JJ Harpell - rare foto found

A few months ago I pondered a strange little book of cartoons put out by a local publishing company called JJ Harpell. The artist must have been a survivor of WWII because every page contained drawings mocking Adolf Hitler. This curious and colorful hardcover led me to the story of JJ Harpell publishing company. Harpell was a West Island reformer and innovator. He took on the insurance companies in the 1930s with such vigor that he went to prison. One of his workers was so inspired by his social credit ideas that he started the Michael Journal which still thrives today, or at least did last time I looked. Harpell eventually turned his thriving publishing house over to his workers and the headquarters is now housing bearing his name. Today Harpell's grandson, James Thomas, who lives in small town southern Ontario, sent me this photo of Harpell and his wife Turbett. He has childhood recollections of Harpell giving him five dollars to mow the huge lawn with a massive self propelled stand up mower.

More reasons to stay home

A reader sent us this photo snap of a guy who goes to local nightclubs and strips nude and dances around, much apparently, to the general hilarity of the assembled.

Corner Church and Verdun

The corner of Church and Verdun is pretty awesome. Two great restaurants and a whole lot of people milling about. This building at Church and Verdun was built only around a dozen years ago. So it is fairly new, but some set of circumstances has left the owner in a bad way, apparently he was misled or something ...had his renovations shut down due to the lack of permits...he lives on Cartier street somewhere...anyway.. for some reason what should be a property worth around half a mil is all boarded up to ward of firebugs and vandals..it houses no tenants and yet some Liberal volunteer managed to get to the top to put up a poster.
Here is a scoop... the phone poles on Church street in Verdun will be taken down in December. No digging required, the wires are already in place below the sidewalk. Sometime just before Christmas work crews will simply come and remove these forever, thus making the street a whole lot prettier.

Coolopolis quiz - who, what, where when?

We have correct replies, these photos were taken at Momesso's restaurant, corner Upper Lachine and Girouard in what must have been late 1986, a few months after the team won the Stanley Cup...the top photo is indeed...
..feared pugilist Chris Nilan...
..this is Steve Rooney, a brainy Boston college kid who kicked around the league for a few years but had only a short stint with the Habs...

Chris Chelios, who was traded soon after for Denis Savard, watches his buddy Nilan shoot pool. Chelios bagged Norris trophies, more Cups and is still playing. Savard lasted only a short while longer in the league.

Paolo, Sergio's brother on the left. It's his joint now.Steve Penney, flash in the pan goaltender for the team.

St. Henry graffiti--bad spelling or secret meaning?

View from PdA

New Quiz - what historically important terrorist lived here in 1861?

You might recognize these digs. You've probably walked by it a thousand times. The little blue oval means it's a heritage site. Anybody know what rather fascinating & important historical figure plotted nasty schemes from here for a few years starting around 1861?

Hint: the guy in question is pictured at left. The building in the photo is on Mountain just north of Dorchester. I think you could call him a terrorist but many others would describe him differently.

Answer: Yes we have some correct answers, it is Jefferson Davis, the Confederate leader who plotted much mayhem against the North from Montreal, including the raid on St. Albans and possibly the assasination of President Lincoln.

Coolopolis Montreal quiz - who is this?

This born-and-bred 25 year old anglo Montrealer is legitimately semi-famous on planet earth nowadays. She is a vegetarian, likes to take Caribbean cruises and lives in SoCa (South of the Canal) in beautiful downtown Ville Emard, semi-perpendicular to the ever-alluring Cote St. Paul. Funny how nobody famous ever came out of Cote St. Paul whereas Ville Emard, with far fewer residents, still teems with notables: Gilles Meloche, Mario Lemieux and now this celeb. And no she doesn't sing. Apparently she's going through a divorce, her favourite song is Pull My Hair by the Yin Yang Twins, she smiles all the time and shopz till she dropz. I've never met her but apparently she's a top flight scenster when she's in town (MCs announce her presence, etc). Ten Coolopolis dollars goes to whoever names her first, Coolopolis dollars must be spent at the Coolopolis boutique.

This quiz is over, you guys did terrible! Her name is Mya Lovely. Nobody even came close. Although maybe that's a good thing. This budding film starlet has acted..well..performed in about 25 adult films under the name Mya Lovely. I'd post a link but your boss might see it on the server or your browser history and then take your chair and wheel you straight from your cubicle to the elevator. Mya Lovely's films are strictly not safe to those who want to keep their jobs unless, of course, their jobs are in the porno film biz.

