Weird fat guy

Fattie in the window at Duluth and St. Lawrence SW corner. Arty, sure, but he's still buggin the neighbours in the HȳpsterZön.

The newest city land scandal explained, sorta.

The wind is blowing much warmer for Benoit Labonte, Opposition Leader and presumptive Mayoral Candidate. When he quit the Executive Committee to get into opposition last year - mainly because Mayor Tremblay wanted to take over responsibility of Labonte's downtown Ville Marie borough - Labonte spent time in obscurity, known best for his incredible likeness to Fred Flintstone, the name derisively pinned on him by his former Tremblay party mates. But the recent scandal involving much-rewarded Tremblay loyalist Martial Fillion keeps blowing up in Labonte's favour. Fillion, who enjoys an occasional social drink, had previously worked for Tremblay in provincial politics and then became Mayor Tremblay's chief of staff in Montreal.

When Tremblay was critized for having 4 times the number of political aides than his predecessor Pierre Bourque, Fillion axed 10 of 'em, leaving 55 on the p-roll. Fillion was then switched over to the city's public housing unit, the SHDM. It was merged with another bureaucratic structure, against provincial rules.

Enter developer Frank Catania, who has alleged ties to the Montreal Rizzuto Mafia clan (see previous posts for another link between Tremblay's party and the same gang of miscreants). It's known that the developer Catania was nailed for tax evasion in 2002, having to fork out over $100,000 in payments to the feds. Catania is a longtime Tremblay supporter and organized a posh fundraiser for the mayor. Catania scored a piece of land in the east end for development. The land was evaluated at $25 million but after a series of events, a decontamination issue, a poorly written contract, etc, the city ended up getting less than zero for the turf. They ended up $100,000 in the hole for what should have been a lucrative transaction. Two members of the City Executive, Francine Senecal and Frank Zampino quit their posts after a meeting where much of this was organized. Senecal, an NDG city councillor, was given the top post at the Cegep du Vieux Montreal. Her hiring was rescinded by the school after the whispers started flying. You see Senecal is married to the Tremblay's aide Fillion, who is currently suspended and, it seems, not the only scapegoat to get the blade for this whole mess.

So that's why Labonte's fortunes are thought to be on the rise lately.

Margaret Stone's Montreal prison diary

Ex-Inmate Tells of Ordeal in Jail
4 Feb 1950
Montreal Standard
by Margaret Stone

I went into the Protestant section of the Fullum street jail on April 2, 1949. I spent five months and four days there. I had been using drugs. They put a blue cotton dress on me and threw me into a cell. They gave me one phenobarbital pill. I was sent to jail at noon on Saturday from the police court. They wouldn't give me a smoke. I got a blanket and one pillow - no other linen. They gave me a dirty old slop pail that smelled. I lost consciousnes. I was very sick and I didn't remember much for five days. I asked for a glass of water when I first came to and got bawled out for it.

"You'll have to get up and wash your cell," one of the matrons said. "You'll have to take a bath too." They gave me no food. This was on Thursday. They gave me a pail and a scrub brush and put me in the cell to wash the floor. I was ill and weak and hungry but I had to wait for meal time for food. They had awakened me at about 2 pm so I had to wait until supper. I lost about 15 pounds in that cell. There was an iron bed and a soiled mattress. Later I got a sheet and a pillowcase and a clean dress. I stayed there until supper time. Then they brought my meal. It was beans. I was so weak I spilled them on my blanket. There were about 30 beans on a plate. I got two pieces of dry bread and a cup of tea, terrible tea. We were allowed a small teaspoon of sugar, like a demi-tasse spoon and dried boiled apricots about a tablespoon of them. They were mushy and not edible.

That evening I asked a matron for some water. She gave me one tin cup but when I asked for more she said,"What do you think? That's all I've got to do? Carry water for you?"

After I begged her, she gave me some in a milk bottle. I had to put my mouth to the bars to drink it. I asked for some in my cell. She said no. The lights went off at 9 pm.

On Friday I asked for a cigarette after breakfast. I got half a bowl of porridge, you couldn't see the milk and that tiny spoon of sugar. Two slices of bread with a tiny piece of butter and that tea. I lay in the cell all morning. We had chores at noon sharp. It was Friday and we got fish with a white sauce a potato, two slices of dry bread and water. A tablespoon of applesauce. The fish is made from canned stuff - 4 cans for 30 people. The white sauce is made from flour and watered milk.

Supper is at 5 pm. The most horrible soup imaginable, a table spoon of molasses, three pieces of dried bread and that tea.

