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Montreal's Johnny Greco: great at boxing, bad at driving

July 15, 2014, 8:46 am
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   Montreal's Johnny Greco, aka Giuseppe Antonio Giovanni Greco, aka The Million Dollar Kid, was a great Montreal boxer but not such a great driver.
Cedar and Mountain
   Not only was he busted in the army for a fatal driving incident, he went on to die in a fatal one-car accident on Cedar and Mountain in Westmount at the young age of 31 on Dec. 12, 1954.
   He was reportedly on his way to attend a charity dinner for poor kids.
   Greco was raised in NDG and started boxing at age seven or 12,  depending on your source. He was a product of the Griffintown club.
   Abe and Murray Elkin made him a star in New York City where he had his first fight in 1941 and attracted record gates as a lightweight.
   He served a year in the Canadian army but that didn't go great, as his bad driving was fingered in the death of fellow soldier Romeo Dagenais in a drive from Montreal to Farnham in January 1944 while he was serving in St Jean south of Montreal.
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   He won the Canadian welterweight title against Dave Castilloux at the Forum in Aug. 1946 and held it until 1952 when Armand Savoie snatched it from him.
   Greco retired after winning back that crown on Aug. 26, 1952.
   His bout against Laurent Dauthuille on Aug. 9, 1949 at Delorimier
Stadium attracted 19,580 fans, which stood as the all-time largest crowd in Montreal for a boxing match until Sugar Ray took on Duran at the Big O in 1980.
   Greco lost that bout.
  Greco also lost a famous bout in Montreal on May 21, 1951, after Rocky Graziano knocked him out with a sock in the jaw in the third round. The photo from that moment is considered one of the great sporting shots.
   He also fought a massively-big drawing saw-off in New York against Beau Jack, a Georgia shoeshine boy.
   He had a career record of 105-13 and retired after winning back his Canadian welterweight crown from Armand Savoie on Aug. 26, 1952. He attempted a comeback in 1954 but it was frowned upon by local boxing insiders.
   Johnny Greco lived at 4539 Draper at the time of his death.
    He died a bachelor and left behind two brothers and his parents, to whom he was very close.
   Rivals Castilloux and Savoie were among his pallbearers.
    It's unknown whether Grego was related to Luigi Greco, who was one of the city's top mob bosses at around this time.
   We know that mobster Luigi Greco's father Angelo reportedly died in 1922.
   Boxing Johnny's middle name was Angelo, so might imply that Johnny Greco was maybe a nephew to the big time mobster.
   Luigi was getting divorced in the early 50s from his wife Berthe, who divorced Luigi (aka Louis Greco) and remarried.
  She, by some coincidence, also died tragically in Westmount on February 12,1953. Circumstances unknown.
   Mobster Luigi Greco died famously at his restaurant at 3212 Jarry after his floor cleaning fluid caught fire in 1972.  
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Demolition of iconic CNR office building: an illegal act

July 16, 2014, 7:02 am
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   Southwest borough mayor Benoit Dorais has confirmed to Coolopolis that he watched on helplessly as the historic, abandoned old Canadian National Railways office building at Bridge and Wellington was illegally demolished last winter by Ray-Mont Logisitics, which was hired by a condo company which is planning to put up condos at the corner.
   The company has been fined by the borough, he reports, and the case is in the courts as we speak, or write, or type or whatever we're doing here.
   There appears to have been little outrage following this demolition, which is unfortunate.
   In the mid-70s heritage activists were outraged when similar illegal (or otherwise dodgy) demolitions were undertaken around Montreal, most notably the Van Horne Mansion. That demolition at NE Drummond and Sherbrooke in 1973 so outraged Montrealers that David Azrieli's reputation was permanently tarnished following the affair, leading him to spend more time in Israel than in Montreal, where he was the province's third wealthiest resident. Azrieli died last week and the issue was raised prominently in the notice.
   Now while this building was no Van Horne mansion, it was the most important of a series of buildings used in the administration of a busy area that included slaughterhouses a stone's throw away from Goose Village.
   I asked Dorais which company the developers hired to demolish the premises but he replied that it was the Ray-Mont crews themselves who took the lovely old building down.
   We at Coolopolis feel that the developers should be forced to rebuild the same building and integrated it into their condo project and whoever actually issued the order should face legal sanctions.