City Hall's bizarre security staff..weirder than fiction

Coolopolis often pokes around City Hall to snoop the archives, check out the notices and so forth. Today I popped in and noticed that the leader of the opposition, Benoit Labonte, has an office in the space that used to be reserved for journalists. I had been in there many times before, once to meet Pierre Bourque who asked me to run as a candidate for his party (I declined). So I approached to knock on the door to see if there was any opposition party representation there. But a blonde female security guard sitting in the hallway ordered me not to approach the door. She told me that I must never knock on that door without an apointment. I abided by her decision but calmly asked her to justify it. The security guard apparently didn't like having to explain her order so she called another security guard and told him that I had been aggressive. I calmly told both of them that I had never been aggressive to anybody and then proceeded to do some research in another room. When I came out, a third security guard was waiting at the door. He had apparently been standing for an hour waiting for me to come out. He continued following me as I did business elsewhere in the building. I couldn't resist but to exit through the door upstairs. I wanted to make my security guard tail follow me up the stairs. At the top of the stairs I finally asked the guard why on earth he was following me. The guard replied that I had pushed the mailroom clerk. I was a bit shocked at the obvious fabrication. I requested to see the security camera, knowing that I hadn't come within 10 feet of the mail delivery clerk, who indeed had been standing by quite amused by the guards getting themselves into an unnecessary lather about me. The security guard conveniently claimed that there was no security camera on the east side entrance area. I left not only annoyed at the ridiculous antics of Montreal City Hall's security force but also bothered by the obvious lies. The security guard's name is Yves Coulombe.

More on the phone poles

An official has confirmed that the phone poles that NDG allowed to have installed above ground last year at Upper Lachine and Wilson stand in violation of city code. The Montreal Urban Plan of 2004 specifically forbids such electrical poles in all new construction. So how did Gescor Construction - owned by the Magi brothers and based right across the street with two mammoth-sized cameras watching its front doors - get permission to install these poles? The answer is that Michael Applebaum's NDG-CDN regime took a special vote to allow the developer to violate the city code and put these monstrosities in. Applebaum's willingness to allow the Magis to build a substandard property in violation of the Urban Plan allowed the developer to save a lot of money. It's extremely rare for a builder to be given such a privilege.

By the way, I have the names of the members of the NDG-CDN CCU, which is the group that can give thumbs up or down to architectural proposals. The CCU meets in private and has no obligation to provide any details of the logic of their decisions.

Update: I spoke with Josiane Wilson of the NDG borough and she says that councillor Marcel Tremblay led the vote to allow the special exemption to allow the above-ground poles on May 1, 2006. The borough flak insists that the borough urban plan allows for above-ground electrical poles but a special vote was required to be passed nonetheless so obviously the local borough plan doesn't count for much. After speaking to many people who live near these buildings I've concluded that they are universally reviled and the best would be for the owners to be compensated and the buildings demolished. Just start again.

The fear in the area is that Applebaum and friends are scheming to put allow more substandard housing in the area, at the corner of St. James and Upper Lachine in an area that's largely green space now. Hopefully residents won't let another one of these happen again. My philosophy: build nice housing because nice housing attracts nice people and nice people make for a nice neighbourhood.

5		Membres réguliers
6		APPLEBAUM, Michael (maire)
7		ACKAOUI, Malaka, (paysagiste)
10		BRASLOFF, Reuben (résidant)
11		CHAGNON, Robert (résidant)
12		COUTU, Geneviève (architecte)
13		DUNSKY, Avrum (résidant)
17		ROULEAU, Marc (urbaniste)
18
19
20		Membres suppléants
22		BOISMENU, Sylvain (résidant)
25		IRIGOYEN, Roxana (résidant)
27		LEMAN, Damien
33		ROTRAND, Marvin (conseiller)

Mtl Olympian becomes Japanese PM

Taro Aso, Japan's longtime foreign minister, was resoundingly elected to become the new PM of Japan. Aso's first foray into representing Japan abroad happened here in Montreal where he competed for his country in the 1976 Olympics as a skeet shooter. He had just inherited his father's cement company and three years later would enter Japan's parliament.

Montreal Project's undying love for US foreign policy controversy...

In Montreal local politics you have the ruling Tremblay party and then you've got the two opposition parties, which are the Vision Montreal (the Pierre Bourque Party without Pierre Bourque) and The Project Montreal Party, which as the name suggests, is the pet project of a Montreal academic named Richard Bergeron. He's obsessed with American foreign policy. Bergeron embraces all sorts of bike paths and windmills but also believes that Bush was behind 911 and that sorta thing that people who wear tinfoil encased metal spagetti collanders on their heads seem to think. The Montreal Project candidate to replace St. Leonard Mayor Frank Zampino today is Livio de Celmo, a guy whose political profile is entirely based on trying to figure out what happened to his brother. Apparently his brother disappeared due to guys who were opposed to the Castro regime. I'm not sure what the story is behind this guy because every time I look it up on the internet the phone rings or there's another distraction, or the electronic monitor makes a blip suggesting that Chimples might finally come out of his coma.Here's an update: Michel Bisonnette of the Tremblay team got 11,450 votes and Di Celmo 309. So not exactly a nailbiter.

