louis Bercowitz entered his gaming room at 1244 Stanley and filled Davis with bullets after a brief but frustrating conversation. Irving Ellis and a few others brought Davis to hospital but it was too late. Louis Bercowitz had pulled the trigger because he was irritated that Davis had forbidden him from opening his own gambling joint, a point Davis made by torching his joint on Mansfield. After killing Davis, Bercowitz bumped into Al Palmer at Slitkins and Slotkins nearby on Dorchester, north side) and he brought him to the Herald where he and Ted McCormick his him in the woman's washroom from the until past the Gazette deadline, thereby giving themselves an exclusive. Bercowitz had been hired by the Detroit mob to kill Davis but arrived too slowly and by this time Davis had already taken power over the city's gambling. The cops were supposedly going to shoot him to prevent their corruption leaking out, which is why he surrendered to a journalist. He was sentenced to 15 years and moved to

Mexico

Fimo Mitchell: Coolopolis' Man of the Year for this week

2011-10-08T12:33:00.002-04:00

Coolopolis’s man of the year this week is Fimo Mitchell, the black Mordecai Richler. Ok, don’t call him that. Ok, do. The 33-year-old has returned home to Montreal from living in China to push his newest novel, Kingston’s Return, a 150-page tale which he started scribbling in 2007.

The story: Kingston Yearwood returns to town after doing a documentary on hip-hop in China and experiences a lot of difficulty getting back into the groove here. It’s an excellent topic, as those who have travelled often experience a hard-to-define readjustment period upon there return. There really should be a word for it.

Mitchell completed a Communications and then a Journalism degree but didn’t enjoy working in that world after a stint at CTV Montreal and then as an assignment editor at Global TV as well as a supply teacher at the Lester B. Pearson school Board. After first teaching in China in 2002, he left for good in 2007 because working life in Montreal was too time-consuming.

“You work all these hours and you’re tired and really drained at the end of the day. When I’m in China I don’t feel that way. I work part-time hours, about 20 hours a week so I have a lot more time to write,” he says. “That’s energizing, a blessing, that’s the main reason I’m out there. It used to be because of my curiosity about China but now in recent years I keep going back, cuz where else can I earn a living and do what I’m really passionate about. I haven’t found that sort of gig in Montreal or North America, I’d take it at this point.”

In his first Chinese job, which paid $500 a month, he immersed himself in small town life speaking almost exclusively in Mandarin. He was living in surroundings where he barely saw a white face, not to mention a black face, for months.

“I was alone in that small hell of a town tucked away behind these paper mills and there was no one to speak to and one day I’ve had this idea for a story,” he says. “I’ve always loved writing articles and so forth but I never thought I’d write a book but when began as a few paragraphs turned into chapters and flowed into a book.”

Check out one of the surprise innovations from his recent book launch in the video below.

Coolest party ever risks cancellation

2011-10-07T17:19:00.000-04:00

Kyle MacDonald, aka Montreal's hippest human, is attempting to bring to Montreal a party concept that has exploded elsewhere. It's a freeb and all it takes is a boom box. The idea is that you and hundreds of others carry your own radios and tune into the party frequency. The party is an outdoor thing unlimited by geography as the party folk tend to go place to place. Problem is they need a couple of hundred more people to sign up within 4 days! So yeah. Sign up!!!!

Suggestions for the Victoria Rink restoration?

2011-10-03T10:24:00.000-04:00

So I wrote an article recently in a thing called Openfile. ca about Billy Georgette and his proposal to restore this downtown indoor parking lot back to what it was: the birthplace of organized hockey. I am a big fan of Billy and his plan and won't rehash all of the crazy details of his quest, which involves making his case by pleading with PM Mulroney at a restaurant urinal and jumping in Pierre Trudeau's taxi to make his pitch.

A newly-refurbished rink would bring tourists and could be a fabulous hockey landmark that recognizes the importance of the game to this city without relying on the Montreal Canadiens.

The city of Montreal seems to like the project and just wants a letter describing some of the possibilities. If they get some sort of credible outline, with a vision of the project, why it would attract tourists and who might be the possible private benefactors, they will then hire experts to do a serious and professional feasibility study. So I said I'd try to help but would very much also invite the input of others. There's a comments section below where your ideas would be welcome.

Drama, what drama!

