Nun's Island: What to do with all the new space?

You surely know of my personal connection between Nuns Island. My father was involved in the early ownership but had some legal disputes with the other guys who bought in and eventually developed the place. The initial idea was to make it like the rest of Verdun, sorta triplexes, etc. But the legal dispute made for a few years delay which led to a rethink and the plans were retooled. So it became the rather more posh thing that it is today. One of those developments, sent by a friend, is a good example, as you can see in this link. 
   But The Question nobody seems to be asking is this: when they build the new Champlain Bridge it'll surely connect to the island in a much less intrusive way. So that could theoretically free up something like 150,000 square metres of land. That's something. So this is your chance to start pushing for the organic chicken farm, giant trapeze orgy facility, super windmill bicycle monorail ferry and so forth. 

Quiz - this was the scene of the most disgusting crime of 1982, what was it?

I am thinking that you'll figure out where this building is, but I doubt if you'll guess what makes it infamous.  Please make an effort on this, one it's a biggie.

Quiz - what happened here in 1966?

This building on St. James near Dominion was the scene of one of the scariest events of 1966. Anybody?

Quiz- what building is this?

This photo shows a well-known Montreal building getting put together long, long ago. Can you name what building it is? 

Quiz who are these Montrealish women?

Clue: two = actresses. Two = accused of serious crimes. One = important gov't official. One = athlete. One = actor's wife.

The other helicopter bank robbery story

Speaking of helicopters involved with bank robberies... in 1966 two bank robbers fled in the woods after robbing a Royal Bank in Galeries d'Anjou. Cops borrowed a helicopter from CFCF in an attempt to catch them fleeing. 
   The four robbers had fled in a taxi and a running gun battle ensued in which a cop was injured. One of the thieves was injured and captured but the other three fled until they noticed the helicopter above them with a machine gun trained right on 'em. I guess the fact that it was winter made their flight into the woods a little more difficult. Click here to read about it. 

Photo of the day: Bus to Vancouver leaving from Phillips Square

This bus appears headed all the way to Vancouver from downtown Montreal in 1937. 
   Vancouver was pretty much on the edge of the universe back then and hopping a long ride with no bathrooms must have been a job for the most determined.
  Photo, once again from the excellent Conrad Poirier collection, photo tip Harold R.

Montreal crime trivia quiz: 1979

The most fantastic crime ever committed in Montreal took place almost on this day in 1979 using a highly-spectacular and unusual modus operandi never seen before or since. 
    Does anybody out there reading care to venture a guess? There's the perp on the left.


As usual the readers do not disappoint. It is indeed Rory Shayne a prison escapee who commandeered a helicopter and robbed a bank on Cote Vertu of $12,000. 


