Happy New Year Montreal, here's some irrelevant info to start you off with

Louis Armstrong used to come to Montreal alla da time in the 50s. He was an earthy guy and Montreal loved him. Satchmo adored porno mags and loved to show his favourites around to those he met. He also loved to have a high quality bowel movement. Armstrong held many-a-conversation from his round-seated throne where he'd discuss the merits of his favourite magazines and laxatives.

Like her boss Jean Charest who lives up on the hill on Victoria Avenue, newly elected Liberal first-timer Kathleen Weil is a Westmounter. And to many folkses' surprise, she was immediately named to the cabinet - (good thing she chose the right gender!) in spite of having no political experitence. She is well known to her Stayner Park neighbours because she doesn't like curtains and you can see inside her house. Weil has been billed as an anglo even though her mom is a francophone and she sends her kids to posh French private school in Outremont. So she's not only an anglo, but she's a good anglo. Coolopolis wishes her solid judgment.

Snow tires. The provincial oppressors have, as we know, enacted a ridiculous law forcing motorists to pay $500 or so on equipping their cars with these things. Other media support this law. Other media have a ton of ads from car tire places. We applaud George Iny for opposing this needless draconia. Coolopolis predicts that helmets in cars will be manadatory next. But if the provincial government insists on coming up with another ridiculous rule, we propose they ban the act that has threanted many a happy male motorist including Morgan Freeman whose recent vehicular mishap in Mississippi suitably required him to be saved by the Jaws of Life. It's not safe to drive while being orally pleasured by a woman (doubly dangerous when it's not your wife) and it can lead to a serious accident, although if you've got to have an accident I guess this might be the way to go. Drivin' Miss Daisy indeed!

Wuzzat!

This beer was a mainstay in Quebec for a few days in the 60s.. who would care to try telling the amazing story, rumours and gossip behind it?

Ok. So Dow Breweries launched this beer in 1963 as a blatant attempt to grab some more of the Quebec market share. But it flopped and the flag-like logo really didn't attract consumers.

And we know about Dow. That's the company that added cobalt salt into their mix in 1966 resulting in the deaths of like 16-20 men. The management steadfastly argued that there was nothing wrong with their beer but they dumped a million gallons anyway, which was a publicity fiasco that forever doomed the company, which had pulled into the top.

Now to this day alcoholic beverages do no require any ingredient labelling. So whereas other alimentary products have to bear all their dirty secrets on the side of the label, booze has no such restrictions. This is, of course, insane. We know that the refusal to watch what goes into booze caused the end of civilization. That's because the Roman Empire used led as a wine sweetner and the elite went insane, leading to the downfall and being overrun by smelly Germans who brought on the dark ages where there was hardly any internet anywhere except for a few cafes.

So one day Dow decided to add a touch of Cobalt salt to their product. Within a month, the first of the heavy-drinking Quebec City victims was to die.

But there's more to the story according to this account found on the Verdun Connections discussion forum. My attempts to contact the writer were dashed when I encountered the same old log-in issues, if anybody can help with info on this pls let us know in the comments section.

It suggests that chronic poisoning might've taken the lives of much of the top brass of the Dow Brewery company. Perhaps the cobalt icing had been practiced within the inner circles with disastrous results that nobody really discerened. Or else there was a pair of homicidal Finns killing the people they were meant to be helping.

In 1963 I rented the guest house on the Black Horse -Dow Estate on the south shore of Lake St.Louis several miles east of Beauharnois.

There were many posters and pictures of Black Horse Beer in the main house. The gardener and his wife, both from Finland, were the only people left living there.

The neighbours later on told me about how they found several members of the Dow family dead by poisoning. They also mentioned that I was crazy to stay there as the gardener and his wife had been the main suspects.

All the time I lived there (about 1 1/2 years) I never saw the owners or family even once show up there. I always assumed that it was a DOW family but the place was just full of Black Horse stuff The main estate and the guest house were just unbelievable, like a scene from The Munsters. Stacked full with antiques not to mention an old Chriscraft and an old Harvard Trainer without wings.

