"Yeah, the Jews. Let's do something," adds jobless Liberal Party director.
"Can't compete with that cheap country labour," quips shoemaker.
"A job? I might as well dig for gold in the basement," unemployed sign-painter figures.
Employment is manic-depressive, thinks chap.
"Reorganization sunk my job," offers idle driver.
If the French-Canadian guy in the middle looks penned in -- it's because he is, by the two officers at a Peel Street armory. This picture of a drafted soldier was taken a few days after the January, 1918, introduction of conscription in Canada. Conscription is the draft in plainspeak. There were many superb French-speaking soldiers among the Canadian forces in World War I, but there were many intricate historical reasons why conscription never caught on in Quebec. It wasn't too popular in the rest of the country, either, and the whole mismanaged mess basically ruined the Conservative Party for the next five decades.
If you know of a scooter that is higher than this tenth-storey job at Addington and Sherbrooke, we'll stand corrected, and you'l be the smarty pants.Answertime: You scored in comments again. The Champlain Bridge was completed 30 years after prohibition. So the only way to cross there during prohibition would have been in an amphibious car. As for the "strip clubs," there were none, per se. Maybe a bit of tame Burlesque, but no chrome poles, no table dances, no danse a dix.
Martin Picard of the Au Pied de Cochon on Duluth just east of St Denis gets much love in an important essay about the joy of unprocessed meat in the New Yorker. You've got to get through the first 2,000 or so words to get to his section but it's worth the wait. Picard recommends you get your chickens from this guy and your pork from this guy. Sez Picard in his book on the joy of meat: "Whether you uproot a carrot and bite into it, or slaughter a deer and cut it into steaks it should be remembered that each effort to procure food is inherently tinged with violence: it is the passage from life to death, and back again towards life."
Elisha Cuthbert, from 24. We like. Yep. She's from Montreal (although she's also from a buncha other places) and says she wants one day to move back to the burg so she can frolic on the Main with Kiefer Sutherland. A TV gossip program announced tonight that she's still single after breaking up with NY Ranger hockeyer Sean Avery but another source suggested that she's actually going steady with Mtl hulking D-man Mike Komisarek. We'd tell you more but the buzzy discussion thread that Chimples got this story was deleted before we could read it.
Sorry to report that Frank Cavallaro has been voted off Pulse News, the weather reporter's contract ain't being renewed, we'll miss the ol' sunofagun.
La Metamorphose at Theatre Prospero on Ontario runs until Dec 8 and is a less oppressive $20 although you might blow some cash at one of the many inviting pubs nearby, including the floozyriffic Cheval Blanc. This one features five thespians, none overwhelmingly charismatic & there's not much dialogue - thankfully because they've chosen to adopt some of those foreign accents which make it real hard to follow the words in French. Some small-scale spectacular stage stuff goes on, including Gregor getting yanked up by a pulley into a bit lampshade above the stage. A few great grotesque moments make this play a ball of existentially depressing fun, try to sit up close in the spit zone if possible (seats are assigned so you'll have to be creative fast cuz there's no intermission).
The Syringa Tree. The Centaur. This tree must be trimmed, or chopped. But hey if you want to study a woman frantically babbling about god knows what in a series of annoying South African accents for far too long check this one out before it leaves on December 2. I hated it but many others found it deeply enjoyable. Those people were women.
Pratt of Poupart Chatigny of Des Erables and Gadbois of St Timothy were asked in a newspaper streeter 75 years ago (6 Nov 1932) whether they read their wives' mail.
They all denied it. They're either liars or wimps. 
Pratt comes off as particularly sanctimonious, blathering about unlikely scenarios in which the woman would get her mail elsewhere, leading the husband to jealousy and the destruction of their mutual happiness. Sheesh. What a loudmouth.
squeezes that little kid's hand, a child who is suffering from infantile creeping alopecia as evidenced by her bandana hiding rampant hair loss. Chimples got a chuckle out of this shot, and that's all that matters in his time of doped up convalecense.
