Coolopolis

A Montreal cop once told me that he believes that about 30 percent of what are deemed suicides by Montreal police are, in fact, homicides.
Consider this: Quebec's suicide rate is the highest of any Canadian province. while Quebec's homicide rate is the lowest in Canada, except for Prince Edward Island.
So we have ample suicides but not many murders.
Those numbers suggest that Quebecers are extremely different than other Canadians in their patterns of behaviour.

But perhaps we are not so different.
Perhaps the difference lies in the way authorities classify deaths.
It's possible that many people are killed in Montreal without any investigation because of incorrect classifications.
The public never even hears about these deaths because the coroner asks media not to publicize suicides, as they apparently encourage other suicides.
Police are duty-bound to investigate all possibilities, but closing a suicide file is much more elegant and much-less demanding than opening a homicide file.
If this is indeed happening, is it intentional?
Suicides were once rampant on the Jacques Cartier Bridge - and indeed people still occasionally climb over the barriers to leap to their deaths below - but in at least three cases victims were tossed to their deaths off the bridge.
So is it safe to assume that in all other such deaths were voluntary?

Gilles Berube, left, hanged
his wife

If a person found dead with a needle in his arm, do police automatically assume it to be a self-inflicted overdose?
Is a body found hanging, or with a gun in hand and bullet in head assumed to be a suicide? Are metro suicides really never murders?
Many murders can be dolled up to look like suicides, one prominent example being that of Tanya Buschman, who was founded hanged dead in her garage in Ste. Anne's a few years ago.
The death might very well have been written off as a suicide had it not been for the loud outcry of friends and family.
Once again: Quebec's suicide rate is the highest of any Canadian province.
Quebec's homicide rate is the lowest in Canada, except for Prince Edward Island.
Under current rules police and coroners are given full powers to determine what is a suicide and what is a homicide.
Given the suspicious statistic, a civilian review board should be created to examine causes of death to see whether authorities properly classified suicide and homicides.

Abraham and Symmers

Debbie Symmers was found dead in a tree-filled park across from her apartment on Wellington in the Point on August 23, 1978.

She reportedly had two gunshots to the head and bruises over her body, which seem evidence that the death was a murder, possibly at the hands of her boyfriend David Abraham.
Her death was classified as a suicide.
Others point out that Abraham - who died 15 to 20 years ago of cancer - was not a very kind person but they do not think he killed Symmers.

According to weapons experts, automatic pistols can fire twice when triggered, so the pair of shots to the skull does not necessarily indicate murder.
Symmers, who dabbled in modeling, grew up at a shabby apartment near Pine and Hutchison.
She didn't click much with her mother, who is a person who had her own battle as well.
Debbie was placed in Marian Hall centre for troubled girls where she proved popular among the other girls.

She gave birth to a baby fathered by a young man named Richard Bell at age 16 but authorities deemed her unfit to take care of a child and took the child up for adoption in 1974.
Not long after she had another child, a beautiful girl to whom she was said to be a devoted mother.
Symmers then suffered serious injury in a traffic accident which is said to have left her with chronic depression.

She received $35,000 in insurancec ompensation following the accident and Abraham helped her spend it, including on a $18,000 Harley Davidson Sportster, as a gift to himself.
Abraham is seen to have manipulated Symmers but police never charged him in connection to her death so he's assumed to be innocent. Not much else is known about Abraham, other than that he had an episode where he beat up a nightclub waiter, which caused him to fall afoul of the Sullivan clan and had to flee town for a while.

The double murder at the McDonald's in 2010 - elements of which are finally almost done wending their way through courts - demonstrates how the impulse to get high can still fuel violence and betrayal of operatic proportions.
The affair, which began over minor conflicts of some petty dope dealing, grew until three were shot dead and the mastermind hanged himself in prison.
The hit men, a pair of brothers, are in prison for life. Another associate is on his way for a 13-year-bid.
All because some people were ready to pay to get high on crystal meth.
The violence climaxed in the parking lot of the McDonald's in NDG on January 24, 2010.
Drug dealer Kirk Murray, 47, and his driver Antonio Onesi, 51, were there to conduct drug business with Robert Simpson and Timothy Simpson, who instead shot them dead.
The Simpsons chose the spot because they noticed that no cameras from the fast-food joint were pointing to that part of the parking lot.
Kirk Murray was a convicted murderer working as a drug dealer under Jeffrey Lynds, a Nova Scotia Hells Angel forced to work in Ontario after the Maritimes chapter shut down.
According to court testimony, Murray wanted to kill Brian Kato McGuire and asked permission of Lynds to do so.
Murray was reportedly irked that McGuire didn't want to commit rip-offs with him.
But Lynds liked McGuire, so he instead furtively organized to have Murray killed.
Meanwhile Lyndrs persuaded Murray to try to kill a guy in a drug burn, an effort which failed after the shooting victim survived.
Murray had a nasty background. He served a murder sentence after shooting two men dead at the Verdun marina in a stupid drunken dispute over a dog when he was 20.
Murray's earlier crime has nothing to do with him getting killed later but shows what he was capable of.