Kwebek's Karla KO'd

Possibly the worst-ever female sex criminal in Quebec history has died in prison of cancer, aged 59. Pierrette Anglehart was a full decade older than her boyfriend, in fact she was 39 when he was 28, when they developed a hobby of sniffing cocaine, stealing cars, kidnapping women, torturing them, sexually abusing them. They were finally caught after at least five such episodes when they went too far and killed Rhea Brochu in an Oka cornfield. She was the sister of a MUC police Lieutenant. They both blamed each other when they were nabbed. Brochu was strangled with pantyhose and then killed with a plastic bag over her head. The duo were heavy drinkers and drug users and were known to sexually abuse their victims for 16 hours straight before releasing them. They were found guilty by jury in 1989. She was 5'0" and Frechette 5'7."

Duran Duran not expected to relocate to Mtl

Yesterday in an interview on Montreal radio Andy Taylor of Duran Duran fame (he's considerably less cute now than he was in this photo and was never as pretty as the other Taylor in the band, er, not that I'm really keeping track of other men's cuteness...) .. umm.. where was I? Ok, the host asked him about what it was like to be rich and famous at such a young age. Andy said that being rich is good because it allows you to not have to move to places like Montreal which, banter had revealed, was experiencing a chilly morning.

The host giggled but the rockstar quip revealed a little something about the way celebrities view Montreal, ie: a place you would only consider living if you were broke.

Taylor, other than his wretched sense of humour, seems solid: longtime wife and four kids, which must have required some discipline.

Story which may or may not be true

Story from a possibly unreliable former inside about a downtown strip club whose DJ, a slim franco New Brunswicker of about 27 years old, sadly perished a few weeks ago. The gossip mill has it that the DJ died of HIV/Aids and that the DJ was bisexual and slept with many men, women, anything in between, a collection which includes many of the actual dancers. The dancing girls have been incessantly grieving his passing rather than wondering whether their own medical conditions might have been in..er..affected by the situation.

To our lighted cross: see you in March

If you like the lovely lighted cross on Mount Royal, take a good look at it tonight.

Tomorrow it will be turned off, covered with scaffolding and cloth, sanded, repainted and rewired at the cost of about one million bucks.

The work is slated to take five months.

Quebec men still being turned into women through chemicals in the water

Somewhere in my messy drawer is a 20 year old clipping from the Journal de Montreal which reports that a study done on Quebecers shows that we are the most feminized of all Canadian provinces. They judged this by asking us what our feelings were towards such words as "compassion," "competition," "charity," "motherhood,"" and so forth. Quebecers routinely showed a much higher preference to the words associated with feminine qualities whereas anglo Canada went with the other words.

There is evidence that we're becoming increasingly feminine, for example the radical drop in violent crime is more proof that our testies and their precious juice which makes us the vulgar, hotheaded apes that god meant us to be are somehow being neutralized. So what is the culprit- you ask? It's the estrogen in the water supply. More proof of the contamination of our water system has come out in reports today. Time to ban birth control pills that are poisoning up our bodies. It's either that or add steroids to the water supply.

More about the Magis

Alberino Magi, aka Rino Magi and Antonio Magi, aka Tony Magi, Montreal developers of Gescor Construction, were the subject of an informative article by the Gazette's Paul Cherry after Tony, 48, was shot but not killed while driving his Range Rover on Cavendish. Cherry reports that the Magis "had alleged links" to Vito Rizzuto, top Mtl Mafia boss now in prison.

The developing duo are involved in a lot of controversial stuff around which questions must be asked.

The Catholic Church on St. James West, known as St. Raymonds recently refused to renew the lease with cherished group Women on the Rise. The family-support group, initially known as Black Women on the Rise had been there for eons and supported mothers with young children. The group reluctantly moved to Terrebonne Avenue at the other end of NDG, much to the chagrin of those who knew the organization.

The church kicked them out in order to rent the place out to a drug center which for some reason is being organized by Magi. What experience Magi has with drugs and those who use them is unclear.

The sad news was reported on Coolopolis and has finally have dripped down to the local population which has started a petition to oppose the drug facility. Residents are going door to door within the community asking for signatures on the petition, it's a rare example of division in the monolithic-from-the-outside St. Raymond's Italian community.

The church has discouraged locals from signing and distributing the petition against the Magis. So apparently have the Magis.

A local bakery was among the places which was hosting the petition to oppose the drug facility. Magi, it is said, wasn't too happy about seeing it on the wall. Soon the petition was gone.

It is also possible that Tony Magi is going to be extradited to the States related to issues of phone fraud that took money off old people.

We have already repeatedly mentioned that the Magi's new building in NDG at Upper Lachine and Wilson was accepted by the NDG borough chief Michael Applebaum, who even went vigorously to bat for it, even though it's hideous and juts inches from the sidewalk and also festooned by antiquated throwback electrical poles.