I was hungry the whole time I was there. I t was awful.

Saturday's breakfast was the same stuff as Friday. A matron said, "Margaret, do you want to come out of the cell?" She's kind and motherly. Mrs. Kathleen Harvey. She helps the girls and realizes we are humans. She got someone to straighten out my cell. I was so weak. She put me into bed. In the dormitary. I knitted a sweather for her son and played card with the girls. I was weak and I had no money to buy cigarettes. We're only allowed three a day anyway.

Saturday noon we had turnip soup. We call it "garbage soup." A piece of badly baked spongecake, three pieces of dried bread and water. Supper was hash. It looked like someone had chewed on it before we got it. We had the tea. It the dry bread and three biscuits with a small square of cheese.

I was having the "chuck horrors." When youa re going off drugs, your stomach craves food. I begged for a piece of bread at night. They threw me a hunk of dry bread. I ate it like a piece of cake. I got this for a week. It's their drug treatment. The Sally Ann (Salvation Army) comes at 10:30 am on Sundays to sing and preach. It breaks the monotony. On alternative Sundays, the minister comes in the afternoon.

There is no work to do, nothing to read while you're in a cell. I asked to scrub floors in the kitchen on Tuesday to get an extra cup of tea. I was starving. If the girls there can give it to you, they slip you a jam sandwich, but if they get caught, they are punished by having priveleges cut off.

I went down and scrubbed the floor.

I was so weak one of the girls said, "Margaret, don't kill yourself."

Tuesday, we had soup for supper and macaroni at noon. We got tomatoes twice. They came from Bordeaux.

Two girls escaped from the kitchen. They were kithen help so there was an opening. I got in two weeks after entering Fullum. One girl working there spoke up for me. She said, "Why not take Margaret? She has a long sentence" I had been washing the walls and windows in the receiving room. I had caught parasites in the cell and had to have medicine to get rid of them.

In the kitchen I started washing dishes and peeling vegetables and sweeping the floor. I was allowed to have a tin of syrup on doctor's orders when I paid for it. Sometimes dessert was four prunes, with a little juice of a tablespoon of jam we call "perfume jam." It is so terrible. I t was red and we couldn't eat it. I preferred the dry bread.

There are four cells for mental patients and they are usually full. I was in the kitchen for a month then I asked to go upstairs to take a rest. My back was aching. Anything you want there you've got to buy it. No comb, no toothbrush or paste. One bar of soap a month and one towel a week for year face and bath too.

I cleaned out the four cells and the four downstairs. I bathed the girls and did all the personal stuff for them, like feeding them.

Downstairs is supposed to be for punishment, but they are not using it for that. They've been sending mental patients there for about two years, both Catholics and Protestants. They all go there until they are committed and passed by the doctor. Some are there for so long as two months. They are living on jail food that is rotten. They don't get any milk. There are no trained people to look after them. They keep the fresh one in striaghtjackets and there is no treatment for of any kind. Some are picked up on the street and it is only a miracle if their relatives can find them.

I remember a girl. She was about 30. She died on a Monday morning after she had been here in five days. Her brother brought her. He said later he never would have done it if he had known about conditions there. They put her in a straigthajcket. Her stomach was flat and her ribs stuck out. She hadn't been eating and she just lay in her cell. She looked very ill to me, so I told a matron she should have a doctor. They didn't pay any attention. Then the mistress told me to take a spoon and funnel and force some milk down her throat. I had never done anything like that before. She couldn't swallow it.

Three days before she died, she frothed a the mouth. She spoke to me and lay ther quietly. I took the straight jacket off and we tied her hands to the line but with straps. The doctor
No doctor came until I got after the matron again to phone. He came on the Sunday evening after a guard had decided to call. He gave her a hypo and shook his head.

"She's very weak. Her heart is bad," he said. He made no suggetsion to move her. He was the prison doctor. On Monday morning he came back witha priest around 9 am. The nurse was there. The girl was all wet. The smell was terrible and the flies were everywhere.

"She's all right," the matron said when I asked to change her. She was unscious. They called her brother but he got there too late. She had died at 10. She had blue eys and was very refined -looking with dark hair, well-built and beautiful skin.

After that, they were nicer to me. I think they were scared of me talking. Two days before the girl died, they gave her a bath. They made her walk back fromt the bathroom in her bare feet. I saw the sores on her body. It was awful.

