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Who killed Harry Up?

April 17, 2013, 2:06 pm
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  Harry Mytil, 33, was shot dead last night at his home at 6696 Henri Julien in St Rose Laval at about 10:30 p.m.
Mytil and friends and house
   It would appear that whoever pumped six bullets into the veteran Bo-Gars street gang member escaped unseen.
   Mytil - who used the nickname Harry Up - had a long rap sheet, but none of his crimes, which included selling drugs and using counterfeit money, matched the splashy home invasion he helped orchestrate on the south shore, almost 10 years ago, on May 3, 2003.
    The caper was simple and brutal.
   Someone named Christina Greer rang the doorbell at the home of defence lawyer Alain Dubois, saying that she had forgotten a jacket at his place.
Alain Dubois
   Dubois knew her, so he opened the door but others forced their way in, hit Dubois in the face with a gun and forced him to open his safe and give them his cash .


    The crime was planned by a 17-year-old boy, who got his sister to recruit Mytil, who in turn recruited Tsionas, who then got Joseph Rochenelle and another man to help.
Harry Mytil
   Mytil waited in the car with a driver while all of this went on, communicating with those inside via walkie-talkie.
The gang went to part and divide up the cash but Mytil, who had several upcoming court appearances to deal with other previous violations, does not appear to have attended.
    Dubois was traumatized by the incident and missed several months of work and had to visit with a psychologist about 10 times. He said he missed some of the sentimental items that were taken.
   After 16 months inside the RdP facility while awaiting trial, Mytil plead he plead guilty to charges relating to his involved and was given four years in prison.
   Mytil also had broken the law with a breaking and entry, parole violations, weapons, counterfeit money.
   
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How to repair an $8,000 cell phone

April 18, 2013, 11:47 am
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Yes Mitch Corber can fix your $8,000 cell phone
   Mitch Corber and I both have experience in the phone business.
  Mine was gained back in the rotary-phone era, when the technology was one step up from a blanket.
   I spent the summer of '85 at Bell Canada toiling away at Services Speciaux connecting mobile phone calls.
   Each car phone call had to be manually connected with cords and a switchboard and timed with an old fashioned stamp on paper.
   We'd have to fill out a relatively-long cardboard form in pencil, a task that usually lasted longer than the actual call, which usually consisted of some variation of "Je suis en route."
   Thanks to this, in my eyes mobile phones will always seem a toy for a small elite of well-heeled bigshots.
   Corber, meanwhile, works in an entirely different world of cell phones, as he runs a place on Decarie called Mobile Montreal, where he does all sorts of cell phone service for riff-raff and rich alike, with quite a lot of cell phone unlocking going on.
    He told me a story which shows that there is still a small number of people who want their cell phone experience to be of a higher-class variety.
   A valued customer came in with a broken phone that cost him $8,000 purchased new. He wanted it repaired.
   The phone, called a Virtu Ascent X, is a high-end Nokia, and apparently made of titanium.
   Yes, apparently there are people in Montreal with $8,000 cell phones.
    Corber inquired all over and was eventually directed to a downtown jewelry store as the only place that could repair this precious phone.
    The store warned him that the phone's one year warranty had elapsed and it would cost him $1,500 to fix.
    He bit the bullet and paid up but when he got it back, he learned that the password was lost. It's usually an easy problem to solve but, hey this is a fancy phone.
   So now at his wits end Corber called the head office in Toronto and learned that the phone had been under warranty the whole time.
  Corber called back the jewelry store and mentioned that the repair should have been free.
   Everybody at this plush jewelry shop which sells $100,000 watches, hung up on him.
   The moral of the story is that Biggie was right about More money, more problems, but perhaps more valuable: take that warranty and pin it right on your bulletin board or wherever else you keep such things, you'll surely need it. 
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Quiz- where was this?

