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Has Viggo Mortensen dumped the Montreal Canadiens?

May 23, 2014, 2:03 pm
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   The Broadway Blueshirts had star power on their side at Madison Square Garden last night with Robert DeNiro, Susan Sarandon and Sting all cheering for the Rangers.
   Montreal's only real top-flight A list fan (sorry Jay Baruchel) is Viggo Mortensen but unlike in past years he has not been posing in a Habs T-shirt nor waving a Canadiens' flag this spring in spite of the Canadiens making the final four.
  In fact, this photo taken of him a few days ago at Cannes shows that the Eastern Promises star appears entirely more interested in some team called the San Lorenzo ASLA, whatever that is.
    So someone in France has got to find this guy and put a Canadiens' flag in his hand so he can prove his ongoing faith otherwise it'll be another Donald Sutherland/Expos tragedy. Celeb fans are not permitted to leap off the bandwagon regardless of how many women they know named Tatiana. 
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Suzanne down by the river... but where exactly was it?

May 25, 2014, 12:05 pm
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   Some entrepreneur could make a few bucks by making a tourist attraction from the apartment made famous by the song Suzanne by Leonard Cohen.
   The song references a multitude of local scenes, including the St. Lawrence River and the Our Lady of the Harbour Statue near the Bonsecours Market, near Common St. and of course...um... the "heroes in the seaweed" who are undoubtedly down there too.
   Those who visit could re-enact the famous poetry that ensued from Cohen's platonically dropping in on Suzanne Verdal, then wife, or perhaps estrange-wife and dance partner of sculptor Armand Vaillancourt.
   I dropped in on Vaillancourt's home a few years back and asked him about where exactly the apartment was but didn't get a precise answer.
   One local hotel called the Auberge de la Place Royale will rent you room 202, that they claim was the 500-square foot spot that the encounter took place in.
  The joint is adjacent to the Helios Cafe, which was supposedly the notorious spot where James Earl Ray was encountered by his mysterious guide in the quest to kill Martin Luther King a couple of years later.
   I'll have to see proof before I'm convinced however.
   And even if it's the real spot, what we need is an actress, a hologram, or a robotic Suzanne bringing you tea and oranges all the way from China.
   Cuz supplying your Suzanne might be a bit of work. I don't want to scour the Salvation Army to find a new-gen Suzanne. 
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The life and death of Montreal concert promoter Matt "Dutch" Garner