They used to pull girls out of their cells by the backs of their necks or by the hair to take a bath. Four guards there are men. Sometimes, the mental patients are naked on the floor or they rip their dresses. The guards don't care. One Polish girl lay naked on the floor for two weeks. Some of them bang their heads against the brick walls. There of the male guards are very brutal. No one there had the nerve to report conditions. They were afraid and just didn't bother after they got out.

They don't pay anything for the work you do. It's the only jail in Canada where that is true. Most pay at least five cents a day. Hardly ever did we get an outing. Twenty minutes in four days, first when they feel like it. They give you no money when you get out. Just one car ticket - and only if you ask for it. I had six cents when I got out. How do they expect you to be honest that way?

Candidate of the day. He can play piano and find babies

Another alluring candidate, Robert Lindblad. He ran in Verdun as an independent for the first time in 2003. He got 54 votes. He is a self-proclaimed psychic that can find missing kids. He ran again in 2007 and upped his total to 80 votes. He's on the ballot again, so don't miss your chance. He's also a musician.

Amazing races - Quebec's political landscape set to change not dramatically

Some interestings races...

Take Rosemont, for example where this Liberal candidate Nathalie Rivard (shh..she's a secret anglo, graduated from Queen's Finishing School in Kingston, etc... ) against some guy who looks like Sergei Kostitstyn of the PQ (that's Louise Beaudoin idiot - Chimples). We think Rivard has to get in, the ginger gene has to express itself in the provincial legislature.
We're also keenly watching academic John Saywell, this year's anglo separatist, a rare species we've missed since PQ Brit looney David Payne finished his career after a drunk driving rap. Coolopolis salutes anybody who can overcome his cognitive dissonance and support a party that seeks to repress his own language. Saywell wrote a book about the PQ. He is certainly not a CSIS infiltrator. No sir. Saywell is running against David Whissel in Argenteuil, we suspect the Liberal incumbent has been poking around wine forums to get the proper temperature of refrigerated champagne he has at the ready.

Verdun 1913

They don't cover 'em like that anymore

From the social pages Montreal Saturday Mirror, April 5, 1913

Miss M.E. Ludington was the hostess at a charming "drawing-room tea," given in honor of her cousin, Miss Jessie Baker of Ottawa, on Friday afternoon, March 28th at her home on Laval avenue, which was artistically decorated throughout, with masses of yellow daffodils and greenery. The hostess, who was wearing a beautiful gown of black satin with white satin and lace trimmings, was assisted by eighteen young girls. Miss Baker was gowned in a pretty dress of tan satin trimmed with a lighter shade of tan. Miss Baker has returned to her home in Ottawa.

... Miss Marjorie Lindsay, Sherbrooke street west, was the hostess at a very charming "yellow luncheon" in honor of the bride-elect Miss Gladys Clay, on Thursday April 3rd. Covers were laid for six, the decorations being artistically carried out with masses of yellow and white spring flowers and greenery.

   Mrs. M. Brodie Atkinson, Tansdown [sic.] avenue, Westmount, gave a very charming "shower" last week in honor of Miss Scarffe, whose marriage to Mr. Harold Ellis takes place on Wednesday April 16th. Among others who will entertain in her honor are, Mrs. Percy McKergow, on Wednesday April 9th., and on Friday the 11th, Mrs. J.M. Orkin will give a 'Bridge' in her honor, and on the following Monday April 14th, Miss Fortier will be entertaining for her. 

   Mr. Philip Henry Guiton, of Cobourg, Ontario, announces the marriages of his daughters, Edith Louise, to Mr. William Edward Manhardt, of Port Arthur, and Catherine Isabel, to Mr. Edward Hugh Bowen, of Sherbrooke, Quebec. The weddings will be quietly celebrated on Wednesday April 23rd.

   Miss Florency Purdy, who has been visiting Mrs. Carroll Cate, has returned to Sherbrooke, Que.

   

Duplessis Orphans still battling for fair deal

Many Duplessis Orphans are still battling for a fair settlement after being sent to an insane asylum as children. This is a photo taken yesterday at a Charest campaign thingy in Laval.

We heart Frank DiGenova - Laval cop man

Joe Beef's was 'a den of filth'

THE CANADIAN VOYAGEUR
CONTINUING THE DESCENT OF THE ST. LAWRENCE
- The New York Times
Aug. 20, 1881
Dateline: Quebec, Aug. 15 dispatch.

JOE BEEF'S CANTEEN.

Montreal is so well known to Americans that an effort at description of it would be a waste of time. But there is one place in it that, it is to be hoped, is not so well known and not so frequently visited by travelers. This place is known as "Joe Beef's Canteen;" a den of filth that may confidently be pitted against anything its like on the continent.

