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Mob-boss retribution ruse - the epic story of a 1972 Montreal fraud scheme

March 7, 2018, 2:52 pm
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Gerald and wife Davida Falovitch

One of the splashiest and unusual criminal trials in modern Montreal history offers a useful lesson for those who aren't careful with their money and wary of their friends.
   The tale starts with John Roydon McConnell, who was an adopted son of one of Montreal's wealthiest clans, as the family owned the Montreal Star as well as other assets.
   In his younger years McConnell, who died in Sainte Marguerite in 2015, was apparently what Judge Mackay, "either stupid or very gullible" and had a "high-flying lifestyle" that saw him burn through $700,000 inheritance within two years, partly through race cars and partying.
   Funeral eulogies posted online noted his love of pretty women, herb and another account explained how he once ordered "everything on the left side of the menu," at a Montreal Chinese restaurant in the early 1970s. (He really liked Chinese food! - Chimples)
   McConnell loved Jamaica and moved from downtown Montreal to live in Montego Bay after he said he spotted two audio recording devices in his apartment.
   Court documents revealed that McConnell, who lived in the Gregor Apartments on McGregor Street as a young man, was worth $3.3 million in 1979, thanks largely to his grandfather John Wilson McConnell who launched the St. Lawrence Sugar Company and then purchased the Montreal Star in 1925, which went defunct in 1979.
   The entire family fortune was ballparked at about $600 million at the time.
***
So McConnell had a liberal view on spending cash, which likely made him more vulnerable than the next guy to predators.
   McConnell set up McConnell Records with Gerald Falovitch, who is also known as Yank Berry. Two of the three records the company put out were by Yank Berry himself, including The Diary of Mr. Gray.
   McConnell set up shop in Montego Bay, while Falovitch watched over the Montreal offices.
   Falovitch had hoped to get McConnell to sign a document giving him more control of the business, so he sent David Issenman to visit Jamaica in an attempt to get McConnell to sign over more of the record company.
  Issenman hopped the flight south on January 29, 1972. McConnell was a lad of 23 years of age.
   Issenman, who plays only a minor role in this tale, was later described in court as a heroin addict. He moonlighted as an RCMP informant, receiving somewhere around $15,000 for information that led something like 25 people to face charges between 1968 and 1979.
   Falovitch then concocted a ruse to extort cash from McConnell.
   Falovitch hired Montreal escort Leslie Lawton, a leggy 20-year-old blonde. Lawton's mission was to seduce McConnell in Jamaica.
   Lawton was paid $300, plus the all-expenses-paid vacation for her role in the caper. She shared a room with Davida Falovitch (Gerald's wife) at the Casa Montego.
   Davida, who knew McConnell through her husband's company, was sitting with McConnell at the Holiday Inn when Lawton intentionally passed by in a secretly staged coincidence.
   Lawton was introduced and sat with the two and eventually asked McConnell for a lift back to her hotel.
   Lawton invited McConnell in and the two coupled together for about three hours before going back downstairs for a drink.
The bar phone then ran with a call for Lawton. It was purportedly her jealous husband ordering her to take the next flight home.
**
The ruse was that Lawton's husband was a mob boss who demanded cash from McConnell as compensation for having sex with his wife.
Soccio
   Longtime mob boss Jimmy Soccio, by then in his 70s, showed up to act the role of the Mafia bigwig at a meeting at the Mount Royal Hotel where he demanded restitution for the offense of being cuckolded. He was later acquitted due to lack of evidence.
   Monteal TV star Tony Massarelli was also involved.
   Montreal mob bigwig Giuseppe "Pep" Cotroni was also said to be somehow involved, or aware of, the ruse.
   McConnell asked for and received $92,000 from his father - the $82,000 requested plus an extra $10,000 for good measure - and paid off the impostor.
   **
  The episode was forgotten until 1976 when McConnell called for an escort and ended up receiving none other than the same Leslie Lawton.
   "Do you remember me?" she asked?
   She then confessed to her role in duping McConnell.
   McConnell then reported the fraud to police but soon regretted it, as he showed little interest in participating in the 1982 court proceedings and defence lawyers dragged his reputation through the mud.
   Lawton, who was living in Ottawa by then, was a central witness.
   A jury of eight men and four women could not agree on a verdict,
   Barry's separated wife Davida Falovitch was charged but acquitted. She said the trial was very difficult on her 12-year-old daughter, who much later died suddenly in 2004.
   Mob chauffeur Pasquale Martone and old timer Jimmy Soccio were also charged and acquitted.
   A second trial by judge without jury led Barry to be imprisoned for six years in 1982. Singer Tony Massarelli was sentenced to two years minus one day.

See also: My article on the incredible tale of Montreal's Yank Barry
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When Montreal's Hans Selye, world's leading expert on stress, was felled by stress of Quebec taxes

March 8, 2018, 10:50 pm
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   Of all the rock star-status original thinkers Montreal has known, few surpass Hans Selye, who was best known for inventing the concept of stress.

    Selye's adages about stress are still cited frequently.
  • It's not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it. 
  • Stress is the spice of life. Both good and harmful stress use up the body's adaptive energy. 

  • A mother's physical reactions are the same when she hears her son has fallen in battle as when she hears later the first report was a mistake and that he is alive and well after all. The toll on her vital energy is the same.
  • People could live past 100 by understanding and conquering stress, by taking it in our hands and examining its chemical and psychological properties. Stress has got such properties, and they can be measured.
  • The caveman didn't have to worry about the stock market or the atomic bomb but the caveman worried about being eaten by a bear while he was asleep, or about dying of hunger. It's not that people suffer more stress today. It's just that they think they do. 

   Selye, who taught at the Universite de Montreal, died at the age of 75 in 1982.
   The sress of dealing with the government might've killed him.
   Selye had been embattled in a protracted battle with Revenue Quebec, which claimed he owed $290,000 for the yeras 1974 to 1977, at least according to totals in October 1981.
   They claimed that the cash was owed from his International Institute of Stress, which he ran from his home at 659 Milton. (Some of that revenue came from tobacco companies, which generously funded his research, but that's a story for another day).
   Government agents seized eight boxes of documents from his offices in October 1981, including some that went back as far as 1945.
   Selye was so traumatized that he was unable speak for several days.*
   In May 1982 Selye launched a lawsuit against Revenue Quebec for violating his home, as a violation of his charter rights. He died five months later.
    His widow Louise Devrel-Selye blamed the government for his death and attempted to sue them for $700,000. Survivors include children Catherine, Michel, Jean, Marie and Andre who has since passed away. His wife Gabrielle died aged 98 in May 2017).

*La Presse 22 May 1982. 
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How a Hydro Quebec bill dispute launched Benjamin Hudon-Barbeau on an epic killing spree for the ages

March 14, 2018, 3:17 pm
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   Benjamin Hudon-Barbeau sought to be the modern-day Mesrine, trying to imitate the legendary character who terrorized Quebec before being shot down in Paris. 
  He explained this goal in one of the thousands of text messages he sent out to his girlfriend while in prison.
  Hudon-Barbeau was a good looking guy with some talents in karate and was able to get people to like him.
   His father Michel, an ex-con, once wrote an entire book proclaiming his son's innocence.
  And Hudon-Barbeau later persuaded fellow criminal Ryan Wolfson to shoot people dead for him.
   Hudon-Barbeau came to public attention  on Nov. 5, 2010 he was ordered to serve 12 years in connection to a double murder at the Upper Club on October 24, 2006.
Luanna Larose
   But on January 20, 2012, the main prosecution witness recanted and the sentence was overturned on appeal.

