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Plateau Airbnb party-pad driving neighbours to frustration

June 27, 2016, 3:09 pm
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    An AirBNB conflict on Cartier Street, one block east of Lafontaine Park has reached a new level of intensity.
    Tensions have been bubbling over for a couple of years. Coolopolis has held off on reporting on it because blameless neighbours felt that bringing it to light could erode the value of their homes in the event they wish to flee.
   However a recent incident has raised the stakes.
   Jasmin Tremblay's five-unit operation sees the property owner renting out units, often to large numbers of renters at 4043, 4045, 4047 and 4049 Cartier, between Gauthier and Rachel.
   The homes have been modified to sleep many people.
     Here is one account of the recent weekend craziness as described by a resident to Coolopolis this weekend describing some bizarre behaviour on the event of St. Jean Baptiste, hours after the Journal Metro newspaper described the tense situation in an article.

   On most weekends Jasmin  'hosts' somewhere between 40-50 people, with parties at these locations occasionally getting much larger.
   On Thursday (June 23) evening for example two stretch limousines pulled up around 1 am and let out about 15 guests into one apartment where a party went on into the early hours of the morning.
   At one point someone climbed onto a roof of the building and shouted down at people random people asking where to buy marijuana.
   Earlier that same evening, Jasmin himself was dancing around to loud heavy metal music  on the balcony of 4039 Cartier around 9:45 pm, lighting off fireworks and liberally using a boat airhorn.
    Naturally this kind of thing attracted the attention of the police, who arrived around 10 pm, from the sounds of it there was a bad scuffle on the balcony, in which Jasmin's boyfriend was sprayed with pepper spray. 
Another neighbour described something similar.
   Tremblay went on a retribution festival and turned his speakers on us at full volume. He then paraded up and down the lane with fleur-de-lys flag yelling.  
   He then later launched fireworks. From what I have gathered five cop cars arrived and they pepper sprayed Tremblay and threw him in a cruiser. He was released with a promise to appear in court. In the meantime his assistant went on a rampage and blasted music and slammed doors until 7 am.
  Imagine if you will, 18 guys, completely drunk, chanting, singing, screaming and yelling until 6 am. This was my past summer. It's one thing for the neighbors to throw the odd party but this happens every Friday and Saturday night from June until October. 
   One of my neighbors has witnessed men urinating from the roof terasse. The amount of yelling and screaming that takes place until 6 am is almost hilarious if it wasn't so infuriating.
   I witnessed one group of renters ask another group so please tone it down.. The reply was "fuck off, we paid for this".. Which I think about sums up the mentality of these groups.
   A group of neighbors has signed a petition and presented it to the owner of these apartments. He has promised to tone it down. But in November, another party happened. A DJ was hired, music blasting at 6 am, screaming, chanting, yelling until 6 am.. several visits from the police.. my other neighbor lost his cool and went over to yell at them to stop, banging his fist so hard on the wood fence that he punched a hole through it. As you can imagine, most of us are at wit's end.
  Imagine saving for a down payment on your first home for 2 years, finally buy the home you've always wanted, only to realize you've moved in next to Animal House.
   Coolopolis was unable to reach Jasmin Tremblay to comment. He previously told reporter Anicee Lejeune that the people who rent are "normal people enjoying a happy hour on a Friday evening" Tremblay said that he does "everything in his power to protect my neighbours."

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Montreal's most radical store: the short-lived separatist MPQ boutique on St. Catherine E.

June 29, 2016, 6:06 pm
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 The MPQ Boutique on St. Catherine near Aird was one of the more unusual retail outlets in Montreal when it was open between around 2010 to 2012.
   The MPQ was a militia that believed it had to be ready to take up arms for the cause of Quebec sovereignty.
  Its leader Serge Provost was a carpenter who liked to wear military gear and worried a lot about politics,
  The Milice patriotique québécoise started around 2000 and claimed to have about 200 members eight years later, each member paying a $100 fee. Provost claimed to have 2,000 members in 2012.
    Its members were sworn to secrecy and required to participate in a few activities each year.
   Its boutique at 4653 St. Catherine E. had a clumsily hand-painted sign for a while, which was later removed. It apparently sold various Quebec-oriented trinkets with plenty of fleur-de-lys mugs for sale alongside the Loco Locass separatist rap CDs.
   Customers were required to navigate a German Shepherd to enter, as seen in this photo Coolopolis snapped in 2012. The MPQ held its meetings there as well.
   The boutique is long gone. It appears that the MPQ has disappeared as well, as nothing has been heard from then since a flurry of publicity in 2012. All websites relating to the group have disappeared.
 