May 27, 2014, 7:38 am
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Matt "Dutch" Garner
   There's only one way for Jenna Lee Solley to cope with the nightmarish sight she witnessed in mid-November 2011 and that is, with hope and patience.
   Solley, on that day, entered the third floor apartment on St. Remi near Notre Dame where her on-again-off-again boyfriend and close-confidante Matt "Dutch" Garner, 29, had been killed days earlier, alongside Einick Gitelman, 28.
   Solley was allowed into the crime scene to collect her badly-burnt-but-still-alive cat which had been stuck inside the horrific fire that accompanied the two killings.
   That's when she came face-to-face with the calcified corpse of Garner, her lover of eight years, all but unrecognizable on the couch, complete with zipper hoodie melted onto what remained of the sofa.
   The shock of the still-unsolved double murder on St. Remi St. - perhaps the most horrific local crime in recent history - was only heightened by Garner's stature as a high-profile concert promoter and scenester in the hip hop world, where he counted many devoted friends and business associates. 
   Gitelman, it seems clear, was burnt to death. He managed to descend two sets of stairs but perished across the street.
   How Garner died remains a mystery, as a coroner's report remains confidential due to the ongoing murder investigation. Solley can only hope to one day be told that Garner was already dead by the time that flames consumed his body.
   "At least we have the hope that he was shot or stabbed or something first because you can't tape someone to a couch," said Solley.
*** 
Ken Garner
   For Matt Garner's father Ken, the initial pain has since transformed into an ongoing agony of maintaining hope that he will one day receive answers concerning the increasingly-distant murders in St. Henri on November 11, 2011. 
   But 29 months and ever-diminishing communications with police investigators have led hopes to fade and frustrations to grow.    Homicide investigators routinely conceal details about ongoing investigations, even from families, leading to a not-uncommon frustration between the parties, according to one expert.    
   “It's a difficult situation when there's no arrest made,” said Heidi Illingworth head of the Ottawa-based Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime.
   “Police are often busy investigating tips and can't necessarily provide information right away to families. It's hard for families to understand. Usually someone from the police services is able to sit down with them.” 
    Many cities have dedicated squads designed to assist families of crime victims. Ottawa, for example, has about nine officers on its victims assistance force, along with several volunteers. Montreal has no such squad.
   A Montreal police representative told Coolopolis that families of victims are directed to a provincial body known as CAVAC which can offer similar services.    But Ken Garner has become so frustrated that he has, on occasion, berated officers at a police station near his home in the West Island. 
   He says that he has begun the process of filing an official complaint against the squad. “I haven't heard a peep besides the initial contact that night when they came to my house to tell me,” said Garner, who admits that he gruffly asked the police to leave after telling him the bad news about his son's death. 
    Solley, who was outside with the officers at the time of their grim visit, said that she even overheard an officer speaking disrespectfully about Ken Garner immediately after the encounter. 
   Ken Garner and Solley's frustrations have been compounded by what they consider ample potential evidence to make progress in the hunt for killers.
   They believe that video surveillance footage of the perpetrators exists from cameras affixed on a neighbouring commercial property as well as from a gas station where the perpetrators purchased gasoline employed in the incendiary attack.
   Another piece of physical evidence, which cannot be disclosed here, might also have yielded telltale fingerprints.
   But those close to the victim do not know if police have pursued those leads or have even interviewed all possible witnesses.
   Ken Garner also complains that about 20 police cars showed up to a vigil held Garner in St. Henri 11 days after the murder, although he concedes that police might have been mindful of the attackers striking again. "They might have thought that there was a danger to others because clearly these killers aren't normal," said Ken Garner.
   Solley also complains that police discouraged Sun Youth from offering a $25,000 reward for the capture of the killers. (Police generally discourage such rewards because the practice leads to a flood of worthless tips).
   One potential moment where police and Garner's survivors might have come together also fizzled out when the family nixed a police proposal to park an information van outside Garner's one-year memorial concert at the Belmont on the Main. The family declined, as they felt that a heavy police presence might spoil the memorial.
   In his despair Ken Garner has begun laying faith a series of increasingly-unlikely factors that might have made Montreal homicide investigators indifferent to pursuing the investigation: Matt's grandfather, who he never met and has long since left the country, was a known local criminal from the Point. Matt's lawyer once successfully defended a suspect who killed a police officer, a fact Ken believes might have turned them from the victim. 
   But Ken Garner primarily fears that his son's known-to-police label has prompted police to reclassify the investigation into a lesser-important settling-of-accounts file. 
Jenna Lee Solley 
***
   Matt Garner grew up with both parents and a brother on bucolic Cadieux Island in Dorion, 45 minutes west of downtown Montreal, until the age of eight when his parents split.
   The brothers then spent weekends on the West Island with their father Ken, a construction worker. Garner was entranced by city life and moved downtown at 18 to study computer programming. Matt's blue-collar father didn't understand the choice.
   "He'd put on his nice slacks and dress up for the office and I'd say, 'what the fuck are you doing? I'm giving you the possibility to buy a house and renovate it. I know real estate agents,'" said Ken Garner. 
   Eventually Matt would gain his father's approval by becoming an entrepreneur, registering a company called Escape Entertainment. "Everybody should have a company. It's something I find very convenient," said Ken Garner. 
   Garner started promoting hip hop concerts and soon his apartment became a magnet for emerging artists such as I.Blast and Magnum and others who he'd arrange opening gigs to for such out-of-town draws as Rick Ross, Redman, Method Man and Busta Rhymes. Matt Garner was soon at the centre of a creative circle of ambitious and talented rap music aspirants. 
   When he moved from Old Montreal to St. Henri, many of the hip hop artists soon followed and also found apartments nearby. 
   His impact on the music scene was undeniable. "Hip hop wears its city on its sleeve and Matt made people feel like we could be Toronto or New York City, or Los Angeles, every city's rap dream," said music journalist Darcy MacDonald, a close observer of Garner's efforts.
   Garner also "lived fast" and "elevated the wrong incentives, popping bottles on stage and promoting the image of living large. But that's not Matt or Montreal's fault, that's hip hop's problem," said MacDonald.
   Life was good and the parties were frequent.
   "He was always the guy at the barbecue with the apron on, putting on the burgers, cracking jokes. He was the guy bringing people together. That huge group of friends just drifted apart after he died," said Solley.
   Deep bonds were forged: one friend later named his child after Garner while another had Garner's initials tattooed onto his forearm.
   Garner's dedication to the cause never waned, in spite of many challenging moments, including a Rick Ross show which quickly went from triumph to fiasco over a small detail. 
   Ross was inked to perform at the Corona Theatre in January 2011 and was paid $80,000. Garner's team sold 2,300 tickets at $50 each but his team neglected to purchase adequate insurance and when fans vandalized the speakers, a healthy profit turned into a loss. 
   Garner persevered in spite of such frustrations, which also included regular money squabbles. "He had been ripped off so many times but he said 'I'm going to do it.' Nobody was stopping him," said Matt's father Ken. 
 ***
   Garner was also an avid fan of marijuana, a tonic he employed to ease the stress of promoting.
   Dealing marijuana also helped him finance gigs. 
Garner, at right