Electrical poles in Montreal... illegal since 1905

I've been developing a story on electrical poles in the city and was surprised to learn that they were banned October 1905. Alas, the bylaw was ignored and rather than put them underground from the start, the city was soon under a cloud of wires overhead.

The wiry sky crisis was somewhat abated when the tramways were axed, leaving a better view of the heavens.

Prior to that the burying of the phone lines was a huge priority. The Electrical Services Commission was established around 1910 to toke responsibility for the work. It was formed of a committee involving electrical officials, the city and phone companies. They called the shots much to the frustration of the mayor who wanted more say for himself.

I called the ESC yesterday and the secretary told me that they do whatever the City and Hydro tell them to do. I think it's a bit more complicated than that but the press flak is on long term sick leave, so it seems that there was nobody else around who could articulate the vision of this thing.

Church Street in Verdun was supposed to have its poles buried last year but the work has yet to begin. I can't seem to get an exact answer as to why. The same street, on the other side of the aqueduct has its electrical lines buried.

People in NDG were annoyed when a new building popped up last year with new ugly telephone poles lining its laneway, which led some people to wonder why the NDG CCU boss and NDG Mayor Michael Applebaum would have allowed a new building to be constructed with electrical power lines overhead rather than buried. I've called a few of the members asking for an explanation and am hoping someone calls me with an answer.

The question of why this development was allowed to go ahead with such an archaic and unattractive feature became even more interesting after the developer was shot down in a hail of bullets following allegations of criminal activity.

Click on some of the images to the left to read old articles on the subject of electrical poles in Montreal.

Goose Village versus Milton Park

Why did the Goose Village area of Point St. Charles get demolished with so little public resistance in 1964 whereas just a few years later the Milton Park area - when threatened with the same fate through the massive La Cite complex project - fought and battled to save their turf?

If you ever wondered why this would be the case, I've got the answer. It's in the form of a 29 page essay written in 1987 for a Master's level course at Concordia.

In case you don't read it, the author concludes that it's largely an issue of demographics. The Goose Village residents were largely recent immigrants from Italy, the Milton Park gang had a lot more radical students in its ranks looking for some adventure. The La Cite was eventually built but the larger project, which would have seen much more demolition, was eventually shelved.

Montreal's book awards - 37 French winners, 1 English winner

For decades the Grand Prix du livre de Montreal gives a cash prize to the Montrealer deemed to have penned the best book that year in English or French. The deadline for being considered is coming up: October 1. If you know of a worthy recent Montreal author who'd like a chance at the $15,000 brass ring here's a link to the form and a list of past winners.

The prize has taken various forms. Early days it was accompanied with an impressive gala. It became a Montreal Urban Community event for a while and even briefly reflected the short-lived megacity. One thing, however, remains constant. The French book always wins.

The only non-francophone winner was David Solway who broke what was judged to be a longrunning anglo lit-ineptitude in 2004. Solway only won after I detailed how an English book had never won the prize not even once, while French books had won 34 straight years in a row. Helen Fotopulos surely had fun explaining the logic behind this. Since Solway won his prize three more French language books have gone on to win the cash prize.

So go ahead and nominate some English books, there's a solid 0.029% change of one of them winning.

David Pristupa's Mtl bikes

An imaginative guy named David Pristupa took these photos of bicycles in Montreal. He has since moved back to Winnipeg. He mailed me these from Manitoba through snail mail. Seems like a waste to leave them sitting in a box. I scanned them and assembled them, rather sloppily.

The secret agenda of Montreal's founding cliques

This painting by Marius Dubois was done in 1984 and put up in Notre Dame Basilica, which is that big church across the street from that touristy Place D'Armes Square in Old Montreal. In Francine Bernier's 2001 work The Templars' Legacy in Montreal, the New Jerusalem, she suggests that it's one of many artifacts that suggests that Montreal's founders had a secret agenda.

Her 351-page published- in - Holland book seems interesting but suffers from some awful writing. If someone were to read it and try to summarize some of her stronger arguments it might open some eyes. Here's two examples from the book, click on them to see them in readable size. Seeing as in this case she's discussing
a work done 24 years ago, someone might consider ringing up the artist and asking him what the idea was behind the work.

Yes! A prog rock frontman from Montreal - 30 years later but so what!

David Benoit, who went to the trouble to front a Montreal-based Yes tribute band Close To the Edge has had his devotion to the prog rock superband rewarded. The real band Yes announced that he's going to sing for them on their upcoming tour. He'll need to get his peroxide bottle out first to match with the other bleach blondies in the band which now consists of only two of the original guys plus hired help.

Here is how I'd like to see an interview with Benoit go:

Q-You're taking the lead in one of the most innovative bands in the past half century, are you nervous to join that band... what are they called again?