On Thursday Dorais confirmed in a tweet that the borough is indeed arguing in court to force the property owners to rebuild the demolished building.

Dorais later rephrased his comments, noting that ordering the rebuilding of a building in such bad shape would seem a stretch, but that "the courts would decide."
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Montreal court decides in multi-million dollar porn ruling

July 21, 2014, 4:23 pm
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   A Montreal courthouse recently spent an impressive seven full in late May listening to testimony about porn DVDs and the story did not have a happy ending for Montreal-based shop magnate Alain Elmaleh who last Tuesday was ordered to pay up $2,555,020 CDN to an American porn company called Jules Jordan Video for pirating DVDs.
   Elmaleh is planning an appeal of the judgment.
Elmaleh
   Alain Elmaleh's companies were originally ordered to pay $17 million by a U.S. judge after an investigation into pirating began about a decade ago but that sum was slimmed down in a subsequent ruling.
Jordan, Jules
   However Justice Louis J. Gouin upheld a California ruling against Elmaleh from 2011 for allegedly pirating movies made by the Jules Jordan Video company, run by 5'7" director whose real - or born name - is Ashley Gasper.
  So chances are that if you strolled into a Montreal sex shop, or any of Elmaleh's many sex shops across Canada, and purchased Trained Teens 2, or John Leslie’s Fresh Meat 10, you were getting a knockoff.
   Elmaleh had been hit by a related suit from Evil Angel, but those parties settled, whereas Jordan's empire chose not to.
   The litigation was launched after Evil Empire received a high number of demands for refunds and realized that the DVDs being returned were fakes.
  Elmaleh said in California court in May that he has no assets in the U.S. and had done nothing unlawful there.
   One might conclude from all of this is that an inventive entrepreneur might have simply created his own porno movies, of which Canada is said to have too few.
   Canada's paltry supply of porno film production is the notion behind a CRTC ruling from March which assailed a couple of companies for not showing the 35 percent minimum Canadian porn requirement on their programming. Quebec has invested heavily in video game industry but thus far the incipient Quebec porn video industry appears to have been forced to do it on their own.    
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Montreal's phone fraud culture

July 24, 2014, 8:30 pm
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   I have come across way too many Montrealers involved with phone fraud operations here, which hopefully have all been eliminated by now in a series of high-profile busts and extraditions.
   So I took some time away from staring at the ceiling this afternoon to make a list of some of these shady characters.
-The male stripper from Verdun: A thirty-ish welfare recipient who once told me that he was gainfully employed at Club 281 (I didn't go down to check if this was true, although he didn't seem to be a particularly exceptional specimen from the parts I saw).
   He strode with the demeanour of a street hustler, was constantly behind on his rent (I was his long-suffering landlord) and had an infuriating habit of paying odd sums here while I was in the middle of doing some fix-it task, that made it difficult to keep an accurate tally on how much he owed. Quite a clever trick really.
   One day during a bus strike he asked me to give him a lift to his phone fraud job in Ville St. Laurent. He was quite open about it. I agreed but only if he agreed to help me scrap an old fridge by bringing it downstairs.
   The fridge turned out to be an unwieldy 350 lb bastard and both of us were cursing all the way down the three storeys, especially him.
   On the drive to his work he brazenly boasted about how he was a particularly good phone fraud guy and would sometimes get the credit card numbers he needed simply by yelling at the old folks who had a hard time understanding his nuanced pitch.
   "GET YOUR CREDIT CARD NOW AND READ ME THE NUMBER!" he said was one of his more successful techniques.
   When the ringleader was later cited in a media report as having been heard on a wiretap laughing aloud with one particularly ballsy phone fraud guy's quips, I'm getting the sense that it was this guy.
   (In case you're wondering why I didn't turn him in, it's because at that point had assumed everything he told me was bullshit).