    
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Montreal Satan's Choice motorcycle club - circa 1972

July 5, 2016, 9:01 am
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Top Row  from left to right 1 -Gilles 2- Rocky 3-Marcel Polidor 4-visitor from Ontario 5-his brother also from Ontario 6-Mick Rowan 7-Daniel Lemaire 8-Sonny Lacombe President 9-Regain 10-Carl 11-Michel "Frenchy" Vieillette
Bottom Row  1-Mike French 2-Rod McLeod 3-J.P.  4- Pino 5-Snoopy 6-Yvon Robert
   The Montreal chapter of Satan's Choice started as a loose group of friends around 1967, many of whom did not initially own motorcycles.
   When this photo was taken, probably in 1972, the gang did not have any particular unifying activity, so some made a little bit of money committing various petty misdeeds, including selling marijuana and LSD.
   Some were on welfare and pretty much all of them barely scraped by.
   The group ranged from brilliant intellectuals like Robert at the bottom right, to impulsive pugilists, like the oft-referenced Mike French on the bottom left.
   Some of these men are still alive, others less so. Please help fill in the blanks and share stories.

Brian Powers, seen in this photo taken also around 1972, stood only about 5'8" but came with a mean streak. He started out as a kind person but soon became no stranger to committing murder. 
   He later joined the Outlaws and was at or near the top of its gang hierarchy when assassin Yves "Apache" Trudeau came to his home somewhere in the West End on Nov. 10, 1978 and shot him with seven bullets to the head from a 45 calibre handgun. 
   I have heard various stories about Powers that I would love to corroborate from independent sources, so please drop me a note if you knew him.
Brenda Van Rentlyn (correct spelling unknown) was the girlfriend of Michel Veiellette, who was in the gang at the time. I have about 16 other photos from this collection that I might publish her at some other time depending on feedback. 
Yvon Robert, Daniel Lamarre and Rod McLoed on Dorchester just west of Atwater. 
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Johnny Young: petty criminal was Canada's first habitual offender

July 6, 2016, 10:18 am
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  Johnny Young was the first Canadian to be kept in prison for the simple reason that he had already been kept in prison many times before.
   Young was Canada's first habitual criminal, a law passed in 1947.
   Young was a wrestler and a bar bouncer and launched a career in petty crime in 1935 by stealing tires at age 23.
   He was busted for theft again the next year, assault the year after that, disturbing the peace the next year.
   Within the next couple of years he arrested for assault, gun possession, dealing wartime ration coupons, and attempted theft.
   He was also part of the gang that - along with Percy Rodriguez - wrecked a barber shop on St. Catherine St in the aim of rigging an election in 1945.
   Young fled his St. Denis Street apartment on Sept. 26, 1949 when he got wind that his arrest was imminent and cops found a stash of guns and 50 ounces of heroin along with a list of local addicts.
  Young was thereafter described as a drug kingpin in one article which also named in the head of the Perrault Gang, which was linked to an East End 1948 robbery that left two police officers dead.      Justice Wilfrid Lazure classified him as a habitual criminal, Canada's first, on April 13, 1950. He attempted an unsuccessful appeal 11 months later.
  He was sentenced to five years in prison but after five years he was still inside St. Vincent de Paul penitentiary as a habitual criminal. He remained in prison until at least 1966 and likely well beyond.
   In 1956 - nine years after the federal legislation was passed - Young remained the only Canadian with the habitual criminal designation, as Quebec judges refused two other requests to designate criminals in that category.
   Under the law Young had to wait three years between appeals of his habitual criminal status.
   The Dangerous offender designation remains on the books in Canada but is usually given only to serious criminals.
   The John Howard Society criticized the original legislation, noting that it aimed at punishing sexual psychopaths, without providing a good definition of what that entailed. Nothing in the newspapers indicates that Young's committed sexual assaults.
   Montreal Standard reporter Mavis Gallant wrote her final article for the paper about young. She went on to some fame as a writer living in Paris.
  She later said of the case.
The publicity he received made it sound almost an honour. Actually, he was a minor lawbreaker, more of a nuisance to society than a serious threat. One of his early convictions, as I remember it, had been for stealing tires and trying to sell them on the black market. “Black market” means it happened in wartime, making it, in his case, a juvenile offence. Young was barely educated and said to be not overly intelligent – though it is often hard to measure the capacity of an untrained, underdeveloped, and inarticulate mind. He knew nothing about the new law and perhaps did not understand that it had been applied retroactively. His brief notoriety must have come as a surprise. There was no legal precedent and there had been no warning – at any rate, none that could have sifted down to his street.
  I have not seen the Gallant article (if anybody stumbles across it on the microfilm please scan and send it) but she notes that she was not permitted to interview her subject but ended up describing a man who was raised in poverty, crime and ignorance in a poor part of English Montreal.
   Young was still in prison in 1966 and was reportedly being kept in solitary confinement due to his inability to get along with other prisoners. Surprisingly little else has been written about this groundbreaking chapter of Canadian criminal penal history.
    