On the night of May 25, 1983. Butch, as Murray was known, was walking his collie.
Doug Brecknell, 21, had a German Shepherd and a third man Denis Cormier, 18, had a doberman. Murray and Brecknell quarreled. Murray went back home to 6th Ave and returned with a shotgun.
Murray forced Brecknell to beg for his life, according to witness Rodd Brosser, and shot him anyway. Cormier who was not at the initial dispute, dived into the water to avoid the shooting spree but was shot and killed.
Victim Doug Brecknell had been known as a bully in the area. He had a rough childhood as his father Doug Senior was found murdered and floating in the river when he was a little boy in the 1970s.
Murray was sentenced to 15 years in prison (with a few days outside due to a temporary escape) and continued in crime upon his official release.
As for Murray's driver Onesi, he was a father from Chateauguay with lots of kids.
Robert and Tim Simpson later confessed to pumping Murray full of bullets and firing a fatal round into Onesi's head at the fast-food parking lot.
After the shooting Onesi's car rolled down the snowy hill that lies past the edge of the parking lot.
When the Simpsons completed the deed they texted Lynds with a happy-face emoticon.
Then they tried to collect their $20,000 payment but Lynds balked and instead concocted a plot to kill another dealer named Mark Stewart, 41, who the Simpsons killed 12 days later.
On Feb 23, 2011 the Simpsons were sentenced to life for killing Murray and Onesi.

Lynds was stripped of his Hells Angels membership because the Hells didn't appreciate his unapproved killing spree. He turned informant and then killed himself in prison in the RdP detention centre in Jan 2012. Many investigations were closed when Lynds died, as he was a key witness in several possible prosecutions.

Brian "Kato" McGuire, 50, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit homicide and will be sentenced to 13 years on Friday the 13th. Some consider the sentence harsh because he was not seen as being instrumental in the violence.
McGuire's brother Donald McGuire, 61, has been in prison for a 33 years after being convicted of extortion in affair involving the detainment of a bank manager. He was sentenced to more years behind bars after killing another inmate once inside.
The Simpson brothers are not related to Jack Arthur Simpson charged in the killing of Mafioso Salvatore Montagna on Nov. 24, 2011.

Next time you pass by the western edge of the downtown Palais de Concrete conference centre, devote a moment to think about Raymond Trudeau, who lived around the corner and was lured into the home of Lucien Picard at 267 Lagauchetiere W., murdered and dismembered.
The little boy had gone to visit his father David Trudeau, 34, at work nearby to ask him to buy an ice cream on July 27, 1954 but his father said it was too close to dinnertime so the boy walked home.
That's when Lucien Picard, 43, a 4'11" unemployed machinist from Quebec City with a Charlie Chaplin mustache, who lived in the rooming house, kidnapped the boy.

On trial Picard said he strangled the boy when he started to scream in his room.
He went drinking afterwards and cut up the body the next day, a Friday, while drunk.
A witness found body parts in a cardboard box in a garbage on the morning of July 27. Picard was arrested in Quebec City.
Picard was found guilty and hanged at 12:30 a.m. at Bordeaux prison on Feb. 11, 1955.
A year later Picard's roommate Charles St. Laurent, 40, was found guilty of "gross indecency charges involving youngsters.

A youth hostel can be an amazing resource for travelers, but in Montreal they're far less abundant and inexpensive than they once were.

In the summer of 1972, for example, 6,000 tourists paid .50 cents a night to stay in the 102 beds at Loyola campus, the equivalent of about $3 in today's rates.
Schools and the provincial education ministry routinely subsidized the hostels, which in 1973 also included 100 beds at the student union building of McGill at 3489 McTavish and another 75 beds at 461 St. Sulpice in Old Montreal.
These joints even provided showers and breakfast in their nominal costs.
Today what's known advertised as a Montreal youth hostel costs about $15-$31 night, about five times higher in adjusted terms.

Blame the measles outbreak near Joliette on a former Montreal cop.