I have been trying to find out for years what this place was all about. Madi ,the old gardener called it the Dow estate and never wanted to talk about its owners or history. This is the first time I have seen the name Black horse mentioned , so I decided to write.
Regards, Jurgen (The Haunted )

Thing you don't see in Montreal anymore

Smallpox. Apparenenently the Kweebeck government believes that there's a whole lotta smallpox virus living in the ground beneath the basement of Concordia's newest acquisition.
The Direct Film bird was once all over Montreal, even appearing in a sequence of drawings on the walls of the subway that created an animated flying bird when the train went by. We mourn the death of the bird.
The Montreal Expos are and will always remain the only thing that ever mattered about this city, on that we all agree. Somewhere, someplace there are a buncha old retired graphic artists who boast about the amazing jobs they did forging Expos caps on players who weren't actually wearing them.
The 1920 Lovells Directory indicates that Montreal had three people by the name of Fucks. The years before and after had no such listings. Wonder if they were fat.

Name this unfamous Montrealer - and his famous legacy

This gentleman was born in Montreal after WWI, most likely to a working class English-speaking family on the Plateau. His life didn't amount to much and it ended up in 1985 but somewhere along the line he unknowingly left a legacy that just everybody in the world knows about today. Look closely at the face to see what it might evoke.

Hint ... - he was close to "God" without ever even knowing it.

Hint 2- what is the name of the appendage in front of his belt and what kind of velocity adjective might you possibly describe it with?

Hint 3- the things behind his glasses became part of the planetary mass consciousness 13 years after he died.


AMSWER! Ginger nails it. It is indeed Edward Walter Fryer, the Montreal native who fathered legendary Eric Slowhand Clapton, who was famously dubbed God on perhaps the best-known graffiti ever. In 1998 Clapton wrote a song about the drifter musician father he never met In My Father's Eyes, (?) hence the refence in the hint. Well done to all those who tried and failed miserably but spectacularly to answer this.

eezie-kwiss - where was this?

We have a right answer. It's shot from St. Catherine and Grosvenor in Westmount gazing eastward at Landsdowne/The Glen and St. Catherine and towards the sloped field behind Westmount Arena and on the right where the Pom Bakery lofts now sit . I've passed by there so many times it's not funny, literally, um .. I mean it's literally not funny... not that I was trying to be funny... although one might accuse my coloring efforts as unintentionally comical.

So..what are RACCS anyway?

When the Reitmans hired that German nanny...

It's last chance to mention that this is the 50th year anniversary of one of the city's most famous kidnappings.

Dorothy Salomon, aka Dorothy Reitman, 25 and her husband Cyril Reitman, son of Sam, of the Reitman's clothing empire, hired a widowed German nanny named Greta Goede-Zablotsky, 46.

Goede, the daughter of an SS captain was put in charge of the wealthy Jewish family's two and a half year old son Joel, known as Jo-Jo. They lived at 2205 Athlone Road in Town of Mount Royal and likely still live there.

Cyril took Dorothy to the Elm Ridge Golf Club on the evening of June 14, 1958.

When they returned, Greta and Joel had gone, and a poorly-written ransom note was left on the table, demanding $10,000 in 20 and 50 dollar bills, or else the boy would be killed.

The couple contacted the police and Captain Greenberg and a psychologist named Dr. Cameron were both helping out.

The couple put the money, as requested, in a container at the Drummond Street bus terminal.

Mom went on the radio pleading to have her son returned.

Greta had fled to Ottawa and left the child with a taxi driver. The driver contacted police and the child was returned. The Reitmans gave the driver a $2,000 reward and Goede was apprehended soon after.

Joel was fine. He remains the couple's only son. Now 58, he sometimes appears in the newspapers involved with Jewish politics, donations and fundraising galas. Dorothy was involved in many worthy causes, including helping to found the Portage drug center.

Not exactly sure what happened to Greta Goede, but she'd be in her mid-90s if she's still alive.

The secret tunnels beneath Phillips Square

Montreal's famous downtown landmark Phillips Square - or Nathan Philips Square as Albert Nerenberg insists on calling it - was formerly paved over with two sets of stairs going leading to passages reserved for those who sold their souls to Satan. The space was greened over when the the Dark Deciphels no longer felt obliged to go underground, but the demonic passages surely remain, heading to a place that only the priveleged few are permitted to know about. That's our story, and we're sticking to it, until, at least, someone comes up with something better.

The hockey sweater....

The Quebec Old Timer hockey team sported a unilingual message on their sweaters back in 1967 as this shot of Maurice Richard next to Ted Lindsay demonstrates. The language featured, however, wasn't French.

Christmas 1972, Montreal - hippie Santa was armed and cranky

Some kinda Montreal underground magazine that ran around this time 36 years back.

I'm told that this pic of Santa as Karl Marx was done by the Montreal poet cual, aka Pascal Delgado, whose site espouses a political philosophy which he dubs proto-barbarism.