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Jacques Parizeau Park - let's rename it P.K. Subban Park: petition

July 6, 2016, 10:50 am
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  Montrealers were saddened by the departure of the delightful and civic-minded Montreal hockey star P.K. Subban.
  Subban pledged $10 million to a local children's hospital while entertaining hockey and non-hockey fans of  his adoptive hometown.
  Montrealers should honour his positive legacy by renaming Jacques Parizeau Park in his honour.
  If you agree, please sign the petition by clicking here.
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High tech fraud: car theft begins with post-it note

July 11, 2016, 8:31 am
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   The days of armed bank heists by men in masks appear to be a thing of the past as criminals have taken stealthier paths to wealth.
  One recent tale begins with a simple post-it note on a door that read "Call me! - Susan."
  A man came home to such a note not long ago and dialed the number written on the paper, assuming it was a female admirer that he had met and forgotten.
   When he called the number and asked for Susan a man answered and said that Susan was not there and took his number in order to get Susan to call him back.
   Susan never called him back, of course.
   Instead the man received a phone call from his bank reviewing various information in his file, including his social insurance number, date of birth and security question.
  The call was made employing technology that allows a call to appear to emanate from a number that it is not actually coming from.
   So the victim would have read the name and number of his bank on his phone, reassuring him that the call was legit.
   It was not.
   The fraud artists had also managed to get into the victim's mailbox in the apartment complex to find out other information about him.
   They used the information they had to create fraudulent identification and then proceeded to get a credit card with a large limit by simply exaggerating earnings, a common practice even by legitimate people.
   The fraud artists then went to a high-end car dealership and purchased an expensive sports car with $25,000 down on the credit card, with further payments to come.
   The car dealership asked all the required questions, thereby legally alleviating themselves of any risk, as the bank and credit card company would be on the hook.
   So the car dealership was not too worried about losing the car.
   Once of possession of the vehicle the thieves then made a deal to sell the car overseas and had it packed and crated to be sent to the new purchaser abroad.
   A fraud detection agent at the bank managed to figure the story out before the car hit the high seas. But other frauds using the same methods are taking place with great regularity.
    
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End in sight for yet another longstanding Montreal-area strip club

July 11, 2016, 9:10 am
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  The Doric Cabaret on Taschereau Boulevard is for sale at seemingly-reasonable $650,000 for both the building and the business.
   The 7,500 square foot property has served the strip club needs of Brossard for several decades.
   The club has had a few wrinkles in the past. In 2008 a guy was shot in the throat there and in 2011 a father and son were found dead upstairs, possibly murder victims.
   Strippers got into an epic brawl at the club a few weeks ago, according to my source.
   The fight apparently led the club to change its policy and limit the number of dancers from that particular ethnic persuasion, thereby leading to a deterioration in the quality of the entertainment, according to his interpretation.
   Another recent description.
Dropped in last night, a Saturday. There were maybe eight strippers, none attractive. Lumpy, out-of-shape bodies with unruly hair, floppy bums and ill-fitting bikinis. Like Cleos on the dayshift. That is not praise.
   The new owners might continue to run the operation as a strip club but as we have seen in many other cases, municipal authorities have worked to get rid of such clubs. 
   A similar club called Chez Francis on the West Island was recently sold for a low price and was demolished.
   Other Montreal area strip clubs that have closed over the last while include Super Sexe on Ste. Catherine, Mado on Pie IX and The Dice Club on Papineau.
   