The Holy Spirit cult, or religious group, if you will, has seen over 119 measles cases in their group near Joliette.
A representative said that the cult doesn't order their adherents not to vaccinate their children. But their creed - which clearly mentions eugenics - doesn't lend itself to such protection.
Eugenics, of course is the idea that you're going to breed your kids to be better specimens. It's a word tinged with negative connotations as the Nazis openly championed the idea, but in fact most parents consciously or subconsciously practice the notion by choosing a healthy breeding partner.
A must-read book on French Canadians' resistance to vaccination can be found in the book Plague by Michael Bliss, one of the great Montreal books.

Bliss discusses how the francophone-inhabited east end of Montreal suffered much higher rates of smallpox contamination in 19th century outbreaks largely because they were advised against the vaccination. One of those persuading them against it was an anglo who, according to the book, was exposed to have been vaccinated himself.
So the current outbreak is centred around a cult started by Eugène Richer Dit Laflèche 1871-1925. He was a Montreal cop before launching a religious movement that is still a pretty big deal to this day.

c. 1917

Eugene Richer was hired as a cop for his tall, muscular physique but was quickly let go for running a bordello.
He started la Mission de l'Esprit Saint (MES) in Montreal in 1913.
He eventually moved to Fall River, Massachusetts and hooked up with Adelard Glasson and started calling himself Joseph Manseau.

He told people that he was Jehova, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. He had five concubines and asked followers to give him all their money. He got in trouble with the cops when he started giving sermons in see-through robes.
So in November 1923 he moved to North Los Angeles and called himself John Lafleche. He died Jan 12, 1925 and one of his followers, Georges Hache took over and announced that the world was coming to an end. It didn't and the group's alleged 144,000 followers were a bit disillusioned that the sun was still rising. Several of Richer's Montreal followers were repeatedly jailed, including one Wilfrid Messier, who defrauded 104 people of their life savings by promising good stuff and telling them he was the reincarnation of Eugene Richer. They wanted their money back but Messier had already blown it on the ponies.
Richer's successor as leader, Eugene R. Robitaille,, whose followers called him "Prince Charming" but who reporters described as "short, plump partly bald," was busted for subversion at the group's temple at 6910 St. Hubert in 1941. Police said that they seized pornographic books.
Police alleged that the group supported the Nazis.
Gustav Robitaille was Richer's appointed successor here in Montreal. He was a fat organist who fathered at least 15 children and died in 1965. He would bless your baby and that sort of thing. He was replaced by a committee of 29 servants, mostly his sons.
One of those sons, Emmanuel Robitaille predicted the end of the world in 1975. Many followers got to work building a special holy place in Oka but were quite surprised when the world didn't end.

Sources: 1-Susan Palmer.2-This article from 1969. The MES still seems to exist, but probably in nowhere near the numbers at their peak which saw 2,000-3,000 followers here in Montreal. Here's their site.

The biggest skill one learns at driving school is how not to fall asleep behind the wheel.
Driving school lectures are overly-long narcolepsy-inducing chinwags in which bored teachers state the most obvious information ever uttered by a human voice.
And yet the provincial government has made the courses mandatory for those who want to drive.
The financial burden associated with that requirement makes driving impossible for many.
That's a shame because getting a drivers license is a key component to escaping poverty.
If a child from a single-mother welfare home wants to apply for a job that requires a drivers license or driving to work, he simply cannot because his family is too poor to get their hands on the $900 fee that such a dubiously-necessary education requires.
I have complained about this financial oppression to the Quebec ministry of transport, which caps the maximum price of lessons at $875 - a price that rises after textbooks and other fees are factored in.
The ministry told me that the driving schools have had the gall to ask to charge even more..
A simple bit of math will tell you that the schools have already got a gold mine on their hands already as the government is shifting tens of millions to these schools already.
A few phone calls will suggest that price-rigging might even be a possibility, as the supply of lower-cost schools has vanished over the years.
A few years ago in a misguided witchhunt, local media did a gotcha story on low-cost schools that allowed students to study from a computer screen. These driving schools were shut down by the government, which is a bad thing because they charged much less.
It should be noted that many other provinces and states don't even require driving lessons and indeed Quebec was in that group for several years.
Cars have become increasingly autonomous and safe and courses could conceivably be greatly shortened in the near future. The lessons are less needed than ever.
Here's a reddit thread I started on the subject a few weeks ago that attracted 156 comments.

1-Forest products Quebec was battered when newspapers died, as pulp and paper lost over 100,000 jobs between 2004-2014 in Canada. Plants closed when eyeballs shifted from ink to pixels, bringing an end to a century of newspapers armpitted against pedestrians' rib cages.

