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Head-shop hippies were right: new research shows benefits of psychedelic drugs
Photo: Stephen Poirier Many mature Montrealers will recall the Purple Unknown, Montreal's first head shop - technically a poster shop - at 2145 Bleury in a building that has since been...
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Quebec's longstanding war on cinema failed to stop some 60s gems
Quebec's over-the-top cinematic censorship was a long-running bit of repressive tyranny here, as innocuous films such as J'Accuse and Luther were long banned by censors. Quebec movie theatres were...
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When Montreal acting legend Percy Rodrigues lived the thug life
You want a crazy, crazy day here in Montreal? You won't find anything more intense than Aug 8, 1944 which witnessed an over-the-top attack at the offices of a Union National candidate Omer Cote on...
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Point St. Charles booze map
According to legend the Point was once dotted with something like 40 bars. An effort to catalogue the taverns and bars been undertaken on a Facebook site and many have noted various names of...
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Martin Stevens - Originality be not thy name
In golden olden thymes Quebec musicians would catch onto a trend beyond the provincial borders and adapt it into French. All would be satisfied. All would be entertained. Musicians launched their...
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Mayor of St. Henri shantytown chases photographer
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....
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Dorval cop killer Real Poirier: did he get off too easy?
Did our justice system let off a Montreal cop killer Real Poirier too easily? Five-year Montreal police veteran Jacinthe Fyfe, 25, was shot dead near285 Malcolm Crescent in Dorval on Oct. 26,...
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Melody Makers of NDG: proof that you're never too young to rock out
The youngest band to record an album in Canada was a rock instrumental trio formed of NDG residents Roberto and Danny Orsini. The brothers were aged just 13 and 14 when their band the Melody Makers...
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Celebrated-after-death poet Malcolm Miller's time in Montreal
A dead poet who attended McGill in the mid-1950s has become the subject of interest in certain parts of literary-land. Malcolm Miller died alone at 83 and in great squalor in Salem, Massachusetts...
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Hells Angels a nice bunch of guys: how biker wannabe Toots Tousignant was...
Reporters routinely interview random bystanders to fill out news stories and those interviews are almost always useless toss-aways. Yet one such interview conducted in Montreal in 1986 foreshadowed...
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Peel and St. James: today's barren intersection was once abuzz with trains
Peel Street (aka Windsor St.) was blocked at the bottom of the hill until about 1950. It might be hard to visualize what's now a wide-wide-wide empty street once filled with important stuff. But...
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Why you should not plant a tree
Trees are above reproach and so, so easy to love. Those live-sustaining, sky-embracing, leafy outreaching toothpicks are - along with motherhood - one of the two unassailable things. "The best...
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John McConnell: Heir to the Montreal Star fortune and his battle against...
Montreal Star heir John McConnell, who died last June in Sainte Marguerite, led a low-profile, sometimes hedonistic life, except for a bizarre 1972 sex extortion scandal in which Mafia don Pep...
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Quebec billionaire Sylvan Adams moves to Israel
Sylvan Adams, 57, a Montreal real estate mogul whose billionaire family was revealed in 2013 to have banked much of its fortune in offshore financial assets, appears to have ditched Canada for...
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Indoor parking shelters for homeless motorists - Ways to improve Montreal: # 6
Some people suffer unlucky streaks and end up sleeping in their cars. So how many spend their nights drooling with head tilted on the backseat door handle? Nobody knows, but they exist. We do...
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Where to play pool in Montreal in 1950 - all 96 places
Pool halls in Montreal have long been part of the urban fabric, with the greatest concentration being found on the Lower Main, as this map shows. Notable moments in such establishments are...
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External glass elevators, why we need them pronto: Ways to improve Montreal #5
Montreal does not have a single downtown building offering a transitory vertical view onto this beautiful city. So nowhere in Montreal can you ride up to a room or office in a glass-walled...
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"If you ate a hot dog or hamburger at Expo '67, it probably was putrid":...
"If you ate a hot dog or hamburger at Expo '67, it probably was putrid." That devastating lead went into wire copy newspaper articles published across the world on June 2, 1975. One could not imagine...
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Plante and Drapeau bickering: time to release the secret tape
Wanna hear an epic argument between Mayor Jean Drapeau and his former partner-in-crimefighting Pax Plante? An audio tape exists of a never-before-heard squabble between the two in 1972, now it's...
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Snowdon Theatre fire - latest shame for the borough of Cote des Neiges/ Notre...
photo courtesy Yanni K. Today the abandoned city-owned Snowdon Theatre, which belongs to city taxpayers, was hit by fire. Who is reponsible for this disaster? Look no further than the borough of...
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