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Montreal's nastiest street

July 11, 2016, 7:41 pm
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  Young Street in Griffintown has a long pedigree of drunken violence as this video I created explains. 
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Montreal summer 2016

July 12, 2016, 7:36 am
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Wife, daughters killed in NDG gas leak blast: the dark forces that lined up against a French Resistance war vet

July 20, 2016, 4:50 pm
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 French Resistance war veteran Roland Haumont riled powerful elites by loudly denouncing French collaborators who settled in Montreal after World War II.
  Then his house exploded and authorities tried to pin the gas leak blast on him.
  Watch the tragic, haunting and deeply suspicious tale explained in the video below.

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Mysterious Montreal: Party girls commandeered to East End Satanic ritual

August 20, 2016, 3:17 pm
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   Kneeling cross-legged in occult ceremonies was a coming-of-age ritual for many in the 1960s. .
   Coolopolis has been tearing up the floorboards to expose stories of mystically-inclined adventures from that era.
   One reader has stepped up to the plate to deliver this crazy story from about 1968.
   Please help us fill in the missing pieces on this bizarre place in the east end.
                           
    Bev and I were coming up Bishop from St Catherine heading to the Cafe Prag when we crossed diagonally  in the middle of the block in front of it. We had to overshoot a bit because of a group of people standing around a convertible parked on the East side just in front of the Prag.
There were two guys and four girls just sort of hanging there. We passed them and continued onto the sidewalk. Bev kept looking back and commented on how gorgeous one of the guys was. I had seen that they were all good looking, well-dressed people, as we passed right by them but my eyesight was very bad and details got blurry past arm’s length.
We continued on and sat on some steps just past The Annex. We were discussing what to do next with our limited funds when two of the girls from the group came up to us.
They were a little older than us and looked really hip and pretty. They spoke English with some kind of Eastern European accent. There were a lot of people like that at the Prag because owner, Kurt was of those origins and he made the Prag a sort of gathering spot for them.
 Of the two girls who came to talk to us, both were late teens to at most early twenties, one was taller than the other, maybe 5’7” or 5'8" and slim. The other was maybe 5’5” and was also pretty and slim. I don’t know accents but I thought maybe Czech or Hungarian, something like that, but not strong and guttural, light and cute.  
The taller one did almost all the talking and was very funny and persuasive to overcome our hesitancy. They invited us to a party, Come, smoke a little, drink a little, have some fun!  
The guys were not very tall , maybe 5’8' or 5’9”, slim builds and lots of hair, maybe light brown to sandy color. They spoke French but said little.
We hemmed and hawed but after a bit of cajoling we said okay. I guess because they were beautiful people and because there were more girls than guys and the guys weren’t big mean muscle bound guys, we felt secure enough to go.                
It was early evening when we all got into the car. They put the top up because we were too many people in the car and we headed East but seemed to make useless turns and wander a bit until the sun set and it started to get dark. We then turned down a laneway.
It had a wall at least five feet high, topped by schoolyard high Frost fencing all along one side and houses on the other side.  
We pulled up to a door that opened directly onto the lane and all got out. We entered a kitchen where there was music playing and a couple of girls were sort of dancing. One other guy was there, the only really dark-haired person other than myself.
 He soon disappeared into another room further into the house where there seemed to be something going on. After a bit, they all said, come, come into the other room.
Well, the other room was actually a very large double parlor that stretched all the way back to the laneway wall, 25-30 feet, with a window and a doorway at the far end. There was no furniture.
People were sitting everywhere on the floor with just a path where we could enter. They led us to the centre of the room and  told us to sit and relax. There was a white sheet on the floor where they told us to sit. We sat but I was ill at ease.
The more I looked around the more I wanted to leave and I told Bev I was leaving. Other than the original two guys and the dark haired guy, it was all girls.
No one was smoking, drinking, dancing. They were all very subdued and the atmosphere was very strange and quiet. No candles, no music other than what was coming from the kitchen.                
Then the lights went out into total darkness. Where I had seen doors and windows were now totally blacked out, totally invisible. Then a rustling all around us and the chant began. The name they called chilled my blood.
There was absolutely no light. No candle. No forewarning to us, and the name that I thought I heard called in the chant was Satanic. No one made any kind of pass at us or acted in any way sexual.
I hear Bev’s shaky voice say “What’s happening?” I say "I don’t know, but I’m leaving! Give me your hand!”  I took her hand and put it on my shoulder and told her to hold on, stand up now and follow me.
I knew where the door was and even though they had dropped a blanket in front of it managed to find the door handle and get out! I kicked and knocked a good few people out of our way to leave that room, dragging Beverley with me.  
There was no one in the kitchen area and we just ran right back out. There was a park at the corner.  
It was in front of us and to the right of us and I wasn’t going into the park in the dead of night. We turned left and kept running, all the while checking for followers. We came out on Rouen street and I think made our way down to Ontario Street. I don’t think we stopped running until then.              
 Bev and I have discussed that evening a few times through the years and have never understood why we went or what exactly happened.    
We had heard about people playing nasty jokes, scaring people with occult shit, but Bev and I both knew that there was there was too much that was creepy and off about the whole thing and nobody was laughing when we left.    
On top of that , despite always hanging out there and always looking, we never saw any of those people at the Prag ever again.     
Because of the somewhat unique location, the house might actually be findable, but I wouldn’t look for it alone.
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Montreal mourns novelist Peter Gonda, 47

