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Barriere met with Coolopolis last week at the office of his old Montreal shipping brokerage firm which he launched in the mid-70s.
It's the third-largest in Montreal and Barriere, now 78, has no intentions of retiring.
Barriere was born in La Colle back in the days when there was only a train at the border and no highway. His French Canadian father ran a small hotel and his mother was Irish from Boston.
He quit school at 17 to work on a farm and was then hired at a customs brokerage company. He was transferred to Montreal where he toiled back and forth between the big city and his border town, spending three years enlisted in the US Marines. "Perhaps not my best decision, thinking back on it," he says. Barriere got his big break by managing a parcel-service management side-business for his customs clearance company that dovetailed perfectly with customers needs.
He was fast promoted to president of his company but he split to go on his own with 11 employees when owners rejigged and left only a tyrant in charge.
Barriere remains an avid sportsman, with handball being his prime hobby.
He was a man-about-town in the 1970s, often mentioned in Tim Burke's sports column and once partaking in a barroom brawl with the much-larger Bob Geary. "He tried to gouge my eyeball out," said Barriere, who noted that the fight ended when blood started dripping over his eye from a cut on his forehead.
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| Barriere and son w/ Rocket Richard, Gordie Howe, Jean Beliveau, Bobby Orr and Bobby Hull |
Barriere took part in a charity event organized by a local notable but was disappointed to learn that the personality was pocketing a hefty 20 percent cut for himself.
So Barriere launched his own fee-free philanthropic charity for the local needy that saw people pay $500 to skate around with Jean Beliveau, Rocket Richard, Gordie Howe and Bobby Orr at at once.
He tells Coolopolis that he raised roughly $4 million for the underpriveleged, half of which was from his own pocket.
Barriere was a regular at local watering holes and knew just about everybody. He slowed down when he quit all booze for about a decade save for one time when a shady local character at the Capri bet him $3000 that he wouldn't drink two beers. Barriere won the bet and donated the cash to his charity.
Barriere remarried in recent years into a vedette clan that technnicaly makes him Jose Theodore's stepfather. He remains friends with Bobby Orr and Eddie Johnston, whose family (which includes several now-deceased bankrobbers) he knew since he was a kid as they rented a cottage near his place in La Colle.