 Swarthy NDG family guy with a sweet local wife and a couple of young kids who I'd see at social gatherings. He'd be there physically at these kiddie events but virtually never stop talking into his bluetooth earpiece phone. So his level of douchiness was pretty much topping out the red arrow on the meter but hell I didn't really care to talk to him anyway.
  Things were looking up for this guy upon the surface, he bought a house in NDG and his wife and kids were real sweet but he was arrested and sentenced and there was some sense of trepidation in explaining to the kids where daddy went.

Trashy son of a prince Ever meet someone so sweet and gentle and then meet their kid who is an absolute lout? Well an elderly Liverpudlian grandpa living in an dodgy highway-side upper duplex fit that bill. He was a super guy, quiet and interesting (Told me that Gerry Matticks had financed his home) but his son who worked in a phone joint was loud and fractious with his separation-new-girlfriend-I've-got-the-kid-this-weekend stuff. I have no proof that the younger guy was into phone fraud but a few conversations I overheard might have hinted at that, although he might also have been entirely legit.

   One friend-of-a-friend (not on this list) explained his motivation to continue in phone fraud to a mutual acquaintance: "There was a ton of money in it, it was too hard to say no." 
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Montrealer raises over $1,500 for soft-boiled egg 'secret'

July 25, 2014, 8:30 pm
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  One local Montreal woman is doing her best to up the ante of stupidness on Kickstarter by promising to reveal her secret to perfect soft boiled eggs for $15.
   Well, you boil some water, walk to the fridge, take out some eggs, put them in the water, wait six minutes, and then you take them out and snap em through with a knife.
   Pay me fifteen bucks!
   But something happened along the rose-lined path to wonderbar Nadin Katzenberg getting her fifteen bucks.
   She was given over 10 times more than she was asking for, indeed she got over 100 times more than she was asking for.
   All of the $1,520 in offerings came from one person though.
   We don't know that person's name but according to the rules of Kickstarter, Katzenberg would have to give about eight percent of that sum to pay the sites fees.
   So Kickstarter will get $122 for the stunt.
   Now, I don't know nobody from nothing ...but is it possible that Kazenberg herself gave the $1,520, knowing that the $122 that the stunt would cost her would well be worth it in terms of the niche of fame and aura of winningness she is creating around herself through free publicity on very badly conceived articles on websites like....err.. scratch that last bit.
   So, clever PR peeps, let it be known that crowdfunding is the new gimmick to promote an aura of winning-o-sity among yours clients! Grab it before it gets cold!
   And Katzenberg, your soft boiled egg secret had better be good! 
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Montreal restaurants going broke

August 7, 2014, 8:26 am
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   I argued here a while back that Montrealers are crazy for spending so much of their budgets at restaurants when it costs a mere fraction of the price to eat at home.
   Alas, people were listening, as a flood of restaurants, have - sadly - closed since then.
   They include: TheRoi de l'Inde on St. Denis, Asean Garden  on Sherbrooke W in NDG, Pacinion St. Denis, Scores onSt. Catherine W. (& in Valleyfield I'm told), Arema middle eastern place on William, Itacate on the Plateau, Booster Juice on Sherbrooke near McGill College,Racines at 444 McGill. I Sensi on Belanger near the Main,
  I feel bad for these restaurants, as they all have employees who were left out of work and owners who took a hit.
   There's no real way of telling whether there is a significant leap in restaurants closing because not all restaurants declare bankruptcy when they close so the Quebec Restaurant Association isn't sure of the numbers.
  There are surely many others and, of course, other newbs are hitting the market with high hopes.
   It's not unusual for a spate of restaurants to all close at once, so it's likely cyclical but I suspect the loss of about 20,000 jobs in the Montreal area since last year at this time might have something to do with the dip, which has also been reflected in a slight downturn in the real estate market.
   Others point to the supposed ongoing effect of a recent law that makes it impossible not to claim all earnings.
   Montreal joints that closed last year BU, Cafe Melies, Aix Cuisine du terroir Laurier BBQ Le Hangar  Le Murphy Les Cavistes Mas Cuisine Projet 67, Euro Deli, (bars: Time Supper Club, Bains Douche, Radio Lounge)  
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Barracuda still biting - king of 70s Montreal chess boom emerges