See: The Upperclub double murder and its dramatic spinoffs

  Two months after his release Hudon-Barbeau visited witness Dannick Lessard, who was then working as doorman at the Garage nightclub in Mirabel. Hudon-Barbeau came with about 10 others late on a quiet night.
   Hudon-Barbeau had some bad feelings about Lessard's court testimony.
   "Look, I'm a hood, I have nothing to lose, you know me, I lost everything. My ex, she stole me, I eat more, I sleep more. In the North it's me. What happened in the North, it's me. "
"Before that, I had respect for you, I have no more respect for you. All you deserve is a bullet between your eyes."
Lessard
    On October 28, 2012, 13 days after the accused's visit, Hudon-Barbeau's henchman Ryan Wolfson shot Lessard was shot nine times when he left the bar at 4:05 am
 Wolfson asked Lessard for help, as his ride hadn't shown up. He then shot at Lessard 14 times, hitting him nine times, switching from a Glock to a Colt after one jammed.
   Lessard somehow survived and later launched a lawsuit against federal authorities seeking $3.2 million for failing to keep an eye on Wolfson, a known, dangerous criminal.
   The Glock and Colt Wolfson used were also employed to shoot others.
**
   After the Upper Club affair Hudon-Barbeau ended up back in prison in connection with another misdeed.
   Hudon-Barbeau, then 36, organized a dramatic prison escape in a kidnapped helicopter on March 17, 2013 with the help of two of his half brothers, Sam and Vincent.
  He told his girlfriend Luanna Larose, then 33, the single mother of a 15-year-old that he was inspired by the French bandit Mesrine who eventually ended up in a hail of bullets.
Sam Barbeau
**
   Hudon-Barbeau befriended a man who named Wolfson who agreed to be his hit-man and carry out murders for him.
   Hudon-Barbeau presumably believed that having someone else kill on his behalf would give him a greater chance of staying free.
  That calculation proved incorrect as he Hudon-Barbeau was eventually sentenced to 35 years in prison without possibility of parole after being found guilty of killing Pierre-Paul Fortier on October 18, 2012 and Vincent Pietrantonio on the same day, along with a pair of attempted murders.
  Indeed he earned those 35 years all between September 29 and October 18, 2012, a three week period, which was full of activity.
  Hudon-Barbeau's trial was a marathon affair, starting June 28, 2017, with jury showing up September 18 and then Justice France Charonnbeau's ruling finally being handed down February 28, 2018.
   Ryan Wolfson had struck up a friendship with the ambitious onetime Hells Angel prospect in prison.
Vincent Barbeau
   Wolfson, once released, spent time with a man whose name was not divulged in court and we will call Ace. (It doesn't take much to figure out his real name). Wolfson and Ace robbed houses together all summer and went drinking at night.
   Hudon-Barbeau rented a house from Vincent Pietrantonio. Pietrantonio, who was closely linked to Ace, soon had a problem when Ace started stealing booze and other items from Hudon-Barbeau.
   Hudon-Barbeau blamed the landlord Pietrantonio and refused to pay the electricity bill, which eventually rose to $2,000.
   This irritated landlord Vincent Pietrantonio, who was staying in Switzerland, also demanded Hudon-Barbeau give him around $150,000 plus another $10,000 he had put on bail to spring Hudon-Barbeau from a weapons charge in Ontario.
   Ace joined in the chorus to pressure Hudon-Barbeau to pay the electricity bill.
   Pietrantonio wrote Hudon-Barbeau on Facebook.
You're not answering your phone tabarnak !!! If someone does something to my home I'll break his fingers quietly while sodomizing him violently. I'm totally serious my tabarnak. 
   Hudon-Barbeau typed a reply on his phone with equal vigor, using every bit of vulgar Quebecois
slang in the dictionary.
Wolfson
    In spite of the attack, Pietrantonio's ally Ace, was still partying in bars with Hudon-Barbeau's ally, Wolfson.
   Hudon-Barbeau offered to meet Ace to settle the electricity bill.
   Ace was so thrilled that he dropped his grocery shopping and rushed to meet Hudon-Barbeau, who - to his surprise - was with Wolfson.
      Ace had been instructed to meet at a restaurant, which turned out to be closed. He spotted Hudon-Barbeau's car backed into a parking spot, as if ready to drive off in haste. Soon Wolfson was shooting at Ace.
   Ace was hit but ran into a nearby garage and then a depanneur and called for help. He ended up in hospital for two weeks.
    Hudon-Barbeau called him at the hospital the next day pretending not to know what had happened. 
    Ballistics experts determined the bullets came from a an automatic .45 caliber Para-Ordnance, which police seized from a Mercedes SUV parking in a laneway next to Wanda's strip club.
   Wolfson had appeared in photos holding the same weapon.
   Hudon-Barbeau denied any plot to shoot Ace. He said that the call he made to Ace on the day of the shooting was a simple request to deal with the place he was renting.
  Hudon-Barbeau said that Wolfson and Ace had their own little spat and he also denied writing the angry texts to Vincent Pietrantonio.
   The courtroom noted that Wolfson, unlike the accused, had no motive to kill Ace, as the two had been good pals.
Vincent Pietrantonio and his son Tommy 
   Hudon-Barbeau told the court that he would never organize a hit against Ace, because he was like his "little brother" and Pietrantonio was like "his father." 
   Ace barely survived the three bullets and was forced to undergo a colostomy.
***
    Vincent Pietrantonio was understandably nervous after Ace was shot, so when he returned from Switzerland, he had asked his friend Frederic Murdock, to sleep at his home to help protect him.
   So one morning Hudon-Barbeau invited another unnamed individual, called B, to watch the crime report on LCN with Claude Poirier. 
   Hudon-Barbeau was anticipating that some interesting event would be taking place. Wolfson, meanwhile, had spent the next near Vincent Pietrantonio's place. 
   Hudon-Bareau called Wolfson to ask who else was in Pietrantonio's home. 
   The witness, B, noted in court that Hudon-Barbeau was revved up and told Wolfson to get inside Pietrantonio's home. "He was getting impatient. He was eager for it to happen." 
   B also noted that Hudon-Barbeau was irritated with Wolfson for his bad aim. 
    Pietrantonio saw a car pull up. He told Murdock to stay inside the house but Murdock rushed out. Gunshots rang through the afternoon and Pietrantonio went outside too and was shot at near his front door. A bullet hit him in the chest, two inches from his heart. 
   Murdock was dead and Pietrantonio barely survived and was unable to identify the shooter who had blasted the two with a Glock semi-automatic 40.
   Wolfson had driven to the shooting in a car he borrowed from stripper friend Marie-France St-Denis. He had stayed at her place a couple of days and then left with her car. 
  Police later seized the gun and other ballistics evidence in a car outside of Wanda's on November 3. They linked it to Wolfson and for good measure found the .45 caliber automatic Ruger wielded by the victim Frederick Murdock.
    ***
Fortier
Pierre Paul Fortier dealt drugs with his brother Marc-André Fortier and the duo earned up to $100,000 per month dealing one or two kilos of cocaine north of Montreal.
  Pierre-Paul had worked for Hudon-Barbeau before he switched to an Italian boss in 2006. 
  The two brothers Fortier met with Hudon-Barbeau in the back of a bar in the summer of 2012. Hudon-Barbeau said he wanted to return to doing business with the duo but Pierre-Paul said he was happy working for the Italian. 
   Pierre-Paul was nervous and gave Hudon-Barbeau $1,8000 per month to buy his peace. The deal didn't make Hudon-Barbeau happy, who demanded $1 million and then $250,000 for reasons clear to himself surely. 
   On the afternoon of October 18, 2012 Pierre-Paul Fortier was tinkering around in his garage with friend Jean-Sébastien Mapp. Pierre-Paul said that he was going to eat that day with a guy he identified by putting his left hand on his right bicep.  It was his way of referring to Barbeau-Hudon.
   Hudon left the Ritz-Carlton hotel on October 26, 2012 in a rented white Lincoln MKX SUV and two days later the vehicle was spotted at the entrance of the Manoir St. Sauveur.
   Wolfson was seen on surveillance video leaving the car from the passenger side. One hour later four gunshots rang out and a SAQ employee witnessed Wolfson running away from the scene. 
  On trial Hudon Barbeau conceded that he rented the Lincoln and also identified Wolfson from the surveillance video. 
   He was only forced to admit being at the hotel because cell phone towers located his cell phone. He said he was going to the gym and was driving a Cayenne Porsche.
   Witness B, noted however, that Hudon-Barbeau was driving the Lincoln and that Hudon-Barbeau had come right out and said that he had just killed someone. 
   Hudon-Barbeau and Wolfson were later delighted to hear that police were looking for a fat man in a Cadillac in connection with the crime. 
   One again ballistics linked Wolfson with the five bullets from a .45 Colt that killed Pierre Paul.
   That gun was also seized in the same raid outside of Wanda's on Nov. 3, 2012. 
   Wolfson, prosecutors noted, had no motive to kill Fortier. Hudon-Barbeau, however, sought to take over the lucrative drug trade north of Montreal.
  The court prosecutors described Hudon-Barbeau as dangerous, manipulative, narcissistic, impulsive and uncontrollable. She suggested that he had attempted to intimidate a witness.
   ***
   Four psychologists analyzed Hudon-Barbeau, with one interviewing him for 90 minutes a half dozen times the Rivière-des-Prairies Detention Institution. One of them determined he was near 30 on a scale of 40 for psychopathy.  