    "He sold weed, a bag here and and a bag there," said Solley. "Does that make him an evil person? I was with him for eight years. I know that end of the business and saw a lot of what he did. It wasn't done in shady corners. It was always done casually through acquaintances. It's just sad that this whole cloud of drug dealer has cast upon him. The stigma is frustrating." 
   Ken also shrugs. "The kid is moving pot, it's not a reason to kill him."
   On Feb. 12, 2011, Paul Frappier, a well-liked rising local musician who performed under the name Bad News Brown, was found dead near his home the Lachine Canal.
   The murder remains unsolved and many have attempted to link Garner and Brown's deaths. Garner was good friends with Brown and was deeply shaken by the death but Solley and Ken Garner dismiss any possible connection between the murders. 
   By that time Garner's dealings with police had been limited to a single episode in which he was questioned and released in relation to an alleged assault during post-party nightclub melee. 
   But in late 2010 police entered to his ninth-storey apartment and found marijuana on the premises. Garner was charged with possession. 
    His lawyer Frank Pappas (notable for successfully defending a man who shot a police officer dead) raised some doubts about police procedures in the bust. 
The scene of the crime
   Garner received a relatively-light sentence of eight months' house arrest. He was permitted to continue operating Escape Entertainment but was required to report to a parole officer who had to green-light his comings-and-goings.      Garner was jubilant upon news of the sentence and phoned his dad on the way home as he and friends hollered in celebration. "Had I known what was going to happen next, I would have wished that he had been sentenced to a couple of years instead," said Ken. 
   According to a variety of witnesses, Garner then befriended a connection from Toronto.
   A few weeks before the end of Garner's house arrest, that connection - according to an eyewitness - asked Garner if he could sell him some oxycontin. 
    Garner had never dealt in any drug other than marijuana but broke with tradition. 
   The contact reportedly agreed to buy $15,000 worth of oxycontin off of Garner, who planned to acquire the supply from a dealer in the Eastern Townships. 
   Garner sold the drug to the Toronto connection, who returned to complain that what Garner had supplied him was not oxy, but another worthless substance. 
   (An alternate version has it that Garner never had received oxycontin because the dealers that were supposed to supply it simply took his money and drove off in a drug burn in front of Garner's apartment.) 
   The oxycontin foul-up displeased the Toronto connection but Garner felt that he could make things right, as the two sides were to meet the next day to settle the issue. 
Gitelman
   That afternoon, November 11, 2011, Einick Gitelman, a ski instructor from NDG, was planning to come by with some marijuana - an amount said to be worth $15,000, about the same value as the disputed oxycontin - for Garner.
   Gitelman was, by all accounts, a non-violent, non-threatening, well-raised young man who also earned some income with the distribution of pot.
   It remains a mystery who set the fires and killed Garner and Gitelman on St. Remi on that day.
   The attackers, whoever they were, likely accessed the third-storey apartment from the back door along Dagenais, entered and tossed an incendiary device into the room of Garner's roommate – who was out of town at the time – and then taped Gitelman to a chair while also either killing or merely detaining Matt Garner. The attackers likely fled with whatever marijuana was on the premises.
   (It has been speculated that the killers might have lifted their unconventional modus operandi from a TV documentary airing on Canadian TV around that time which featured a re-enactment of the 60s-era, London-based Crays crime family tying a rival to a chair and threatening him with fire.) 