  Burkhard Bateman, aka, Rory Shayne, was responsible for three splashy crimes involving hostages. 
     Shayne was born in Germany to a Canadian father and German mother. They left him in Hamburg as they came to Canada, both reportedly suffering some sorta psychological challenges. He eventually moved to Ontario and ended up in BC where on September 24, 1970, at age 19 he took part in a bizarre sailboat hijacking fiasco in which he shot up a CIBC in downtown Victoria, injuring two cops, and then commandeered a sailboat with two people aboard. He wanted to sail to the states and told his abductees that he felt the world was against him and he had spent three years confined for a car theft in Ontario that he hadn't committed. They eventually got him to surrender (click for cool photo) to US Coast Guard authorities. He was sentenced to 20 years. 
   Shayne was transferred to Le Clerc medium security prison and escaped Dec. 14, 1978 prison and while on the lam knocked over a dozen banks for a haul of about $250,000. 
   In one of those robberies on Feb. 23, 1979 , Shayne and his girlfriend (who a witness described as "very ugly") hired a helicopter to take them to Quebec City. They paid $600 to Olympic Helicopters' Hank Ford and then pulled a gun on the pilot. Shayne, who had a collection of guns ranging from pistols to machine guns, pulled a weapon on pilot Le Huu Nguyen and handcuffed him to the helicopter while his girlfriend held a gun on him while he scored $12,000 of loot from the Royal Bank at the Place Vertu shopping centre while about 15 customers were inside. 
    (In an entirely unrelated event, about three minutes later elsewhere in the city another bank robbery took place, in which a security guard and cashier were shot. Oh, the good ol' days!)
    Shayne was nabbed on March 2, with girlfriend Rachel Dubiel, 36, of Pierrefonds, who was sentenced to five years, while Shayne got 12, although it was 20 years in total when the others were taken into account.
   Shayne was back in the pen and one year later participated in a prison riot at the Laval Institute, which seemed to have involved yet another hostage taking. 
    So they brought him to court in Montreal whereupon he whipped out a gun (possibly hidden in his rectum, according to his then-young laywer Gary Martin) and tried to take a hostage. Martin calmly talked him down. The gun went off twice but the bullets just slid to the ground, possibly wet from being kept in a moist place. He plead guilty of trying to kill judge Martineau and was sentenced to life in prison.
    Back in prison in Laval in Feb. 1982, Shayne complained that he was being beaten regularly by guards following the incident and was being regularly sent to the hole. (West End Gang chronicler Darcy O'Connor actually taught Shayne in prison and has a couple of tales of the guy in his excellent book.)
   He was transferred to Milhaven Ontario and is likely out by now, he would be 60 if he's still kicking around.   

Murder at Upper Lachine and Oxford

On the afternoon of July 13, 1966 a driver pinned a taxi back by parking in front of him at the corner of Oxford and Upper Lachine Road. He then ordered the driver Louis Maillet to scoot and then shot him dead with a rifle while he ran away and the hack's ride watched on. 
    The killer then returned to his car and waited for police. The weirdest part of this already-weird story is that the police reported it to be a case of mistaken identity. Not sure what the name of the shooter was but perhaps it'll surface eventually.
   The shooter was, I believe, a worker at the Canadian Pacific who wanted to get revenge on his supervisor who he felt was harassing him. 
   You'll note that the store is still named Minto, which is strange because it's two blocks west of the street of that name sacrificed by the Decarie expressway, likely started its days there. 
     (By the way, if you like this true Montreal crime stuff, I'm giving a speech about it with Pro Will Straw at the Blue Met Festival, April 18. ((I think that's the date).)  

Q: who is it?

Only clue... he worked downtown and did not die a natural death. 


Harold, et al, got it right, it's Sidney Leithman, who was gunned down most likely by Colombians. Big bag of cocaine found on the backseat of his Saab, although that might have been tossed in by the killer. 


Anyway, so it begs the question, what happened to all of these high flying big name defense laywers? There are no more of them, the reason, why as Stephane Giroux explained yesterday, is that far fewer cases go before a judge nowadays. That's because the voir dire rules changed and the prosecution has to lay all of its evidence out on the table prior to trying somebody. So when prosecutors actually prosecute someone it's because there's highly-solid evidence against the accused, so let that stew in your head next time you're called in for jury duty. The fewer trials means big savings in the justice system too as trials are extremely costly. 

Crime from '75

School shooting rampages are sometimes thought to be a new phenomenon, I think the "I don't like Mondays" was the first of them, and of course Marc Lepine and Columbine, and then a few others. But the one perpetuated by Michael Slobodian, 16,  (2 killed, 13 injured, suicide) in May 1975 in Brampton Ontario is considered the second case of a student shooting up a school because of his emotional issues. (Here's your chance to give your usual speech about how crime exploded in the 70s cuz of drugs that people didn't know how to cope with--Chimples). It might be noted that the Slobodians had moved to Ontario from Montreal about a dozen years earlier. In fact there were a good 10 people with that family name in Montreal in 1963 according to Lovells. (Sorry, clever Banq brass makes no linking possible).