August 14, 2014, 7:57 am
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   The 68-year-old on the right is seen here engaged in an apparent attempt to stare down another chess opponent in front of an invisible chess set.
   Montrealer, or onetime Montrealer Jerry Rubin, was once famously nicknamed the Barracuda for his wicked skill set when it comes to the game of chess.
   He earned it during a match held in 1960 when, as a 14-year-old he stared down an opponent who suffered a heart attack midway through their match.
   The opponent recovered but Rubin's legend was created and opponents would  latercut a wide swathe when he'd saunter down the exposed brick hallways of Robert Drouin's En passant chess club on St. Denis street. "He has nerves of steel and he's fast, real fast," said one opponent.
   The owner of that club noted that about 20 chess clubs sprouted up in 1972 in Montreal after a famous chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. About a dozen remained six years later.
   The photo above was shot earlier this week somewhere in lower Westmount but the exact location will remain confidential as the safety of those who cross the Barracuda's gaze cannot be entirely ensured by the staff of Coolopolis nor by its associated companies. 
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Who stole the Smith-Scollard fortune?

August 14, 2014, 9:11 am
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   Eccentric millionaire Sarah Smith Scollard died in Montreal 82 years ago and that's important because her vast fortune also disappeared with her.
  Smith-Scollard had been staying at the Mount Royal Hotel under the name Sally Stroupe from October 1931 to July 24, 1932 when she died here of pneumonia.
   Scollard was known to steal soap from hotel and wrap it in $1,000 bills for safekeeping. She hid a half million in a clock and wore a 10-carat diamond on a camping trip and would carry a quarter million dollars worth of jewelry in her purse.
   In her will, she cheaped out her sister and her ex-husband, giving them $1 each.
   She was said to be worth $15 million, a sum which she grew from a $400,000 inheritance in Wallace Idaho. She was also known to frequent Virginia, Iowa, Kansas, Oregon and other such places.
   Her funeral was in Montreal on July 28, 1932 and there was some confusion as to what became of her ashes.
   The heirs argued that her financial adviser Reese Brown ripped her off and kept her prisoner in Montreal.      His version was that they fled to Canada to escape an American tax bill.
   He died in a car accident on January 27, 1934 when he drove into the car of an Indian carrying poles, one of which impaled his brain.
   His widow Sally Brown had been suspected of stealing a lot of the cash and fleeing to Vancouver. She was later located and said that she scoured the streets of Montreal for the woman's safety deposit box and eventually found it to be empty except for a couple of magazines. 
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Montreal's creepiest convent

August 14, 2014, 10:20 am
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According to an article that was widely published across America in 1898, Montreal was home to a convent full of teenage nuns who slept in coffins.
   The article, entitled "Strange Convent in Montreal," reported that the Convent of the Holy Face started with five daughters who played with skulls and were subject to scourges and chains in their cells.
   They had a mother superior but a man - supposedly a doctor - ran the place.
  Hundreds would visit each month to say prayers, according to the report.
   The article stated that 14 nuns inhabited the place, most between 14 and 18 years of age.
   They'd dance around and play like normal girls.
   They would usually sport black but on feast days dress with a crimson front with a saint face painted on the front with a crimson veil and wear it to sleep in their coffins.
  They had a beautiful garden out back but were not permitted to go out there.
   The location of the supposed institution is not listed or described in the article, nor does Lovells give any hint of any such place, so we're suspecting that the story was invented.
   