The Dominion Bank opened its second Montreal branch 100 years ago today in the Blumenthal Building. They stayed open until 11 p.m. Saturday nights, a most convenient time for johns and hookers. The Blumenthal is boarded up now but don't worry. It's protected by the same heritage designation that is currently saving the crumbling Seville Theatre. The Dominion Bank merged with the Bank of Toronto and the happily married couple still do business next door in the building at St. Catherine and Bleury (below), completed in 1927 by one of Canada's most prominent architects, John McIntosh Lyle. Lyle, who was schooled at Yale and L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, was one of the earliest North American proponents of the Beaux Art architectural style. Lyle's other designs include the Royal Alexandra Theatre and a good part of Union Station, both in Toronto, where he settled down. (Pictures courtesy of imtl.org)
Here's news about opening day, 1907. Clickum-seeum: 
There shouldn't be slush in November. It's just not right. Here's a unique meteoroligical cocktail of leaves'n'slush united in one great unit.
The MUHC English hospital system recently popped up two big billboards at the south side of the Glen Yards.
Barely a word of English on either sign. Not bad for an English hospital in an English speaking area. English, apparently just isn't good enough for them.
In the late 80s the city went to considerable effort to build a lovely Terry Fox Park along the St. James street cliff. Flanking the green space however is this incredibly hideous used car lot that happens to never be open. We say it should be bought up and greened over and the park should be extended west.
The owners of this lovely old Victorian building on St. James don't much care about anything except the parking behind the joint. Directly across the street on St. James once stood a gorgeous Brodie Farm mansion that the city had a gentleman's agreement to turn into a library when they bought Oxford Park from the Brodie clan for $75,000 in 1949. The city bureaucrat Claude Robillard sneakily went and demolished the lovely building. We think this one shouldn't suffer the same fate. This should become a protected heritage building.
The St. Raymond's Church has installed tempos at their entrance. We know a lot of old people go to this church and could use some safe traction underfoot but this is going too far. God, or at least Eric Clapton, standing in for God, weeps.
The construction site at Girouard and St James is fast turning into a real building. Here is what it's slated to look like when finished. It's the extension of the JE Hangar building. They make artificial prostheses for those needing new limbs.
A planner from the Turcot Yards renovation project tried to sneak into the plans a small detail that would totally screw up all traffic in the West End. He proposed that this entrance to highway 20 be demolished and not replaced. So they tried to just slide it by the residents of NDG by holding public hearings in Lowerland (St. Henri, etc) but no meeting in NDG, even though it would be greatly impacted by this plan to deteriorate their access to downtown. FoC (Friend of Coolopolis) Peter McQueen persuaded the Turcot Yard pencilnecks to hold an additional meeting and the planners got blasted for even thinking about this. They left promising to reconsider their bad plans which also include the bad idea of moving highway 20 to the bottom of the cliff.
Housing activists constantly argue in favour of a mixite, poor folk housing put in as a part of shiny new developments. And they generally get their way. So if they believe in such a mix, then it should also apply to the existing poor people housing. So we propose that 30 percent of these units on St. James be poshified for rich people (although for the sake of historical accuracy, these somewhat regrettable projects are not, in fact, government subsidized and we hope they never will be).
Sympathies to the family of Antonio Lamer, a Montreal mob lawyer who made an unlikely rise to the top job of Canada's Supreme Court. As a kid growing up at 3446 Iberville his lawyer father would pull him out of school to attend trials and the lad became friendly with the old guard of the local law establishment. When he became a lawyer he slugged it out for business and was instrumental in the abolition of the death penalty in a celebrated case involving the Dubois brothers, although he, characteristically gave credit for the anti-death penalty to a fellow lawyer, involved in the Conservative Party (Lamer was a Liberal) who convinced Diefenbaker to his views. Unlike other mob lawyers Lamer never personally associated with mobsters, if they wanted to meet up, they'd have to come to his office during office hours. In 1961 he fought an extortion ring of the Lower Main that would see you get beaten up if you didn't give a slice of your paycheque to local toughs. Once he left that world it was to the lofty heights of judge-dom and he never looked back. Lamer was the antithesis of the big city gumshoe lawyer, he spoke in a folksy, sing-song voice and seemed easily shocked. Will be sadly missed.