2011-10-03T10:12:00.006-04:00

I could never be a theatre reviewer. On the one hand, the stage is an embattled and beleaguered form of entertainment and it's nice that people still attend plays when the alternatives are often free and very impressive.

I have such great admiration for those who put their hearts, souls, energy and time into such endeavours that it makes it hard to speak negatively of anything.

But any good writer services his audience, not those he writes about. The reader comes first. That being said, slamming a play isn't always fair either, for example, the harmless Centaur play Schwartz's: The Musical was recently all set to get a lavish run in Toronto (minus some of the anti-Toronto slams) but then the would-be producers noticed a Globe and Mail review written by Matthew Hayes slamming the play in a rather exaggerated way and they cited this as a reason for not picking it up after all.

So a theatre review can actually determine careers and livelihoods. I saw the play Cantate de guerre at the Theatre d'Aujourdhui last week and have to say it's not a ton'o'fun. It's a relentless poem about the evils of war, with words spoken by one actor Paul Ahmarani, who plays a sadistic warrior whose humanity was taken away when his family was brutally murdered.

I have seen Ahmarani in at least three plays and I appreciate but don't love his work. Six other actors speak as a sort of chorus and while the stage is nicely presented and the entire crew came out for a special talk back session explaining their approach to the art, I can't say that I'd say you should rush to the theatre for this one.

Mayor Yvon Labrosse of Montreal East

2011-09-28T12:59:00.001-04:00

There has been lots of talk about the Duchesneau report on corruption in the construction industry and one part that has been overlooked is that he clearly indicated that the big problem lies not with the province, but rather, with the municipalities.

Holy demergerist roller orthodoxy has many now believing that small towns are bastions of honesty and good government but history tells of the dirtiness that goes on in these towns.

One town that had an interesting past before joining Montreal was Montreal East which had a tradition of being run by long term mayors, starting with Mayor J. Versailles from 1910 to 1931, Edouard Rivet ruled from 1962 to 1982.

When the 75-year-old Rivert had a stroke, Labrosse -- who had joined council in 1969 -- became interim mayor. Labrosse had worked at the Gulf refinery, which was one of the big four that funded 90 percent of the budget of the small town of 3,800. Labrosse beat Joseph Patriarco and became mayor of the small town.

And true to the dictum that oil tends to do little to help democracy, Labrosse got in the habit of making borough meetings incomprehensible to onlookers, something which he was entirely unapologetic about.

Now the town had a thing for giving freebs to residents. They just couldn't help it. One veteran Councillor Maurice Senez was tossed in jail for income tax fraud but managed to keep serving on council, which didn't make the mayor too happy.

Soon Labrosse himself was in the crosshairs of his opponents, as he had allegedly given free gravel to a car dealership. He also allegedly used city resources to help build six houses in the area. He was sick of the attacks so he openly asked for a probe in 1984. He was also known for taking a ton of trips and allowing councillors to do the same on the city nickel, as they would take about five journeys a year to places like San Antonio Texas or Ottawa. He was removed from office in 1985 by the province, which about 1,000 of the 3,800 Montreal East residents to sign a petition supporting the Mayor, as they felt that the investigation was a waste of their money, however the cash was really mostly coming in from big industry, so there's some sense that lavishness wasn't entirely inappropriate.

In October 1985 provincial police decided there was no reason to charge Mayor Labrosse with any crime and he eventually won all of the lawsuits against him and sued to have his legal fees refunded. He got his expense account back in 1986. However the refineries started their long march to closure at that point and Labrosse had to deal with that. In 1987 Labrosse declined the Montreal invitation to rename his stretch of Dorchester after Rene Levesque and so eight blocks in that part of town (along with Westmount) still bears the customary name.

In 2000 he fought against the mergers and by 2004 the folks livin' there made Mtl-E the only municipality in the east to demerge. He had tried to run as a city councillor for Montreal in 2001 but lost due to the fact that he wasn't known in the borough he ran in. However he did get voted back as mayor of Montreal east in 2006 but lost his bid for re-election in 2009 but 806 to 800. He is in his late 70s now and apparently still alive.

Nowadays the city is sitting on a goldmine of land abandoned by the refineries that could conceivably add another half million residents to the island.

Quiz of the day - who is this guy?