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Montreal hotel-goer drugged and sent to South Africa

August 14, 2014, 11:48 am
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   Quebec City hardware merchant A.D. Fraser came to Montreal in 1876 to stay at the Montreal House on Common street near the customs house, which was where sailors would stay on their brief stays in the city.
   However destiny had other things in store for the Scottish-Canadian.
   Fraser left Quebec City with $800 in cash and a small suitcase.
   Upon arriving in Montreal he split up with the person he was travelling with and passed his luggage to a man who started driving away.
   Fraser followed the man, who went into some other home, which he claimed to be the Montreal House.
   It wasn't and Fraser pointed this out.
   During the course of this discussion the two had a drink but Fraser's drink was poisoned.
   After sucking back the Mickey Finn,Fraser found himself shanghaied all the way to Capetown South Africa.
   Fraser found work as a bookkeeper while in Capetown and earned enough to make his way back to Quebec City in September of 1877 via London.
   His wife and children were delighted by his return, presumably.
   Fraser would have been about 57 when this occurred, assuming that he's the same Donald Fraser born in 1819 and belonging to the well known clan.
 
 
   
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Snowdon's strangest building

August 14, 2014, 12:35 pm
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Two Montreal books tell the story of Snowdon in the 50s and they're both the creation of a local guy named Bill Conrod, who recently put out his second tome More Memories of Snowdon in the 50s.
   Of course this is an incredibly small niche market and Conrod hasn't done any social network marketing, so I thought it worth mentioning.
   The book is solid, from what I'm told, although I have never seen either it or its predecessor.
   One Snowdon building I'd be very curious to know more about is the 1929-built, 36-unit Queensway Court building on Snowdon (north side) just east of Decarie.
   The 5257 has a weird little alcove up a flight of stairs with a few tiny stores in them. (Photos borrowed from the excellent Spacing site). According to tax records, the $3 million + building was purchased about five years ago by some local Chinese but it looks the same as ever.
   I visited one evening after the stores were closed with my son and we were sufficiently freaked out to see a small hairdresser and tailor inside the then snowy-icy courtyard which is not visible from the street.
    Apparently I'm not the only one who found the place spooky, judging from this anecdote on that same Spacing post:
  1. Growing up gay in the 50′s and 60′s was pretty tough. But Snowdon wasn’t too bad for me, compared to other places I’ve heard and read about.  The “annex” steps and courtyard in this photo were always interesting to me as a child.  Recently, however, I’ve recovered an upsetting memory about that exact spot.
    One pleasant evening when I was about aged 6 I was with my father on Queen Mary, for some reason.  On our way home we stopped in front of the annex steps and he said, “Stand right here and wait for me; I’ll be back soon.”  I waited and waited — a very long time — but he never returned. I wasn’t sure what to do.  But then I remembered that I’d been to Steinberg’s with my mom, and it was just across the street (where Metro is now).  I told myself, “You know how to walk home from here. It’s not far.”  And I did just that.  When I arrived home, Dad was already there.  “What happened to you?” I yelled.  He just stared back blankly at me.  I told my mom what had happened, and she said, “Oh, he probably just got to talking with someone, you know your dad, and he forgot.”  I accepted her explanation and put the event behind me.  
    Thinking this over as a grey-haired, middle-aged man now, I’d still like to give my dad the benefit of the doubt.  He was a good father.  He was always kind, generous and loving toward me.  But he was a man’s man. He loved hockey — all sports, really — and I guess I was a disappointment to him, since I wasn’t much interested in that.  So, I can’t help but wonder about it all, and I suppose some questions will haunt me for the rest of my life: Who would leave a little kid standing in a doorway on a very public street at night? And, should I change the word “leave” to “abandon?”
 