Strippers Mariette Allen &
Gilles Frenette also ran an
agency at that time

Another story from 1975: stripper agencies are, of course, one of the dodgiest sorts of businesses, so don't expect much good to come of them. But in the mid-70s a single agency on St. Catherine put so many underage girls into stripping and prostitution jobs and they single-handedly accounted for a solid portion of the city's underage runaways. 
     In fact you could buy fake IDs for $8.50 back then. The agency was called the Paul Calce Agency at 254 St. Cat E, owned by Gilles Simard. He died (not sure at what age, but his widow was only 29) and the Dubois clan then intimidated the young widow into handing it over as payment of a loan-shark debt. Competitor The Honest John Agency was also shaken down by the Dubois clan. The Dubois boys shot the place up and narrowly missed secretary Denise Adam who recounted her long association with the Dubois. She once got a big 50 cent tip for a coffee from them when she was working in a restuarnt in St. Henri in the 60s. And then soon after, Normand Dubois and six others broke down the door of a place she was staying. And then she got a job at the Calce agency and Claude Dubois was the PR guy for the place and when she switched to the competitor, he verbally assaulted her and apparently got a gun at her.
    The point being that those Dubois were everywhere back then and scaring a lot of people. 

Frank Shoofey's murder still unsolved 26 years later

You might've noticed that cops have still not solved the murder of lawyer Frank Shoofey late at night in October 1985 in his office at 1030 Cherrier. Apparently you needed a key to get in through every door and the shooter apparently did his work quite cooly and calmly, pumping four bullets into the  hairpiece-covered head of the son of Lebanese immigrants. Many thought it was a mob hit connected with a conflict between his management of the fighting Hiltons and Don King who also coveted them and had some kinda contract with those boys. 
    A cop once told me that they got a jailhouse confession from somebody, a cheap thug but couldn't use it in court, so they knew who did it but couldn't try him for it. 
    After the murder somebody called the Gazette to take credit for the slaying, saying it was done for the Red Army faction. Surely it was some loon trying to distract the investigation. 
   Another notable thing, one of Shoofey's clients was murdered in his lobby in 1979. Shoofey was defending Pierre Quintal, who was accused of running a drug manufacturing operation. Three guys were apparently later charged with the murder.
    Anyway, here's a note I received from someone who knew a guy who might've done it, read on:
      Frank Shoofey, the mob lawyer. I'm certain you've heard of him. You can look up the details.
       I have (had) a friend who may have done it. He certainly threatened to do it. But as you know, those guys were a dime a dozen.
     He was a paranoid-schizophrenic AND a member of Mensa, AND had a nasty temper.
     Nice combination, huh?
     I haven't seen him since ?? - cannot remember- (perhaps mid to late eighties?) w
     We did a lot of reminiscing, and then he apologized for the grief he had put me (and others) through, and then we shook hands. He walked away and I never saw him again.
     But I was busy with family, mortgages, bills and worries of is being outsourced phenomenon (yes even back then)
     Only perhaps months, years later did I realize that that handshake had some air of finality about it.
     He is almost certainly dead now, but I could never get details from the Douglas. "We do not release that kind of information, sir."
    He'd be about 73 years old now.

The mysterious "freak building" on Monkland

So these two Conrad Poirier photos were taken in November 1939 at 5800 Monkland, in front of that Sutton building, next to the old Steinberg's, now-Gene Kooto building. The photos were taken in November 1939. But according to Lovells, the current stucture was built in 1953, so we have no idea what the short-lived freak building was. My initial suspection was that they were digging a tunnel for kids to stroll under to avoid getting run over on the street. They built tons of those around town and they're almost all gone now. Thx to Harold for the heads up.

The next Plateau

In ye olden days in Montreal everybody was obsessed with finding "the next Plateau." That meant, a semi-dilapidated area that would turn lovely and cool under your nose, thereby massively increasing the value of your real estate investment. It has become a bit of a pathetic cliche for those desperate to push The Point or Verdun as great up-and-coming neighbourhoods and doesn't really work because the lack of building has pushed up prices in those areas. 