**
The court proceedings include a lengthy narrative discussing how Hudon-Barbeau terrorized another witness, apparently his girlfriend, who notes that Hudon-Barbeai would frequently vow to kill her mother or other various people who had nothing to do with any of his dealings and that he once forced he to go look at a decomposing body in the woods. 
**
Court transcripts also include several paragraphs of insults he hurled at authorities, such as; 

Je te le dis, toé, ma grosse face, ta grosse face de corrompu plein de marde, hein! (inaudible)… gang de pourris, vous êtes des ostis de pourris, là, ça se peut pas, le gros. Esti t’es chanceux (inaudible)… Je te (inaudible) mon gros cochon. Toé. Tu peux bien rire, gros crisse de mangeux de marde de corrompu, avec ton Baribeau plein de marde maudit crisse de cochon. Tu penses que tu vas t’en aller juge, toi, Baribeau, hein? Tu vas finir comme (inaudible), le gros, à municipale (?). Crisses de bâtards, ostis de corrompus, j’ai jamais vu ça. Y a des ostis de bâtards qui (inaudible). Dcâlissez ma gang de pourris, j’en reviens pas, man.

**
Wolfson was sentenced to life in prison in October 2016. 
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Examining the untimely death of Loyola grad and entrepreneur Mario Macri

March 15, 2018, 5:57 pm
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Mario Macri
   Many Montrealers expressed shock at the callous murder of Mario Macri near his office on Lapierre, just north of Newman at 9:50 a.m.Tuesday morning.
   Macri previously owned a bar called Le Petit Mene, which was located feet from where he was shot.
  But the real family money came from Brasserie des Rapides in the strip mall seven minutes away on a motorscooter near Bishop Power and Champlain, where patrons can choose from dozens of lively young waitresses clad seductively in snug shirts.
   The Brasseries des Rapides has been in the family for since 1993 and is said to be owned by Domenic Macri, who keeps a relatively high profile on various internet platforms.

  See also: 

   A variety of reports, however, describe Mario Macri as co-owner of the Brasserie des Rapides.
   Mario Macri also ran a legal loan company called Plan B, a company that offered legal loans to those in need. 
   Mario Macri's social media profile is non-existent but a faithful Coolopolis reader sent in this picture from the 1991 Loyola yearbook.
   Loyola is a moderately-priced boys Catholic private school on Sherbrooke St. in NDG run by Jesuits.
   Loyola's Italo-contingent contained many upright individuals as well as some with family ties to the mob, including a Cotroni grandson and a teenager sent to avoid pressure from the New York City mob, none of which is meant to imply that the Macris had or have any ties to the underworld. 
   Macri's office of Plan B Finance sits in a strip mall owned by Rosario Scalia Construction and he was shot near the Asian food supplies store that took over the space he used for his defunct bar. That second strip mall is owned by a numbered company which has four owners, three of them named Di Iori.
   Montreal's high-flying homicide squad are investigating the slaying to determine whether it could be linked to Monday's shooting of Tony Elian, who owns the posh Giorgio Gruppo Roma clothing store on the east side of Peel just about St. Cat.
   Elian's attacker sported a fluorescent vest and mask and brandished some sort of rusty old musket that looked like it might not fell a sparrow.   
   Elian's shooter launched the rifle onto the pavement after the shooting. Elian, who had endured a long string of previous attacks, survived.
   There is no word on the type of weapon used to kill Macri or any description of his assailant.
   Macri, as noted in his high school grad comments, appears to have been a jovial lad with good looks and charm and will surely be missed by many.

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Montreal could blow up the NBA by launching a rival basketball league - here's the step-by-step

March 19, 2018, 5:51 pm
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   Montreal is a giant booming city tragically under-served by pro sports.
   A lackluster Montreal Canadiens team is only complemented by the miserable football CFL Alouettes and snoozetastic soccer MLS Impact, which each only play a handful of home games per season.
   Baseball is not a realistic option, as the investment required for a stadium and team are too onerous, while the dollar makes high salaries even more ridiculous and backstabbling Toronto continues to undermine Montreal's hopes of breaking up their Canadian MLB monopoly.
   Pro wrestling? Roller Derby? Not want!
   But getting a serious, top-notch basketball team is entirely feasible, however not by following the obvious path.
   Unlike the NHL, which is thrilled to keep expanding, the NBA is steadfast in its refusal to go beyond 30 squads.
   This means that many basketball-hungry cities such as Seattle, Louisville, Vancouver Austin, San Jose, Las Vegas and Omaha have no hopes of getting an NBA franchise.
   Montreal already has a facility for a pro basketball team in the form of the Bell Centre, which has plenty of holes on its schedule that it would love to fill.
   And yes, pro basketball would attract fans, as proven in sold-out annual exhibition games held here.
   All the Bell Centre would need is some removable floors, a pair of hoops and some running shoes and JUMPING JAMES NAISMITH!! it's time to bounce baby!
   Montreal could simply combine with other cities that want an NBA team and start a rival league of its own.
   All that would be required for a few teams to lure a big star away from the NBA or get them straight from the college ranks.
   This might not be as hard as it appears.
   NBA salaries are subject to a salary cap, which means that the big names don't get paid as much as they deserve.
  The top 10-highest paid NBA players earn between $27 and $35 million  per season. a new league could offer each of those stars $50 million per season, which isn't much considering that the league would only need a handful of them.
   Other than about two dozen superstars, the NBA is full of replaceable no-namers.
   A new league could easily rival that level of play by scouring the endless pool of failed basketball hopefuls from around the world, as basketball is rumoured to be played everywhere from Tasmania to Tashkent to Taipei.
   Montreal and its upstart basketball league could further undermine the NBA by innovating with viewer-friendly razzle-dazzle: 4 point and even 10 point shots depending on how far the shooter stands from the basket and floors that light up with animation.
   The NBA would ask somewhere from $750 million to $1 billion for an expansion team but not only would Montreal not have to pay a cent to launch its squad, it could later make big money by selling expansion rights to other teams once the league takes off.
   Returning a MLB baseball franchise to Montreal would cost in the ballpark of $1 billion but getting a top-level pro basketball team would cost a fraction of that.
  Names? Coolopolis has 'em: Montreal Heros, Montreal Impeccable, Montreal Bouncers, Montreal Action, Montreal Bourgeois, Montreal Dunk, Montreal Joie de Vivre, Montreal Mechants, Montreal Silhouettes.
   The mascot? Coolopolis has one here for you called Chimples.
    
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Suicide snatchers - Quebec law allows authorities to detain anybody they deem suicidal

March 21, 2018, 8:11 pm
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  This article was published in Montreal in October 2004, written by Kristian Gravenor. 
  If the laws and policies have been changed in the years since, we are not aware of it. 
  Michel Blais is the real name of a real person. We don't know where he is now. 