 


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Booze authorities order clothing back on at St. Jerome's only peeler joint

August 14, 2014, 1:31 pm
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 Montreal was once circled by a suburbs featuring brothels in the form of strip clubs but alas that supply is decreasing fast as booze authorities tear up licenses.
   The most recent to suffer is the Body Shop in St. Jerome, also once known as Bar Studio 378 and Sexy Hollywood.
  The bar lost the right to feature nudity and strippers in a court decision handed down by Jean Lepage and Yolaine Savignac on June 18, following three days of hearings at the start of the year.
   The decision to force everybody back into clothing at St. Jerome's only peeler joint was largely based on nine occasions in which dancers offered sexual services to undercover cops for pricing varying from $100 to $200 depending on the type of activity involved. (Seems expensive, who could afford that? - Chimples)
   Onetime owner Jean-Francois Lauzon (who had cocaine, grow-op and fake credit card-related prios) switched the name to Sexy Hollywood after purchasing it in October 2009.
    Cops found a stripper willing to sell them speed and watched on as a dancer smoked pot with a customer outside. In June the cops caught a dancer giving a hand job to a customer. Cops seized lube and condoms, etc.
   In June 2010 the joint changed its name to the Body Shop and later that fall, the cops returned and noticed that a light system had been put into place to warn dancers of police busts.
   Police noted that the ownership-management also had a hand in a massage parlour called Alexcellence Massage in Laval.  
   But cops found no links between biker gangs or any other such criminal networks and ownership. They also noted that they made many other visits - at least 9 - which revealed no sexual activity.
   Philippe Bollinne, a 43-year-old father of two, purchased the club in 2012 with money he earned from previous jobs as a doorman, security guard, car salesman, and a massage parlour.
  In March cops found a teen runaway with false ID working at the place.  And in late February Heidi Van Horny announced that she would have sex with 23 men in the bar in one day.
   Bollinne said that it wasn't clear whether she'd have sex with 23 men or give dances to 23 men and he dismissed it as a publicity stunt, as it never took place anyway.
   The booze authority didn't take these two events lightly and noted in the decision that they disapprove most of false declarations, sex acts, drug dealing or consumption, not-cooperating with police and presence of minors.
   It was pointed out that the Supreme Court struck down the prostitution prohibition but the judge noted that prostitution constitutes a disruption of peace, a phrase repeated a few times in the decision.
   Back when the club was an unabashed sex rodeo back around 2006, dancers were making up to $8,000 a week, not bad scratch for someone who might not have a lot of other employment possibilities.
   Anybody who reads such reports - and we've published a few spicy ones here on Coolopolis - might consider that the offences committed in the club seem pretty minor. The bar launched an unsuccessful appeal.
   But hey we live in an age when there's a lot of cops and not much crime, police have to do something with their time.
  Other clubs slammed with serious punishment in recent years for sex-related stuff include: Bar Terrasse (June 2012), Miss Hilltop (May 2012) Bar Le Ki Osk (Aug. 2012) Bar St. Thomas (May 2012) Bar Le Coin du Pecheur (Aug 2012) Bar Chez Diane (July 2013).
 
 
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Outremont Satanists stymied in attempt to kill two kids

August 19, 2014, 10:30 am
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Pretty wild story here - most likely a tall tale - about a trio of people who were supposedly prevented from committing a child sacrifice in Outremont this week. The first 17-or-so minutes of the video above sheds light, not much, but some light on the situation. The guy reporting the event, Kevin Annett, has supposedly come to Montreal to look into it. The allegation is that two top ranking officials in American gas and energy industry were about to kill a pair of children supplied to them by the local mafia. Local police are supposedly working with the agents that made the citizen arrest in this case. The exact location of the Outremont home in question was not released. Anybody with any knowledge of this supposed event is welcome to post their info in the comment section or by emailing me. Misinformation also welcome.
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Rogue immigration counselor beats the Queen