A-Yes.

Q-Oh so you're nervous but do you think it's dodgy for a guy who comes from a city without roundabouts to join that band that loves to sing about roundabouts - jeez I keep forgetting their name.

A-Yes.

Q-Oh, so do you think these guys should just shut up and retire - I'm talking about that band whose name I keep forgetting...

A-Yes!

Thanks for the very candid interview Dave! See you on stage!

Montreal Canadiens centennial

Allegedly it is the Montreal Canadiens one hundredth year in existence next year. Lots of fireworks planned. Here's the math: the Habs were sorta, kinda conceived of at a meeting December 2, 1909. Some have argued that the team wasn't actually started from scratch but rather, was transferred here from some tiny Ontario town named Halleybury. I'm not sure of the nuts and bolts of that argument but here's my F-to-E translation of what seems to be the first news report surrounding the possible start of the team.

From this hard to read article.

The formation of a new hockey league, composed of professional clubs is now a done deal. A dozen well known sports figures met last night and threw down the basis of a new association which will include clubs The Wanderers, Renfrew, Halleybury, Cobalt and probably a team of French Canadian players. The meeting was kept as secret as possible but we’ve learned enough details to interest our readers.The meeting was presided over by Fred. C. Strachan and Eddie McCaffertey, acting as secretary also attending were PJ Doran, J. Gardner, R. Boon of the Wanderers. J.A. O'Brien, G.E. Matel and J. G. Barnett of Renfrew, T. Hare of Cobalt and N. Timmons of Halleybury. A representative of an Ottawa club also attended. Questions of the highest importance were discussed but they remain secret. We know however that a deal was struck and a pact was clonclude d and $1,000 will be deposted in guarantee by each club so the league can last three years to come with the founding teams. Toronto is uncertain because of the lack of accommodation for the public but that can be dealt with by turning a part of the Exposition into a skating rink.

Why ain't there baddies on St. Catherine?

We showed you a story about oddballs on St. Catherine in the 50s, here from the same series is another stroll down that same strip by the same author in the same series, this one answers the question - why isn't there much crime on St. Kits?

Thomas Ryan was run over by a truck (driver in the inset of the photo). Ryan, 55, was unlucky but on the other hand a couple of priests were there to usher his soul to heaven, so it wasn't all bad.

Thomas More Institute - give some local drama a whirl

The Theatre Course at the Thomas More Institute has been rolling for something like 60 years and I've been course leader for about seven of 'em. We attend around 18 plays, about half in English and half in French. We meet about once a month at the TMI on Atwater just above Sherbrooke to discuss the works. The plays are at a wide variety of venues and some quite amazing. It's fun, social and stimulating. You can even get university credits for the course. Sometimes we sell out the course but this year we have a couple of extra spots available but you've got to act fast. The course is a blast and a great way to enjoy the winter. It starts soon though. I don't get paid in case you were wondering. Click on the image for the phone number for further info.

Quebec's late sanitoria building boom - miscalculation or conspiracy?

If you like demonic mystery and skulduggery you might wonder why Premier Duplessis spent a massive amount of the provincial budget building new sanitoria to treat tuberculosis when the disease was clearly on the wane. Experts on the Duplessis Orphan scandal suspect that doctors might have been taking advantage of the fact that these facilities were far from the local populations and then using them for human experimentation on orphaned children, as a sort of continuation of the stuff that was done in Nazi Germany. These conspiracy sniffers point out that something similar was done later under Ewan Cameron and MK-Ultra and that postwar Quebec had ties with postwar Germany medical innovators. Here is an article from October 31, 1953 in which Duplessis confesses he might've gone overboard funding some of the new facilities.

Book launch tomorrow downtown, attendance mandatory

If you pass by Paragraffe bookstore tomorrow (ie: Saturday September 11, 2008) around 2 pm you might wonder why Pierce Brosnan is signing books. Then you'll realize it's not Pierce Brosnan, it's a professional imitator. No, it's not that either. It's the fabulous NDG author and failed scenester Paul Bracegirdle who will be launching the first of his trilogy of tweener books. It's quite a thrill ride from what we've heard. We'll be there for sure. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Good article describing the author here by Mike Boone.

Kweesh- Guess that event.

Drapeau tours Montreal....

My brother found this photo in a pile at ABC photo studios a few years back. It's an original shot of Jean Drapeau being given a tour of some construction site during the winter. As JD said, everybody is in full Stalinist mode following the great leader who they secretly revile. This photo fascinates and depresses me.

Observation of the day

The weather has stunk since last November, which is when legendary weather announcer Frank Cavallero was released from the local CTV News. Coincidence? Or something larger?

Memories of horse riding on Mount Royal

Here's a memory from longtime Montreal journalist Christy McCormick of the days when you could rent a horse to ride over the mountain. To read in full form, click here.