NDG birds of prey

Bird of prey brazenly sat in my backyard a couple of winters ago, didn't seem to mind me snapping at him with my inadequate camera. Just stared back as he yanked away at that mouse or sparrow in his clutches. I checked with a bird expert and he told me that it is, I believe, a kestrel. It doesn't make frequent appearances in urban areas.

The Bellevue Casino

Qwiz - who are they and why is the woman an ongoing mystery?

Quiz hint: the woman at the top had some interesting information. She's also had 70s flings with Bill Johnston and Jacques Parizeau, both of whom stand pretty much at opposite ends of the language issue spectrum.

Someone got it, it's Carole de Vault, and William Johnson. He co-wrote her biography. In fact, he wrote the whole thing based on stuff she told him, I know because he told me. She was involved in the FLQ and eventually became an informant, getting $30 a week for two weekly meetings with her RCMP controler Julien Giguere, plus a $15,000 flat fee for her cooperation, nowadays de Vault lives a private existence. Johnson says he doesn't really know where she is but we're not entirely convinced.

Here's a little bit from it:

How could I betray my friends? This was a question tht I would often be asked later, after my role was made public. The fact is that I did not see what I did as a betrayal. Insofar as FLQ actions had serious consequences. I seriously wanted to counter the FLQ. And insofar as they were only playing a game suited to naive adolescents, I too, was playing a game.

No one went to jail on my account. The police were worried about another outbreak of terrorism on the scale of the Otctober Crisis. When lesser acts were committed, the police tried mostly to contain them rather than send Felquistes to prison. I was there in case a crisis blew up.

CIBC sez 2008 = a terrible year for Montreal

The CIBCWMM Economic Activity Index is out. It crunches recent data based on the following criterai 1-population 2-employment 3-unemployment 4-full time employment as a share of employment 5-consumer bankruptcy rate 6-business bankruptcy rate 7-mls unit shares 8-housing starts 9-non residential building permits.


This year Regina was tops, thanks largely to the high price of oil and fertilizer. Let's see how they do with the $40 barrel. Toronto did well too. But they also look like they've got some looming problems with the auto industry. Montreal fared much worse in 2008 than 2007 when we placed fourth. This year we were all the way down to 13.

Home prices did well, but new construction was woeful and the job situation wasn't great, compared to other places anyway.

oops-correction required...Burlesque event tonight at Cafe Campus, Friday on the Main near the river

(Please note, an earlier version of this had all sorts of incorrect times and places, erase it from your mind!)

Coolopolis staffers hear this, on the hovercrafts, cabs, in the saloons: "Why can't our burlesque stars do community outreach?!"

I have to editorialize about this: Montreal's burlesque babes are too preoccupied with losing their ivory cigarette holders in the seat folds of the stretch or making sure the rooftop helipads will be cleared in time for the pickup to their private jets.

So we're doubly, perhaps triply glad to announce that today at 8 pm you'll have a chance to see the fabulous Miss Sugarpuss at a hotness show called the Slightly More Naked Noel that should last until 11- it's at the Cafe Campus on Prince Arthur.

Then on Friday she shall forever shatter the division between the common upright biped and the fabulous internationally reknowned burlesque performer with her Teaser Night for Burlesque Etiquette at 24 Saint Lawrence 704. The absolute cream of the local scene will be there, doing their best not to blow their images by allowing their jaws to drag on the hardwood & linoleum.

Further lessons in burlesque etiquette will also be offered, which could give you the hope of cultivating a skill that will come in handy if you're ever seeking a way to distract your captors when you're brought in by authorities in North Korea.

Caption Contest - when Celine met Maurice Richard

Best caption wins a ride on the Beaver Lake paddleboats with Chimples and the Coolopolis interns. You'll have to wait till May to get it though. Put your quips in the comments section.

WE HAVE A WINNER!!!! Chimples has studied the suggestions over Christmas and has deemed Tony Kondaks the champion of this inaugural coolopolis caption contest based on the fact that he wrote his full name and didn't write anything so obscene that anybody might get terribly upset. We cannot send out a prize to the winner right now because we are operating on the high seas, docked in international waters due to tax reasons. We shall return to dry land by the end of this fiscal year.

The Milton Park struggle in photos

Chimples scanned these pics sometime last year from a book about the Milton Park episode. Alas the book fell behind the Nonsectarian Community Goodness Toast Machine and can't be retrieved. So Coolopolis can't guide you to buy it at this moment. The general idea was that much of the McGill ghetto was going to be demolished for a massive housing/commercial project but a lot of young hippies fought against it. Ultimately the only thing that got built was the La Cite complex, which was still a large part of the whole thing. These various photos are semi-self-explanatory.
May 23, 1972 Prince Arthur Street
Street festival July 27, 1970.