According to the MTL based Swedish poet Conga (hot chick in foto) this grisly squirrel corpse is one of 
many discovered on Gilford Street. The squirrel appears to have suffered a painful death. It has plenty of mouth foam. It was either poisoned, suffered a disease or died while preparing a particularly lively presentation for the Commission for Reasonable Squirrel Accommodation. So now this leggy Swede is spearheading a one-woman team of investigators trying to solve the Montreal quirrel (sic - yep she calls 'em quirrels) crisis.
In June 1974, a boy from Ville St. Pierre known only as Stephane B., along with a friend, pranked some adults by burying a mannequin in the woods near his home and pretending to his parents that their dog had found a dead body while they were walking him in the woods. 
Lou Tec has a short lease and is resigned to an eventual demolition. The business has started looking elsewhere for another location.
The warehouse on the right has the impression that they're staying.
Sam Croitori of Century 21 tells me that it's an awkward time to try to rent out spaces in this warehouse on Ann below Ottawa because "it's all up in the air." He says the same owner owns the whole block and still doesn't know what the future will hold.
Mr. Julian has owned this engine repair shop since 1994. He would be okay with selling. "The city came around and said what they want to do and I'm not against it. This building is old." They haven't talked turkey yet. He'd like to stay downtown because he fixes marine engines.
The giant Entreposage Domestik sits beyond the eastern limits of the planned project. "We're staying," they tell Coolopolis.
This bike repair shop on Murray below Ottawa recently inked a two year lease, so he'll have to be paid off if owner wants him out before the end of 2009.
Murray north of Ottawa is key, as it contains about 15 apartment units. Claude Amesse purchased it from McConnell the plumber a couple of years ago for about $750,000. Amesse won an architecture award for the job he did on this corner and has been pouring cash into poncifying it with new doors and windows, so the city might have a hard time making him an offer he can't refuse.
Maurice has worked for the same owner at the storage warehouse for 26 years. He says that talks between his boss (the owner) and the city haven't really been specific but he thinks it's "inevitable" that the building will go.
Highly doubt that they'd be stupid enough to touch this landmark on Mountain. Nobody answered at the photo studio and the guy we know upstairs has moved to PEI.
Golden Metal on Mountain has no news but it would be hard to imagine that this place wouldn't be the first to go. It was opened by a guy named Goldman during the last great war and about 30 years ago its current owner Gingras took over.
The area west of Mountain contains little noteworthy except for a series of warehouses and an extremely well-attended dog run.
A rare bit of housing west of Mountain in the Griff. Nice door anyway.
Urban political maverick Jeremy Searle falls squarely in the category of WNTL (What's not to like?). His contribution to Montreal politics began when he launched bus tours of the city's architectural mismanagement. He begame a popular city councillor for Loyola and was on the Executive Committee for a few years before having a falling out with Michael Applebaum and Tremblay. He ran for borough mayor last time round but didn't get voted in.
We've been trying to figure out this big announced remaking of Griffintown by a Quebec City company whose website is still under construction. (How are you going to do a $1.3 billion project when you can't even do a $143 website?) The idea is to put some moneymaking stuff down in this historical district and toss in the usual guilt payments to the poor in the form of shitbox aka affordable housing. Of course they'll try to demolish and evict many current tenants quite happily living in the area now in order to accomodate the usual mix of big-promising developers and frothing-at-the-mouth socialist housing entitlement set. Looking at the newly released document leaves many questions unanswered about what gets demolished and what doesn't. There's promises to build a new street, covered walkways, a tramway, a movie theatre, and an alien launching pad for the Raelians (we added that last one in, but it's about as likely as some of the others). Some at Coolopolis Towers suspect that this will end badly, that they'll kick people out and the developers will run out of money as they always do and leave everybody miserable and the place looking like Dresden in 1946, sorta like what happened in the Overdale affair. We'll have a look at the plans again tomorrow to see if we can figure out what is slated to be demolished and what isn't. 
The half-green circles indicate that those buildings on Mountain won't be torn down.
This pic of the legendary Aussie Whiting (left) was sent to Coolopolis Towers by Harold Rosenberg, (right), a photosnapper with a larger-than-life status as well, whose accomplishments include several decades taking photos of crime scenes for our local constabulary. 