April 18, 2013, 4:35 pm
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Montreal's horse and buggy entrances

April 21, 2013, 7:12 am
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  Part of Montreal's charm is that all of our walls are touching someone else's walls so you can hear their bullshit noise and screaming and feel part of that community of suffering.
  Toronto, meanwhile, built all of their houses about 9 inches apart, so people can boast that they've got some room to stretch their arms in the sideyard, although not enough to get their lawnmower through.
   But somewhere along the line a brilliant architect concocted these horse and buggy entrances which gave Montreal a spooky element, as residents could suddenly imagine ghostly and ghoulish figures such as on the right staring through at them.
   Backyards, usually accessible by alleyway behind were now also reachable by these holes in the facade.
   I lived in a draft apartment at 4129 de Bullion for a couple of years next to one of these and never fully grasped the point of it.
   As for the photo on the left, the same sort of opening gives way to an entire neighbourhood of Montreal, at a place nobody seems able to pinpoint.
   I'd imagine if those bullies stood under that passageway rather than in the alley, the trek to that area would be considerably more intimidating. 
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The city's ball-thieving roofs

April 22, 2013, 8:41 am
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As a kid, some of my worst moments of shame, sadness and guilt took place when I lost stuff that was given to me.
   At age eight we lived in Vancouver for a year and whenever we'd toss a ball on our lawn it'd inevitably eventually get lost in these prickly fat shrubs.
   Then when we moved to 227 Westminster I had my bike stolen after leaving it outside for my mom to carry in, the first of my many bicycle heartaches over the years.
   So every summer when I see balls stuck atop the shed at Oxford Park I relate to the sadness of the kids helpless to get 'em down.
   I sometimes go up with a ladder to grab 'em but they never get back to their proper owners.
   I once bought about 10 basketballs and would actively offer to lend 'em out to kids who seemed like they didn't have anything to play with in the park on the condition they returned them. But they would tend to lend them to another needy kid in turn and the balls soon disappeared into the mists.
   I would venture to guess that such badly-designed structures have stolen thousands of balls from sad kids over the decades in this city.
   It'd be great if the city would finally put a sloped roof atop this and other such structures, as it would prevent such situations and also allow people to play near the buildings  even hit tennis balls upon the walls, something that people seem to want to do a lot more of.
   But I guess we'll have to wait for some sports association to ask the politicians to do at a public meeting because that, sadly, seems to be the only way things get done.

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City's attempt to evict Hassids fails, judge lets 'em stay

April 23, 2013, 8:43 am
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  The City of Montreal's high-profile attempt to shut down an Outremont synagogue has flopped, as a judge decided last Thursday that the Munchas Elozer Munkas Congregation at 1030 St. Viateur has the right to continue its operations.
   The city launched the case two years ago on the grounds that the synagogue, which had taken over a residential duplex in 1976, was in violation of certain zoning restrictions, as it sits in a residential area.
   Superior Court Judge Andre Prevost ruled that the fact that the synagogue, used by a Hassidic group in a building owned by someone named Pinchos Freund, should be allowed to remain because  it has been in operation for over 40 years and only recently did the municipal authorities demonstrate any interest in pointing out its zoning issues.
   The judge also noted that the building is indeed in a residential area, but it's so close to a high street that it's very much on the edge of both worlds, so it should be recognized that it's not a purely residential spot.
   The issue was initially raised when a neighbour named Mrs. Dinelle complained of noise in 2002 but her issues were apparently settled and she was satisfied.
   Someone named William Morris, who does not live in the area, also complained in 2008, even though he doesn't live nearby. And the city was able to supply a petition of 200 names, many of whom live nowhere near the area. 
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Anti-racists & racists finally agree on something