   The flames eventually burnt through the duct tape on Gitelman's chair. His black-stained hands left a mark all along the walls of the stairway. He managed to get outside only to die in a yard across the street.
   Gitelman was likely simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. His family, who were not interviewed for this article, later established a hockey scholarship in his name. 
   How Garner died remains a mystery, but his charred body was later found fused to the couch. The victims' friends and families were devastated by the stunning news but were confident that arrests would be imminent. 
   Two-and-a-half years later, the case is becoming increasingly cold. 
   Ken Garner, now 60, remains constantly preoccupied by the event and he searches for clues, taking hundreds of long bicycle trips from the West Island to the top of the Mount Royal, his way of contemplating the death of his son. “The truth can cut deep but you have to know the truth,” he says. Anybody with information concerning this case is asked to call 911 and share it with police authorities. 
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Montreal retail, where it came from and where it's going

May 30, 2014, 11:04 am
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  The future of local retail here is a hot subject, as commercial high streets are increasingly threatened by online shopping.
   I briefly explored some of these issues in a four minute interview with the great Mutsumi Takahashi* this afternoon on the news. Here's the link to watch it.
   One point I wanted to stress is that while technology has dictated the fate of many types of businesses, it's not the only factor involved. For example  Chinese laundries crashed after hot water and washing machines came into the home but restaurants did not see a similar dip and are thriving more than ever even though all Montrealers now have highly-efficient kitchens.
   Often it's subtle government policy changes that can make or break a business. We've seen the total of depanneurs almost halved since 1988, partly because government allowed grocery stores to sell beer. Government also forced corner stores to lose their video lottery terminals and hide smoking powerwalls.
   As a result many depanneurs have shut and consumers have been inconvenienced - especially those that do not known cars - by the disappearance, which can be blamed at least partly on the weakness of the depanneur association lobby in fighting these changes.
     We also see the inevitable decline of shoe shine parlours as a viable industry but as I've noted elsewhere on this site, that phenomenon was at least partly accelerated in 1948 by government policy that forced such businesses to pay $1,000 for a special permit to operate on Sundays and evenings.
   So what's a good business concept?
   Bowling alleys, are you can see from the graph, is the closest I've seen a business concept grow in step with population growth.
   I've also noted the bizarre fact that there was reportedly only one single tattoo parlour in Montreal between 1959-1969 and it closed up, so that's an industry that has taken off.    
   The 1990s came along and gimmick sex businesses sprouted up including sexy serveuse restaurants which were popping up all over but authorities made those difficult - perhaps unfairly -  by reclassifying the semi-nude waitresses as performers, which made administration difficult.
   There's also an ongoing war on massage parlours under the notion that they are havens of underage sex and white slavery but I don't see much proof of that. Indeed these places are generally quieter than funeral homes, so I question whether government has the moral authority to prevent a taxpaying landowner from putting a money-making business into his commercial property.
   I also noted in the interview that high streets routinely compete with each other, perhaps the most aggressive of which is the St.Hubert Plaza which has known to give free rent to a merchant for a few months just to get rid of an empty storefront. So that's why you occasionally see a little Star Wars figure shop and such bizarre stuff up there.
   These street associations compete with nearby strips, so you used to have Monkland and Sherbrooke in competition until the Sherbrooke street merchants association disbanded (at least it last time I looked.) These associations are sometimes known to poach businesses from nearby rivals, so it can be nasty on occasion.
  One solution that you will also see if a borough or town change zoning to discourage businesses from one strip and push it towards another, so in Verdun, Wellington has been designated forever commercial while Bannantyne and Verdun Aves are being pushed to go residential.
   There's a whole lot of storefront to fill in the future where we won't be leaving our homes all that often, even to shop, so innovation and new businesses will be required.
   I have a few ideas of what the hot future retail street front businesses are but am not entirely convinced that sufficient talent and ambition is being attracted to that realm.
   Sitting in a little shop all day hoping that people walk in and buy stuff, while you force yourself to get through the increasingly complicated administrative challenges involved in running a shop - paying a variety of taxes, buying permits, being grilled on signs (not just for language), workers conditions and all the rest - is not everybody's idea of an enjoyable career plan.
    *Speaking of charts, according to my perusing of old newspapers, Mutsumi's arrival at Pulse/CTV Montreal coincided with that station rocketing upwards far ahead of all competition in the local anglo TV news landscape and those numbers have stayed the same since. 
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Coolopolis asks YOU (yes you): Is that a Montreal thing?

June 5, 2014, 2:05 pm
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Is that a Montreal thing? I ask this of these five itemz below.

