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Quiz - who was this?
The weird story of Quebec TV personality-turned terrorist: Michelle Duclos. The plot starts when Michelle Saunier, a 30-year-old, French-born psychology teacher, who had recently visited Cuba...
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The life and times of Montreal Irish mobster Johnny McGuire
Local Irish mobster Johnny McGuire was a portrait of confounding contradictions, a prince and a bum, a generous benefactor and a shylock, a hard-fisted boxer and a tranny club owner. McGuire was...
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Death of a flat-out Montreal character
Gordon Mianscum, a Cree from Chibougamau who became an oft-seen Montreal character due to his unusual stretcher-style wheelchair in the 80s, has died at 51. Mianscum lost use of his legs as a teen...
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Montreal: Friday photo fun and food for thought
This is an overlooked but important character in the local criminal scene. He died in the mid 70s of a brain aneurysm. Can anybody name him?Hilarious moments for pedestrians forced to walk into...
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Young Montreal photographer becomes subject of mother's panicked posts
Halouma, right, seen with singing star Janelle MonnaeA well-known Montreal photographer has found herself at the centre of some passionate invective as her mother has taken over her Facebook page and...
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Massive plywood boxes sprouting up in Montreal - alien invasion imminent?
Someone asked me recently what that massive wooden box was at the corner of Girouard and St. James. I had initially suspected it was some sort of workers hut for those construction apes (Hey! -...
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Montreal's child mayors - how they once ran our parks
*Little guys and girls, being the principle stakeholders in the welfare of our local parks, should have a major say in the way those playgrounds and parks are run. That insightful vision was...
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House of misfortune, Basin street home of tragedy
Good ol' Basin street where big dreams go to get crushed. It's a typical Griffintown street: once inhabited by working class Irish, then turned into warehouses and now at the centre of massive condo...
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Life off Centre in the Point
How awkward is Centre St in the Point? Correct answer: Pretty much awkward yeah. Perhaps no better instant portrait as this scene where a pair on Jardin are caught wandering with nowhere special...
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Swastika Ave in the heart of downtown Montreal
Swastika Ave. is still with us here in the heart of Montreal. The tiny laneway sits behind the highrise at Ste. Famille and Sherbrooke and was renamed Ste. Famille Lane, or Place Ste. Famille. The...
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Street view rebels, urban trikes, swimming in cold water and more from Montreal
Fab Excavation guy is the new champion of Google Street view Montreal as a reader submitted this fab belly-exposing pose made last summer on Dunver in Crawford Park west Verdun. Unlike a Montreal...
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Montreal's feisty Irish
Here is my TV interview from yesterday in which I offer my telling of history of the Irish in Montreal in four minutes. It's my attempt at an infontaining recount of important and silly moments...
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Montrealers who used gasoline to clean things - with predictable results
Gasoline was once commonly used as a household cleaner, which turned out to be a pretty bad idea for countless people who burned to death while scrubbing away at home. One estimate suggests that...
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TMR - Montreal suburb tells aliens we're wannabe Brits
/The Town of Mount Royal was billed as a "new Westmount" when designed about a century ago at the other end of a train tunnel to downtown. Toronto architect Frank Darling (possibly related to...
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When Montreal bikers were given government cash to carve wooden ducks
The Sundowners, Popeyes, Death Riders, Dead Men, Cave Men, Outsiders, Les Gorilles, Playboys, Arch Angels, Phantoms - all of these were biker gangs in the late 60s and there might have been more....
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Montreal woman pays with her life after marrying legendary drug kingpin
Could this be her? Montreal's Francine Brisebois, the longtime wife of drug king Ernesto Guillermo Francisco Barretto-Morales, aka Tito Pacheco, may or may not have killed herself in Peru in 2011....
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Montreal's precious greystones need more protection
The greystone is the most sublime form of Montreal architecture Every single rock is a time-worn pearl yanked out of a local quarry - likely up in Ahuntsic - by stout hard-working, hard drinking...
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Montrealer tosses tomatoes at ex - fruity spousal abuse from 1956
As we know, fruit and veg sections bring out the worst in people (who told you that?-Chimples) and one particularly nasty incident went before a judge in 1956. It started when Emile Derible, 46,...
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No money for losing eye on a badminton court
Badminton's for sissies? Not true, as one Montrealer can sadly attest. Xi Ping Zhang joined three other men in punching some birdies on October 15, 2010 at Ste. Anne College near St. Joseph in...
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Alberta oil company controls fate of crucial-but-crumbling section of Ste....
You know those invisible urban borders? Crossing one frequently involves an abrupt buzzkill, where urban enchantment suddenly disperses like a waft of sweet perfume. Well that's what you've got...
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