However, there is one strategy that might have replaced it. Tenants and owners are fleeing areas afflicted by construction. This is most notably occurring in the blocks surrounding the French superhospital. (specifically the blocks just east of the Main near Chinatown) I have heard of landlords offering several hundred dollars per month discounts just to get people to stay. Others are selling their condos are much lower than they would otherwise, still with no buyers, as the spectre of trucks and jackhammers is scaring many away. 

Other areas where similar firesales will likely take place include the St.Raymond's Parish of NDG and anything near that Turcot remake thingy and maybe even the blocks next to Westmount arena.

The upside of buying an underpriced unit in a construction-adjacent neighbourhood is likely significant though, so those who can sleep through the sound of backhoes grinding gears, time to start sniffing out the market.

Papineau and St. Catherine

The increasingly-crumbling abandoned block at St. Catherine and Papineau - north side - would make a good case study for urban decay. The property starts with a vacant terrain, likely a former gas station -  and then a burnt-out theatre and greystone apartment building. 

 Oil company Suncor owns the empty lot - surely a former gas station - and an Ottawa company called Canril, had a halfhearted attempt to develop it last year, presumably due to lack of interest in new condos on a feed street to the bridge near a gay bar ghetto.

Depanneur on Pap South of Cat

   The adjacent buildings were burnt out a few years ago but I don't know when exactly. The buildings are owned by Normand Poirier. As in the case with abandoned properties, I wonder what plans the owner has with them. 
When know that he had a fire and didn't repair the buildings and that usually means he was under-insured.     If one pays for higher levels of insurance, one usually doesn't have the right to take the cash, one is forced to repair. So he's obviously not making money on the property other than his insurance cash and he must be paying taxes to the city on the property. He surely no longer has insurance on the the place because insurance companies don't like to insure abandoned property and will only sometimes do so at a very high fee. And they certainly wouldn't allow a building to have its windows left open, as this one does. 
    So the chances of this lovely old greystone burning to the ground seem very high, particularly since it's surrounded by good old time East End sketchiness. 

Seemed like a good idea at the time

   There's some sort of drop in centre for troubled youth across the street. There's also what I suspect is a crackhouse just across. And there's a stripper placement agency with one-way mirror windows that has covered parts of its sign with duct tape.     And of course there's what's known as the city's worst McDonald's nearby as well, where the cashiers famously try to shortchange patrons as I can attest from repeated personal experience. 
     The area is at the end of the Gay Village, although some say it unofficially ends at Papineau. The Bar Stud, a lousy little shoebox building that settled with Audrey Vachon in 2008 for refusing to serve her on the basis of her being a woman is the only brazenly gay establishment east of St. Cat.  
   One reason that it might be hard to redevelop these soon-to-be burnt down buildings is that a gay bar zone might not be soon as entirely family-friendly. However the gay tourism brings in something like $25 million to the city every year. 

Agence Erotique 2000 stripper placement

  The city should really take some of that money and do something with abandoned property - which is very close to the Papineau metro. Either go whole hog and turn it into a huge gay circus museum or grant some sort of developer incentives to develop the property for conventional usage.
   Montreal has been losing population to the suburbs and this sort of abandoned property could house a couple of thousand taxpayers pretty quickly. Some academics and politicians say there's plenty of land to develop on the island but I think they are probably wrong. 
   So my idea would be to make an unofficial boundary, say the gay village ends at Papineau and everything east of there would be good old regular housing. 

Working Class Unity Bridge still not getting built

So there is a ton of potential development around the Lachine Canal area but it's still currently designed in a bit of a goofy way. 
   Take this example: if you want to cross the 100 metres of the canal around St. Patrick and Angers you need to get yourself into the St. Remi Tunnel and walk through. 
   It's about a 800 metre walk, but it's a longer drive as you've got to get all the way down to Church, making it a  1.5 kilometer drive. 
    So it's really time to build a new bridge across it now before the yuppies move in and weep about how it'll destroy their view over morning coffee.