****
    Imagine you got high, started feeling a little melancholy, then called up one of those sympathy chat phone lines to talk, only to have your conversation lead you to handcuffs.
    Michel Blais can tell you about it. Six months ago Blais, 43, went out with a buddy and drank a beer or “maybe about 24,” sniffed some blow and returned to his Pointe aux Trembles home where he phoned the Tel-Aide listening line. “I don’t remember much. I had a lot to drink. Sometimes I call just to chat. I sometimes get discouraged, I’m on welfare and have trouble paying my bills. I’m often depressed.”
Tel-Aide was closed and a recording recommended certain callers dial another phone line, which turned out to be Suicide Action Montreal.  Blais was too hammered to understand the difference and dialled it up, apparently the booze led Blais to give the wrong impression and after a few minutes an operator told him, “Somebody will knock on your door in five minutes.”
   Blais was incredulous. “How’s that? I’m okay, don’t send anybody. I’m glad you’re concerned but I’m perfectly healthy I won’t die, but they replied ‘we can’t do anything, we’ve already made the call.’”
Blais went outside to wave the ambulance off. It rolled up along with a police cruiser. “I told them that I’m tired and that I want to sleep but the cop said, ‘there’s no point in resisting,’ I told him ‘you have no business with me and you don’t have the right to take me by force,’” says Blais.
Alas, wrong. Blais, who reports neither criminal nor psychiatric history, says police allowed him to lock his apartment door but wouldn’t permit him to fetch his jacket or call a lawyer. The ambulance hauled him to the Santa Cabrini hospital in St-Leonard where he spent the next 15 hours waiting on a cot in the hallway.
Eventually Blais unplugged his IV, dressed and scooted. Two security guards gave chase but he dashed away. 
“When I got home the phone rang. It was the police, they said ‘Mr. Blais you didn’t have the right to escape the hospital.’ I said: ‘What’s your problem? Are you crazy?’ I hung up and 15 minutes later there was loud knocking on the door, I said ‘I won’t open and you don’t have an arrest warrant,’ they replied that they don’t need a warrant.”
The fuzz entered, removed him from a closet where he had sought refuge, handcuffed and carted him off in front of 15 patrol cars and countless neighbours. “It was humiliating,” he says. He was brought to the Lafontaine mental hospital, examined and quickly released.
Blais’s subsequent complaint to the police ethics committee was rejected. Since 1994 police have the right to take you away if you’re deemed a danger to yourself.
Every day three Montrealers who contact Suicide Action (some transferred via 911) get hauled off for an unrequested psychiatric evaluation.
You don’t even have to dial. I’m told of a stripper from Cleopatra’s whose boyfriend sent an ambulance for her following a downcast phone conversation. The episode cost her $150 in ambulance fees and a day’s work. She dumped her beau.
I couldn’t get the dancer on the blower to confirm, but if a third party reports you as suicidal, you must convince two ambulance technicians that you’re not planning to off yourself. The ambulance staff doesn’t have a formal script or formula to evaluate one’s risk of suicide but “If there’s any doubt they’ll transport the patient, they make the safe bet,” says André Champagne Urgences Santé rep.
Suicide Action dispatches ambulances depending on how you answer questions like “are you suicidal?” and “do you have the means to commit suicide?” according to Michel Presseault, coordinator, who reports a “few complaints” as well as “a bulletin board full of notes from people thanking us for saving their lives.”
Blais insists that he never claimed to be suicidal, there’s no taped recording to check. “They had no business coming to my house, I didn’t ask for anything,” he says.

*October 2004. 
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Florida murder cold case from 1982 leads to Montreal-area West End Gang suspects

March 22, 2018, 7:59 pm
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  News from St. Petersburg Florida police indicates that considerable resources are being put to apprehend the killer of a Brink's truck guard, killed in a robbery on Jan. 23, 1982.
   Police figure that two individuals close to Montreal's Irish mob, the West End gang, played a role in the affair.
   Joseph Warner was 44 and a father of five when he was needlessly shot over what turned out to be bonds that had no value to the thieves who just discarded the paper off a boat.
   The killer might be somewhere around the age of 80 now and so police are hoping that an ex-girlfriend or someone else with an inside story might come forth and bring justice to the deceased.
   The West End Gang universe is not an infinite one and our ever-popular all-time West End Gang Power Rankings list pretty much covers the main characters.
  Police issued sketches of the suspects and sent Coolopolis a third sketch of one of the two suspects sbut with a mustache.
  The thieves pulled off the heist dressed as elevator repairmen, a trade several members of the local Irish mob practiced, notably the bank robbery-tastic Johnston brothers, who are all dead and are not considered suspects anyway.
  Police are offering a reward in the $18,000 CDN range. The suspect with the moustache bears a slight resemblance to Earl Poirier, who was killed along with his girlfriend in Park Ex by two men wielding hammers in 1984. Poirier was a safecracker said to be in Billy McAllister's crew, as was suspect in his killing was 67-year-old David Stern, a partner-in-crime who was subsequently blown up in a car bomb in Cote des Neiges three years after that. 
  For a further discussion on this and other West End Gang issues have a peek at the video below.   
    
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Larger-than-life chess masters turned Montreal into a world hotbed of chess

April 15, 2018, 8:18 pm
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Steinitz, left and Lasker, right battle in Montreal 1894
  Montreal became a global hotbed of chess in the 1890s thanks to a number of wild characters who lived in the city.
**
  Chess in Montreal got a major boost when the German Emmanuel Lasker, 24,  challenged champion Wilhelm Steinitz, 58, in a world championship match that to be played in New York, Philadelphia and Montreal.
   The upstart Prussian was well-ahead by the time they rolled into Montreal but Steinitz proved steady in the matches played at the Cosmopolitan Club, which sat on the corner of Cathcart and University, south side.
   Chess master and columnist William Pollock moved up from Albany to cover the match, which saw the 12th and all further games in the match played at the Cosmopolitan. Pollock was friends with Lasker and the two dined at the Windsor Hotel during the showdown.
   Henry Pillsbury, also a chess star, hit town for the event and almost upstaged the contest with his own blindfolded multi-board challenge.
    Pillsbury told the Pollock that Montreal had gone chess mad (as reported in Pollock's May 19 column in the Boston Herald.)

No end of persons have learned the game and picked up a respectable knowledge of its science within the past week since Steinitz and Lasker have been paying. It is the common talk. Persons who have not the slightest knowledge of the game go to the Cosmopolitan Club to see the masters play, or else form parts of the vast crowd which so blocked the way in St. James street at times that the carriage and cabs have been obliged to drive around another street. At the opera performance here on Saturday last a chess scene was introduced, one of the players being designated Steinitz and the other Lasker, and the crowd applauded wildly, In the hotels at dinner every one discusses the match with great zest and yet I venture to say that not over 25 percent of them even know the moves." 
  
   Steinitz blamed insomnia for his earlier efforts but he played well in Montreal. A popular rumour suggested that Lasker had been drugged but he denied it.
   Steinitz was in town for his 58th birthday on May 15 and admirers lavished him with a silver walking stick and $125 cash.
   Lasker finally prevailed over Steinitz in Montreal on May 26, 1894, winning $2,000 and became the second World Chess Champion.
***
  George H.. Stevens was no fan of the drunken louts who stumbled around Montreal so he aimed to encourage sobriety by opening a cafe at the southeaster corner of St. Alexander and Craig (St. Antoine). The building is gone but his Hope Coffee House thrived from its debut on Thursday Nov 9 1881 and stayed upon until the 1910s.
     "A number of gentlemen who had become convinced of the evil of intemperance" aimed "to provide the public not only with wholesome light refreshments of every description but we good substantial dinners and lunches at very moderate rates."
   The Hope Coffee House served 100 cups of coffee a day and similar total of meals, making for a profit of $2,000 for he first year, as noted in The Coffee Public-House news asnd temperawtnce hotel Journal.
   It would also become a hotbed of chess after 1884 as the Brooklyn Chess Chronical of Oct. 1884-Sept 1885 noted the launch of its chess club, joining three other Montreal chess clubs.
**
   Frank Marshall's father was in the  flour business and so the family moved to Montreal in 1885 (the same year as the great smallpox outbreak) and by age Frank 11 was beating his father at chess. Dad then hauled little Frank to the Hope Coffee House where he started beating some good players.
Marshall
  Young Marshall took one board in a 16-board challenge against visiting chess master Steinitz on Nov. 13, 1893. Steinitz won but was much impressed by the young challenger and predicted a brilliant future for Marshall.
Pillsbury
  Henry Pillsbury did a 16-board exhibition blindfolded and won most of his games but Marshall beat him.
   Marshall, in his autobiography, later suspected that Pillsbury, who was 21 had gone easy on him. Pillsbury died 13 years later.
   Marshall claims in his autobiography that he won the championship of the Montreal Chess club in 1894 but there's no evidence of that being the case. But he worked with Pollock to launch a chess club from the Hope Coffee House.
   Marshall went on to become the U.S. Chess Champion for 27 straight years from 1909 to 1936.
**
  William H. Pollock, a chess master and chess reporter, born in 1859 in England, came to Montreal from Albany to cover the Steinitz-Lasker contests and moved to Montreal in 1894 officially.
Pollock
   He was no slouch and on 22 September gave a 19 board exhibition at the Central Chess Club at the Hope Coffee House and won them all. George Gossip, who would later become his bitter rival, was in attendance.
  Pollock did a 22-board show on Nov. 1894 in which he went 14-5-2, losing one of his matches to Marshall, who duplicated the feat in another multi-board exhibition.
  Pollock would end up staying for two and a half years. He became Executive director of the Chess and Checker Club of  Montreal with 16-year-old Marshall as Secretary. The two were slated to have a five game challenge, which the Montreal Daily Star suggested would be won by Pollock but they didn't go through with it.
  Instead Pollock aimed his intentions towards George Gossip in what would become a bitterly-fought duel starting Dec. 1894.
    Gossip had written several books about chess and would later write a book denouncing Jews under a pseudonym.
   Gossip would prove to be easily-irritable and would complain of noise during games, which then left Pollock flummoxed.
   Gossip wrote in News flash Oct 20 1894
   The French Canadian chess players here are the poorest, meanest humbugs I have ever met - all Jesuits. An old priest promised me $10 Dollars for a simultaneous, but of course a Jesuit can only be relief on not to keep his word. Another club treated me similarly. The only real patron of Chess here is an American, Mr. J.N. Babson (of Sussex Street) I have only made 27 dollars in six weeks, 18 dollars thanks to him. A Manchester paper has published already four columns of articles by myself, for which of course I expect payment, if I am not dead before the money can reach me. A very nice man, Mr. Cox, Professor of Physics at the University here, who had promised to take a course of chess lessons off me, has OF COURSe been laid up with lumbago, so I have not made a cent with him. "