A morally wretched but physically powerful creature ca;ling himself Joe Beef, occupies the whole of one of the big stone buildings facing the river, a block or two from the Bon Secours Market. The building is four stories high and 30 or 40 feet wide.

"Joe Beef" is one of those despicable characters who, while they sell the vilest rum and keep places that disgrace a city, gain reputations for great charity and some goodness by giving to the poor some of their ill-gotten gains. We have some such men in New-York; men who do more harm in their life-time than a regiment of men could counteract, but who make themselves something of a reputation by dispensing a little ostentatious charity.

Joe Beef's Canteen is the foulest and vilest hole I ever visited, not excepting the worst of the "resorts" on the West Side of New-York. It would not be allowed to exist a minute in New-York.

Yet, with all this, "Joe Beef" has made himself a reputation in Montreal, by giving a little meat to the people he has robbed. He is respected a little in some decent quarters, and the vagrants look upon him as their best friend.

I went through his den, with a guide who knew the place. The first room we entered was the bar-room, in which a dozen vagrants were lounging, in various degrees of intoxication. The proprietor himself was behind the bar, and on the counter was a pile of sick-looking raw beefseaks. Beef sells one of these raw steaks and a raw potato for 5 cents, for the customer to cook them. All the vagrants and sots of Montreal eat here, when they can raise 5 cents. The smell in the building is sickening.

I was introduced to Beef, and he showed me some of his curiosities, as a special mark of his favor. Most of them were too disgusting to look at, too indecent to describe. He had snakes done up in glass jars, and toads, and a variety of other articles. In a small dark room, just back of the bar-room, an enormous black bear was chained, and by his side were fastened a score or more of ferocious dogs. The next room was the "theatre," where, on Sundays, religious services are held. A half-drunken clown and a black monkey were performing on the stage for the edification of half a dozen tramps, who were stretched on the benches.

The proprietor is evidently an educated man, and speaks and writes well. But he is a little nearer a devil and his place near what the revised version calls Hades than anything I ever saw.

To visit this place is to see it in nightmares for the next week. But the Montreal Police do not interfere with it, and Joe Beef goes on "helping the poor."

Note: But McGill likes Joe Beef.

Pimpin' Santa.."don't come back wifout the money be-ya-atch"

Finger through the classifieds of your paper and you might find an ad for a special someone to come and visit you wearing an alluring costume. The visit will set you back $175 an hour and just $75 each additional hour. If you think more than a few bucks of that are going to the performer, you're wrong.

That visitor is Santa Claus and Henri Paquet is the big pimpin' genuis behind the visits from the rolley poley jolly man. Paquet's operations have long been down in St. Hubert and as well as organizing and supplying a mean ass gang of Santa Clauses, he's also a veteran of the costume rental biz.

Paquet has earned his stripes as a media fave around Christmas and Halloween, as he has the brains to offer a spicy quote to those who ring him for their filler copy.

He claims that he initially got in the costoume biz supplying G-strings to strippers. His best media moment surely came in 1985 when he told Gazette writer Carole Treiser that transvestites are his best clients, as they are up for a costume year round.

The second-best customer demographic for a custome shop owner is - brace yourself for a biggie - "Suspicious boyfriends who need camouflage for a night out trailing their girlfriends."

Guys, are you really dressing up as women so you can tail your girlfriend unseen and check if she's cheating on you?

Didn't think so. We call bullshit. But it's a great quote nonetheless.

Fieside snaps

Here's a YouTube photo montage, taken today (credit), at the site of the recent Point St. Charles fire that claimed a pile of historic bricks.

The surgical answer to jock itch

Back in the 70s, there were ads everywhere - TV, radio, bathroom walls - offering help for dreaded jock itch. We seem to have stopped worrying about the terrible affliction. But the radical cure was, once upon a time in Montreal, the removal of your ballsiness. Source: The Nature of Their Bodies By Wendy Mitchinson, 1991, p. 252.

F1 memories

Memory road - the long lost peep show on the Main...

Silly season reporting - July 7, 1992 I penned an article for the Gazette about the hookers who play their games cheek to jowl to little kids who zap aliens for a quarter a shot in the game arcades on the Lower Main. The Journal de Montreal was apparently quite impressed by the scoop under everybody's noses. They gave it nice coverage complete with a lucious photos that's surely embarassed to a few lonely souls to this very day.