1- Worrying about a toll on the replacement for the Champlain Bridge, is that a Montreal thing? 
    Our elected officials are claiming that there's a united opposition against the imposition of tolls on the upcoming bridge that will eventually replace what is the Champlain Bridge. To his credit the NDP South Shore MP whose name I can't quite recall has been working hard in his futile attempt to persuade the Harper Conservatives to allow motorists to ride the span for free.
   But when a TV crew shot some streeters on the South Shore random folks interviewed said hell yeah put a toll up there because I don't use it much and I don't want to pay.
   Other online discussion forums and article comment sections echoed the same sentiment.
   Of course the diable est dans les details, there's a big difference between paying 25 cents of paying $7 bucks to cross and we don't know how much it'll cost to cross, so there's that.
   So I ask: is worrying about tolls a Montreal thing?

2-French suddenly lovin' English, is that a Montreal thing suddenly? 
   Those of us long-in-the-tooth anglos who have been here a long time can certainly recall the parle-en-francais! and le-Quebec-aux-Quebecois era where folks were unashamed to pile on you for opening your mouth with the Queen's English coming out.
   (Personally I parle French a lot and love doing it, but I also talk English in situations that other fluently-bilingual anglos might speak French. For example if I'm in the east end waiting for a red light and something unusual happens I might comment to the person next to me on it in English. Why? Because it's fun, it creates an interesting context, a bond, a declamatory moment, hard to explain).
   But La Presse has come out with a new survey of 500 young Quebec volk, suggesting that the younger peeps here in the Kweeb are suddenly overwhelmingly positive to English, Premier Couillard was unabashedly pro-English and was even wildly applauded for saying he'd beef up the learning of English, and indeed just last night on French TV an academic said that studies show that the more English French kids can be taught, the better it will be.
   Suddenly there's a consensus forming quite the opposite of what it would have been just a couple of years ago.
   So I ask: Is French folks being highly positive to the English language suddenly a Montreal thing?

3-Going up the stairs at the Oratory, is it a Montreal thing? 
   I've got to tip my hat to the great oratory of St. Joseph, largely built by an unjustifiably ambitious underling who was in the right time at the right place to see an incredible massive shrine built around him, frankly the only local churcharoo that can really conjure up the mysteriousness sideshow element required to believe in ghostly gods. I know that they used to have Andre's heart in a jar until it was kidnapped and supposedly returned, although I'd say there's a good chance there's another man's heart in that jar now. And of course the chambres a bequilles has been featured on postcards, a place where people shun medical advice and toss their canes because their walking ways has been healed by the miracle of god.
   That said, do pilgrims really ascend those stairs on their knees? I've never actually seen it.

Dance break: 4-Having sex in cars, is it a Montreal thing?  
   Montrealers used to be oversexed because they'd move out at age 12 and get an $80 a month apartment with money from their part beer bike jobs
   As a result Montreal became a bit of a hedonists' paradise as young people would spend weekends at their lovers' apartments practicing sex position and consuming all sorts of drugs.
   But rents skyrocketed and the few kids who move out now often have to share with several roommates, making intimacy difficult. The rest, of course, are doing the Italian thing and living at home until 29 and saving up for their future house which they'll buy once the real estate market crashes again.
   So the stage has been set for Montreal to be a city of romantic parking. But if that's the case where in the city do they go to park? I can't imagine you can just pull over on any random city street and get busy and be vulnerable to dog-walkers peering in to your most personal moment.
   A cop once told me that they see the steamed up windows with suspension shaking all the time but never bothered those inside.
   So, um, is this, like, uh, a Montreal thing?

5- Seeing the area below the hill as lower-class, is that a Montreal thing? 
   Areas like the Point, the Hank, the Griff, Emard, Cote St. Paul, Verdun, were long seen as areas to escape from, partly no doubt because they lacked the geographical advantage of being above the hill, which was home to the most coveted and expensive areas.
   But gentrification, proximity to downtown, bla bla, appear to have counteracted the trend and made some of these lower-altitude areas seem coveted. Or is is still just the same old lowerland hyped up with boosterism?
   So seeing the below-the-hill area as less desirable, is that a Montreal thing?

  I ask you this and encourage you mightily to respond in the comment section, as crowdsourcing is the only way to get answers these days. 
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Some great Kickstarter pitches from the Montreals

June 16, 2014, 8:21 am
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Montreal people are on Kickstarter trying to raise cash for their ventures, so let's have a look at some of the 357 of the Montreal pitches that the project fund-raising site has seen.
  Of the 357 Montreal pitches, 120 succeeded and about 30 are open right now (although some of those might have expired by the time you read this).
  About 200 of all pitches were unsuccessful or cancelled.
  So about 56 percent fail. That does not mean that the project itself failed entirely but it certainly stamps a big L on the forehead of the undertaking.
   The biggest Montreal success was Simon Tian's Neptune Pine Smartwatch which bagged $801,000, from 2,839 backers, well over its target last December.
   Here are some other noteworthy Montreal kickstarter pitches.
 