George Gossip at right
   By Dec. 15 Pollock was cruising in the match over Gossip with a 3-0 lead but was irritated by a judge's decision and then refused to play. Soon it was 4-3 with two draws and then 4-4.
   Gossip meanwhile was threatening to sue the Montreal Herald for libel concerning their coverage of his match against Pollock.
   The match got up to 6-6 and the two agreed to call it a draw and split the purse.
  Gossip left for Buffalo immediately after the match.
   Pollock found it hard to make ends meet in Montreal so he lobbied for the right to represent Canada at the Hastings Tournament in 1895 and left on the Labrador Steamer and never returned to Montreal, according to W.H.K. Pollock A chess Biography with 523 Games 

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Ghosts, fake nuns and grisly demises: Montreal news from the 1890s

April 16, 2018, 8:54 am
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Narcisse Belanger, aged about 40, of 176 Ryde (old address) was hit and killed by train at Rose de Lima in St. Henri (surely the GTR line to Bonaventure south of St. Antoine). She was brought to the police station where Abbe Descarries, Montreal's priest,  gave her last rites. Her husband came to see her in hospital before she died April 1, 1897.






 Mrs. Shanahan's daughter dreamed that her mom would die suddenly the next day and then told others about it jokingly. Then bang, her mom, aged 60, fell down and died suddenly of a heart attack at 4 p.m on Jan. 16, 1896 at 19 Hermine, which sat just west of Bleury, halfway between Craig (St. Antoine) and La Gauch. Andrew Craig, blacksmith, was listed as resident in Lovells.







Amaline Bisthaire, 3, fell into a vat of boiling water at 473 Craig (across from the Champs de Mars behind city hall) and died on 16 Jan. 1896. Mom was working in a job doing washing. The place was listed as Alphone Aube's barber shop in Lovells.








  Baker Cleophas Beaulieu of St. Idisore, aka Laprairie, noted that he was unable to bake bread after being cursed by a vagrant, forcing him to employ facilities elsewhere. He seemed to consider this proof of witchcraft, according to this article from 6 May 189





Jockey Cleophas Robillard was sentenced to 15 days in prison or $5 fine for punching a police officer in the face at the Exposition Grounds in 1893. Assaulting officers was treated as a minor offence right up until the 1950s.






Nelson Sut, 9, was sentenced to a $1 fine or eight days in jail for tossing rocks on Hibernia Street.  Accomplices Henry Lightfoot, 15, and Cham Lightfoot, 5, were also arrested by Officer Corbett at the same time but their sentences were unknown.



A woman from Boston defrauded a family of $100 by promising to make their daughter a nun.



Prison officials were flummoxed when Thomas Hall, 19, escaped Montreal jail beneath city hall in the summer of 1893. Guards speculated that the skinny young man might have managed to get between the bars but another more logical explanation had him joining the drunks who were released in the morning.
George Stephens called police on the Salvation Army, whose enthusiastic volunteers were so numerous and enthusiastic in buttonholing people near his Hope Coffee House on St. Antoine and St. Alexander that they cramped business, this in April 1896.
Wallace Rose was charged with kicking a fellow inmate John McVey to death. McVey was hit by a single kick and didn't complain of injury but died later. He was serving a six month sentence for vagrancy.












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Maurice-S. Hebert: from high-flying criminal defence lawyer to thug life

April 17, 2018, 7:30 pm
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Hebert
   Maurice-S. Hebert walked around Montreal from the mid-1950s with the swagger only a top criminal lawyer of his wild times could possess.
    Newspapers regularly reported on his legal maneuvers to keep the scurrilous on city streets, as Hebert shared his time between hard-bitten miscreants and esteemed fellow members of the legal profession.
   When and why he himself joined his criminal clients in their illegal initiatives remains a mystery worthy of speculation.   
***
    Maurice-S. Hebert was born in 1925 and by age 30 worked with high-flying defence lawyers as Raymond Daoust, who launched the Allo Police as a mouthpiece to promote his own glory.
     Hebert also sported black robe alongside future Supreme Court Chief Justice Antonio Lamer, who spent many years defending local tough guys before riding the legal elevator to the very top.
    Hebert's earlier tasks were of the light-and-fluffy variety as, it was noted in September 1957, he got Sports Daily editor Samuel Feldman cleared of aiding and abetting bookies, and Feldman continued his publishing from his modest offices of Peel Publishing at 1117 Cypress. 
   Hebert then kept getting home for dinner on time as he took on easy tasks such as representing Conservative candidate Hyman Brock in a vote-recounting effort.
   In 1960 Hebert worked with Daoust to lower a murder rap to a manslaughter charge.
   He defended a man whose cigarette machine was deemed illegal and in another case cleared Meyer Dunn and 97 clients by convincing a judge that being in Dunn's restaurant after 2 a.m. does not constitute an after-hours violation.
   Hebert, now 36, suddenly had an inkling to become premier of Quebec, so he tossed his hat into the ring to replace the suddenly-deceased Maurice Duplessis in 1961.
   However Hebert pulled out of the vote and Daniel Johnson Sr. then became premier.
***
Samson
   Hebert's failed political initiative, one might speculate, might possibly have embittered him to the rule of law, as his trajectory appears to change thereafter.
   Hebert carried on in his law pursuits, defending Raymond Caza in 1961, in a murder trial as he was one of a gang accused of killing their leader Keith "Rocky"Pierson.
   Hebert then went to bat for a young Frank Peter "Dunie" Ryan in a $14,000 jewelry heist in 1964 as Ryan was charged with robbing Edgar Charbonneau's jewelry store at 1450 City Councilors. 
   The jeweler Charbonneau also happened to be a longstanding Union Nationale MNA, the same party that had spurned Hebert in his effort to become leader.
   It's hard to resist connecting the dots of Hebert's possible motivation to see a possible-rival taken down a notch.
   Ryan, who was a mere 25 years of age, was also a suspect in a $116,000 fur theft in Quebec City at the time.
   Ryan was born and raised in the McGill Ghetto and lived on Cote des Neiges near Queen Mary. A heist in Quebec City would have required considerable guidance, which may or may not have come from Hebert.
Leithman
   Fast forward to the early 1970s when Hebert and Sydney Leithman shared an office at 1255 Philips Square where police planted a series of recording device from 4 Feb to 20 Feb 1972.
   Leithman, who was later shot dead while driving his Saab to work, called a press conference to expose the illegal espionage on Nov 20, 1973, but Hebert did not attend and stayed mum.
   Hebert was, by then, the faithful servant of such criminal bigwigs as Paolo Violi, Willie Obront, and Vic Cotroni.
  Hebert was named as a player in Obront's money-laundering operation and in December 1972 was accused of fraud by a New York grand jury.
   He then represented rogue RCMP agent Robert Samson who was sentenced to seven years for placing a bomb in the home of Melvyn Dobrin, of the Steinberg's grocery chain on 26 July 1974. Samson lost an eye, hearing and damaged several fingers in the botched delivery.
  Samson and Hebert would unite in a caper that would put the final nail into Hebert's career, as we shall see.
Proulx
  Hebert's troubles included those of the administrative variety, as he was fined $1,200 in 1975 for failing to file his taxes in 1968, 1971 and 1972.
   Hebert's chauffeur Lucien Proulx was sentenced to three months for failing to testify at a crime commission in Oct. 1976 after allegedly trying to bribe police officer Sgt. Michel Lepine on behalf of aspiring prostitution kingpin  Ziggy  Wiseman.
   Hebert and Robert Samson then cooked up a scheme to cash four bogus cheques worth $135,000 at the National Bank at 3690 Wellington in the summer of 1975.
   With career hanging on by a thread, Hebert was arrested in May 1980 after Andree Marquis and an young man were nabbed leaving his apartment at La Cite with cocaine to deliver.
   Hebert escaped punishment on charges of cocaine trafficking after chemist Pierre Murray deemed that white powder found in Hebert's pocket was not cocaine.
   The Quebec Bar, citing Hebert's fraud conviction, officially revoked his right to practice law in February 1982.