April 23, 2013, 2:37 pm
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  For perhaps the first time ever, Montreal's anti-racist and racist subcultures are finally on the same page. They're both bashing Michael Rosenberg, who ran with the anti-racists and now has apparently been charged with sexual assault on at least one young woman.
 The racist and anti-racist subculture in Montreal have long performance a street-level soap opera with heavy boots, never short of violence and dramatic accusations.
   The most recent bit of excitement revolves around an antifa, or anti-fascist named Michael Rosenberg, (or possibly Michael Rosza) who came to Montreal via Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Toronto and London, Ontario.
  He was accused of sexual assault, it's unclear what the details or circumstances are of the misdeed.
   Nonetheless he was quickly being tried by the court of public anti-racist and racist skinhead public opinion, bashed by both sides before even going to trial.
   In fact it's not entirely clear whether his name is even Rosenberg, as a Mike Rosza, 24, was charged with similar crimes recently in Ontario and it could be one and the same person.
   Rosenberg tried to express repentance on his Facebook page but that backfired and only made him look guiltier.
  The racists portray him as a leader of the anti-racist movements while the ARA says he had no part in leading anything.
  One anonymous commenter wrote: "Mike Rza has never been a fucking leader of anything except for a Facebook page. And he got a taste of some street justice quite a few times, in Montreal at least."
   About a decade ago I'd regularly check in with the Anti-Racist Action representative in Montreal and some of their actions were quite laudable. For example they lobbied aggressively to get a man named Sacha Montreuil, who was allegedly involved in the death of a black man named Christian Thomas in Rosemount on June 24, 1999, reclassified as a hate crime.
  But while their anti-racist position is something to be admired, they could often err on the side of extreme sanctimony. For example on May 19, 1999 about 40 ARA-associates went to the home of a young man and broke into his home, uttered death threats and other similar stunts. A woman involved in the protest was arrested and charged but after 18 months the prosecutor cited a lack of evidence and she was set free.
   I once interviewed a young woman at the Cock and Bull who was also an unrepentant member of a racist group but ended up sympathizing with her somewhat after she showed me photos of how the anti-racist groups had smashed the windows at her home and put up posters of her on the street. 
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April hump day in the island city

April 24, 2013, 11:33 am
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No park is without peril, as this tiny girl learned Monday when she got stuck on one of the baby swings at Oxford Park and required the attention of firefighters to free her from the demonic contraption, a traumatizing experience which will undoubtedly scar her psychologically for some decades to come and perhaps her children as well.


 This beautiful facade is no more.
   The front of the building on Ste. Catherine St. opposite Alexis Nihon Plaza has been resurfaced and its glorious bas relief and Packard emblem have been forever replaced.
   Owner Reza Tirana is hoping to demolish the building for a new development but has thus far been stalled by dealing with the various levels of bureaucracy.
   The building sits near the border of Westmount and Montreal and might actually be divided between the two.



Apparently pedestrians were able to cross the Victoria Bridge on foot until recent times, as this adjacent photo indicates. My cursory research hasn't yet turned up a link suggesting when and why this policy was changed. If anybody knows, please send the info along. I'd like to see pedestrians welcomed back across the span.
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Montreal's killer waitress

April 24, 2013, 8:35 pm
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Louise-Therese Desnoyers
   Louise-Therese Desnoyers, 31, waited tables at the Klimataria restaurant on 4441 St. Lawrence, until one night in 1979 when she plunged a knife six inches into the midsection of owner Peter Savopoulos, 48.
   Desnoyers had stayed up late the previous night, working until 4 a.m. on January 15, 1979. She had the rest of the day off, so she popped in on owner Savopulous at 10 p.m. to ask him to allow her to switch an evening shift for a day shift, as she had a doctor's appointment  She pointed out that the other waitress involved in the swap already agreed, but the boss (in another report his name is spelled Savapopoulos) nixed that idea.
Peter Savopoulos
   Desnoyers then hit a couple of other joints, the Capitol, Hellas, Rialto, had a couple of beers and returned to the Klimataria at around 2 a.m. with other restaurant guys named Frank and Tommy.
   Bossman Savopoulos bought them a cognac and sat and drank one with them and. He may or may not have been a bit tipsy.
   Desnoyers ordered some food to share at the table, the three gobbled it up, so she ordered another plate but the boss said she had to pay for it before ordering a second, so that's when the friction began. 
   She reassured him that she had already paid for the first serving.
The restaurant is now the Licari furniture shop
   To add to the hilarity, she brought up the story about how boss Peter had wanted to stab a bus boy named Claude two days earlier and she had stopped him by grabbing the knife from his hands as Claude dashed out to safety.
   Desnoyers picked up a pair of knives to demonstrate or re-enact the tale. She put one of the two knives back, but boss didn't much like her display, so he punched her in the face and next thing you know, she plunged the other knife into his chest, killing him quickly.
   Desnoyers later said that Savopoulos had fallen on the knife when he lunged at her to hit her again.
   Louise-Therese Desnoyers was convicted of manslaughter on March 27.