David Williams and Nicole Durand of the Milton Park Citizens Committee deliver some kinda petition to City Hall, May 24, 1969.

Jeanne Mance, 1972, buildings were demolished soon after, although the church in the background, the First Presbyterian remains as condos.May 24, 1969

Building occupation on Prince Arthur May 23, 1972.
May 24, 1969. The residents created a makeshift playground for the kids. (The portly guy, in the photo two up died of a drug overdose along with his girlfriend who was in a few local movies).

Quis today - who is that on the right?

Kwizzenders: The man on the right is Andre "Toots" Tousignant, a top biker found dead in the woods 10 years ago. Someone had killed him and even chopped his fingers off, hopefully after he died. He was the only Hells Angel that would talk to the media. I once interviewed him after Daniel Sanger gave me the number to the gang clubhouse near Ontario, which has since been demolished. Can't remember much about the interview but I recall asking him what kinda music they play at the clubhouse and he said some guys like classical music. Right, sure. Andre claimed to make a living on vending machines. He earned a ton of respect for picking up a ticking Rock Machine bomb and tossing it away from the clubhouse. He also killed the prison guard in that bad idea scheme that eventually put an end to the gang heirarchy. It's universally assumed that his own buddies executed him.

Gilles Villeneuve 1978

What's good for Quebec is good for Labatt 50. When Gilles Villeneuve won a Formula One race here in Montreal in 1978 he - as tradition dictates- opened a giant bottle of the good stuff, his bubbly came in the form of Labatt 50 beer. Vive la bedaine!

Random scenes Montreal December 15, 2008

Crowley, a tiny east-west street just south of Demaisonneuve and Decarie. I had theorized that it would eventually be widened as a compromise around the nutty idea of cutting the St. Raymond's area of NDG off from the big intersection at DeMaisonneuve and Decarie. The cute little daycare has been demolished and replaced with this. (The daycare, called Petits Chenilles, moved to the old MOSD building on Upper Lachine.) The previous structure stood far back from the sidewalk, unlike this thing, so goodbye to the little lawn. Every new building in NDG seems to be right on the sidewalk these days. There's not much chance of a road widening here now. So the serious problem of future diminished access to lower NDG looks like it will go unresolved. Near Oxford and St. James West.
Upper Lachine, slippery sidewalks, not a pinch of road salt anywhere.
Incipient tent city set up on Dorchester, south side, just east of Bleury. Funny guy has a little sign saying something like Institute for the Research of Marijuana in front. Bad photo, but you get the idea.
St. James near Oxford, south side. They could market this town as the world capital of slush. Put us back on the tourist map.
Sad little red victim of impact at Dorchester near University.

Bella Luna..sorry too late anyway

I meant to post something about an interesting play on at the Mainline Theatre but I was a bit slow on the draw, didn't know where to find a photo and now the darn thing has finished its run. The play, however, deserves some praise. It tells - told? - of a blonde depressed kid whose descent into madness involves him taking advice from all sorts of exotic fairies in fancy costumes. The madness uncaps when the crazy guy's  buddy brings over his date. This somehow destabilizes the young lad. The date is played by the actress better known for her stage persona as Miss Sugarpuss. She's very good, as is everybody in this play, which, truth be told, was way too long.  

Au Lutin Qui Bouffe

Nowadays nightclubs are rife with snap happy customers taking advantage of the freebie-o-sity of the digital camera technology that has revolutionized the world of image taking. Back in the day there were also photo ops from one's high livin' moments in the form of a pro photographer that would rove around and sell you a snap. This great photo was sent in by a reader named Melissa and features her mom at the Lutin Qui Bouffe, a joint near St. Denis and Laurier that had a huggable suckling pig at the ready for such occasions. David Radler was involved in this place and he would later find fame as an associate of the ever-controversial Lord Tubby of Crossharbour, aka Conrad Black.

Another such operation ran from the Kon Tiki bar in the Mount Royal Hotel, our family ran that photo snap biz for many a moon and somewhere amid the wreckage we have a huge pile of photos of customers making jolly at said establishment. Which led us to a previous debate over the cover of Leonard Cohen's album Death of a Ladies Man, which is apparently a photo of Cohen in one very such shot at the Kon Tiki.