2- Oil We don't do oil in Quebec. There might be some on Anticosti but that's a longshot. The price of oil, as we know, has been undermined as well, which creates a big threat to our Alberta transfer payment income.
3-Electricity The next resource to suffer a downtown could be our electricity exports, as massive scientific efforts continue to grab power from the sun, wind, natural gas and even from space.
4-Warmth Some scientists believe that we're doomed for a Maunder event, a multi-year cycle of cold weather, which will decrease tourism, immigration and general quality of life.
5-Water Our ace card remains our great supply of fresh water, which is coveted in drought-ridden areas like California and Texas. We can't sell it though. Besides, our fresh-water aquatic advantage could quickly evaporate with any cheap electricity technology that allows for affordable desalination.

Until the 1970s, thousands of defunct, rusty and decaying cars were simply abandoned by motorists on city streets each year.
In 1969, 5,000 cars were left so heartlessly, in 1971, 8,000 wrecks were discarded on public roads because motorists had to pay $20 to scrap the vehicles and simply leaving them on the roadside was much cheaper.
Owners would just remove the plates and anything else linking them to the car and just leave them to rot.
Favourite spots to abandon your vehicle included streets to the north of Jarry Park (seen in the photo) and De Maisonneuve west of Decarie and on Hochelaga.
Their presence impeded snow removal operations.
A few years later scrap dealers started offering modest sums for kaput vehicles, thus killing the inane vehicular littering.
Montreal's car pound on Papineau opened in 1957 and had only 220 cars taken in that year so the numbers exploded fast.
The total of 8,000 cars at the pound in 1971 included vehicles that had been towed or accidented.
Owners had 60 days to recover their cars and had to pay $2 per day. The pound resold the wrecks in packets of 20 at a cost of about $15 per unit.
Police made no attempt to determine who abandoned the cars. Too much work. In many cases the identification number had been filed off or otherwise destroyed.

Quebec's billionaire hermits: that was the theme of an article I wrote for a big Toronto business magazine a couple of years back. One of the publicity-shy entrepreneurs I profiled was Marcel Adams, who has never offered an interview with media.
Even photos of the guy were non-existent.
Marcel Adams has a hell of a story though. At 94, he's still apparently in good shape in spite of living a tough life.

Marcel Adams was born in Romania, survived Nazi work camp, fled to Israel and then came to Canada in 1951.
He worked in a Quebec City tannery when he lucked into a the first stages of a real estate fortune - now worth about $2B - by investing in a Quebec City housing project.
It turns out that his son Sylvan - who has been running the family business for a couple of decades - is far more open to media.
In an new interview with Immobilier Commercial magazine Sylvan Adams talks openly about the family and the biz of shaping development around Quebec.
Sylvan Adams, like myself, is a Westmount boy who went to the same elementary school and high school four years before me (Roslyn and Westmount High) and like myself has three daughters and one son.
Unlike myself he's a competitive bicycle racer and quite wealthy too.
Adams, 56, notes that his brother Julian, now 60, didn't take over the family business because he was devoted to chemistry and has invented some important medication called Velcade. He also has a sister who is a lawyer and another who is a nurse.
Adams tells the magazine he - at the helm of Iberville Developments - purchased the land around the 10-30 project in 1990 for 18 cents a square foot in 1990.
He thought of building a shopping centre on the site but the Champlain Mall was stiff competition and only Cineplex signed a lease.
So he went against his dad's philosophy and simply sat on the land.
It was a good strategy. Thirteen years later sold part of the property at a big profit.
In 2003 Adams sold off 20 percent of the property to Devimco at $5.83 a square foot, for a total of $35 million. They went on to build the 10-30 mall at the site.
So Adams bought the property from Trizec $4 M and sold it for $50 M, keeping a little more for their own development.

Marcel Adams, patriarch, seen in rare family photos

Iberville Developments also sold malls in Quebec City and Sherbrooke in 2005, among 17-or-so properties the company sold for over $1 B between 2000-2005, because the offers were just too high to refuse.
The company has upcoming developments in Candiac, Pincourt and Sherbrooke, Adams reports.
But their plan to build something big in the east end RDP/PAT area was - he says - scuttled by corruption at Montreal city hall.
Adams lives in Westmount with Margaret Cornwell, his England-born wife of 30 years, in a house on the second-highest built property in the city only behind the oratory.