The city computer that tells all

There's a little office in the city courthouse that has a special computer that will tell you all sorts of info on people in this city.  

   The door says that only lawyers are allowed to use it but anybody seems welcome and if you can figure out the complicated interface (the semi-babe-licious pregnant clerk will help you with a minimum of irritation) you can get quite a lot of info on your co-citizens who have gotten tickets for speeding or tossing garbage out on the wrong day or various other such misdemeanors. 

   It also has their addresses listed so you can find out where a lot of people live. Somewhere in my pile I have the addresses of where Mom Boucher listed his home, Nick Rizzuto and various other local notables.

     Some people I considered dodgy came up clean, others I've known had a long list of infractions including a male stripper/avowed telemarketing fraudster named Jason M. who had a pretty slick technique of nailing me for untold hundreds of dollars over our acquaintanceship. I'd tell you his trick but you'd be tempted to use it.

   One woman I knew from that same circle had about 20 arrests for various drunkenness-related stuff. 

   It got me thinking about her former boyfriend who is a friend that I've lost touch with, probably now living the life of a marginal.

    He was a timid little guy. He fathered a son with that hardcore alcoholic, she with the rap sheet of 20 arrests/fines. They had another kid, although he wasn’t the father of the second boy, her dubiously claiming that she had been raped whereas it was likely more of a transaction. 

   In 2006 or 2007 they partied all summer in Pigeon Park and lived in the streets, while they left the kids with his aging grandparents. 

     Authorities put their two kids in a foster home. The couple kept drinking and fighting everyday. She pushed him out their apartment window, or maybe he jumped for some drunken reason and he broke his ankle. 

    They did more drunken fighting and he got sent to jail for the brawls. In his absence she started hanging out with another small, talkative addict and they’d smoke crack together. My friend was arrested again while riding on his bicycle, drunk carrying a beer. He was on my way to my place because I promised him $10. 

     They put him in jail several months for the parole violation. Now both of his parents, his mom and stepdad Jimmy, have died and he can see his kids once every two weeks if he can get transport to the west island.

    He had been delivering pizzas for a while but didn't have a licecense and isn't much of a safe bet to drive safely anyway. Last place he was living that I know of was a tiny rooming house where he had to sleep in a sofa with his legs bent to fit.

     When he visits his kids their mom usually simply doesn't come. So tragic, and yet he is still a cheerful guy, very friendly, always laughing. I think he lives down around Tupper street nowadays.

Who is this criminal and what is his legacy?

This person snatched a purse and then hid as a 38-year-old businessman tried to catch him on Sherbrooke in downtown Montreal in 1972.
   He leaped out of the bushes and killed the man. He was apprehended and eventually escaped and was re apprehended.
    Who is he and why does he matter?


Yes we have some correct answers. His name is Kurt Finney. He ran away from home May 10, 1972 in Baltimore and came to Montreal. He was 14. On Sept. 30 he came into town from St. Adele with four other local guys. He said he wanted to snatch a purse and proceeded to take five Valium-10 pills, so could barely walk. He set upon a 58-year-old female victim snatched her purse, although he didn't succeed. An eyewitness came after him and Finney leaped out of the bushes near City Councillors and Sherbrooke, when the man approached Finney stabbed him to death with three wounds to the neck and chest. The man killed was Westmount developer Daniel Rudberg, 38.
    On October 13 Finney escaped from juvenile court on Bellechasse and his name was published in the papers in spite of him being a minor, because apparently public safety trumps youth confidentiality laws. He was recaptured two days later in an apartment on Cremazie but only after his mother made a public plea for him to turn himself in. The four others were also charged in the crime.
  The real legacy, however, is that the terrible tragedy prompted Rudberg's widow to launch an anti-violence initiative called Leave Out Violence (LOVE) that still exists and does good work today.