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Quiz - who were these front page newsmakers?

April 25, 2013, 8:14 am
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  For a brief moment in 1979 local papers found an excuse to put these immigrant sisters on their front pages in connection with a high-profile crime committed by two brothers - one of whom was later shot dead in Plattsburgh.
   When brought in for questioning,one of these two alluring enchantresses told a crime reporter, "I don't want to go to prison. I don't even know what a prison looks like."
   Can anybody name who they were? 
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Ghosts of 2185 Montcalm

April 25, 2013, 10:52 am
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Lisette Cloutier, seen in her ghostly form, departed her physical body at 2185 Montcalm when
she and her friend Carole Blais were strangled in their sleep
Robert Hamilton
    Next time you stroll the route spanning the verdant snootiness of Lafontaine Park and the ramshackle retail of Ontario St., listen closely for the ghosts of two young single mothers strangled in their sleep 34 years ago.
   Lisette Cloutier, 24, surely knew that Robert Hamilton, 22, her boyfriend of two years had previously spent four years at the Pinel Institute for the Criminally Insane for reasons unknown.
   She likely had an idea of his wicked ways, as she had helped him escape from a police car in Hull one year earlier when he was wanted for questioning in connection to a burglary there.
  When Cloutier broke up with Hamilton, she had some extra space in her apartment and invited her friend from the Gaspe, Carole Blais, 26, to stay with her.
  Hamilton waited until the two fell asleep, entered and strangled both with a cord while they slept in the apartment with their three young children at 2185 Montcalm on the morning of March 1, 1979.
   The three children came across the dead naked bodies of their mothers in the morning.
    Hamilton was charged with murder, it's not clear to Coolopolis what his final legal fate was.
   The three children who slept in that apartment during the horrible tragedy would be in their late 30s now.
   It's unknown whether Hamilton is living as a free man today. 
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Turcotte verdict not so shocking: Quebec parents receive little or not punishment when they kill their kids

April 26, 2013, 7:39 am
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Patricia Rosenstone
   Much fuss was made last year about the lenient sentence given cardiologist Guy Turcotte who was quickly released on reasons of temporary insanity after killing his two children.
    The ensuing public outrage might have been justified but such cases routinely end in short sentences, or acquittals in Quebec. Here are a couple of examples.
Michele Bradette
   Patricia Rosenstone, a suicidal American with psychological, drug and alcohol issues, who had moved to Dixville to be with her boyfriend, killed her three small children Maxwell, Joye,
and Maya, aged between 11 months and five-years,* on January 3, 1978 and left them covered with a sheet in the hallway of 690 13 Ave. N. in Sherbrooke.
   She had slit their throats with a butchers knife and then slit her wrists but died not die from the self-inflicted wound.
   The killings took place three days after Rosenstone was released from a mental hospital and was green-lighted to be reunited with the kids.  
   Attempts to find out who authorized the return failed, as a court withheld the health facility's refusal to release what they said was a confidential health file.
   After killing her children she was brought into the insane asylum, where she attempted suicide by leaping out of a window, only succeeding in breaking her arm. She was deemed not criminally responsible for killing her three kids due to temporary insanity on April 18. On December 15, 1978 she was freed and moved to Florida to be with her parents. A local woman fighting for children's rights named Jane Pankovitch nobly fought for an investigation into the entire dossier but that didn't shed light on the failings of the system.
   In a separate case Michele Bradette, 20, killed her seven-month-old baby Martin Racicot on Nov. 7, 1978, by punching him in the head three times. She said she had spent three sleepless nights tending to the child at her home in St. Felix in Abitibi. The child had a terrible cold and she had to get up several times to tend to the little boy. One of the times she snapped and hit the child. She thought he had gone to sleep but he was dead. Her boyfriend Jacques Racicot was on hand at the sad time. She plead guilty to involuntary homicide and received one year in prison.
*another source lists the children's ages as 2, 5 and 10. 
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A particularly bad Saturday on Plessis in 1979