Montreal Constable Mario Delvecchio's owes his life to his smoking habit.
The officer was out on Ontario St. E near Joly when a sniper started shooting out of the window of his rooming house.
Delvecchio - who was behind the wheel of a police ambulance - was hit by a 22-calibre slug which hit his Bic lighter and a pack of Dumauriers stuffed into his shirt pocket.
The father of a then-five-year-old boy survived, as the bullet harmlessly plopped to the ground on August 13, 1978 at 7:55 a.m.
He usually wore a bulletproof vest but it was too hot that day.
But the shooting spree wasn't all fun and games.
Pierre Thibodeau, 27, who owned the apartment block across the street, looked out the window and was shot in the head and killed.
The gunman fired 15 shots in total.
He was eventually persuaded to surrender without force.

Welcome to the neighbourhood.
The Superhospital is moving to Vendome in 36 days and many Montreal hospital staff and visitors will finally have access to a real urban environment after being isolated on the mountain.
Unlike at the Vic and General, you won't be stuck brown-bagging it or eating at the cafeteria, as a nearby walkable neighbourhood awaits to serve your retail, restaurant and bar needs.
Restaurants
1-Chalet BBQ This reasonably-priced classic joint at Addington and Sherbrooke is five minute walk from the hospital and never disappoints.

2-Copoli Small, friendly, unpretentious greasy spoon right across from the metro is a reliable option. They specialize in large hamburgers.
3-Momesso'sat Upper Lachine and Old Orchard is famous for their submarine sandwiches.
4-Ville du Souvlaki at Prudhomme and Sherbrooke is a standard souvlaki joint, spacious and reasonable but not huge servings.
5.Thai Express at Sherbrooke and Decarie is noodlicious fast-food that's not so wonderful once it gets cold.
6. Soba Sushi at Northcliffe and Sherbrooke has been a restaurant in various incarnations for decades and has now turned Japanese. There's Iranian on De Maisonneuve, Korean on Upper Lachine and Indian on Sherbrooke, a McDonald's and Second Cup at Claremont, a Subway near Decarie.
Bars

1-The nearest bar to the superhospital is theEB Lounge, on De Maisonneuve just west of Decarie. It's not much of an option. They advertise on Stretch Carr's excellent Caribbean radio show but I've never been as I can't figure out where the door is.
2.Next Door PubThe old Buster Harvey's at Sherbrooke and Marlowe is cozy joint worth a visit.

3-Liquid Lounge this place on Sherbrooke just west of Claremont hasn't earned a great reputation and has been described as a "dive bar" and has been associated with various calamities but I've never seen trouble when I went.

4-Maz Peter Sergakis recently purchased this place on Sherbrooke just west of NDG Park and is still thinking of how torenovate/rename it. Call him with suggestions.
5-Honey Martin's, the best option, is a cozy Irish place but it's a 19-minute walk. The Claremont or the joint at Oxford and Upper Lachine might also get added to the list if they're ever revived.
Places to stroll on your lunch break

1-Westmount Park It's an 11-minute trek but it is and has always been a heavenly spot, complete with library and greenhouse.

2-NDG Park Ample benches to sit and watch the action on Sherbrooke.
3-Oxford Park A quiet spot where tai-chi is practiced but recent expansion of the basketball court has removed much of the green space.
4-Cote St. Antoine Some of the city's most charming architecture sits on a span of this ancient street just up the hill.
5-Sherbrooke between Claremont and Grosvenor is a charming spot full of boutiques, ice cream joints, delis and other charms.

East End rooming house. EAST..END...ROOMING...HOUSE..
No good news ever starts out with that phrase.
The recent arrest of Claudio Ponari, 57, a landlord of a rooming house 3629 Ste. Catherine E., on that dodgy strip between Prefontaine and Pie IX, is both sad and bizarre.

The rooming house has been a constant headache for police and neighbours, as a woman shot another woman there in 2005 and somebody torched the place two years ago.
The TVA network brought cameras inside the hallways a few months ago to show the unwholesome lifestyles of those living within those walls.
The area has been chronically plagued with crack cocaine use and prostitution.
It's in no landlord's interest to promote drug use, but sometimes these things are beyond one's control.

However the arrest of the landlord in connection with a major crack bust makes the story entirely unusual.
We don't know the details of the drug charges or the evidence against Ponari.
Presumably police believe he either tacitly permitted the drug dealing to go on within his property or perhaps was even more actively involved.
Occasionally landlords will get friendly with tenants and even end up taking drugs with them and bad results inevitably emerge. We assume Ponari is innocent until proven otherwise and hope you do as well.

