Lily Bouthillette had a bad year in 1995 and is having another bad year in 2018.Bouthilette took over La Marraine Bar after her mother, who owned the place since 1987, was killed by a regular customer in her home adjacent to the bar at 17 Rang Thiersant in Saint-Louis, a town of 775 residents.
Bouthilette now has to cope with another shock, thanks to government officials.
Quebec liquor authorities have banned La Marraine from featuring the nude dancers that has been the signature attraction at her place deep in the countryside, a half hour south of Sorel.
Quebec's RACJ alcohol board has permanently revoked her license to allow nudity, following hearings in December and March.
"It looks like I can never get that license back," she tells Coolopolis. "I can't afford to appeal."
She's waiting for police to come around and lock up the booze, as the same decision suspended her liquor license for 15 days.She doesn't expect many to come to her watering hole once the women in bikinis are banished.
Dancers in the bar, a lengthy police investigation revealed, had been offering sexual services in the booths for lonely truckers and other rural folk willing to pay up to $120 for intimacy.
Police searches also turned up various personal quantities of drugs and condoms.
Bouthillette told the RACJ officials that social workers left the condoms in order to help encourage safe sex.
Undercover provincial police officers made a series of visits and gathered information, which they used in the file that aimed to sink the club at the liquor board.
They noted, for example, that a dancer pitched an agent, on 16 July 2015. "It's like La Ronde, you've got to try all the rides to see which one you like most. you pay and do whatever you like. It's worth the $80."
Kessy Ana explained on her Facebook page that she works at the club because "I had enough of men who showed interest only until I slept with them. As far as sleeping with a man, at least now I don't get attached and I earn $400-$500 for one night and no longer get my heart broken." Owner Lily Bouthillette told liquor board officials that she saw herself as a maternal, protective figure towards the dancers ever since she took the club over in 1995 after her mother Pauline Berthiaume-Bouthillette, 63, was bludgeoned to death.
Bar regular Florian Girouard, 35 was arrested following the death on 20 May 1995.
 |
| Kessy Ana |
The bar continued apace under her guidance but it now unlikely to make a comeback, as liquor authorities have not expressed any hope of tolerating the activities adults choose to indulge in within the confines of the closed cubicles.
She thinks her only option is to sell the bar, her home and the large adjacent lands to someone who might be able to get La Marraine's stripper license back.
"I'm all out of money at this point," she says, "so maybe someone else can buy it and get the licence back."