One year ago Coolopolis brought you up to speed about a possible shantytown operating near St. James St. West in St. Henri.Coolopolis asked the landlord about it and he said he would look into it.
However it appears to very much be operating in the same way as ever, perhaps even expanding.
An intrepid friend of Coolopolis obtained photographic proof of the possible settlement but not before meeting with spirited resistance a couple of days ago.
He was in for quite an adventure as he recounts below.
I was accosted by the owner of the place, who very aggressively demanded that I erase the photos, then followed me home while delivering a tinfoil hat monologue to a 911 operator the entire time!See also: Secret shantytown in St. Henri?
This was a fellow who lived there, in the brick building adjacent to the shanty town. He was francophone, in his 60s, very agitated.
When I laughed at his demand that I "erase the photos" and didn't appear to be impressed or intimidated by his foaming-at-the-hips outcries of "mon calisse de mangeux d'marde" he called 911 and went on a very plaintive tirade that the operator must have found highly amusing.
I should point out that I never set foot on this guy's property and took the photos from the sidewalk. As far as I know, I didn't do anything illegal, so his response was comical and bewildering.
He kept referring to me while on the phone with the 911 operator as "un genre de crotté" - not sure why, since I am a normal looking guy in my 40s - and when I walked into the lobby of my building he reported the address to the 911 operator and said something along the lines of 'but it isn't likely that he actually lives here, because he's a bum" or something similar (in French, of course).He also described me as "inebriated" to the 911 dispatcher, even though I don't really drink, even socially.
He also told the 911 operator that he was hoping I would walk into a shop with a security camera so that he wouldn't have to keep following me, and that the police could simply demand that they turn over their security footage and identify me from it!
He said that I was "a dangerous person" and that he was going to make sure that I made no attempt to "disparaitre dans l'brume" in his valiant attempt to "assister les agents d'police" and made sure to tell her that I was an anglophone (three times!) presumably to endure a more prompt police response.
To add to the hilarity, he was wearing bright orange rubber boots with dress slacks tucked into them. Followed me at a distance of maybe 10 feet from his shanty town all the way to Charlevoix street, reporting his precise location to the 911 operator the entire time!
There is clearly electricity going to the toolshed dwellings, which as you can see in the photos have been "modified" in all sorts of imaginative ways.
I used to live one street over on St Marguerite from 2005 to 2011 and the shanty town had already been there for a while before I moved there, albeit smaller and with only a chain link fence around it.
I used to think it was some kind of meth operation, but could it be possible that the geezer that pursued me this afternoon simply rents those squalid hovels to neighborhood crackheads?