Who is - or was - Montreal's Eddie "Do Nothing" Baker?
We need to know and we need to know now!
In around 1969 Baker became an underground literary-and-lifestyle Montreal icon as a 41-year-old who'd wander around and do nothing all day, thanks to a stipend from his Massachusetts-based father, who ran a women's apparel business.
He attained boho-fame thanks to a biographical magazine article by Don Bell, which was included in the collection Saturday Night at the Bagel Factory.
Some of his quotes:

"I don't think I"m being pushed by something external and necessary. You can be so quiescent that it creates like an electric spark. And you may think: I should be doing something. Why don't I? I can't be wasted away by zeroness.

His jacket: "My canvas-covered, camouflage-coloured, pile-line army-type surplus-store Japan-made imitation transistorized ski-trouper jacket."

Why he likes the underground city: "You don't have to make decisions in tunnels; there are no options open to you. You must go straight ahead. There is a feeling of destiny awaiting you at the end, your footsteps echoing along the corridors, the denouement. It's like being in an Edward G. Robson last-mile movie."

His longest marathon was a 15-hour sitting at the Carmen Coffee house. "At midnight when I went outside, my buttocks felt manicured."

Why he felt compelled to write poetry: "I was like a balloon, being wafted aloft, without any gravitational pull. This caused an intensified state of lassitude and ennui. It was a sort of obliviousness, a total void. It eventually gets to jangle your nerves, like a quake inside yourself. I felt that a seismic tremor would seize me if I didn't get thrown into something."

On writing 50 poems: "it was like pulling out my gut as I tried to explain myself to myself."

One of his poems:

I'm a bit
Withdrawn
If not
Solitudinous

"After sliding up to people for so long, tickling them and then slipping away, I was now drawn into the gears of human relationships. I felt that the machine was going to grind me to death."

"I realized that the literary world is no better than the financial world. One day I told Peter Desbarats: The best thing in life is the dream. Once it become real, it's no good."

"My insignificant slim little sheath of poems is probably no more than a few soft specks on a white collar."

"If I become famous it will be as a virtuoso of lethargy. I'll be just as cultivating my present nothing way of life and fallow state of being to live in a more affluent manner. I will be somnambulant in an eiderdown bed instead of broken down springs. It's a mystical dilemma. I can only do nothing. I must make a living. Therefore I must make a living doing nothing. If I can't make a living doing nothing, then the end is near and clear."

His lifestyle imitators: "the artisans of urban whirlpools"

"I am like a receptor of all the impulses and radiations of society. People who are taken up in the flux of daily life have their receptors blurred because they are creatures of actions: a wheel of a machine can't get to know what the total structure of it is. They need a quiescent being who can depict them in a concrete and concise way what the fabric of their existence is. I may be a barren personality but here may be a a part of me in everyone and I may illuminate those parts. But that's all a lot of crap. Let angels take care of angels and devils watch over devils. I don't care about the world and the world doesn't car about me. This is a porcine culture. People are like pigs grovelling in the world to survive. When you get right down to it, everyone is out for himself and anyone who says isn't is just deluding himself. But so what? It's nice once you acknowledge it. So one slumpy little Eddie Baker bonking around, doing nothing, shouldn't be any skin off anyone's ass."

"Time just seems to drag one. It's like it leaks out of a small-hole can each day until it is empty."

We know that he lived in Lower Westmount, south of Alexis Nihon, in a home owned by the ex-wife of the director of Eliza's Horoscope, presumably Gordon Sheppard, who died in 2006.

He had six poems published in Parallel magazine in 1966, a small poetry publication run by Peter Desbarats.
He played a zany guru in a Montreal movie called McBus, done by Lenny Cohen's pal Derek May.
We are told that he wasn't happy about Don Bell's article and didn't speak to him after that.
Some of those who might know more about Baker - and we don't even know if it's his real name - are dead. Desbarats, Bell, Sheppard are all dead and gone. If Baker was alive he'd be something like 88 now.
If anybody can shed more light on this great (great?- Chimples) Montreal character please let us know.