They say that all the great artists are mentally imbalanced, but are the mentally imbalanced all great artists? Here's artwork on the walls of Montreal's Pinel Institute for the Criminally Insane, a place where they send you when you attack your mom with 8 inch scissors. There's a classic Maxime Robitaille on the left plus some spooky images done by other inmates/patients, including a teddy bear at the end. Do we have any bids?
Chimples has been in the hospital a lot lately so we haven't been so productive here at Coolopolis Towers. He suffered a bit of a shock when we tried to place a TTBI (Time Travel Brain Implant) device into his slot last week. His poor ticker was a mess and had to be replaced by a human heart. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission's investigation into the Absolute PokerSo stay tuned.
situation is active and on-going. The Commission's agents, Gaming
Associates, are in the process of finalizing its audit of AP's operations
and will be submitting a report to the Commission of its findings. The
Commission will review this report and decide the appropriate course of
action. To avoid the possibility of jeopardizing its investigation, the
Commission will not comment on this matter until such time as it has reached
a decision. The Commission expects to receive a final copy of the audit
report by December 7, 2007.
David Montour
Chairman
Kahnawake Gaming Commission
(450) 635-1076
Night Patrol, a 10 member clan that handled the case and all overnight cases until they were disbanded in 1979 after beating up some Dubois brothers. Cinq-Mars was immortalized in Trevor Ferguson's City of Ice. He was also a legendary WWII vet and is still apparently alive, aged around 87. Leduc was shot while peeling onions with his wife in Laval December 2, 1984 (see comments). He was killed by a guy hiding on the balcony. He was 50. West Island resident Bob Menard was another member of the Night Patrol. They could, at times, be extremely brutal.
One of these practitioners of the local skin trade is, in fact, (dramatic drumroll please)..not a WOMAN! Can you guess which one it is?
Mickey King -- "Queen of the Trapeze Artists" -- starred in the Gay Paradise show, opening 65 years ago this week at Saul Schnapp's Roxy Funhouse, 1214 St. Lawrence Boulevard.
As they were prying apart the floorboards at 640 Notre Dame St. East back in 1907, a team of demolition workers stumbled across the carefully hidden tools of a counterfeiter's atelier -- plus a couple of hundred smackers worth of phoney metal cash. 
To be precise, the three petroleum tanks seen in the lower portion of this satellite picture would have been in its backyard. The house was ripped down after the Canadian Pacific Railway purchased it and neighbouring properties for development. 
Here's the story as broken by La Patrie in Nov. 1907:
An entire workshop for counterfeiters
As they demolish a house at 640 Notre Dame Street East, workers make an unexpected discovery between two boards on the third floor
A quantity of counterfeit 50-cent and 25-cent coins
La Patrie; Friday 15 November 1907; Front page
Police were advised yesterday afternoon that a number of workers employed by Lajeunesse and Co. to disassemble and demolish buildings located on the south side of Notre Dame Street East, an area that has been purchased by the Canadian Pacific Railway, were surprised to discover between two boards in the house bearing the address 640 East, all of the equipment required by counterfeiters and about $200 in false 50- and 25-cent coins.
One of the employees of Lajeunesse and Co. -- the one who first made the discovery -- presented to a representative of la Patrie the items which our artist reproduces here.
So where do these counterfeiting tools come from?
After investigations by reporters of La Patrie, it turns out that seven or eight years ago, the Welsh brothers -- who have been condemned for making false coins in a house on Longue Pointe -- lived on the floor of the building in which were found the items and false coins that we here illustrate. It is almost certain that they are the culprits who concealed these counterfeiting tools. Their confinement in prison has prevented them from returning to remove these items.
The room is also the place where the famous Dan Sheehan and a woman of loose morals lived 13 or 14 years ago. Sheehan was then a dreaded member and leader of the famous Black Horse gang. Detective L.G. Lapointe, who was formerly in charge of the district, recalls very clearly how much trouble Sheehan gave him at the time.
This afternoon, La Patrie returned the items found yesterday into the hands of the police.
This is our kind of Dawson shooting -- shooting peaceful pictures, that is. This cute, furry panhandler is one of the darker squirrels that have been giving the grey guys a run for their acorns. (Photographed 28 Oct. through a fence at Dawson College.) May the better rodent win!
The intersection of Mill and Bridge is a flat place, but the battle to remember fallen Goose Village boys here is uphill all the way. 