April 26, 2013, 9:11 am
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  On Saturday April 7, 1979 Montreal radio was blaring such hits as Music Box Dancer, Heart of Glass, and Sultans of Swing. Steve Rogers and the Expos were hosting their home opener at the roofless Olympic Stadium that day, a gloomy, chilly - 1 afternoon.
   There was no internet, no cell phones or texting, no Craigslist, Sunday shopping, no spending with bank cards, so what you had in your pocket was what you'd spend.
   For some people, including ex-cons Gilles Laliberte, 21, and Richard Racine, 23, that left little else but drinking and violence.
   The two young men had already spent much time in prison. Racine had been released just two months earlier after serving three and a half years for armed robbery and refusing to testify. Laliberte had even more recently been freed five and a half years into his eight year sentence on charges of attempted murder and armed robbery (although admittedly by that math he would have been a minor at the time of the crime).
  Racine - who was on medication to control his bad temper - had a girlfriend named Debbie Hughes, 18. She had been drinking with the two for a while on Friday night but she was unhappy that she found Racine with a gun. She rather sensibly left Racine's apartment to stay with a friend at 1925 Plessis but the two showed up there at 5 a.m. Saturday morning and stabbed resident Leonard Corbin, 23, an unemployed dishwasher, to death in the kitchen of the apartment.
   They threatened to kill his roommates Anne-Marie Desharnais, Lucienne Papineau and Kostas Patsavos as well but were talked out of it.
   The two warned everybody not to report their murder and then forced Hughes to come with them as they left, but they let her go free after they all walked down to Ontario St.
   Police picked the two of them up at Racine's aunt's house on Des Erables at 7 p.m. that evening.
   Racine was sent to a prison in Laval where he attempted to kill himself and failed. He tried again and succeeded. He was just 24.
   It's unknown what happened to Gilles Laliberte, but an inmate by that name fought for the right to have a gay conjugal visit with his cell-mate in 2001. It was refused, as conjugal visits are not allowed for fellow inmates.
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Bank truck heist gang member shot dead at his restaurant: A photoshop re-enactment

April 29, 2013, 7:45 am
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      Jean-Claude Lafonde, 41, was shot to death inside his restaurant, the Louvre, at Papineau and Ste.Catherine, by two men who fled unapprehended in the early hours of Friday January 26, 1979
     Lafonde was one of five convicted in a million dollar Allied Security van heist in St. Jovite on March 21, 1978. He had plead guilty and was released, awaiting his sentencing hearing February 6. The two men came in and shot him dead as he stood near the cash. About a dozen diners and one waitress was on hand while the murder took place. That's his real face but the rest of the image is a collage. 
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When crime reporters kill

April 29, 2013, 12:32 pm
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Robert Leboef and Yolande Desilets
  Robert Leboeuf  reported crime for Allo Police, Journal de Montreal and Nouvelliste de Trois Rivieres, and was known professionally to be a difficult fussbucket who always wanted to get his way, yet he was also remembered for showing up and leaving his office with a big smile and wave to all around him.
  Underneath that persona lived a murderous maniac who would end up killing three people, including himself.
   Robert Leboeuf, 39, Yolande Desilets, 28,  and their 3 1/2 month old son Donald died February 13, 1979.
   At the time, it would appear that the couple was estranged, as Leboeuf had been living in Longueuil, but Desilets had moved to Toronto.
   On this date she was visiting with her parents on Rang 8 in Saint Wenceslas.
   He agreed to pick her up, along with his son and bring them to Toronto together in his '70 Pontiac.
   As they embarked on the 6 1/2 hour drive, Leboeuf pulled over near on Highway 161, the main strip of Saint Wencelas, and had his wife exit the car.
   He then shot her dead with a .3030 calibre rifle. He then shot his baby son, still inside the car, in the heart. He buried them in snow and then shot himself in the abdomen.
   Cops found the abandoned car but only two days later a farmer, driving by on a tractor came across the macabre sight of three dead bodies in his field. 
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Proof that the east side of Montreal has way too many gas stations