August 22, 2016, 8:12 am
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   Well-known bon vivant, man-about-town, photographer and novelist Peter Gonda died suddenly Saturday.
    Gonda had been writing a follow-up novel to his acclaimed Drinking and Driving in Chechnya, seen as a reflection of his unique imagination and unbridled, bombastic character.     (Although an avid traveler in the spirit of Kerouac, Gonda had never visited Chechnya.)
   Gonda wrote many screenplays and was also known for an outrageous travel column that ran in The Hour weekly for some time around 2004.
   Many knew Gonda from social media where his posts stood out as fun and unfiltered content, contrasting the stage-managed expressions seen elsewhere.
   But more knew him from the various bars on the Main which he was known to frequent since the mid-1980s.
    Musician Mack McKenzie was among many who expressed his sadness at news of Gonda's passing. "Wise guy. Dark mind. Heavy drinker."
   Another saluted his "take-no-prisoners, original voice, dark humor." and another referenced his "wit, humour and charm,"
    Gonda was an only child adopted by parents who had survived the Holocaust and he attended Herzliah High School before graduating in Photography at Dawson College.
   He lived in Paris and in Prague and worked as a photographer, house painter and DJ at the Biftheque among other occupations.
   His mother predeceased him while his elderly father suffers from dementia.
   Gonda lived alone on Casgrain near Bellechasse. He had been battling some lifestyle-related health issues at the time of his sudden death.
   A wake will be held for Gonda at the Bifteck at 3702 St. Laurent on Sat. August 27 from 2:30 pm to 5:00 pm.      
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Photo shows St. Henri shantytown loaded with gas tanks

August 22, 2016, 8:28 pm
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  Large amounts of gas in steel cylinders sit perched in a yard on residential St Philippe street between St. Antoine and St. Jacques in St. Henri, as seen in this photo taken by a drone airplane a few weeks ago.
  Eight vertical cylinders standing about 6 feet high, as well as another tank about three times that size sit inches away from foot traffic in a densely-packed residential neighbourhood.
   It's unclear what is inside the tanks but such tanks usually contain propane or other flammable and highly-explosive gases.
  These tanks could conceivably hold well over 1,000 pounds of gas in total.
  Authorities were made aware of the yard in the past but have taken little action.
  The man who rents the home is, according to various accounts, is sometimes belligerent and aggressive.
   Many Montrealers have died over the years in gas explosions, mostly notably in the 1960s as dozens in a pair of incidents in LaSalle, while a family was blown up at Beaconsfield and Sherbrooke in NDG, as Coolopolis has recounted.

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Homeowner conspiracy: property owners fight to keep prices high

August 22, 2016, 9:10 pm
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 Canadian home costs have been rising spectacularly over the last couple of decades, yes, including in Montreal where rents and home purchases are well beyond the means of many.
   But no other spot is as hot as Vancouver, and the debate it inspired has implications for Montreal.
   The accepted consensus has been to blame the Chinese immigrants for purchasing at any costs, thereby driving prices into the stratosphere but former Montrealer and friend of Coolopolis Kyle "One Red Paper Clip" McDonald believes that to be nonsense.
   The real problem, he argues, is that Vancouver is built on a small plot of land and its preponderance of small bungalows force a limit to about eight people per 2,000 square foot footprint.
   The solution is to increase density by rezoning to allow many more large-sized apartment buildings to be built.
    The new supply would drive prices down and offer new supply of reasonably-priced residential options to people who can't afford to live in Vancouver under the current market.
   The problem?
   The people who own those $1.5 million bungalows are perfectly happy to have lucked into such impressive equity.
   To protect their goose egg they actively oppose any attempt to erode their fortunes.
   They oppose increased densification, so unless they can be overcome, there is no solution in sight.
  McDonald has spearheaded a movement which he calls YIMBY, a reverse take on the Not-in-my-backyard. He feels that people will be able to afford their roofs once builders start getting permission to build bigger.
     