As the livery stables on Remembrance Road surfaced, I thought I would add something from my uncompleted memoirs recalling my time on Ridgewood in 1955 when I was 11 years old. I stole regularly [from parents] but did not spend much, saving money for an occasional trip to the mountain livery stables where $4 would buy a two-hour ride

When I got to the foot of Remem- brance Road that fateful day with my $4 dollars I was shown a horse called Rick. We didn't like each other. He snorted and jerked his head away twice refusing to let me hold his halter. I was about to take my $4 home, or wait for another horse to come in, but the rare availability of the two or three western saddles the stable changed my mind.

Rick and I followed other more suitably attired riders in the britches, hacking jackets and handsome boots. I was wearing corduroy trousers, and an Eisenhower jacket over a sweater and my usual black oxfords. Some of the mounts were fine animals and it was clear that the riders owned them. Horse wagons stood parked along the roadside at the end of their trips from country estates. Their horses were housed for the weekend at the livery stable, which was a ramshackle set of interlocking red sheds with rows of stalls inside, a big tack room and holes in the ceiling through which hay could be dropped from the loft and pitch forked into bins. Always the smell of horseshit and the sound of running water as the hose kept pouring out a stream that moved from trough to trough and another kept the open drains draining. There was a paddock to one side,.with scarred white horse fencing around it.

I noticed the stable hand looking more at Rick than me. I congratulated myself for not going out with him unless I had a western saddle where you have a stable seat and less vulnerable to a horse's mood. You must show them who's boss or the next thing you know, you’ll be scraped off on a tree or dumped on the ground. Horses can be right bastards - just like people.

So we set out, as always looking for that stretch of open meadow without cops, picnickers and finger wagging women who tell. It was a warm autumn afternoon about 2:30 and Remembrance Road was spotted with a few riders in small groups and a few clumps of pedestrians. The odd car came and went along the road with the mountain a canopy of reds, russets and golds. Cars moved gingerly around the people and animals. Fifty years later, it became boulevard Camilien Houde, who was still mayor at the time of this ride. Remembrance Road later became a typical urban highway with cars streaming down at high speed over the very site of the old stable.

Beaver Lake, which became a ice rink in winter, was then a duck pond where birds of all sorts competed for official rations provided by the city with seagulls and spunky sparrows grabbing as much as they could over the protesting ducks squawking madly at the sight of them. But the glistening white ducks were amply fed by families gathered on benches along the shoreline. The ducks have long disappeared with the horses on the mountain. The horses were regarded as too dangerous and too English, and a thoroughly French fleet of plastic paddleboats in gaudy colours arrived to replace the ducks. Beyond Beaver lake lay the forested trails through which I rode through the trees in search of an empty meadow.

I kicked Rick into a trot, something he hardly accomplished then dropped back into a walk again. I kicked him again and got no reaction at all. That's when I let him have a slash of the thorn branch.

Electrified, he took off like a shot and off we went on a glorious split-assed charge of the Union Brigade at Waterloo. Then he bucked like a demon. I survived one or two, but was soon flying headlong forward over his head, landing on my arm. Recovering from the shock of that, it soon began to throb in deep pain. Rick stood there foaming at the mouth, but he did nothing but stare defiantly. A moment later, a man came up at the gallop "You okay, lad," called a man.

"My arm really hurts, Sir," I said, as he came riding up. A tweedy mounted woman joined us and dismounted. She wore a green scarf and a Donegal hat, khaki riding britches and like him, gleaming brown boots, modestly spurred.

"There, there, let's look at that," she said, her commanding Westmount tone matching his.

Sadly, I could also hear more hoof beats and soon the voice of a French Canadian policeman. Looking painfully around I could see the golden legs of his palomino. I was beyond caring with my mind focused on the deep pain in my arm and the bright green of the grass stain that marred the shine on the lady's boot.

"He go too fast -- trop vite!" said the cop, in a way that meant he planned to lay a charge and ban me from the mountain forever.

No, Constable," the man said crisply. "That animal is ill. He's had a fit. I've seen it before. Look at his mouth."

"Non, monsieur. I see dat before too. Trop vite!"

"Not at all. Look at that animal. It had a fit. Look at the lathering."

The woman was feeling my arm expertly now. "John, this boy has broken his arm," she said, in that crisp nursing sister way. "He must go to the hospital immediately."

That ended the legal debate. "Put him here," said the policeman in a complete change of mood, and the man swiftly dismounted, and together with the woman, hoisted me on the policeman's horse in front of him, side saddle.

"Now hang on, lad. I'll be right beside you -- it's smooth at a gallop, but I don't expect you know that, do you?" he said with a wink.

