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Many Quebec suicides might actually be murders
A Montreal cop once told me that he believes that about 30 percent of what are deemed suicides by Montreal police are, in fact, homicides. Consider this: Quebec's suicide rate is the highest of any...
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The too-short life of beautiful Debbie Symmers
Abraham and Symmers Debbie Symmers was found dead in a tree-filled park across from her apartment on Wellington in the Point on August 23, 1978. She reportedly had two gunshots to the head and...
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Montreal's McDonald's murders
The double murder at the McDonald's in 2010 - elements of which are finally almost done wending their way through courts - demonstrates how the impulse to get high can still fuel violence and...
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The horrible thing that happened at this house near the Montreal conference...
Next time you pass by the western edge of the downtown Palais de Concrete conference centre, devote a moment to think about Raymond Trudeau, who lived around the corner and was lured into the home...
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Montreal youth hostels, the great lost tradition
A youth hostel can be an amazing resource for travelers, but in Montreal they're far less abundant and inexpensive than they once were. In the summer of 1972, for example, 6,000 tourists paid .50...
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Cult at the centre of Quebec measles outbreak was launched by Montreal cop
Blame the measles outbreak near Joliette on a former Montreal cop. The Holy Spirit cult, or religious group, if you will, has seen over 119 measles cases in their group near Joliette. A...
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Quebec perpetuates cycle of poverty by making driving school mandatory
The biggest skill one learns at driving school is how not to fall asleep behind the wheel. Driving school lectures are overly-long narcolepsy-inducing chinwags in which bored teachers state the...
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Five natural resources that aren't doing much for Quebec
1-Forest products Quebec was battered when newspapers died, as pulp and paper lost over 100,000 jobs between 2004-2014 in Canada. Plants closed when eyeballs shifted from ink to pixels, bringing an...
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When Montreal streets were littered with abandoned cars
Until the 1970s, thousands of defunct, rusty and decaying cars were simply abandoned by motorists on city streets each year. In 1969, 5,000 cars were left so heartlessly, in 1971, 8,000 wrecks...
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Montreal's billionaire Adams clan: secretive no more
Quebec's billionaire hermits: that was the theme of an article I wrote for a big Toronto business magazine a couple of years back. One of the publicity-shy entrepreneurs I profiled was Marcel Adams,...
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'Smoking saved my life'- Montreal cop
Montreal Constable Mario Delvecchio's owes his life to his smoking habit. The officer was out on Ontario St. E near Joly when a sniper started shooting out of the window of his rooming house....
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Superhospital neighbourhood guide
Welcome to the neighbourhood. The Superhospital is moving to Vendome in 36 days and many Montreal hospital staff and visitors will finally have access to a real urban environment after being...
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Landlord busted in east end rooming house crack raid
East End rooming house. EAST..END...ROOMING...HOUSE.. No good news ever starts out with that phrase. The recent arrest of Claudio Ponari, 57, a landlord of a rooming house 3629 Ste. Catherine E.,...
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Eddie Baker - the ultimate Montreal icon
Who is - or was - Montreal's Eddie "Do Nothing" Baker? We need to know and we need to know now! In around 1969 Baker became an underground literary-and-lifestyle Montreal icon as a 41-year-old...
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Montreal planning fail: new and useless traffic lights being installed...
The six numbered dots represent the new and useless traffic lights A staggering proliferation of nonsensical traffic lights has occurred within a tiny stretch of the West End in recent months,...
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The immigrant who hated it so much here that he bombed our embassy
Not all immigrants enjoy Canada. An untold number move back to their country or elsewhere after arriving. But surely no immigrant hated Canada as much as Colman Losonczy, a mechanic-turned accountant...
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History buffs unhappy with resumption of construction on possible downtown...
Some Coolopolis readers are not happy that the construction of a 27-storey skyscraper - delayed as crews searched for archaeological treasures - has resumed. Ivanhoe-Cambridge shut down the...
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Spring in Montreal ain't the same without baseball spring training
For decades Montreal's impatience with the never-ending winter was calmed by the soothing tonic of spring training, seen in TV reports beamed into our home We knew that young hopefuls basking in...
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Uptight Montreal hippie hairdresser tried to get the Woodstock film pulled...
Time to finally name the mysterious, unnamed Montreal hairdresser who had the temerity to try to shut down the film Woodstock because it showed him disrobing with a woman for 150 seconds. We don't...
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Quiz - what great Canadian poem/song was penned at this West Island house 200...
One of Canada's most famous songs, written by what's considered the greatest poet of his country across the pond, was penned at this house in the West Island around 1803. Anybody?
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