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How sex disappeared from Montreal

August 24, 2016, 10:54 am
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   Commercial sex was in your face everywhere in Montreal until about a decade ago.
   Street prostitutes brazenly stood on sidewalks, not just on Ontario, the Main and St. Denis but also in residential areas like Verdun, St. Henri and Lachine.
   Streets were lined with porn theatres, strip clubs, sex boutiques and sexy serveuse restaurants.
  Sex signs and storefront photos were once so common that their proliferation was seen as a major political issue as entrepreneurs fought back mightily to protect their right to erect such signage.
  Every week some sex-related business would launch with a spread in Photo Police. Come to the naked car wash! Enjoy private no-touch dancing! (at least one such place still exists).
  There seemed no end to the appetite for commercial sex.
   Magazine stores and video stores, once numerous and thriving jam-packed hotspots, all contained impossible-to-ignore porno sections inches from the mainstream fare.

   Sex was such a big industry that it boosted journalism and provided legitimate jobs. Now-extinct alternative weekly newspapers were funded by dozens of pages of ads for escorts, massage services and 1-976 sex hotlines.  
  In-your-face commercial sex was around from the very earliest days of Montreal, as street prostitutes made their availability known in the fields at Sherbrooke and Fort and then moved on to the old city.
   Hookers would call out to men offering "a suck and a fuck for a buck" in the 1930s and in the 1960s pimps would stand on all four corners of the Main and St. Catherine offering male passerby a fun time. Alain Stanke counted an average of 10 women sitting alone waiting for commercial pickup in bars on the Main on a Sunday night in 1958.
   This ancient street tradition has suddenly disappeared. Prostitutes are long gone from streets and bars.
   Strip clubs are disappearing fast as well. The 75 on the island in the 1970s have been reduced to about 18. The Downtown Club at St. Catherine and Drummond the latest to close its doors this week.
   Some argue that commercial sex has not diminished, it has simply found other less-visible outlets.
   Escorts now advertise on sites such as Backpage, which are either free or almost-free (the reduction in advertising overhead cost presumably leading to lower prices.)
   Some argue that massage parlours have supplanted strip clubs, as they are easier to operate, being beyond the scrutiny of alcohol-related inspection.
  However massage parlours are still not that numerous and each can only accommodate two or three customers at a time, while strip clubs could host dozens.
   Sexy serveuse restaurants were pushed out of business by provincial regulations, although one might speculate that they would have disappeared on their own.
  Porn theatres were wiped out by online porn. Indeed some believe that almost all of Montreal's once-ubiquitous local sex industry has been supplanted by online porn, which implies a sex trade international deficit, as the beneficiaries are largely in such places as California, Europe or South America.
   Some note that the younger generation is less interested in sex, as studies have repeatedly demonstrated that millennials have sex far less frequently than their parents did.
  Vices such as cocaine have seen similar declines, as the younger generation appears to have snubbed such fun for excitement from Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and smartphone games.
   The evolution is a significant change for Montreal, which was once seen by fun loving tourists as a sex-and-drugs-and-rock-n-roll party central.    
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Report: Plateau shocker - man at centre of intense Montreal Air Bnb dispute has died