David Heti is aiming to raise $73 for a steak dinner. He has three backers so far, who have given him $8. His very short video, about three seconds long, says "I just want some steak." He types on his page: "I feel like I've been working kind of hard and I'd like a steak dinner. You know, a good steak dinner. But I can't really justify the e"



Flavored toothpicks. What about mint? Already got 95% pulled in with its $33 k + haul with 338 backers.about it here.
It is done by something called the Phood Station. Not to be confused with the Phool Station.  See all the wood sucking tastiness here.




The paltry $300 is an embarrassment, only 4 percent of what it needs, but Tom Ovidiu's soccer game which includes a straw that blows the ball is pretty cool.





Sam is leaning heavily on an acoustic guitar riff to sell his dream of being the king of spherical ice balls. The video starts off with cool ukulele music or whatever that is, which abruptly stops with a jarring in-yer-faceroo speech slamming cheapo factory made ice-ball competitors. Its $5,000 collected is
only at 20 percent of its goal.




   Slut Island, I always thought, was the unofficial name of Ile de Jesus (Laval City.) This one is a slam dunk, of course, cuz who wouldn't want to support something called the Slut Island Festival? Well, it managed to hit its very modest target of $1,500 even though nobody actually had the guts to get in the camera and give us a pitch on the video. Congrats to Frankie Teardrop and Ethel Eugene. I'll be first in line to the skankfest!

Some guy who looks like Daniel Richler meets Captain Obvious sits wearing a hat talking about free games.
   This guy is actually one heckuva pitchman and is asking for $80,000 to take a year off his successful game-designing career to make free games. His first try last month got to $64,000 but that was short of his goal and his current attempt has him at $28,000, just around one third of where he wants to be. The kickstarter rules dictate that if you don't get 100% of your goal it's a failure, so he might be kicking himself that he didn't ask for $60,000 in his first go-round. 
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Pete Murphy, king of the newsboys

June 30, 2014, 6:15 am
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Pete Murphy seen in a drawing from when he donated instruments to hawkers
  Local newspapers did their best to turn Pete Murphy into a legend but the newspaper salesman has been totally forgotten since his death, so Coolopolis is going to try to remind you of his glory.
   Murphy was born in Quebec City in 1850 but started slinging newspapers in Montreal at the age of eight, eventually getting a self-built shed at the corner of St. Francis Xavier and St. James, considered an excellent spot, as it was outside of the big city Post Office.
   The city had only about 60,000 residents when he began and his sales grew as the city and he did brisk business with customs such as Sir John A., various visiting royal Brits, and Wilfrid Laurier, who once brought him a gift of a blackstick back from Ireland.
   He formed the Newsboys Protective Association in 1901 and tried to help the various newsboy hawkers, which included mostly Jewish boys, and he sometimes bemoaned that the numbers of Irish were in decline selling papers on the streets.
   Murphy was not only making good money, he had good press, as the papers tended to laud his efforts to sell their product. He got in the habit of forming various associations for the newsboys, providing them with grey knickerbocker suits for the Workers Parade of 1903 and 1906 and he appeared in a photo in the Utica Globe in 1906, a big deal at the time.
   In 1903, Murphy - by now known as the city's oldest newsboy -  asked that newsboys be regulated and forced to pay a tax fought for the right of girls to sell newspapers on the street, which had been banned.
   He threatened to start his own newspaper in 1904 when the Sunday Sun went on strike.
   In 1911 he lobbied for the reinstatement of the right to sell papers after 9:30 p.m and distributed more uniforms to the newsboys from his home at 14 Coloniale. They held a bus tour in his honour that summer, at the end of which he was presented flowers at the Gazette.
  He bought musical instruments for the boys in 1914, spending $400 of his own money on a variety of instruments in hopes that the music would help the boys' minds.
   He held an annual dinner for the newsboys around Christmastime, at his own expense. About 500 attended the last one he held in 1916, at which he pleaded with the boys to stop smoking.
Murphy died in St. Agathe in 1917, leaving a wife, two daughters and two sons, Frank and Peter, one of whom fought in WWI while the other took over his newsstand.
   Murphy was so notable that a significant obituary was written for his widow, who died at her home at 1979 St. Antoine in 1936 at the age of 96.

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Quiz - where in Montreal was this?