The six numbered dots represent the new and useless traffic lights

A staggering proliferation of nonsensical traffic lights has occurred within a tiny stretch of the West End in recent months, putting rest to any doubts about the ineptitude of traffic planners and municipal authorities.
On one 400 metre stretch of Decarie between St. James and De Maisonneuve there are now four sets of traffic lights, two brand new and one that has been uselessly delaying people for about four years. That's a new light every 100 metres. It must be some sort of new world record.
Compare that to a much-busier 700 metre stretch of Sherbrooke between Clifton and Girouard - a strip with far more pedestrians and traffic - it does fine with four lights over almost twice the distance.
A pointless luminous delay machine has been installed at Crowley and Upper Lachine, which serves no purpose: traffic to Crowley is virtually nil and a stop sign would be entirely adequate.
A light installed about 30 metres north of Upper Lachine on Girouard forces motorists to wait 54 seconds. Fifty four seconds! You'll literally want to get out to stretch your legs or do jumping jacks while waiting through that sucker. You then get six seconds - yes six seconds - to progress northbound through the green before another 54 second red cycle begins. Those who sniff a green on the horizon motor full speed, knowing they'll be punished by the clock for missing their chance. Once again, a simple stop sign would be adequate and would lead to much calmer driving.
Stop signs encourage motorists to keep their eyes on the road - pedestrians, cylclists and other cars - rather than up in the air, mesmerized by a green, yellow or red light bulb.
Montreal West thrives without a single traffic light - including at a busy five-way intersection of St. James and Westminister full of school kids - where there has never been an accident.
Nuns Island hasn't got a single traffic light and has useful structure like roundabouts, putting to rest the nonsense of Montreal drivers being somehow worse than those of other cities.
Needless to say the public had no say in this expensive money and time grab.
Lives, in tiny increments, are being confiscated by nameless pencilnecks planning roads in locked offices.
It isn't cheap either: traffic lights are costly to purchase, maintain and operate, whereas stop signs are almost free.
A traffic light is a punishment. A stop sign is a chance at redemption. Don't believe me? Drive through the intersection of St. Jacques and Westminister. You'll see the goodwill and cooperation that motorists are capable of and you'll feel good after getting through.
Unlike in many other cities, traffic lights in Montreal are not made with an intelligent design, so you routinely see a long line of cars waiting at a red while no vehicles are trying to come the other way.
Is there corruption behind this illogical slavery to the traffic light? Are we living under government by insurance company whose next task is to force you to wear helmets behind the wheel?
The concept of a traffic light is philosophically offensive. It's signal that the government feels entitled to arbitrarily confiscate your time in a paternalistic manner which does not require explaining. No attempt to justify these often pointless delays is ever offered. Let's start dumping these devices now.

Not all immigrants enjoy Canada. An untold number move back to their country or elsewhere after arriving.
But surely no immigrant hated Canada as much as Colman Losonczy, a mechanic-turned accountant who hated Canada so much that he attempted to renounce his citizenship and then committed a murderous anti-Canadian terrorist act when that failed.

Losonczky moved to Montreal from Hungary in 1951 at age 29.
He met secretary Lucille Bastien five years later and the two spent romantic time in Paris. They appeared to have lived at 10800 Berri in Ahuntsic but they split in 1962 and she filed for divorce in October 1968.

Vienna embassy

"I left him because I was fed up with supporting him. I begged him to assume his duties as a husband and he failed to do so I left," she said.
Losonczy had been forced to serve in the Wehrmacht as a teen, an experience that left him deeply scarred.
Once in Canada he got an idea that French Canadians were oppressed, so he decided to help them fight against the oppressor. He took part in the 1968 St. Jean Baptiste riots in Montreal.
Losonczy was not - as far as we know - involved in the centre of the Quebec separatist movement but he was surely sympathetic to it and inspired by it. It's unknown whether he was acquainted with fellow Magyar Francois Schirm who killed for the FLQ after coming to Montreal from Hungary.
In 1967 he went to the Canadian embassy in Vienna and attempted to renounce his Canadian citizenship. He caused a scene and was deported back to Canada.
On August 26, 1969 Losonczy, then 47, returned to that embassy and set it on fire with incendiary devices.
Dead in the blaze was senior commercial officer Hans Karl Rott, 47 and delivery man Alfred Sautner, 46,
Anywhere from 15 to 32 others suffered various injuries, broken limbs, burns, cuts and shock. One brave employee caught one of the bombs and ran down the stairs with it. Another employee was hit by the mad attacker as he ran for a fire extinguisher.
He surrendered himself to police at the scene.
He had written a letter to the government calling them "miserable capitalist criminals, arrogant oppressor-exploiters, stinking prostitutes and degenerate satellites of the imperialist Yankee murderers... I escape from Canad that ___ English colony where I refuse to live in destitution and misery." He also tossed in an anti-Semitic insult for good measure.
No word on what punishment he was given, although a long-stay in a psychiatric facility would not have been a surprise. He would be about 92 if still alive.

Some Coolopolis readers are not happy that the construction of a 27-storey skyscraper - delayed as crews searched for archaeological treasures - has resumed.
Ivanhoe-Cambridge shut down the Manuvie House construction site at 900 de Maisonneuve W. - the old Simpson's parking lot - in mid-February but announced Monday, about five weeks later, that they hadn't found anything.