April 29, 2013, 12:58 pm
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   These two chunks of land are somewhat roughly the same size, measuring around two kilometers wide by six kilometers on the north/south scale. The area on the left spans the canal to the back river and Cavendish to Westminister. There are something like 30 gas stations sitting on that land, including many sensibly station along the service road of the Decarie Expressway.
   Now the area between Park and Pie IX has somewhere around 85 gas stations, many on smaller streets, many very close to each other.
   So while it might be more convenient to find a gas station on that side of town, it also mans that there's more ugly semi-industrial ugly blights sitting around.
   There's also the environmental factor. Back in the 70s gas stations posed a hazard, as lead would get into the atmosphere and poison people's brains. In fact that could be one of the reasons that the crime rate was so much higher back then: people used leaded gas and it damaged people's brains much in the same way that it led to the fall of the Roman Empire.
   There's no serious price competition between gas stations in the Montreal area, and so it must be asked whether all of those stations are really needed on the east side of town.
   Many gas stations have been removed from the city in recent years and replaced by housing, perhaps most dramatically at the corner of Desmarchais and Verdun where all four corners house a service-station related operation until about a decade ago, when they were all built into condos.  
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Hipster cars got exhaust pipe USBs

May 1, 2013, 8:32 am
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   I haven't been to many car shows since 1969 (or was it 1973?) when a British painter named Michael Millman living temporarily in our family garage (?) brought us to a Place Bonaventure where I only recall a Volkswagen seeming very expensive at $4,000. We took the bus home and I stared at length at the statues on the church across from the Sun Life building.
  I have occasionally been tempted to go since but couldn't co-ordinate a freebie ticket so I've sat 'em out.
   The latest show here in January featured a car blatantly marketed towards hipster-nerd-do-gooder-public-transit-users called a Honda Gear, complete with some kinda thingamajig that looks like a fancy USB plug on the back, I guess it's the exhaust. (Could be handy in the winter here in a place where kids get killed when dad's shovelling snow and the pipe gets into the snowbank). The ridiculous car literature claims the car is "Inspired by fixed-gear bicycles" and "Everything that young, discerning urban buyers would want in a car." I drive a car but I also support the anti-car movement because it leaves me more space to park when everybody else takes the bus. 
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The Jalbert sisters' final night on de Lorimier

May 1, 2013, 9:49 am
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Celine Jalbert
Solange Jalbert

Sisters Celine Jalbert, 18 and Solange Jalbert, 20, were found strangled to death at their apartment at 5950 de Lorimier on January 17, 1979.
   The sisters were from what is known today as a dysfunctional background. Their father abandoned his five children and their mother had psychiatric issues, including serious depression requiring hospitalization. Both had been sexually abused as children.
   Celine moved out at 16, as did Solange. They did a variety of jobs, including stripping and  Celine worked in a tobacco family in the daytime and a doughnut joint at night.
    Solange moved to Victoriaville to be with a boy. Celine was attempted suicide in August 1978.
   So Solange moved in with Celine at the apartment on de Lorimier in December 1978 and both were suddenly without work and went out partying a lot, coming home with different guys, according to neighbours.

   They also started hanging out at a club on Pie IX known as a biker hangout as well as another one on St. Hubert, also known for its intense criminal element.
   Some of the guys they hung out with were known to be serious criminals and one hypothesis had it that they were killed because they knew too much.