July 4, 2014, 10:42 am
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   This photo, taken of a group of mostly women sporting the latest hats, corsets and dresses, was taken 107 years ago in Montreal and is one of my faves. Can you tell where it was shot? 
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Article 3

July 4, 2014, 11:45 am
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Quiz-where in Montreal was this?

July 4, 2014, 2:30 pm
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      Baby.. tell me now.. where in Montreal was this? 
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Who killed Stephane Prevost in Lachine on May 15?

July 4, 2014, 4:20 pm
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  Stephane Prevost, 37, was known as a kind-hearted father of three who enjoyed helping neighbours around his home in the sometimes-troubled Duff Court sector of Lachine until he was mysteriously found beaten to death near the Lachine Canal on the night of May, 15, 2014.
   Prevost had a criminal record for a variety of minor offences but was in no way associated with drug consumption or the drug trade, those close to him have told Coolopolis, so the chances of his death being a gangland slaying seems slim.
   Rumour has it that the Dalbe Viau High grad might have encountered a group of loud drunks out near where he was found around the scenic park-area near the Lachine Marina, near the St. Lawrence River and Lachine canal at St. Joseph and Seventh Ave.
   He was found dead by a passerby walking a dog near 11 p.m. and police said that he had been dead for about three hours at the spot, which sits about 40 minutes by foot from his home.
   Prevost was the father of three children, Nicolas, Jessica and Jeremie, from two different mothers. He had been estranged from the mother of his first child since the birth and only met his daughter, his eldest child, when she was 11.
   He also left behind his mother Pauline Fecteau and stepfather Marius Pitre as well as sister Julie, and brothers Dominic and Pascal.
   Chances that Prevost was killed by random strangers seem tiny but the area around the Lachine Canal had once been known as a spot where random attacks have taken place, most notably in 1998 when a string of random attacks raised concerns for the safety of the area.
   Prevost's murder was the seventh of the year on the island of Montreal in 2014 and his identity has not been revealed by media until now.
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Where in Laval was this?

July 4, 2014, 7:30 pm
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Montreal quiz -where was this?

July 5, 2014, 11:40 am
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This one shouldn't be all that hard... 
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Montreal scene - where was it quiz?

July 5, 2014, 3:30 pm
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Ezzeee quiz - where was this in Montreal?

July 6, 2014, 7:30 am
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Downtown building, aged 150, was site of wild hooker-john-cop drama

July 6, 2014, 10:00 am
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    This lovely building that has sat on the west side of Drummond north of Dorch since around 1870 is slated for demolition by the owners, the Cohen brothers' Modico Canada, who wish to build a three storey hotel with nine to 10 storeys in back.
   I lived straight across the street for about five years and admired its Penny Lane-like qualities as it was affixed to a picturesque fire station but it has been abandoned and left to ruin for quite some time.
   The most unusual thing that ever happened at the place took place in 1983 when it was the Vines Tourist Rooms, a vocation it had for at least three decades.
   In March 1983 an engineer named Feliks Tobiasz, 48, (he'd now be in his late 70s if still alive) was busted by police, who ended up breaking two of his ribs. He was charged with being found in a bawdy house and resisting arrest. Two prostitutes later said that he was mouthy, wild and unruly, so it's possible that they were the ones who contacted police.
   Tobiasz, who reported himself to be a big fan of Communism, filed a complaint at the Police Ethics Commission, alleging that the officers (David Ashton, Serge Morin and Henry Williams) had mocked his penis, as they had apprehended him in the nude. A judge dismissed the complaint.
   When constructed the building would have stood across from the old Victoria Rink, which we've discussed on many occasions on this site. Impossible to tell who lived there in the early days, as the address changed around 1930, so we're forced to guesstimate the original address in the old Lovells, but Wayne Griswold, who became a media attorney for the Standard appears to have lived there when he arrived in town from Griswoldville Conn. as a young man.
   Getting back to Tobiasz: another person with the same family name was embroiled in another over-the-top drama in 1961 as Francisz Tobiasz, a 27-year-old Polish sailor, jumped ship in Montreal but was refused refugee status, leading his passionate young lover Sophia Horan to offer to return to Poland in his stead. The sailor was allowed to stay a little while longer and we're guessing permanently too. 
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Where is Claude Quevillon?