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When discotheques reshaped Montreal, told with rarely-seen photos

April 26, 2018, 12:55 pm
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    Jean-Paul Mousseau, seen in the top photo, made a splash after being hired by owners Gilles Archambault and Claude de Carufel to redesign their Le Baroque nightclub at 1467-1469 Crescent.
   Mousseau, best known for conceiving Montreal metro's colourful red tile motifs, created the elaborately-designed, Warhol-inspired Mousse Spacthèque discotheque (seen above), which opened its doors on 6 Sept. 1966.
   Majority owner Archambault was the spawn of entrepreneurs who quit school at 14 to work at an insurance company. He took acting classes before bumming around Europe where he earned a little travel cash by hosting conferences about Quebec in countries like France, Spain and Germany.
  While traveling France Archambault spotted early-day discotheques, known as Whisky-a-Gogos, which dispensed with musician and just played records.

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   Turntable nightclubs started when the German wartime occupation forced young French to party by dancing to their spinning 78s on their phonographs.
   Archambault then teamed up with de Carufel, a construction guy, to open a discotheque on Stanley street but their permit request was shot down.
   Archambault gave up but de Carufel prodded him to revive the project and the duo went on to open La Licorne at 1430 Mackay, in a  building that has long since been demolished in favour of a concrete residential skyscraper.
   Only about 10 people showed up at its launch, as the Licorne was still a half-completed project but it soon became popular with a low overhead and high profits.
Archambault
  It's not entirely clear whether the Licorne was Montreal's first discotheque, as former boxer and lifelong entrepreneur Manny Gitnick opened Manny's Place at 5018 Decarie in 1964.  Manny was better known as a smoked meat deli guy and his near Queen Mary might have been hurt by the massive construction on the Decarie Expressway.
   Archambault became a high-flying, Bentley-driving nightclub king who dressed in the best Italian suits and he and partner de Carufel then opened the Baroque, which became the Mousse.
  They also launched L'Empereur at 1473 Dorchester W. which later became the car-themed Le Crash.
   The Mousse Spacthèque aimed to turn nightclubbing into a sensual, surrealistic, artistic experience where clubgoers would bathe in light bouncing around wooden ceiling mobiles and over various scattered female mannequin parts.
   Ties and dresses were mandatory at the club which housed the Cybèle, Pluton and Orphée rooms, seen later by an art critic as, "a manifestation of the 1960s cultural utopia with its pursuit of emotional liberation and self-fulfillment."
   The team opened similar bars in Alma, Ottawa, Quebec City as well as the Metrothèque at Berri metro, the first Montreal nightclub to be connected by metro and where Liberace watched on with DJ Alfie Wade as police busted underagers.
   Owners shut the Mousse Spacthèque and reopened it on June 30 1970 as the Eve Club, which aimed to attract a female clientele.

See also:


   The next year the Mousse was rechristened the Sexe Machine where cartoonist Robert Lapalme, 60, created a part-Clockwork Orange, part-Fellini fantasy with topless waitresses and plastic breasts.
   The switch from live music to records has continued unabated and disco became a key component to the Montreal identity as, patrons themselves became the show and their dancing the visual entertainment.
   Nightclub musicians found work scarce thereafter.



La Licorne 







     Gilded Cage discotheque as seen in 20 Feb 1969 La Presse. The place had paper hanging from the ceiling, as the stalagtites were seen as an essential element of the discotheque experience. 
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12 Steps to Heaven - a music lover's weekly downtown quest for new vinyl albums

April 26, 2018, 7:21 pm
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    A handful of music-loving Montrealers conducted a weekly music-purchasing scramble Thursday evening, trekking down St. Catherine in a frantic quest for new music.
   Rohinton Ghandhi discusses his experience in the Nov. 2017 Quebec Heritage Magazine, describing himself as a "vinyl runner," a title reserved for only the most determined album seekers.
  His weekly ritual began early in the week as local radio stations would tease music fans by spinning music that only hit stores Thursday evening.
   Record stores posted their top 40 lists in their windows to indicate what was hot that week and sound shoppers would consult it to see what merited their attentions.
   Ghandhi, who came to Crawford Park Verdun from Bombay at the age of six with his family in 1967, dabbled as a weekend DJ from 1976, a pasttime that required him to be on top of all of the newest tunes through the disco, punk, new wave and other eras.
   Albums so popular that they were difficult to find included Pink Floyd's The Wall, The Pretenders, Frampton Comes Alive and various hard-to-find imports, including New Order 12" The Beach, which sold for $60 at Pierre Musique.
   Ghandhi, as DJ, sometimes purchased and played records he didn't much like, including Chris de Burgh's ever-requested The Lady in Red, and he would conversely spin music sometimes that he liked more than his crowds, such as Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass
***
   Ghandhi's mom died when he was 13 and his father followed suit when he was 17, leaving him with the enormous responsibility of trying to persuade government officials to allow him, as a 17-year-old to take charge of his two younger brothers.
  Ghandhi, who is related to Mahatma Ghandhi, spent weekdays working part time at various restaurants at the downtown Les Terraces Complex and on weekends would shoot photos and spin music at local weddings, often at events held at the Legion in Verdun.
   In spite of that packed schedule, Ghandhi managed to conduct his weekly scramble for Thursday releases from 1976, eventually owning around 3,500 albums, a total he has now reduced to 400, as he parted with his beloved records along with his DJing equipment.
***
 Here's where his quest would take him as he recounts in his excellent original article, which he took two full years to research and write.
   1-A&A records was housed in the impressive former firehouse at 1621 St. Catherine, near Guy, a sprawling spot he recalls for its creaky floorboards. The joint was Ghandhi's favorite as it had well-managed promotional displays and a DJ booth with a powerful sound system playing the latest wares.
   Salespeople took satisfaction in setting shoppers on the right path towards wise purchases, while rockers ranging from Brian Adams to Honeymoon Suite dropped in for promo visits during its run between 1972 and 1993.
 
  2-The next stop on the trekk eastward was a quick tour at the nearly-adjacent Cheapies, run by the Discus chain where a promo albums, recognizable by a large round hole in the cover, were put on sale for a low price.
    3-Dave's import Discount Records, a dark one-room shop on Bishop just below St. Catherine was next. Owner Dave Silver had an uncanny ability to showcase only records that were in demand and many faces were seen beaming with delight as they left with a hard-to-find import or bootleg.
Manager Lori Morrison on Halloween at a
Montreal Discus store in 1991
   4-Cheap Thrills, a small used record store on the east side of Bishop just south of Demaisonneuve was next on the list. The store was opened by Janet Dawidowicz in 1971 after she saw the concept work in California. New music sometimes filtered into the used records.
   5/6/7-Dave Silver's Record Cave was next at 1318 St. Catherine W., the store, opened in 1966 was later duplicated with another at 1238 Crescent. Silver worked tirelessly until 1973 when he sold to Adrian "Dutchy" Arts, who renamed them Dutchy's Record Cave., which also sold hard-to-find vinyl until 1980. (Dutchy later sold those stores and opened a place on the Main just north of Demaisonneuve.) 1318 St. Catherine became Pierre Musique which focused on new wave records. The store on Crescent became Downtown Records in 1980 and Rock en Stock in 1982. Dutchy Arts died in 2013.
8-The eastbound hike then continued past Peel which, during those times did not yet offer the landmark HMV which recently closed at the Southeast corner of St. Catherine. Instead it would be on to the Discus/Music World store in Les Terraces, which was known for its John Cougar Mellencamp promo for Scarecrow which involved real chickens and hay. The place lasted from 1976 to 1986.
 9-Labyrinthe at 492 St. Catherine W. was a sort of flea market for vinyl which sometimes offered a find.
 10-Sam the Record Man, at 397 St. Catherine W. was an essential stop after it opened in 1975 next door to the more familiar spot it inhabited later. The place was known for its insanely bright lighting and singles on the wall positioned in order of their spot on the hit list. Sam's was probably best known for its radical Saturday morning sales advertised in the Friday newspaper. Lineups for $2.99 copies of Blondie, The Knack of The Cars were routine. The store closed in 2002.
11-The Record Goldmine at Suite 110 of the Belgo building was another stop for those in the know. Dave Silver ran the place after 1984 when he returned from Toronto. Silver loved jazz, hated CDs and closed shop in the mid 1990s, donating his vinyl to the Salvation Army before dying in 2005.

