Downtown building, aged 150, was site of wild hooker-john-cop drama

    This lovely building that has sat on the west side of Drummond north of Dorch since around 1870 is slated for demolition by the owners, the Cohen brothers' Modico Canada, who wish to build a three storey hotel with nine to 10 storeys in back.
   I lived straight across the street for about five years and admired its Penny Lane-like qualities as it was affixed to a picturesque fire station but it has been abandoned and left to ruin for quite some time.
   The most unusual thing that ever happened at the place took place in 1983 when it was the Vines Tourist Rooms, a vocation it had for at least three decades.
   In March 1983 an engineer named Feliks Tobiasz, 48, (he'd now be in his late 70s if still alive) was busted by police, who ended up breaking two of his ribs. He was charged with being found in a bawdy house and resisting arrest. Two prostitutes later said that he was mouthy, wild and unruly, so it's possible that they were the ones who contacted police.
   Tobiasz, who reported himself to be a big fan of Communism, filed a complaint at the Police Ethics Commission, alleging that the officers (David Ashton, Serge Morin and Henry Williams) had mocked his penis, as they had apprehended him in the nude. A judge dismissed the complaint.
   When constructed the building would have stood across from the old Victoria Rink, which we've discussed on many occasions on this site. Impossible to tell who lived there in the early days, as the address changed around 1930, so we're forced to guesstimate the original address in the old Lovells, but Wayne Griswold, who became a media attorney for the Standard appears to have lived there when he arrived in town from Griswoldville Conn. as a young man.
   Getting back to Tobiasz: another person with the same family name was embroiled in another over-the-top drama in 1961 as Francisz Tobiasz, a 27-year-old Polish sailor, jumped ship in Montreal but was refused refugee status, leading his passionate young lover Sophia Horan to offer to return to Poland in his stead. The sailor was allowed to stay a little while longer and we're guessing permanently too.