August 19, 2014, 6:30 pm
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Goikhberg by DELF BERG
   When you've served your time, you're out, whether authorities like you or not, as Yafin Goikhberg has been set free in spite of vigorous attempts to keep him behind bars.
   Goikhberg, 49, who is a Ukraininain living in LaSalle, was sentenced to five years in September 2011 after being convicted of misdeeds relating to his attempt to help people, mostly from Russia the former Soviet Union and Israel immigrate to Canada.
   He moved to Canada from Kiev in 1992 and worked as a translator for an immigration firm, eventually branching out in his own bizarre direction.
   He would - according to court testimony - invent fake refugee stories and take welfare cheques from some of his clients, forcing some to beg in the subway, and so forth. At one point he was charged with 149 infractions.
   But what irked authorities was that he was totally unrepentant and considered himself the victim of a anti-Semitic setup, once famously denouncing a judge a Hitler's grandson.
  "... he attracted many victims in Canada, charged them for services not rendered, fabricated for them forged documents, identity and history justifying refugee status that he encouraged them to produce to the authorities and pocketed the benefits that they had received from the Ministry of Employment and Social Security. He also charged the victims for services not rendered and threatened two recalcitrant of abuse against their family."
On August 8, Justice Guy Cournoyer ruled that "a court may not judicially create a bail review mechanism that does not exist." See the link above for more crazy, and much high-technical, details from his case.
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Warehouse shack rivals famous cathedral

August 20, 2014, 1:00 pm
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NYC abortion tragedy: sawbones flees to cottage near Montreal

August 20, 2014, 4:58 pm
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  Women who wanted to terminate a pregnancy would likely have had this conversation back in the day. "Doctor what happens if there are complications?""Well if you die, then I'll chop up your body, attempt to dispose of it and flee town to my cottage north of Montreal."
Lofrumento
   That might seem insane but in the days before legal abortion these things really happened.
  We've discussed good old Jack Seligman of the Fairmount Bakery that ended up dumping a woman's body into an alleyway after a botched abortion.
   But in 1962 New York City physician Dr. Harvey Lothringer provided an abortion to Barbara Lofrumento that went wrong and ended in her death.        So he chopped up her body and flushed it down the toilet and fled to his hunting cottage north of Montreal. Meanwhile a plumber was called in to unclog the drain and found the poor victim's body all chopped up down there.
   Lothringer was eventually tracked down in the Caribbean and served four years in prison. He was eventually even reinstated and involved in a controversial prison death, in which a woman committed suicide after he took her off her medication. 
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MP&I's fave tram pix

August 21, 2014, 6:30 pm
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No 1 shows a Northbound Blue Bonnets streetcar just past the crossover the Southward Track and the curved spur into Blue Bonnets Raceway to the West/ Right..
Jean Talon/Harold Cummings/Namur is just to the South with a road entrance to B B off West end of street just West of Decarie, the latter out of frame to left. The Tramways Trestle over the CPR to Vezina can be seen in distance.

 No 2 Shows soutbound streetcar having just crossed road at West end of Jean Talon/Namur into Blue Bonnets. Crossover for streetcars into BB can be seen behind, with spur diverging to West/Left in distance.



 No 3  Shows MTC PCC cars piled up for scrapping at St. Lawrence Iron and Metal South of Dickson in the East End.  There are some autobusses and Work Equipment, also, in 1963.





 No 4 Westbound car on Rte 91 Lachine at St Pierre ( Bascule Bridge )


No 5 Nice View @ Youville Shops near the end.
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Did the city rehire worker after killing colleague?