And effortlessly swinging into is own saddle, with the woman saying she would take the "poor animal" back to the stable, we set off at an easy lope towards the police station, which when I saw it last, was a city museum that seemed permanently closed. What fun the ride would have been if it weren't for the pain. The man's magnificent chesnut hunter, stayed exactly a head behind the policeman's palomino. Whether the policeman's horse moved right or left, there was never a gap between us that was not the same as it had always been. The police horse was a smooth galloper. If it weren’t for the pain, it would have been wonderful with the sound of hoofs beating. That was the thrill of the hunt, I have never experienced.

It wasn't 10 minutes before I was bundled off into a police car, and with siren's wailing swept down Remembrance Road, which was not pretty much empty of horses by this time. My father was summoned, and turned out to be not far away at an old neighbour's apartment on Ridgewood, probably showing off his new pride and joy, the new Jaguar XK140 he had just bought. I didn't know it at the time, but he was racing behind the police car having picked it up when it came down the hill into Cote des Neiges as we headed for the Montreal General Hospital downtown.

My father had always been there for my accidents and tended to think this his chief fatherly role. He took me to the hospital when I was five, having split my knee open on a licence plate hanging from the handlebars of my trike. I was going down the hill and my knee came up with force and dangling plate cut deep above the knee, which gave me four stitches. I had already had six stitches over my eye when I broke out of my crib and landed on a table corner when I was six months, and the suffered another three stitches in my finger when a penknife closed on it while I was trying to carve my name in a tree. "You've got more stitches than a old boot," he said cheerfully as I limped back from hospital after the penknife accident.

But this time, there were no stitches and after pulling and yanking my arm excruciatingly, and waiting for Xrays forever, with me wondering why didn't they have the same thing the shoe shores had. You never had to wait for the picture there. It seemed weird that a little shoe shop would have something that a big new hospital, which the Montreal General was at the time, didn't have.

But apart from a few perfunctory remarks, my father appeared little concerned about me, so thrilled was he about his terrific ride and the super performance of his new Jag. Following the police car in city traffic was like my gallop, I thought. "You should have seen her corner at McGregor. We were doing 90 before I came into that - nearly a 90 degree turn!. Boy does she corner! What a lovely machine!" he said, marveling at his good judgment in choosing a Jag.

The most...uh..original candidate in the upcoming byelection...

Andy Wattie's by-election campaign literature suggests that the world's population be reduced in this way:

"One out of about fifty extended family members would be called upon to be the one each extended family would feel would be best suited to represent its members in the human gene pool. Females would have on averge two children but would stay at home with their parents so as to discourage further procreation. This process would eventually become a world-wide phenomenon."

He also suggests that the world be divided into 20 regions with Cyprus being the world's capital and Winnipeg as the capital for this area.

You go Andy! Keep those great ideas coming!

Quiz - identify this new Montreal logo and then slag it.

Answer: it is indeed, as somebody noted, the icon for our franchise in the ice cricket league. Err. Kidding. Really. Not. Yes. Not. Yes I am. Okay, it is , in truth, the little thingy for the Montreal Sasquatch of the PBL basketball league, which is starting here this fall, to give competition to the Matrix. They're going to fight for all 11 paying basketball fans here in Montreal. Meanwhile we still have no baseball team. The owner is a guy named Real from Quebec City. By the way, you can actually play on the Matrix if you can pass the tryouts September 19-21. You have to pay them $100 for the honour of being evaluated.

Hu Zat?

Still stumped? Hint: he moved here in '68 and left town (St. Lazare, actually) five or six years ago. Yes: it's Jim "Gentleman Jim" Fanning, member of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. Forty years ago, he was appointed general manager of the Montreal Expos. A former catcher with the Chicago Cubs, Fanning also served stints as the on-field manager with the Expos, taking the 'Spos to their only playoffs appearance in 1981.

How the scorer celebrated the most historic goal in Montreal soccer history

Montreal Impact scorer Joey Gjertsen potted the goal that put our team past the Nicaraguan squad for the NA version of the Champions' League. Just another ho-hum moment in the exciting life of Mr. Gjertsen apparently. Consider this to be proof of the further erosion of the art of fist pumping, which was taken to new depths last year when Anna Ivanovic pioneered the mini-pump.

Why those cameras are O.K.

Some families are lucky enough to have a natural conciliator -- someone who can step between exasperated parents and their exasperating kids. Christine Malo, the eldest of four, played that role in her family.
The 17-year-old lived her life to the fullest, riding horses, speaking two languages and learning a third. She stepped up to the plate at her school, the Cegep of Vieux Montreal, where she was a member of the welcoming committee.
Late most evenings, this outgoing Outremont girl with the sparkle in her eyes used to enjoy sitting on the edge of her mother's bed, talking about the people met that day, the things she did, the experiences she went through.
But one one September night, she experienced something she would never recount, but which her mother would never forget.
On her way home after an evening meeting of her cegep welcoming committee, she happened across three punks stalking the nearby metro station. They decided that her handbag was something that would enhance their perfect day.
Maybe it was all that sangria in the park, but they pulled off a sloppy job. Christine went down in the bag snatch, her head slamming the pavement.
Christine Malo died in hospital forty years ago this week.

