Clik here to view.
Episodes from Montreal's marijuana past
Marijuana - sometimes called Mexican hemp, or Indian hemp until about 1952 - was once advertised in newspapers as a cure all. The Courrier du Canada ran an ad in 1874 for Craddock and Company of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A reluctant leaper, cop fratricide, failed tunnel heist and a gas leak...
Shirley Deschamps, 20, had been placed in the Foyer Sainte Claire d'Assise to stay with the Franciscans de Marie at 80 Laurier East in early April 1964. Young Shirley was suddenly hit by some...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lou Black's Living Room - a downtown nightclub that endured attack after attack
Black outside his bar fire 1964 On might suspect that a guy who names his bar after himself is ego-tripping big time. So that tells you something about Lou Black's Living Room, which opened in 1960...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When Montreal's balloon man was suspected of murdering a child
When little Robert Jones, 9, was found murdered at a fair in Montreal North in 1956, all eyes turned to the balloon man. Jacob Karmensky, aka Jack Karmensky, was a well-known figure in town after...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Michèle Duclos: Montreal TV host helped try to blow up the Statue of Liberty
Michele Duclos had just about everything going for herself as a young and attractive young Montreal TV and radio host in the mid-1960s. She had, as Oscar Wilde might say, the only two things that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NDG future landmark awaits, as big chunk of prime land waits to be redeveloped
A future west end landmark across from the superhospital could be on the horizon, as a 30,000 square foot property can be yours for just $7.5 million. The future building could be commercial or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rita Picard: Montreal's oft-jailed Queen of the Red Light
Picard as seen in 1980 doc Plusieurs tombent en amour* Rita Picard persisted in pimping, getting busted an incredible 49 times between 1947 and 1992 for prostitution-related offences and ultimately...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When hustlers made money renting chairs on Sherbrooke Street
Small-scale cut-throat capitalism coloured the biggest annual event in Montreal each year as locals jostled to make a buck renting chairs to spectators of the St. Jean Baptiste parade. These...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Benaiah Mcdonald RIP
Benaiah Mcdonald jammed a lot of style into a too-short life, as the 23-year-old stylist died Feb 6 in Montreal of kidney failure, in connection with chronic sickle cell anemia. One narrative has...
View ArticleClik here to view.
One last drink: the man who blew himself up in a Park Extension tavern
A heavy-drinking construction worker from England known as Mr. Majors started coming to the Pam Pam Tavern at 491 Jean Talon West in October 1976 and spent much of his paycheque on the suds. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Generous Montreal celebrity socialite Stratton Stevens dies at 85
"Any cause that asks me for money, I just give it. I just say yes to them all,"Stratton Stevens would say in his trademark quiet and slow tone. Stevens, who was friends with the well-heeled and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Montreal's all-time top 10 toughest bars
10- Neptune Tavern 121 Commune W. (1832-1976) Strongman Louis Cyr's career as a police officer ended in 1898 after he seriously injured patrons while breaking up fights in this place frequented by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The friendliest in-law you never had: Montreal's scurrilous charmer Ludger...
Ludger Harel was an affable charmer who spent a lifetime pretending to be the in-law that you hadn't yet met. Harel, born in 1882, first saw the inside of a jail cell in 1905 as the audacious...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Leaving Quebec? Here's how to explain why you moved away
So you want to leave Quebec? The latest local news contrivance is shows that a lot of young English-speaking Montrealers have thought about moving away, which a suddenly-caring French newspaper...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Montreal murder 1991: a sad stumble down bad memory lane
Montreal 1991: one of the worst years in recent local history, with a rising crack epidemic, a recession, political uncertainty, gays living in fear and tensions between minorities police, plus of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When almost 2,000 Canadians left Montreal to live in the Soviet Union
Soviet propaganda enraged traditional Canadian and Quebec power elites, as the Communists brazenly attacked capitalism and sacred religious beliefs in the years following World War II. Soviets...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Best Montreal books, Montreal's hottest neighbourhoods, and what Coolopolis...
If you have not yet dropped into Indigo, Paragraph, or Coles (Dorval, Angrignon and Cavendish) or Au Vieux Bouc (two locations in east end) you surely have purchased your copy of the must-own,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Artist Oscar Cahén's sketches of Montreal nightclubs just one sliver of a...
These outstanding illustrations taken from a 1956 article in Weekend Magazine depict the liveliness of Montreal's 1950s nightclub culture (a subject pain-and-pleasure-stakingly detailed in Montreal...
View Article