2011-09-24T22:02:00.002-04:00

This Montrealer made a ton of cash from illegal activities in the 1970s and often insisted on conducting meetings in the nude before ultimately flaming out as they all do. Anybody have a guess at it? Namewise suggests that he was a sage alien arachnid. Hints: He was a boxer as a kid, then tried to promote a Woodstock-style rock festival, which was floptastic and then he attempted to establish a stranglehold on the local skin-trade before getting caught and killing himself in prison. Still nobody?
Answer: It is indeed Richard Siegfried Wiseman, aka Ziggy Wiseman, who made massive amounts of money in the 70s skin trade. His downfall started when he attempted to bribe a cop with payments of $2,000 a week, rising to $5,000 per week after three months. At their early meetings Wiseman insisted that they talk in the nude so as to not have any wiretap surveillance happening. Or maybe he just liked to have conversations with other men while naked. Wiseman was making $5 million a year and his name came up at the crime commission hearings in the mid-70s, dropped alongside Cotroni and others. His office was here on Cherrier.

Yuletide Homicides!

2011-09-23T23:42:00.004-04:00

Christmas is around the corner and it's a time of love and cheer but sometimes love turns to hate and gifts turn to bullets. Here's a brief list of some of the murders committed on or around Christmas in the province of Kweeb.

When newly-arrived immigrant Leonard Siragusa returned home at at 11 p.m. on December 23, 1961 he had hoped his loving wife Francesca Siragusa, 22 would launch her loving body around him in a tight clinch of love (cool down! – Chimpes). But when he got home to 227 Mozart he noticed the door was locked. He looked through the window and seemed to see a man leaving through the backdoor. Francesca unlocked the door and told him that it was a neighbour who had dropped by. But the next day husband persisted until she finally confessed that it was her lover. Leonardo had a gun handy and used it. Police initially thought he had killed his wife because he was angry that she had sent $10 to her home back in Italy.

Rheo Robert hits
his final canvas

Rheo Robert was a boxer living in Three Rivers Quebec who did the rounds one Christmas until he got to Leo Paul Gauvin’s house at 1009 Lapierre. When he got to that residence he broke the tragic news to his host that he was planning to take off with his wife. The husband was scared of Robert and on December 26, 1962 pulled out a gun and shot Robert to death with a 30 calibre pistol. He was acquitted. .

Pierre Totant must have considered himself very lucky when lovely Claire Laroche, 21, accepted an invitation to his apartment on December 26, 1965. The woman agreed to pop into 3425 Papineau apt. 303 for a little drink and dancing but didn’t plan anything more than that. Alas Totan had other plans and when she refused his advances he killed her. Totan was charged with murder and while awaiting justice he hung himself, ending his life on 5 January 1966. She had been living at 5945 11^th Ave. in Rosemount.

"Hi I'm Darwin Heilman,
I killed my son
"

Darwin Heilman was a troubled genius who had spent time at the Douglas Hospital and had also taught university. He had fathered two children with Marielle Poirier of St-Bruno but the two had separated and often fought. On 24 December, 1970 he brought his 3 year old son Dean to a shopping centre and then back home. When another quarrel ensued he brought the boy into the bathroom and cut his throat, killing him. Police arrived too late to save the child but at 37 Seigneuriale apartment 2 but they saved him from killing others.

Marcel Quesnel was seriously hooked on his ex-girlfriend Louise Dumontier, 18. She was living at 402 Church in Verdun. On 26 Dec 1972 he reached persuaded her to come to his apartment at 925 Rosemont, claiming that he’d kill himself if she didn’t come. When she came, he shot her dead with a bullet in the head.

Bernard Barriault. Nice hair eh.

On 23 Dec.1972 Bernard Barriault, 23, invited a taxi driver named Yves d’Anjou into his home at 260 Greene. It was midway through the night and the visitor wished Barriault a happy yuletide with two bullets. His girlfriend Carole Regimbald, 21, was also dead, shot and stabbed 30 times. Barriault was a loan shark.

Jean Guy Lalonde liked to visit his girlfriend, who was a widowed single mother in Brigham in the Townships. On 26 Dec. 1973 he brought gifts but her kids weren’t quite on the same page as him. He was a particularly brutal man who liked children to be disciplined. The power went out and a quarrel ensued and he said he was leaving with the gifts he brought. Well, that wasn't a very popular plan and the woman shot him dead.

In 1976 on Christmas Eve, Gerard Petel, 48, was hanging out at 5049 St. Urbain when a 17-year-old stabbed him to death.

Toope! There it is!