The Axe: Satan satisfied with Quebec Government

Between January 1922 and September 1925 Montrealer John Roberts wrote and published an eccentric little muckracking anti-corruption paper called The Axe, which has been scanned and put online at the provincial library site. Roberts was in constant trouble for his efforts and served jail time in November 1924 after offering a $5,000 reward for information concerning a murder. The jailing stirred enough interest to put him onto a speaking tour. Roberts railed against bookies, prostitution, hypocritical politicians, big banks. He had loads of vague little innuendo, such as the little bit pictured at left.

Some of his crusades were sensible, such as his objection to the fact that Canadian women who marry immigrants lose their Canadian citizenship, or so he said.

The paper eventually disappeared but Roberts' son became a Montreal journalist, as did his son Leslie Roberts. Then Leslie Roberts Jr. (the great grandson of the Axe founder) became a TV news figure here in Montreal for a long time before moving to Toronto where he hosts the Toronto Global News. Roberts has a brother who edits the Toronto section of the National Post.

Montreal...duh..we are stoopit!

According to a study done for MacLeans magazine, Montreal is jam packed with idiots.

Our score of 71 - and no, Coolopolis doesn't know the methodology - was amongst the worst of any city in the country.

Ottawa, Victoria and Calgary ranked around 93, tops in the country. But points are not awarded for fashion. Just look at their clothes, really!

Only Sherbrooke, 3 Rivers and Chicoutimi were dumber than Montreal. Hey at least we're smarter than some places.

These results are mildly surprising because Montreal supposedly has the highest proportion of university students of any city in North America.

We were still smart enough to get rid of Celine Dion. Garou too.

News of our reduced mental stature might seem depressing but in fact, it's good news. If you live in Montreal and you can read this it probably means that you're smarter than your neighbour so you'll have the edge over him. You can manipulate him into painting your fence by pretending that it's fun, that sort of thing.

I once spoke to a Montreal businessman after he rented out space under the expressway for a parking lot. Brilliant and simple yet nobody had thought of doing this. He immediately started cashing in to some easy money. When asked why nobody else had this idea previously: "All the smart Jews moved to Toronto."

Our rankings in culture were also dismal.

We have museums but we rarely go. Thus we're also less cultured than other places. 29 percent of us go to such joints while 53 of Calgarians visit such places. Maybe we're too busy going to nightclubs, hanging out on groovy terraces, reading brilliant website drivel and so forth. Right?

Cheap houses in Montreal North

Remember when Coolopolis told you that you couldn't buy even the cheapest shack in Montreal for under $200 k? Well we were wrong. Or maybe we weren't but... it's not the case right now. Come up to Montreal North and find a wide selection of homes with stickers under that price.

Unfortunately the area has recently come to be seen as a sort of local Compton, thanks to images of rioting up there. The riot was pretty small but the images of looters is enough to scare out the would be buyers.

Part of that price erosion is due to the sharp colour images of the angry rioters looting stores in the area. These shots were featured on the police website. The police union says that they received orders from the top not to intervene in the looting. Instead, the brass allowed them to loot all they wanted and then put the camera images up on their website. The result was that those who claim to have some sort of gripe against the police are left with these images undermining their credibility.

The disruptions won't help their home values. We probably won't have any Detroit style houses for $4,000 but prices surely aren't going up in that area.

One thing I can tell those people in Montreal North who feel that Old Bill is overzealous: police do not patrol randomly. They respond to complaints from residents who complain about things they see and don't like.

If the police arrest a kid smoking a joint on the street, it's because the neighbours have phoned to complain. So it's not the police behind the policing, it's the people looking out the window and walking by. Policing is dictated by the community, a community defined - in this case - by geographical proximity.

Ear amputation at the Forum!

Recent obits of Killer Kowalski have focused on an incident that occured in Montreal at the Forum Oct. 15, 1952. In a bizarre wrestling accident in front of 12,000, Kowalski ripped the ear off Yukon Eric, pictured above, immediatley after being earcapitated.

Kowalski visited Yukon in the hospital afterwards and the two tough guys shared a laugh. But word got out that Kowalski had derisively laughed about the damage he did and thus earned him the nickname Killer. The 6'7" giant laid a whupping on his next opponent as well.

Wrestling promoters warned that women in attendance should not sit in the front row of Kowalski matches.

My dad once boasted how he filled the Forum as a promo guy by telling the newspapers that a certain upcoming wrestler was a fugitive from the police. Whoop di freaken do. What's news in that? Who isn't these days? Anyway that would have been a few years prior to this.

Eric Holmback, who neither smoked nor drank, killed himself in Georgia in January 1965.