Jojo Savard at her peak in 1992

This article was nominated for some sorta journalism award, I was on the beach in India when it finally ran so I don't know exactly whatever award it might have been. The only thing I'd change is the claim that she was 39 years old. She'd have to be around 45 by that point. She had been getting a lot of free rides from the Gazette and CFCF by this point so that motivated me to examine her act a bit closer. I don't think this really helped her career a whole lot.

Quebec provincial rejected ballots - do you smell a fish?

A whole lot of people have gone to the polls in provincial elections without getting their vote counted.

Totals are not as bad as they once were, but one percent of all ballots were rejected in the most recent Quebec provincial election of 2007.

Why? We're not sure. A provincial bureaucrat in charge of such questions told Coolopolis there are no records as to what caused these ballots to be rejected.

Federally, francophones spoil ballots far more often than anglos, but nobody knows why. A recent Ottawa Citizen study pointed out that on the federal level 47 of the 50 ridings with the highest proportion of spoiled ballots were in Quebec.

In some cases would-be voters surely spoiled their ballots in protest, in other cases there were perhaps two names ticked off, or perhaps there were some ballots rejected for no real justification - our own Florida-style election scandal.

It used to be worse. In 2003 the percentage of rejected ballots from the provincial election was 1.25%. In 1998: 1.13%. Prior to that, the numbers were higher: 1994: 1.96%, 1989: 2.63%, 1985: 1.52% of ballots cast were deemed ineligible.

So ballot rejection has diminished sharply since the 1995 provincial election on separation, which ended up in squabbles and lawsuits concerning 85,000 rejected votes, many of which were left uncounted without reasonable justification. Elections Director Pierre F. Cote's report charged 31 PQ-appointed voting officials with electoral fraud.

The current ballot style, top left (Vote for me! - Chimples) is based on the Belgian model and has been since 1998. It seems idiot proof, but thousands of ballots still don't get scored.

Prior to the '95 referendum, many more ballots were simply tossed out.

Let's take 1989, where the practice of tossing out votes was far more widespread. Perhaps the highest total of rejected votes ever registered was in Bertrand where Francois Beaulne of the PQ beat Liberal Estelle Lessard by 2,819 votes in an election which saw a staggering 4.64 percent of all votes rejected (1,826).In Berthier Liberal Albert Houde beat Jules Samson, 3.9 percent of all ballots were rejected. That same year In Acadie the Liberal Yvan Bordeleau won easily but 3.5% of votes were rejected and the same percentage of rejected ballots was registered in Charlevoix.

In some cases the total of rejected votes could have seen a seat go the other way. Here are some examples.

1989.
1-In Bourget Huguette Boucher-Bacon of the Liberals beat Gilles Baril by 159 votes, but 887 votes were discounted, an impressive 3.28 percent of all ballots were simply tossed out.
2-In Two Mountains Liberal Jean-Guy Bergeron beat Helen Robert of the PQ by 515 votes, but 1,061 ballots - 3.05 percent of the total - were rejected.
3-In Bellechasse Liberal Louise Begin beat Claude Lachance by 191 votes, but 602 votes were not counted.
4-In La Praire PQ Denis Lazure won by 790 votes over Yvon Pommainville but 867 ballots were rejected.
5-In Rosemont Liberal Guy Rivard, Guy beat Sylvain Simard by 133 votes while 862 votes went uncounted.
6-Vachon, Liberal Christiane Pelchat won over David Payne by 114 votes, as 957 votes were tossed away.
7-In Rouyn-Noranda Temiscaminque the PQ Remy Trudel beat Gilles Baril of the Liberals by 66 votes while a staggering 1,418 ballots (4.91%) were tossed out.

Only Rosemont and Rouyn went to recounts. The second-place candidates in Bourget and Vachon asked for recounts but then desisted. The law - not sure if it applied back then - is that recount fees have to be paid by the loser, a total decided by a judge. In cases of under 1,000 vote spreads there is no charge.

So in 1989 most of the close votes with lots of rejected ballots went the Liberal way.

That changed in 1994 when the PQ did a lot better in those suspicious totals.