Who is this leading international expert and local academic? Hint 1: the proliferating industry he kick-started with an influential 1984 book, mixes psychology with architecture. Hint 2: Montreal's Underground City is badly in need of his services.
Tattoo parlours weren't big in old thyme Montreal. From 1959 to 1970 at least, there was only one place in town. It was on the lower Main and it closed in early 1970. The prof inked 100,000 skins in 35 years, including many women who would get their boyfriends' names tatooeed, but there was no erasing them. He'd have to think up an imaginative motif to hide the name when the love soured.I don't know if it's movies, or biker gangs, but young people have rediscovered tatoos. After the movie The Rose Tattoo came out with Anna Magnani, about 15 young women came to get the same rose tattoo. Nowadays young people want more violent motifs, warriors, Nazi eagles, death skulls, daggers, while just a few years ago they were getting crosses and images of Christ or tributes to their moms. Right now the most popular are the cobra head and the German helmet, just like the ones I did on my friends arms in the 22nd regiment during the war, I think even the Germans had them too."
Soldier of the day. Walter Leja. Died 1992. Suffered massive injury May 1963 defusing a bomb planted by barbaric terrorist separatists at Landsdown at Westmount Avenue. Rocky Leja. Great Canadian.
Clue: He doesn't have that hair issue problem anymore. He's got a few bucks stashed away. He was thirty when this picture was taken at a celebrity hockey tournament in Ville St. Laurent in 1972. His future wife, who was born about four years before this snap was shot, well ... you know her too.
But he was also a star in his own right, back in the sixties, as a mamber of the Baronets -- a pop band billed as "Quebec's Beatles." That's him on the left.
An actual conversation from atop Coolopolis Towers. 
PYT Jihane Chuccri, the lovely Miss Exotika 2006 says that
she's not making a big deal of it or nuthin, but the prizes she sez she was promised for winning the title 12 months ago never materialized ie: a trip to New York and/or Florida to take part in a larger contest as well as a $1,000 cash prize. "I'm disappointed," she says. Nonetheless she's up in Quebec City doing a degree in Mathematics and working part time. She's headed for the top with or without youze.
You won't find this east-end baby listed on the MLS. How come?
Answer time: We had a couple of good stabs at the answer, including one identifying this bunker's past owner. This Rock Machine clubhouse, which stood at Huron and Bordeaux Sts., was seized by the provincial government using federal proceeds-of-crime legislation. Montreal cops shut it down in 1997, but that didn't stop people from trying to burn it down on several occasions. Coolopois photographed it back in '99.
Lawyer Germain Champagne is still kicking around. But he'll never top his 1975 feat which saw him persuade a judge to legalize stripping in Montreal which led to photo ops like this.
June 18, 1975, chilly polcor winds blew against Verdun-bred Canada Post boss Bryce Mackasey, as this lucious and lovely ad caused a phony furore amongst the intolerant. The post office paid $700 for the print ad in The Byliner, a magazine run by the Toronto Press Club. The print beneath read: "We're not stringing you 
along, use postal codes, you'll thing our thong, don't be cheeky, you've all got 'em, please include them on the bottom." Mackasey (pictured at left) apologized even though the year prior the post office had run an ad showing two bare bottomed women running up Bay Street, "streaking to use the postal code." In the same edition Pierre Trudeau ran an ad with a topless woman but seems to have avoided scandal. The 700-member Toronto Press Club had started allowing female members the year prior. Director Peter Marucci passed blame on graphic designer Peter English who no doubt blamed his neighbour's dog in turn.
Who is that woman above?
they're in French so the conspiracy industry hasn't really caught onto his ideas. He cites Lucien Rivard, 
Willie Obront, and a number of 60s era Montreal crimelords as potentially being in on the action. He raises suspicion about 
local lawyer Louis Mortimer Bloomfield (pictured) whose letters have been sealed by the national archives because - the theory has it - they connect him to the murder of Kennedy. 
It is claimed that
Who here in this room can tell us where this sign stood? Its message changed often but this one came out perennially when it got most beautiful in the summertime. It stood on Sherbrooke Street in downtown Montreal before suffering a sad fate at the hands of a sick, sick person.