The builders noted that they had hired a archaeological specialist firm, although the name of that company wasn't mentioned in a press release.
They note that the construction site is also outside of designated archeological zones, according to a provincial Culture Ministry map.
Montreal residents Ian Barrett and Robert J. Galbraith have responded with a not, accusing the builders of only digging five 10-inch test holes and not looking in the right way.
"There are old accounts of children and private collectors picking up arrowheads and stone axes exactly on this site. And now IC says there is nothing left there of the original sites. But much of the site was never built on, because the area went from Indian land to forest to farmers fields, then to 19th-century greystones on big lots with spacious gardens and lawns, and then finally covered over with parking lots. Very significantly, in 2010 and 2014 Indian artifacts were even found during sewer work right alongside the site. There is no doubt about it; this is a promising area," they wrote.
"It is important to understand that the evidence left behind in an Indian city in Canada is usually very subtle. They did not leave behind stone foundations and most of what we find are small and scattered indications of life. A piece of pottery here, an arrowhead over there. You’re not finding big strata of debris. Most of their lifestyle was organic and has disappeared. So of course, a few test holes are unlikely to produce results. A broader investigation is essential."
The note also describes Hochelaga as "one of the greatest, most legendary lost cities in the world."

For decades Montreal's impatience with the never-ending winter was calmed by the soothing tonic of spring training, seen in TV reports beamed into our home
We knew that young hopefuls basking in the Florida sunshine would soon bring that ingenious weather our way.

Spring in Montreal is enormous. Orgasmic. Life-affirming. Wild. Dangerous. Unpredictable.
There's no better place to spend a spring. "In Montreal spring is like an autopsy. Everyone wants to see the inside of the frozen mammoth," or "Beware of what comes out of Montreal, especially during winter," said Lenny Cohen.
And an essential part of that spring was the fantastic vision of physically-vigorous competitive entertainers whose whimsical world saw them attain financial viability by what they could do with a leather ball in something delightfully dubbed Grapefruit League action.
As much as people might like hockey or football, their training camps can't compare. (I think the NHL pre-season is called "the Withered Leaf league," and football's is "The Summer Solstice circuit", you're welcome - Chimples)
How many times did I dream of one day going down one day and snooping around Expos camp for real, perhaps with future kids. But watching on TV was just good enough.

Lest you think that the spring training summerlust was a recent contrivance that began with the Expos: note that media was reporting on the baseball spring training as far back as 1931 and perhaps earlier. In the 1930s the Royals did spring training in Texas. in 33 they brought a Montreal player named Gladu down, the first Montreal kid invited to camp.
Spring training, a time for hope, renewal, faith. All taken away when the team moved.

Time to finally name the mysterious, unnamed Montreal hairdresser who had the temerity to try to shut down the film Woodstock because it showed him disrobing with a woman for 150 seconds.
We don't know who he is but he'd likely be about 75 by now and might have led a bit of a failed life if you believe his own arguments.
The hairdresser, whose identity was never revealed in the media, slapped a libel suit in June 1970 demanding that the film stop airing because it showed him briefly stripping from a distance in a split-screen with a woman in tall grass, as can be seen here. He said it exposed him to ridicule and considered it libel.
The woman, also unnamed, was a 20-year-old secretary from Pennsylvania.
She testified that they stripped because it was raining. They had met just previously and had skinny-dipped in a nearby lake. They didn't have sex but they embraced in the tall grass, she said.
The defendants, Warner Bros. and United Amusement Corp. said that the hairdresser - who appears to have had an outlandishly large red beard - was not recognizable.
One Warner Brothers' lawyer said that it showed "beautiful people doing beautiful things."
Judge Paul Langlois replid "I'm not sure I would agree with that."
We don't find a verdict but it's safe to assume that the suit failed, as the movie was never yanked from theatres as far as we know.

One of Canada's most famous songs, written by what's considered the

greatest poet of his country across the pond, was penned at this house in the West Island around 1803.

Anybody?

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The horrible thing that happened at this house near the Montreal conference centre

Montreal youth hostels, the great lost tradition

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When Montreal streets were littered with abandoned cars

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Eddie Baker - the ultimate Montreal icon

Montreal planning fail: new and useless traffic lights being installed everywhere

The immigrant who hated it so much here that he bombed our embassy

History buffs unhappy with resumption of construction on possible downtown Montreal Indian burial site

Spring in Montreal ain't the same without baseball spring training

Uptight Montreal hippie hairdresser tried to get the Woodstock film pulled from theatres

Quiz - what great Canadian poem/song was penned at this West Island house 200 years ago?