1994:
1-In Chambly the PQ's Louise Beaudoin, beat Lucienne Robillard by 407 votes, while 1,130 ballots were ruled inacceptable.
2-In Three Rivers PQ candidate Guy Julien beat Liberal Paul Philibert by 609 votes while 667 ballots (2.24%) were cast into the garbage pail.
3-In Lotbinière Jean-Guy Paré of the PQ won by 283 votes while 558 ballots were tossed out.
4-In Cremazie Jean Campeau won with a 429 vote majority over his PQ rival while 568 ballots were rejected.
5-The Liberals beat a few of their own Margaret F. Delisle won by just 25 votes in Jean Talon over Diane Lavallee, in a seat where 551 ballots (1.94% of all ballots cast) were rejected.
6-And Robert Therien of the Liberals won in Bertrand by 146 votes while 478 votes were rejected.
7-Paul Eugene Quirion won in Beauce South by 164, as 635 ballots (2.14% of all votes cast) were tossed in the bin.
8-And Normand Poulin won by 61 votes in Beauce North, as 501 votes were rejected (2.09% of the total).
9-David Cliche of the PQ beat Benoit Fradet, Liberal by 128 votes, while 683 votes were tossed out.

(Trivia: Saint Jean was a tie and required a re-vote. In the rematch, the PQ's Roger Paquin beat Liberal Michel Charbonneau by 532 votes, with 487 being tossed out).

Of those worrisome results, only Beauce North and Jean Talon went through official recounts.

1998:
1-Anjou: Jean-Sebastien Lamoureux, Liberals won by 143 over Pierre Bélanger, P.Q. as 384 ballots were rejected. (1.39%)
2- Argenteuil David Whissell, Liberal beat Denise Beaudoin by 148 as 427 votes were tossed (1.08%).
3-In Bonaventure Liberal Nathalie Normandeau,won by 160 over Marcel Landry as 235 votes were rejected. (1.03%)
4-In Charlesbourg, the PQ candidate Jean Rochon, Jean prevailed with a 33 vote majority over Liberal Denis Roy as 564 votes were chucked out (1.43%)
5-In Jean-Talon Margaret Delisle, of the Liberals won by 156 over Daniel-Mercier Gouin of the P.Q. amid 288 rejecetd ballots (1.01%)
6-In Kamouraska-Témiscouata Liberal Claude Béchard won by 110 over Denis Simard of the PQ as the rejected ballot bin showed 304 (1.16%)
7-In Shefford Liberal Bernard Brodeur won by 73 over René Marois of the PQ as 659 votes went uncounted 1.56%)

2003
1-In Dubuc Jacques Côté of the PQ won by 44 votes over Johnny Simard, while 280 votes were tossed out (1.1% of the total).
2- In Groulx Pierre Descoteaux of the Liberals beat Robert Kieffer of the PQ by just 303 votes while 465 votes (1.32% of all ballots) were rejected.
3-In Matane Liberal Nancy Charest won by 33 while 155 ballots were rejected.
4-In Roberval Karl Blackburn of the Liberals beat Rejean Lalancette of the PQ by 244 votes as 313 votes were tossed out (1.02%)
5-In Vachon the PQ's Camil Bouchard was elected with a 219 vote majority over Brigitte Mercier, as 490 ballots were tossed out.

2007:
1-In Crémazie Lisette Lapointe, of the PQ won by 170 over Michele Lamquin-Ethier of the provincial Liberals as 349 (1%) ballots were rejected.
2-In Johnson Eric Charbonneau of the ADQ won by 180 over the PQ Claude Boucher as 366 votes (1.13%) were rejected).
3-In Mégantic-Compton Johanne Gonthier of the Liberals won by 201 over the ADQ as 240 were rejected.
4-In Rouyn-Noranda-Témiscamingue Johanne Morasse of the PQ won by 129 over Daniel Bernard of the Liberals in an election which saw 361 votse tossed out (1.24%)
5-In Vachon Carmil Bouchard of the PQ won by 227 as 429 ballots were rejected.

In Quebec elections, a variety of parties are meant to have people at the polls helping make sure that their team doesn't get shafted, but as we saw in the provincial referendum, that doesn't always work out.

Voters are told little about the rejected ballots and the cause of their rejection remains vague.

Surely some spoil their ballots in protest. But perhaps some legitimate votes are tossed away by those who don't like where the X is marked. Thankfully not as many votes are tossed away as were 20 years ago.

CARGO FREIGHTER -- TRIAL RUN

These pictures were taken by Colin Gravenor of Montreal for the National Film Board in July 1943, on the occasion of the trial run of a new cargo freighter.
View of a new cargo ship in the water during its trial run.
Crewmen look through a porthole on a new cargo freighter during its trial run.