12  Phantasmagoria started at 3472 Park on less than $2,000 before moving down a few doors to 3416 Park and had a hip ambiance that made the trek up from St. Catherine to Sherbrooke worthwhile. Eric Pressman, aged just 18, along with Marsha Dangerfield launched the store in November 1968 and named it after a Lewis Carroll poem.Guests likened them to John and Yoko, who they met at the famous 1969 bed in for peace. The second location, occupied in 1971 was twice as large and came with a hippie counter upstairs. The duo split in 1973 and Eric moved to Vancouver while he sister Linda took over. The store closed in 1995 after some difficult years. 
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Own your own spaceship! Rael's used interstellar craft and other precious alien sex cult items put up for sale

May 2, 2018, 5:09 pm
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   Want to own the spaceship owned by Rael, beloved and esteemed of the alien sex cult that once occupied these parts?
   This precious and priceless gem is for sale, for real, right now on Kijiji, along with other related treasures.
   This is your chance to step into the actual spacecraft, then enjoy the admiring glances of people staring at you moving it down the highway or trying to get it through your front door.
    (Unless, um... you can actually just fly it to your place and land it in your back yard - Chimples)
    Building a gazebo? Put that hammer down. This will put your neighbours to shame as nobody else will have one of these in their backyards, no sir.
     On offer are the following:  
  • 1 Flying saucer containing explanatory sign of the history of Rael
  • 1 Rotating UFO DNA chain
  • 1 UFO Embassy's original briefcase presented to the Prime Minister of Canada
  • Lot of 69 frames

   The vendor has not yet replied to our reporter's query about price or other information but we'll add it when we get word. 
   Rael, as we know, was a race car driver from France who moved to the Montreal area and established a significant following revolving around his tale of being enlightened by aliens.
   His group had big ambitions around the turn of the century but eventually felt irritated by media attentions and in turn pranked reporters with claims of successfully cloning a human. 
   Media got its revenge by infiltrating the cult, as the Journal de Montreal published a lengthy series on the group.
   The Raelians moved on elsewhere but kept some events happening, such as the ever-popular topless rights march but Coolopolis is too indifferent to actually research this further. 






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The golden age of quetaine - Montreal in the 1990s - a city awash in tackiness

May 6, 2018, 3:48 pm
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Celine Dion's rise to megastardom exposed Quebecers' thirst for validation, and the masses fused identities with this traditional rural farm girl from a huge family and vicariously hit the Vegas strip with her. There was no escape from her image at every grocery lines as you purchased bottles of Blue Dry and Mini Bon Bel. Sea-Lion Dyin's wedding became the giant orgasm of sentimentality and vedette-worship. Other cringe-era pop idols worth considering: Veronique Beliveau, Mitsou, Les Bebes, Marjo, Martine St. Clair, Laurence Jalbert and others massively overexposured in the 28 channel 90s universe.


Commercial sex gimmicksLow-budget entrepreneurs aimed to make a buck on other people's lack of clothing. Sexy serveuse restaurants sprouted up like weeds and Montrealers could suddenly get a sexy car wash, sexy voyeur shows, and of course strip clubs with the new and wonderful lap dancing, thanks to court decisions that made them legal. Don't forget the streetwalkers that proliferated around the city, a phenomenon that has largely disappeared after centuries in Montreal. There was even a sexy depanneur in Laval.


Mom Boucher and the biker wars (1994-2002) A coked-out megalomaniac ordered slavish biker brahs to kill kill kill rivals trying to sell drugs in their bars. Barbarism reigned. In one biker bunker bombing bungle the assailant blew himself up and the intended victims went out and picked up part of his spine and kept it in a jar as a keepsake. Yeah it was dumb.

Low budget TV Feds forced cable companies to generate loads of cheapie TV before internet largely let 'em off the hook. So people like Lynda Tremblay got shows that proved a showcase to ineptitude and mediocrity. Heck even the genius leader at Coolopolis had a show.



National unity debates Placard-waving protesters dressed like blueberries, and one guy earned headlines by camping out on the cross on Mount Royal. Incredible bores like Elijah Harper, Guy Bertrand, Lac Meech. Daniel Turp, Daniel Johnson and Lucien Bouchard were suddenly on  TV all the time. You could be trying to get lucky in a bar and somebody would wreck things by suddenly talking about Lac Meech. (Didn't that happen to you at Bar St. Laurent when you were cruising good ol' Isabelle from Esplanade?- Chimples). Buzzkill city baby.


Rockin' hair 1992 was peak heavy metal in Montreal with Guns'n'Roses setting off a riot at the Olympic Stadium. Bathtub drains all over Verdun were clogged with mousse-soaked hair strands from working class youth and this didn't change much when grunge brought equally uncatchy music to favour. Music was your identity back then, although it seems weird now.


Rael and other oddballs Montreal had no jobs in the 1990s so people got weird. Some were so bored that they joined up an alien sex cult run by a bald little Frenchman. Other oddballs abounded, such as a guy in Verdun who dressed like the Pope, astrologer Jojo Savard and the guy slept with an alligator. We had time to kill back before the internet. 
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Well-known Montreal couple face life imprisonment in Nebraska drug case

May 16, 2018, 1:57 pm
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      A pair of Montrealers, best known as freelance journalists, face life imprisonment after police raided their Omaha Nebraska home on Oct. 30, 2017 and charged them with producing the drug Fentanyl.
   Ken Hechtman, 49, and Wendy Kraus-Heitmann, 42, (aka Wendy Hechtman) moved from Montreal to Nebraska in February 2016.
   Kraus-Heitmann lived in Montreal for over a decade after coming to study at Concordia.
   She bore four children with two different fathers in Montreal before marrying Hechtman. Two are now adults while the younger two under 10 years of age.
   Hechtman, who also has US citizenship, attended Colombia where a writer described him in 1989 as a "publicity hound who disrupted the peace and quiet for no reason," and was "a thief and peril to his classmates."
   The same writer noted that he was also seen as "the smartest student in the university" who "could do unbelievable physical stunts."
  He received considerable attention after being temporarily kidnapped in Afghanistan in 2001 when researching an article he wanted to write for the Montreal Mirror about the Taliban.
  Kraus-Heitmann is well-known as chatty, bubbly and interested in Montreal affairs. She helped Coolopolis on occasion before returning to Nebraska due to lack of employment opportunities in Montreal.
   She was enthusiastic following her return, finding a pair of well-paying jobs and a large home for $800 per month near her parents. 
   Hechtman took a stonework and masonry course in Nebraska.
   The status of their legal case remains unclear at this moment, although some Montreal friends have expressed an interest in setting up a fund to help their legal defence.
   Neither has been active on social media since their arrests and an attempt to contact Wendy through Facebook bore no reply.
Colter Keffer, 23, and Abby Rowell, 28, both of Nebraska, were arrested as well.

Wendy's last tweet before her arrest


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Truth or myth? Homophobia led Mayor Drapeau to raze Mount Royal Park

May 18, 2018, 1:53 pm
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   Legend has it that Mayor Jean Drapeau, soon after taking office in 1954, had the trees razed in Mount Royal Park in a fit of outrageous and excessive moral posturing.
   His irrational fit of moral rectitude targeted homosexuality but severely damaged nature, according to this popular version.
   A number of sources have repeated variations of this claim in recent times.
   Let's cut through the forest in a hike up truth  mountain.
1947 aerial view of Mount Royal park shows lack of trees
 Aerial images from 1947 demonstrate that the park was already relatively deforested prior to Drapeau's arrival