Police were looking for two male killers at last word.
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Cannibalism in Quebec

May 6, 2013, 11:38 am
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   Was delighted to see Anthony Bourdain praise Montreal last night on his culinary travel show but lest people believe that we actually eat beaver meat and ice fish and eat outdoors after playing shinny in public parks in St. Hank, sorry it's not entirely the case.
   Nonetheless I think he has overlooked one obscure element of the Quebec diet that is rarely discussed: human flesh.
   Recent news that cannibalism was practiced by American settlers has shocked some people but it's really nothing new to our part of the world.
   Here is one example, written up in A.W. Brian Simpson's Cannibalism and common law: a Victoria yachting tragedy
   A  peculiarly grim case, involving in all probability both mass murder and cannibalism, occurred in 1828-29 on the island of Anticosta (sic) in the gulf of St. Lawrence. Four men landed on the island and visited a hut at Godin’s Post. Inside they found “the carcases (sic) of four human beings with their heads and legs and arms cut off, and the bowels extracted, hanging by their thighs in the room, and the others cut up in the same manner.” There was also a store in a trunk, and a pot with flesh in it. This larder had not, however, saved the last survivor, who lay dead in a hammock. The Times, at the instigation of the Lloyd’s agent at Pictou, published an account of items found at the site, where numerous other human relics were strewn about; this account derived from an affidavit sworn before a local justice of the peace. It transpired that the remains came from the Granicus, which had been wrecked on the island, then largely if not wholly uninhabited in winter, about November 20, 1828. Between 17 and 20 persons had been on board, and the last survivor was a sailor whose name was Harrington, the son of Mary Harrington of Barrack Street, Looe.
Bloodstains on the roof and other evidence suggested that a number of his companions had died after a violent struggle; he presumably simply froze to death.
   The same book tells of Captain Timothy Gorman who ferried Irish immigrants to Quebec in the 1840s  and brought timber back to Europe. He had eaten two ship hands but that didn't seem to slow down his career.
   And of course the battle for Quebec, which was part of the larger seven years war, was won largely because the Brits were able to blockade the Atlantic  preventing French from sending much in the way of reinforcements  but also because the Brits had the upper hand with relations with the native Indians, as some key leaders believed that the French had eaten their people, although some starving British troops also indulged in human flesh in those battles as well. 
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Cats: time to ban them?

May 7, 2013, 9:01 am
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   Montreal is home to an estimated 500,000 cats and that's a cause for concern because recent studies have shown that people who own pets have been getting infected with the Toxoplasmosis brain parasite that alters their personalities, which research has demonstrated makes people reckless and more prone to being involved in motor vehicle accidents.
   The toxoplasma gets into the food chain through mice, the t. gondii or toxo, as it's also known hides in the rodent's immune system.
  The bug gets to the mouse's brain and it turns the rodent fearless, making it easy prey for cats.
   The cat then gets infected with the bug and transmits it to humans.
   A British study has shown that 1,000 people a day are getting toxoplasma through cats or poorly cooked meat. Leading researcher Jaroslav Flegr says that due to their high-consumption of bloody meat, the French have an estimated rate of 55 percent infection.
   A recent study from Sweden indicates that people infected with toxo have higher rates of schizophrenia, depression and other mental ailments.
  Flegr's studies suggests that men infected with the parasite become sloppy, mistrustful and introverted, while it does the opposite to women, who "tended to be more meticulously attired, many showing up for the study in expensive, designer-brand clothing. Infected men tended to have fewer friends, while infected women tended to have more."
   Those infected by toxo "were about two and a half times as likely to be in a traffic accident as their uninfected peers."
   So if you have a cat, you might consider these things and possibly get a blood test, apparently a malaria medication called Clindamycin can help get rid of the bug.
    So it won't be long before someone crunches the numbers and finds out what this easily-avoidable cat-borne parasite is costing the public purse and the continued co-existence with cats subsequently put into question. 
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