July 8, 2014, 7:33 am
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   One time Montreal taxi driver Claude Quevillon has made his way back into the news in connection with the unsolved murders in the 80s of young boys Maurice Viens, Sebastien Metivier and Denis Roux Bergevin.
   In the mid-80s Quevillon was said to have approached police with what might have been some useful information about the killings.
  According to one unverified narrative, police were forced to discontinue their interviews with Quevillon on the orders of mental health authorities.
   Another version has it that police released him because they did not consider him credible.
   This has led to considerable frustration among the families of the victims, who would like to talk to Quevillon on their own but are unable to locate him because if anybody knows, they aren't allowed to tell.
  This week, one witness came forth to say that Quevillon lived in Point St. Charles in the early 80s, where he was a regular at the Chez Moma depanneur on Centre street, reinforcing the possibility that he was an important witness to the crimes.
   The parents of young Denis Roux Bergevin, who was was murdered at age five in Cote St. Paul in June 1985, recently held a press conference in which they complained of a lack of communication with police in the investigation into their son's premature death.
  The child's body was later found in the woods in Brossard. He had been sexually abused before being hit on the head and killed. Police said a grey Chevrolet might have been involved but nothing came of the investigation.
   If indeed Quevillon is still alive - he'd be about 74 if he's still alive -  and truly had a history of mental illness there's a good possibility that he might be in a place such as the Pinel Institute, where many patients never leave. But it's also possible Quevillon is none of the above and that this narrative is a mutation of the truth bred through decades of desperation. Any and all solid information would be welcome. 
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Chinese immigrants can fund the return of the Expos

July 9, 2014, 6:19 am
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Dominic Therrien says that he's working behind the scenes to encourage a totally original way to fund a baseball stadium to help get the Expos back.
  Therrien is a Trifluvien who went on to play some minor league ball before becoming an immigration lawyer in Vancouver, specializing in helping wealthy Chinese move to Canada.
   Therrien suggests that the $500 million required to build a new baseball stadium in Montreal could be raised from spurned immigration applicants.
   About 1,750 of the 5,000 outsiders seeking to move to Quebec under the investor program are accepted each year.
   Therrien proposes that 620 of those rejected applicants be accepted in the country on the condition that they agree to pay $275,000.
   That program would last three years and all of the funds would be earmarked to build the new Montreal baseball stadium.
   Therrien, speaking on the Derek Aucoin radio show Tuesday, noted that some like the concept but say that the proceeds should instead go to some other cause, such as building a new bridge or hospital.
  Therrien deals with this suggestion by noting that, unlike those infrastructure projects, a baseball team injects money into the economy.
   So if, for example, the payroll is $100 million taxed at 45 percent, the return on the salaries alone would be $45 million. Concessions, tourism, other sales taxes would also provide the government with income.
   Under the investor program, a candidate can bring his family to Canada and become a landed immigrant if he provides a $800,000 cheque to the government, which they return after five years without interest. The government, if they earn say five percent from that cash, will benefit to the tune of $200,000 per head.
   The Harper government expressed some misgiving about the program, which is popular in Quebec but not elsewhere in the country.   
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Life in the East End: balcony chicken bone battle

July 10, 2014, 7:02 am
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Description: "The guy with the blue cap threw a chicken bone on the girl's balcony. She got mad cause she has dogs that could choke on the bone. The guy with the yellow hat is her boyfriend and he steps in to defend her . Watch the man gets stumped."
 Video posted by Alex Terrieur, who is undoubtedly the guy shouting "World Star Hip Hop" which the internet suggests you're supposed to chant when witnessing a brawl. 
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Document exposes South Shore policing practices

July 15, 2014, 6:34 am
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   Those driving in certain parts of the South Shore might sense that they're being watched by overzealous police following the emergence of a document confirming the existence of a ticket quota, which requires police to write up a dozen tickets on the night shift for such infractions as texting while driving, improper stops, disobeying traffic lights, speeding, license, registration, tinted windows, mufflers, unsafe driving, illegal maneuvers (U-turns, passing).
   The directive - which we presume to be valid - comes from the Richelieu St. Laurent police which covers Beloeil, Calixa-Lavallée, Carignan, Chambly, Contrecoeur, McMasterville, Mont St-Hilaire, Otterburn Park, Saint-Amable, Saint-Basile-Le-Grand,
Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Saint-Julie, Saint-Mathias-Sur-Richelieu, Saint-Mathieu-de-Beloeil, Richelieu, Varennes and Verchères,
   This document would presumably be an embarrassment for the squad, as ticket quotas can lead to unfair and excessive ticketing and most, if not all, police squads deny their existence. (Story from julienjj on Montrealracing.com). The document, it is believed, was leaked by the union as a pressure tactic to speed negotiations. 
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