2011-09-22T17:07:00.003-04:00

One of the worst crimes in Montreal in the 1990s was the killing of an elderly retired minister Rev. Frank Toope, 75 and his wife Jocelyn Toope, 70.

The beating murder was committed in the early morning of April 2, 1995 by three kids aged 13, 14 and 15.

The elder two claim to have been under the effects of LSD at this time, although this claim doesn't exactly clear the bar of credibility (see comments) as the lysergic tripping experience wasn't exactly that common in that time and place. One of the teen trio had suggested that the couple be targeted because the old man didn't tip the kid when he delivered his newspapers. The perpetrators' names have never been revealed for legal reasons and they will not be revealed here.

It might be worth nothing that they were subsequently re-arrested for other crimes afterwards but we're not sure what has become of them since. The oldest would have just turned 30 this year. Anyway, the address of the reprehensible Toope massacre has never been published, not sure why that would be kept confidential when other similar cases had their locations out there right away. (It is one of the 5Ws, dontchaknow!- Chimples). Anyway it's 242 St. Charles.

The Toopes came to the West Island in 1968. Frank was from Newfoundland and his wife was a Brit. Frank retired as rector of the St. Mary's Anglican Church in Kirkland in 1989. Their daughter Allison was 33 at the time and their son Stephen was 37 and was dean of McGill Law School. Their funeral attracted over 1,300 people.

May the victims rest in peace and may the perpetrators dedicate their lives to good things.

Say no to mafia hitmen riding seadoos

2011-09-21T16:09:00.002-04:00

The Mafia recently attempted to continue its ongoing assassinations of the Rizzuto gang by firing at Raynald Desjardins from a seadoo. This really does not sit well with me for a number of reasons, mainly because it seems that they aren't taking it seriously enough.

I need to explain. If you wish to return to your pie recipes, lotto results or whatever else you look at on the internet, please leave now.

Ok, for those of us still here, take all possible hobbies and activities and chronic behaviours we indulge in and evaluate them on a chart with evil at one end and good at the other.

At one end of the spectrum are the damaging ones and the other, the benign or even helpful ones. At this end you have serial killers. At the other end you have people who tend to lepers in the third world.

Such activities lead people to have their endorphins, dopamines or other brain chemicals flow. So presumably Michael Vick would really have been better off playing squash rather than organizing dog fights because both would ultimately have released the same pleasurable chemicals in his brain.

So after serial killing you descend into stuff that is slightly less bad, rape and then assault and a little further down robbery and property theft or damae.

Then we arrive at a more philosophically debatable area, gross but not necessarily harmful behaviour: drug use, whoremongering, being rude or verbally abusive, whether those are benign or evil or even positive, that could be debated.

So someone like Chris Nilan who fought willing opponents and then became a heroin addict and occasional shoplifter before landing as a sports commentator, the karma jury is out in his case, as he'd be somewhere around the middle.

And then farther down the spectrum you have your normal people and their harmless activities, golf, tennis, cooking, yes... sea doo riding and eventually you get into the saint zone, where the do-gooders inhabit.

We can never have too many people doing good things, so if we can somehow convince those who get their endorphin rush from doing evil and trying to get them to get that same thrill out of benevolent behaviour, then we are doing a majorly good thing.

Ok, so the mafia seems to have combined a benign activity, sea-dooing with an evil hobby, murder.

A few days ago a mafia hitman crusing along the back river and took aim at Raynald Desjardins, who is thought to be a top member of the local mob whose ranks have been thinned out by Calabrian revenge.

A gunman riding a sea-doo rode up to where Desjardins was strolling and attempted to shoot him from the water-bound vehicle. He missed. So he must surely have been frustrated by that but undoubtedly he enjoyed the fun ride on the water. So when he got home his wife must have asked, how was your day and he replied, well good and bad.

If I were Desjardins I would avoid going to La Ronde lest the same mafia hit man attempt to shoot him while riding The Teacup.

The would-be killer then torched the sea doo, which didn't work because, well it's a sea-doo and it was wet.

I do not recall this sort of thing being on the Sopranos. I think there should be a tacit agreement that mafia bad guys should wear dark shirts and not try to kill people while wearing speedos. They should leave the sea doo activities to Stockwell Day.

So I think the public should finally tell the mafa that enough is enough, it is time to stop trying to kill people while indulging in enjoyable sports and leisure pasttimes.