August 28, 2014, 10:47 am
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 Here's one that sits in the awful intersection of stupidity and tragedy: In July 1995 a veteran City of Montreal worker named Michel Dubois, aged 40, decided to prank colleague named Joseph Villa, 38, so he sped at him with his city vehicle with the aim of stopping just before impact.
    But Dubois' stupid idea of a stunt screwed up when he failed to stop in time and ended up pinning the guy to the water truck, killing him in the parking lof of the Miron quarry.
   For the record, Villa was actually doing something useful while Dubois was acting like an idiot. He was busy closing the valve on a water truck.
   Dubois then apologized as the guy lay dying and then drove off. He surrendered to police later that day.
    Dubois had been secretly driving without a license. He had his license taken away a year prior due to drunk driving.
    The city suspended and fired Dubois for leaving the scene, leaving prior to the end of his shift and not telling his employers that his license had been revoked.
   Dubois had previously worked as a security guard in two city zoos and was caught selling exotic animals to pet shops to pay off debts and support a drug habit. He sold a parrot, two budgies, two boas and a crow. He also smoked a morphine-based drug that the zoos employed to put animals to sleep.
   He avoided dismissal by signing onto a detox program.
   After killing his colleague, Dubois pleaded guilty and his lawyer asked for six month sentence. Prosecutors asked for 24 months. A judge sentenced him to 18 months. He said he had a nine-month-old child - who'd be about 30 now - and a girlfriend for the past two years.
  The city fired Dubois but the blue collar union sought to have him reinstated and requested he be paid in full retroactively. It is unknown whether he got his job back or not, but I'd be curious to know. 
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Richard Whaley - pepper spray and cocaine don't mix

August 28, 2014, 12:21 pm
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    Here's a rare photo of Richard Whaley, a Montrealer who some feel died due to police action, although he'd still have to take plenty of blame regardless for the events of November 1996.
   Whaley a 29-year-old from Pointe aux Trembles, was driving somewhere on de la Gauchetiere after midnight when his vehicle hit a van.
   He was angered by the van's driver and threatened him with a syringe or a screwdriver.
   He fled in his car and collided into a tree.
   Police chased him down and he fled into an apartment where he holed up until police showed up.
   They felt the need to pepper spray him.
   A coroner's report later noted that the Montreal cops used pepper spray 323 in one year and only 13 times in an unjustifiable manner.
   Well this was one of those unjustifiable times, according to the coroner.
   Whaley had consumed a ton of cocaine and died of heart failure due to cocaine. Nonetheless he remains on the list of police victims on an activist site.
   His brother sent that photo into that site, saying that Whaley had been mostly forgotten. .
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Regret correction therapy - let's turn Montreal into a world capital for treatment

August 29, 2014, 6:56 am
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    Montreal could get back on the world map by providing infrastructure that would be unique to the planet. 
    I'm talking about a vast facility where one could re-enact and correct one's moments of regrets with role play involving other individuals, or CGI, or even robots.
   Many believe that regret is a fairly benign thing that actually helps us by teaching us wisdom, but another school of thought - mine - suggests that our collections of regret deeply scar our lives and burden us unnecessarily as they fester and linger, with our feelings of past guilt, frustration and shame hindering us from finding peace.  
   I would argue that any suffer undiagnosed PTRD Post Traumatic Regret Disorder. 
   Earlier generations were in denial about their regret, clinging on to a I don't regret a thing ethos. But je ne regrette rien  has died off and people are more comfortable to air our their regrets now. 
    Sadly, they are still not doing anything to address those regrets. 
   The large-sized Montreal-based facility would offer all sorts of scenarios of re-enactments which could be customized to the specific realities of those involved. 
   At the Montreal Regret Correction Therapy Centre you could tell a likeness of your murdered aunt that you don't think that she should go to the Tuscaloosa knife festival, or explain to the principal why it's illogical to suspend you one day before the grad ceremony, or whatever it is you want to do to heal your psychic pain.
   The centre would also offer regret prevention therapy to younger folks, who would be told of the value of spending time with their kids, or standing up to bullies and so forth, all of which would help them avoid getting stomped on by life.
   Not all of it the goings-on at the facility have to be about misery
   One common regret is that they didn't have much fun or romance earlier in life, so there could be a party element incorporated into the proceedings. 

  1.     Montreal could turn regret correction therapy into a multi-billion dollar business that could turn our tourism deficit back into the black and also help countless people deal with their PTRD symptoms. 
    
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