  Pressure to eliminate a wooded section of Mount Royal known as The Jungle, or Chez Claude, rang out in Montreal in 1953, prior to Drapeau's arrival in office.
  The Jungle, in blue, was razed in 1954
   The mountain's most shocking violent sex murder occurred in January 1945 when John Benson, 9, was killed by a pervert while the boy was cross country skiing on the hill.
   Montreal police promised a fast arrest, claiming that they had information on all of the dangerous sex offenders in town at the time.
   But Roland Chasse, 43, was only caught after being overheard speaking Benson's name in his sleep at a homeless shelter near city hall. He was sentenced to death and hanged.
     Benson's death was invoked eight years later when the initiative to make the mountain safer gained steam.
   The homosexuals were part of the violence problem, according to police as they were not only considered potential predators but potential victims as well, as police noted that thugs and extortionists targeted gays cruising in the woods.
   (Mathieu Caron's otherwise excellent MA thesis notes that Raymond Trudeau, 6, was killed by Lucien Picard in The Jungle in July 1954 but in fact it appears that the boy was killed near his home near La Gauchetiere and Anderson.)
   In August 1947 Armand Chartrand, 31, killed Cecile Carriere, 42. The two had been camping out in The Jungle for a couple of months. She died several days after he struck her in the head while in the park.
   Many other violent incidents took place in the area, according to newspaper articles, and Robert Walker's article in the Montreal Herald of August 17, 1954 painted a horrific image of the Jungle as "a viper's nest of perverts and near insane alcoholics, yet children play nearby"... "children playing on the grass bordering Park Ave in the last of the sunlight are watched from less than 100 yards away by maniacs. Occasionally a child wanders too close to the maw of the jungle" ....  "an officer would hesitate to send even two armed men to the scene. If it were learned that a man was molesting a child in the jungle he would favour calling two patrol cars and sending three constables on foot to help them."
   Walker noted that on the night he slept among the vagrants a body was found suspended from a tree among the "gross indecency, stunned drunkenness. . what I saw was indescribably disgusting."
   It can be noted that similar, more recent encampments, such as the Viger Park affair and Occupy movement camp in Montreal were also eventually dispersed by authorities, so the move to discourage people from sleeping in the park remains the prevalent reflex in such situations.
  ***
   Montreal eventually hired a New York company to figure out three-part solution. 1-add lighting, which was lit in 1955 2-build Camielien Houde Road through the mountain to make it easier to access for safety purposes and 3-cut down the trees and bushes where the vagrants lived.
   A team of 30 park employees began chopping trees and bushes of The Jungle in October 1957 in a two year initiative.
   The work also aimed to eliminate sick trees and bushes and to plant 500 trees in another section of the mountain. Three thousand trees were chopped, mostly birches, with the aim of replacing them with evergreens and more robust trees. The forest was compact so in many cases the crews had to choose between which tree to allow to thrive and which to sacrifice.
    One who advanced the narrative that park officials acted recklessly was the architect who designed the Beaver Lake Pavilion. "Nearly every low growing tree bush or shrub that could shelter a pair of lovers or hide a gangster has been ruthlessly cut down," wrote architect Hazen Sise, who bemoaned that the fewer trees caused his structure to look less appealing.
   During their work the parks department officials never expressed the aim of advancing morality or eliminating an encampment. They said the sought to make the park more accessible.
   Removing the trees appears to have led to unanticipated further losses, however, as isolated trees were uprooted due to wind and water runoff.  
    Love for forests and parks was widespread in the 1950s. The 4-H group was a particularly active force and were tireless in their initiatives to plant trees and promote awareness of trees. 
   Parks played a major role in people's lives during those years, even more than today, particularly young people, as officials encouraged kids to spend time in parks by creating park elections and other attractions. 
   So indeed Montreal officials chopped down the trees in a section of Mount Royal Park, but it was in response to lawlessness that appeared to have spun out of control and had they allowed potentially dangerous activity to continue they would have likely been blamed or considered liable for any subsequent death or damage that sprung from their inaction.
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60 photos bring back old time Griffintown and Point St. Charles

May 22, 2018, 9:07 am
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Abbott family at 428 Charron in the 1950s

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Boxing in Goose Village 1930s

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Richardson St. 1954

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1950s officials turn dirt on new arena on Hibernia

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 Redpath factory workers 1960s

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Abandoned cars Butler and Coleraine, early 1970s

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Hibernia Street 1978, tram installed temporarily for filming of Les Plouffes movie

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2674 Coleraine 



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Victoria Day celebrations in the Point.

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 Bridge and Wellington

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Charlevoix and Mullins 
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Charon St. 1940s

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Island and Manufacturers (aka Auguste Cantin) O'Brien grocers

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David Marvin photo from Griffintown c. 1965 - 1975

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Park in Goose Village 1963

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 Island and Centre 1953
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 Leber and St Madeline 1974


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 Magnan's
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 Elected children mayors of parks in Point St. Charles
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 Leo Leonard 1982 on William Street in Griffintown
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1971 Hibernia and Knox the Moose Tavern


Thanks to various people who posted these photos online, including contributors to the Point St. Charles and Victoriatown History FB group. Many of these taken by David Marvin. 

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Dining with piglets - a short video on the killer drama at Montreal's Au Lutin Qui Bouffe

May 23, 2018, 12:17 pm
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Sex scandal in Mascouche - strip club orgy lands police and firefighters in hot water 1981

May 25, 2018, 9:05 am
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   Lizette Rivard, 24, became the center of attention following a police scandal in 1981 that saw dozens of cops and firefighters allegedly take part in what was described as a public orgy.
   The building that housed the Maxi-Sexe Bar is now on sale for $450,000.
  Watch the video to hear the whole story. 
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How a Montreal barber helped set off the U.S. Civil War

May 29, 2018, 11:10 am
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Minkins, is apparently pictured in this
image from a wanted poster
   Shadrach Minkins, aka Frederick Wilkins, remains the only Montreal barber who influenced world history and became the subject of an important historical biography.
   Minkins, an escaped slave, was waiting tables at the Cornhill Coffee House near Bunker Hill in Boston on Feb. 15, 1851 when taken in by Deputy Marshal Patrick Riley, on orders of Commissioner G.T. Curtis, who had a close relationship with slavery-defender Daniel Webster.
   Cops arrested him on a complaint from John Kupper, attorney for John De Bree, a naval purser in Norfolk Virginia.
   De Bree claimed that Shadrach was his slave and had escaped on May 3 1850.
   Minkins, of course, was of African heritage.
   A hearing was scheduled to rule on his status and his lawyers S.E. Sewall and E.G. Lorin had the hearing delayed several days.
   Massachusetts law prohibited the jailing of slave so Minkins was kept in the courtroom during that time.
   Commander Downs rejected a request to house him in the Navy Yard for the four days before his hearing.
   When the hearing began in Boston court on a Tuesday, many African-Americans waited in the hallways anxious to attend the case.
   Deputy Marshal Riley, a rosy man described by a detractor as a "glorified pumpkin" offered to buy Shadrach Minkins for $25.
  Deputy Marshall ordered everybody out of the hearing but nobody was in a rush to leave.
  Suddenly outside the courtroom a sound of Hurray rang out as a group of people rushed towards the room.
   Riley and friends attempted to keep the door shut.
    Shadrach Minkins walked towards one exit but Officer Edward J. Jones tried to block him and Minkins then headed towards an unguarded door.
   Riley called out "shoot him! shoot him!"
   Jones then grabbed a symbolic sword of justice but realized it wasn't a real weapon. So he called for help out the window.
   At that moment the door burst open and a stream of men rushed in.
   Riley hid behind the door as the group ushered Minkins out.
   Those inside the room looked "thoroughly sick and ashamed of their business," according to an account.
   Minkins, a Methodist, was brought to a home in the countryside where he knelt down at breakfast and thanked God, saying he would sooner die than return to the south.
   He dressed as a woman to attend an anti-slavery meeting that Sunday and soon after headed to Montreal.
   Several people involved in the break-out faced charges but Minkins was already long gone.
   Boston Mayor Hood was an avid anti-slavery advocate and newspapers were abuzz with the story as copies sold out fast across the country.
    The reports inflamed tensions that eventually brought the slavery question to a head in a manner that resulted in civil war.
    Various parties sued each other for libel concerning their parts in the affair, indeed a Colonel Gugy won a $100 lawsuit against the Montreal Gazette.
    Once in Montreal Minkins first worked at the Montreal House Hotel (now 360 Place Royal, near the old port) and lived across from what's now the courthouse on Notre Dame.
     Minkins spoke at a fundraiser for his cause as well as others in a similar circumstance (Charles Williams, Henry Johnson, Stephen Tidball, aka Tybold and James Scott) at the Theatre Royal on March 13 1851.
     The beneficiaries complained that they didn't get the money promised them. The organizer Butler shot back blaming Scott of failing to share the $7.50 he had given him.
   Minkins reportedly had a restaurant in Montreal called Uncle Tom's Cabin but no records of that can be found.
   Minkins went on to have his own barber shop on Mountain, west side, just south of St. James.
   He fathered two children with an Irish-Montrealer and died in 1875. Their unmarked graves are at the Mount Royal Cemetery.
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