Kevin O'Brien and Jimmy O'Brien - Montreal brothers proved notable for opposite reasons

Kevin O'Brien in 1972

  Kevin O'Brien grew up as part of a four brother-family in a modest home near Campbell Park in Little Burgundy and went on to one of the lengthiest, most successful and yet discreet careers as a a smuggler of goods once considered illegal.
  To this day his name elicits the highest of praise from those who know him.
  His brother Jimmy, on the other hand, underwent an entirely different experience.
 On 1 September 1972 James O'Brien helped set a blaze that took 37 lives at the Wagon Wheel, a country music bar filled with many of his  peers and friends from the English-speaking Montreal working class demographic.
    Three dozen died of asphyxiation or suffocation, including three 14-year-old girls, and a couple with four children.
   Elizabeth Montgomery, 24, managed to escape the blaze in spite of the emergency doors being locked but was killed when a collapsing fire escape crushed her skull.
  On Labour Day 1972 Gilles Eccles; James O'Brien and Jean-Marc "Boots" Boutin spent the day drinking at a beach. They returned to their homes in Little Burgundy, drunkenly driving their car in circles on the park baseball diamond.
   They then regrouped to drop in on the Wagon Wheel near Dorchester and University, only to be refused entry to the crowded bar, full with 200 people.
   Boutin, in particular, was livid at the snub. They filled a container with gasoline at a gas station nearby on Demaisonneuve where Eccles's father was working.
   The drunken trio ignored his pleas to go home and sleep.
   Boutin and Jimmy O'Brien set a fire to the stairway while Eccles watched from the car.
  (Boutin later penned a suicide note taking full responsibility for setting the fire on the stairs, claiming that Jimmy was actively trying to stop him.)
   They left and Kevin, who had no part in the stunt, located the trio at the bar of Club 67, inside the Hotel Colonade at Crescent and Dorchester.
   He was tasked with the inconceivably difficult duty of telling his brother and his two pals that their playful little fire proved far more devastating than they could imagine.
   Jimmy, Gilles and Boots were sentenced to life in prison.

Boutin and Jimmy O'Brien 1972

   Eccles and Boutin were released in 1989. Jimmy O'Brien was paroled in 1983 but drug and alcohol parole violations repeatedly returned him behind bars.
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   Kevin O'Brien went on to engineer some of the largest successful hashish importations in the city's history. One haul was said to be so large that it fed the city for years.
  Kevin developed an early reputation for pulling off art thefts from the homes of the wealthy in some wild and woolly heists.
   One time, he told friends, he was in the process of stealing art from a home in Westmount and needed to deal with the wealthy residents he was robbing.
   “Pardon me but would you mind terribly if we tied you up?”
   Kevin, born in 1950, found a place beside West End Gang leader Dunie Ryan, who was eight years his senior.
   Dunie Ryan dubbed Kevin “The Kid.”
   The boys took out baseball bats and smashed everything in sight, never articulating the nature of their grievance.
   The young woman overseeing the place rushed to the telephone and called her boss Cotroni, asking him what to do.
   He simply told her to let them do whatever it was they wanted.
   The cashier was unimpressed by Cotroni's response . She quit the cafe and later got romantic with one of Kevin's brothers.
   On 17 May 1977 police attempted to pull Kevin O'Brien's vehicle over near Decarie and Highway 40.
   O'Brien and company wheeled away at breakneck speed down the Metropolitan Expressway to St. Lawrence until the pursuing police cruiser rammed into their car, ending the chase.
  Police arrested O'Brien, 27, along with  Jimmy Dylan, 18 and Gary Trimbrell, 20.
  Police found a drugs, bullets, and a gun in the car and found more strewn along the roadside as the trio attempted to toss the evidence away during the chase.
   Kevin did three months for the caper and never went back inside.
   He could keep a secret and also advised others to never tell him their secrets either.
   Kevin O'Brien, who could not be reached for this article, is in good health and spirits and living in Montreal. Others who know him speak of his generosity and hatred of violence.
   “Best man I ever knew. He was a sort of Robin Hood,” said one person who knew him well.