'Oh boy, a shave, a night ashore and then to sea' is the sentiment of this young sailor enjoying all the comforts of a deluxe hotel suite. It's his first trip and he's enjoying every minute of being a sailor.Chief of Canada Steamship Lines Commissary Deputy J.F. Prendergast watches Chef Alex Dimeo prepare six strawberry pies for the examiners and crew during a trial run of a new cargo ship.Into dock and the new crew boards the ship. Handed their bed clothes the new crew were aboard briefly and off for final night shore before leaving for another port.

Crewman poses relaxing in his bunk on board a new cargo freighter during its test run.

On board the last time - this man was watchman from the time the keel was laid - now he is enjoying his first voyage on 'his ship' and a few minutes later he will go ashore to commence guarding another Canadian cargo craft. No need to ask if he is enjoying his soup.

St. Catherine in the 1940s

This photo appears to be on the north side of St. Catherine just west of Eaton's in the 1940s, or so the Rossy sign in the background would suggest.

But upon closer inspection it's possibly a Classy Formal Wear sign in the background, which would put this on Park Avenue just south of Laurier (west side).

We obtained this snap from Paul Olioff, a Montrealer with a keen eye for the city. It features his father with the pencil thin moustache. Many thanks for the contribution.

Skydive at the Centaur... rock on guys

If you're looking for something to do with your lonely evening, you could do far worse than to check out Skydive at the Centaur, which stars two brothers whose feet rarely touch the stage. Instead, these guys fly over the stage with help from a hardworking, mostly-invisible stage crew who fling the actors high over the boards by manipulating hoists and harnesses. The younger brother is an agoraphobic nerd and the more outgoing older sibling is a failed rock star hopeful who has now embraced borderline bogus new age psych therapies. After much nostalgic pop-culture banter about Geddy Lee and Steve Austin, older frere counsels bro on lucid dreaming and much of the rest of the play shows the two in an incredible dream that involves parachuting. The clever, witty show is as light as air and just flew by (enough of that...Chimples) making for one of the most enjoyable plays that has hit the Centaur in quite some time.

McDougall's Memoirs of Montreal media

Patrick McDougall, now 79 and living in Ottawa, offered Montreal his talents as a radio host and interviewer on the CBC in the 60s and 70s. He has a brief and enjoyable memoir of those years in Montreal. Click this link to have a peek. His Montreal days start at around chapter 28. McDougall titles his opus after a response Marlene Dietrich gave him when he asked one of his trademark irritating questions of her at Expo 67. Here's a snippet:

I got to pop it in front of more than a hundred journalists in the ballroom of the Shangri-La Hotel in Montreal. It was a super scrum, with Dietrich up on stage seated at a desk with her Musical Director Burt Bacharach at her side. I remember she was dressed casually in the mannish style she favored.
Below her, ranged in uncomfortable folding chairs, were what had become known by then as “The Expo Press.” A microphone was being passed from hand to hand, and when it came my way, I seized it eagerly.
My first question was dumb enough, God knows. It had to do with Sammy Lerner who wrote the English lyric for her signature song “Falling In Love Again.” I wanted to know if he was related to the Lerner of Lerner and Lowe. Dietrich didn’t know and said so.
I tried to recover. “Here’s a question I thought someone would have asked by now,” I continued smarmily. “Tell me, how do you keep looking so young?”
Her answer came crashing back in that incomparable Germanic monotone :

“I am not that oldt."

Bad subliminal advice

This building at 500 Dorch W., corner Beaver Hall Hill contains a buncha provincial government offices, from the labour board, to the rental board and many other such places.

Anybody riding the elevator gets treated to an audio recording of a woman saying "nous montons" which means, "we're going up." But the semi homophonous "nous mentons" means "we lie." Those working in the building find this chuckleworthy, but we wonder if it's not making a bit of a bad suggestion to lie before various judges.

This ranks number two on the list of bad subliminal messages in Montreal. The Meldrum sign at Walkley and Sherbrooke is the worst. It's an area which has seen many murders in past years, possibly because Meldrum spelled backwards suggests homicide.

CBC development meeting next Tuesday

In the 1960s CBC decided that it needed a new Montreal headquarters. So it studied a variety of possibilities, including putting it on the near-virgin Nun's Island. But instead they opted to build on Dorchester just southwest of the downtown core and knocked down an entire neighbourhood so they could have ample parking for the facility. They're finally trying to advance on an old plan to build housing back up on that wasted space and next Tuesday (Nov 18, 7 pm 1325 Dorch. E 872-3568) they're hosting a yammerfest public consultation thingy about the plan and that means sitting through various lunatics yelling about how we need more public housing in the city, which means that sucker taxpayers get to pay some random person's rent. If nothing else, you'll get to see the bizarre mockup of the proposed new neighbourhood where the new buildings are represented by flat panes of glass. Condos in that area have sold well so these should be in great demand and while living on frosted glass might seem a bit weird, the buildings will surely be an improvement over the concrete wasteland that sits there now.