August 26, 2016, 9:18 am
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 Residents of Cartier Street are reporting that Jasmin Tremblay, a 40-something entrepreneur who upset many by transforming five apartments into short-term Air BNB rental units, has died.
   Coolopolis could not immediately confirm the reports.
  Residents of Cartier Street between Gauthier and Rachel reported seeing Tremblay taken away by ambulance Wednesday.
   One shocked resident who knew Tremblay reported that he had succumbed to heart failure and did not survive.
   The dispute between Tremblay and his neighbours had been going on for a couple of years, as Tremblay proved determined to rent apartment units by the day.
  Many neighbours complained that those who rented from Tremblay were often loud, numerous and inconsiderately disruptive.
  The conflict intensified on St. Jean Baptiste Day when the Metro newspaper published an article which Tremblay felt was unfair to him.
  On the evening of June 24 Tremblay made a ruckus, setting off a noisy air horn and playing loud music.
   Neighbours said that police intervened, spraying Tremblay's boyfriend with pepper spray. Another said that police shocked Tremblay with a taser.
   Police declined to comment on the events when contacted by Coolopolis.
   Tremblay had since recovered and was negotiating with at least one irritated Cartier neighbour to purchase his condo, indicating that he had no intention to reduce his operation.
   Coolopolis is awaiting confirmation and further details.
More: Plateau Airbnb party-pad driving neighbours to frustration
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Attackers pepper spray punks at St. Henri music venue

August 31, 2016, 7:23 am
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  Adherents of Montreal punk scene were shocked after two attackers entered the Death House underground live music venue Saturday night and pepper sprayed people in attendance.
  The attack took place during a show by Death Proof and Thumbsuckr and left victims seriously ill, some almost requiring a visit to the hospital.
     Drummer Kat Valentine expressed her dismay in a social media post noting that they "had no idea what this was related to" and "we don't want to be associated with that bullshit."

 The venue had previously been run by a tattooed punk known as  Maniks but in more recent times was run by Dylan Mckernan, a widely-traveled vegetarian who now operates a chimney sweeping operation.
   One person familiar with the scene suggested that the "original punks didn't find him hardcore or crusty enough and just see him as some hippie capitalist."
   Similar competing punk venues have sprouted up in the adjacent area, including one known as fattal@fattal, listed at 679 St. Remi.    
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Free the Chicken! Plateau hippies and the famous sign denouncing poultricide

September 25, 2016, 10:11 pm
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  Former Montrealer Juergen Dankwort has shared these photos* of a briefly-famous Free the Chicken sign put up outside Louis Tucker's poultry shop at 20 Roy E., SW, corner of St. Dominique in 1970.
  Tucker's was a place where you could buy "live or dressed chickens, baby ducks, squab, pigeons, rabbits, geese and turkey" according to one description.
   A bunch of young hippies, artists, students and politically-motivated folk, known as the Chicken House Gang, lived upstairs, in a commune-type setting, including Dankwort
   Dankwort was one of tens of thousands of American draft dodgers** who came to Montreal around that time.
   Others living upstairs from Tucker's included artist Louis Spira and war-refusenik Kevin Cohalan, who still lives in Montreal and participates in a Plateau-area historical endeavours.
  "Every morning at 6 a.m. you'd hear bawk-bawk-POW!" Cohalan tells Coolopolis. "Maurice got the idea of painting a sign designed to overhang the sidewalk. He was a good artist. He discussed it with the city of Montreal and it hanged over the sidewalk for a few weeks or months."
       Dankwort, who now lives in Vancouver not far from Spira, recalls that the now-demolished building was none too luxurious. "It was a communal existence. By today's standards you wouldn't set foot in the place. There were rodents and it was pretty gross. Then you had the smell from the live poultry store. We saw the chickens coming in in these wooden creates. It was pretty horrible to see how they were treated. It was inhumane.
  "The sign Spira created read 'Free the Chicken' and 'Vive le Poulet Libre' on reverse, both painted in glorious colours on a wood base that was later illuminated with a light bulb after the city told us we had to take it down because it was extending signage from a wall more than the permissible few inches without illumination," said Dankwort.
  A Montreal Star article by Laird Baldwin described the sign as "a heroic spread-eagled chicken leaping a brick wall and breaking its chains as the long awaited sunrise bursts forth from behind.”
   Spira told the newspaper reporter that the sign represented more than just their objection to the shop below.
  "We are trapped poultry all.At an early age were are all chained to social dogmas, sexual inhibitions, guilt concepts, competitive games. In general we suffer the oppressive stifling of our natural instincts which  are divine messages from the purse source of all creation.”
  "When the chickens are free, we will be free."
Dankwort in more recent times
   Nobody knows what became of the sign.
   No word on what Tucker thought of the sign.
   Tucker's poultry shop survived at least until 1975 when it was listed as being subject to bailiff seizure.