The current building will become housing or a hotel and the CBC offices will relocate to Papineau and Dorch. The surrounding housing will contain about 2,000 units.

Gotta love that Parti Quebecois, never a dull moment.

You might not be a big fan of the Parti Quebecois, but you've got to applaud the entertainment they provide the electorate.

Martin Lemay and Daniel Turp joined fellow MNA and language critic Pierre Curzi in denouncing Paul McCartney's show in Quebec City this summer because McCartney's not French. The show went on anyway. Curzi later fudged and waffled and said he was okay with the show. You can ask Turp about all this tomorrow at his office between 5 and 9, him and Duceppe and Harel will be there hosting well wishers.

Remember Andre Boisclair? He was the last leader of the PQ. His Chief of staff between 1996-1998 was named Luc Doray. Doray falsified documents in order to get cash to buy cocaine. He was found guilty of fraud in May 2001 and ordered to pay back $29,500. Boisclair admitted to being a cocaine user during those years as well. Doray works for the City of Montreal nowadays.

Bring back the boys of winter - a winter domed baseball league would fit here

Montreal lost a lot of its fun the Montreal Expos moved away under the nose of Mayor Tremblay. Now all we've got left is hockey and soccer. Even the soccer team has its problems. They're playing in a prestigious tournament. They're doing well. But they have a game to play in February here in Montreal. So head over to the Olympic Stadium, right? No. The Olympic Installations Board has closed the place down for several winters because they think the roof could collapse under the weight of snow. The Big Owe roof held up to record snowfalls last winter, but it's still deemed unsafe.

The obvious solution is to pop an electric blanket atop the roof. Tiny heated filaments would melt any frozen precipitation upon contact. The city could then buy a franchise in a newly-created baseball winter league to be played in domed stadiums and cities with hot winter climates. The league would have about 12 teams and play around 40 games per winter. Homer hitting steroid freaks welcome.

Any city with an underused dome would find use for its facility. Latin American countries would leap on the opportunity as well.

Upton & Markey and the debt we owe them..can you name it?

Two years ago Ed Markey (left) and Fred Upton, two rival politicians from Mass. & Michigan, managed to do something for us Canadians that nobody around here seemed to have the brains to do even though people were braying for it endlessly. Now we've got it, you can drop them a line of thanks, or even ask for more of it. You know, I'm sure what we're talking about.

I lived next door to the backdoor of Chez Paree for about five years in the early 90s and on a couple of occasions paid the $2 to get in and the $5 for a beer so I could get at the free lunch buffet. Strange thing - when you're hungry with a plate of food in front of you, women strolling about in bikinis don't even make a blip on your radar, so while I enjoyed the pieces of meat laid out in front of me, they were of the cold cut variety.

This longtime fabled showroom became a posh strip club in 1982 but bucked the strip club trend that allowed men to fondle and grope the dancer for double the price. Lap dances took hold everywhere else except for Wanda's.

Up until now apparently the only one ever to get a lap dance at Chez Paree was someone who needed a bit of warming up. In July 2004 Triumph the Insult Dog treated Bonhomme Carnaval to a lap dance at Chez Paree for a comedy bit on Conan O'Brien.

So apparently anybody can plop down a few bucks and get that same service starting today.

Here's a lap dance legal timeline. In 1988 police accused Robert Bourdeau of operating a bawdy house on St. Catherine East at a place called the Pussy Cat.

In 1993 the Supreme Court decided that the Pussy Cat was not indecent. Apparently men would pleasure themselves in front of naked women there.

So the practice became legal sorta but some campaigned against it, including a stripper named Katharine Goldberg. She was quoted as saying, "I just saw ugliness....I didn't feel clean even when I took a shower. I slept with a knife under my bed." (...doesn't everybody?...Chimples)

Mayor Pierre Bourque fought to have it banned, but that ridiculous Drapeau bylaw from 1966 was strick down in June 1995, it forbade bar employees from fraternizing with clientele.

In January 1998 Quebec Appeals Court banned the practice again, deeming it to be prosittution.

But in December 1999 the Supreme Court ruled it to be legal.

One manager named Florent said of lap dancing: "There's girls crying, taking drugs, doing cocaine and freebasing just to forget that men are touching them."

So that's why they're taking all those drugs.