*Photos copyright Jurgen Dankwort, please do not republish without his permission.
**Dankwort's father was a top German diplomat stationed in the US and while Jurgen was not a US citizen, he was eligible to be sent to Vietnam as a US resident. 
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Street View helps Montrealer win $72,000 lawsuit

September 26, 2016, 9:04 pm
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    A court has ordered Bell Canada and the city of Montreal to pay Rachel Collard, 70, over $72,000 after she was injured falling into a rotting manhole cover in Crawford Park Verdun in December 2010.
    Collard was 64 when she gifted her son the building at 7395 LaSalle Blvd. in 2010.
  She came to visit him that same year, parked around the corner and promptly fell hard on the sidewalk due to the deteriorated manhole.
   She broke a wrist and suffered other injuries.
   Bell Canada showed up to grill her on whether the lights were really dim and to question whether in fact the manhole was in such bad shape.
  The issue was solved thanks to good old Street View, as all the plaintiff had to do was to fire up the laptop and move the cursor around.
   Collard was shooting for $99,000 but will surely be thrilled to go home with over $72,000 in her purse.
   Coolopolis noted a few years ago that cyclist Juliet Davies won $1 million from the city after ending up in a wheelchair due to her bicycle wheel getting stuck in a drain in 2007. It took a couple of years for the city to get around to replacing those drains.
   In this case the rotting manhole was fixed within a few months, as Street View demonstrates. 
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Montreal judge boots eBay in $100,000 sneaker case

October 12, 2016, 11:59 am
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  Montreal-born Jeff Skoll, who founded eBay after growing up at 6822 Mountain Sights, might be a bit irked at his hometown.
  The Skolls left Quebec when Jeff was about 13, after the first referendum, as talented people flooded away during a time of bad politics.
  Skoll has given away $1 billion to charity since becoming rich but he has not, to our knowledge, directed much - or any of it - to his hometown of Montreal.
   But a pair of Montreal brothers might get $100,000 of his cash, at least.
   On September 23 Quebec Superior Court Justice Chantal Corriveau ordered eBay to pay Thierry Mofo Moko and his younger brother Kevin Mofo Moko $86,000 plus interest for money they purportedly would have received had their online sneaker sale not been cancelled.
   The interest on the claim raises the total to over $100,000 Cdn.
   Nike made only 1,200 pairs of Air Foamposite Galaxy One sneakers. Forty pairs were sold in Montreal, which went on sale at a downtown store at midnight on 24 Feb 2012.
Skoll
   The brothers paid $280 for the shoes and posted them for sale on eBay. They rapidly received an offer of $50,000. They also received a note offering them $80,000 for the sneakers off-auction but eBay reminded them that they were not allowed to sell through the network without paying the commission.
   A few hours later they received an offer of $98,000 for the shoes.
   However an eBay bot cancelled the sale and removed the page, citing the brothers' lack of sales history, the exaggerated price, the generic photo and the sketchy purchase payment history of the bidders.
   eBay forbade them to repost the ad but the brothers phoned the company and they were permitted to try to auction them anew, but this time they pulled the shoes as they realized that they'd need to keep the shoes as evidence of their lost profit.
  They hired a young lawyer named Bruno Sasson to sue for the lost bid.
   eBay had fought against the case being heard in Quebec, as they would have preferred it go down where they are headquartered in California however a Quebec court deemed that the case should be heard in Montreal.
  eBay hired Stikeman Elliot, one of the city's top law firms, who put youngAlexandre Thériault-Marois on the case. The young man with the double family name was a high-profile cat during the student strikes and also seems involved in provincial politics and maintains an active Twitter account.
    Justice Corriveau shot down a few of his arguments. She contradicted his claim that the shoes were used goods. She also refused to allow evidence that the average price of the shoes was more like $1,200 or so, only a tiny fraction of the gaudy price offered.
Younger brother Kevin
    eBay has not commented on the verdict but it seems likely that they will file an appeal.
   The brothers said that they would use the money to help their family in the Congo.
   Kevin Mofo, on his LinkedIn page, lists himself as a sales rep for Telus, and also as a concert promoter and former dance instructor.
   The identity of the person supposedly willing to pay $98,000 for the shoes was not revealed on any online source.
    The bid $98,000 bid appears far out of whack with established prices, as the most expensive shoes in the world cost only $6,000 more than that as the runners worn by Michael Jordan in a famous 1997 basketball game went for $104,000 in 2013. 
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