Mo' better Overdale photos

1450 Kinkora Avenue, now demolished. Great building. The cul de sac was eliminated from the map after the buildings were knocked down during the Overdale tragedy. It's part of the parking lot now. Apartment 1 (bottom right) housed a guy named John Killoran, a shy student with a massive long hippie beard who told me he wanted to become a business journalist. I was in apartment two where I paid $125 all included. I had never met my predecessor, a skinny Anarchist named John who wore an enormous leather coat and had a chunky girlfriend named Carole. He was apparently a cutting edge fan of Joy Division but he also left a sorta dorky pen-drawn likeness of Boz Scaggs on the wall when he moved out. Apt 3 housed Mike Lynes, (aka Mick Lynes) a good friend and scenester and wannabe rockstar who moved to England around 1985 possibly to persue his Brian Jones fetish. Fellow guitar strummer Barry Henderson inherited his place and also became a close friend until he moved to New Brunswick in 2006. I snatched the pink-painted wood fireplace from that unit just before demolition, stripped it and still have it in my living room today. In apartment 4 lived the softspoken Ethiopian Solomon Tesfamarian. He knocked out a few bricks and put in a window without anybody noticing. Second floor included an introvert named John from Ottawa in apartment 5. He became a taxi driver and then died of a heroin overdose. He introduced me to Eddie Cochran records which became an obesssion to me. A bossy chick named Carole Burgess, whose sister Kathleen was a single-mother living in the area, moved in after the walls were washed of blood. In apartment 8 lived Tom Knuth, a brash student from West Germany who had a sweet girlfriend of Polish descent named Nancy Kwok who - legend has it - was soon after shot dead in the USA. Knuth always wore a brown leather bomber jacket which earned him the nickname Tom Brown. Knuth's cousin was his apartment predecessor who introduced me to some German pop stars like Joachim Witt. Clyde Klotz lived up there although I only met him once. He later went on to marry and divorce actress Gillian Anderson. Old Finnish Miss Ronni was a kind woman of laughter with a great Baltic accent. She would knit stuff for other tenants from her top floor apartment 8. I helped her Lutheran minister move to an old age home.

Frank Hannibal lived around the corner, he was a studly brown skinned Westmount High grad working as a mover and male model. He was always bugging me to let him know when an apartment opened up. I forgot. He was disappointed and then moved to New York. A chatty hippie-turned punk rocker from London named Eddy - who was about 10 years older than myself - and made a sudden transformation from meditation to mohawks lived downtairs before moving off to LA. He was replaced by flamboyant young gays who were understandably annoyed at my habit of blasting Alien Sex Fiend records at maximum volume. One of them, a black actor named Alex would traipse around in a skirt. He came over and comfortably sat among a bunch of us beer-swilling male slobs clad in full megapansy garb.

French Quebecois musician Pierre Flynn shot a video featuring 1450 Kinkora as a backdrop just prior to its demolition. (Of the building, not his career.)

The other side of the building sat on the north side of Overdale and mirrored the eight-unit building on Kinkora. It housed the wistful academic Robert Craig whose documentary about the demise of the neighbourhood aired on the Vision Network. The smiling Spanish horn-rimmed janitor Marcelino Oruna lived in apartment four and was succeeded by a small red haired guy with a similarly tiny girlfriend. That tiny duo broke up as soon as they had a tiny kid, which was the fashion back then. My window had a view on an identical apartment, only a few feet away, it was the nest of a friendly blonde chorus line dancer from the Yukon. I'd peer into her window to see if she was walking around in her panties or less but the leggy beauty was onto me pretty fast, my efforts were always futile. Her apartmental predecessor was one of the duo from the craptastic Deja Voodoo, I never really saw him or spoke to him though. Also living in that beehive mirroring my building was a well-liked Moroccan guy, a talented photographer who would always smile but never speak. The timid lad eventually hung himself. There was also the hilariously acerbic gay Newfie Norman Welsh who'd invite us over for John Waters films. I almost forgot this guitarist named Steven Parks. He sported big glasses that made him look more like an accountant than an axeman. I didn't know him well though.

The greystones on Mackay housed, among others, Fred McSherry, the janitor from Hamilton, who was also a clever concept artist. I think he got a grant for an artwork made of a book tossed into a blender and reglued together. Fred had a fellow Hamiltonian friend named Gregory living around there who wrote songs and played an organ, one of his catchy lounge-style numbers, "Nicar-ag-ua... Sand-inista..." had people humming it around Overdale for some time.

Nearby was old-school Byron Chichester, who seemed very old at the time, possibly even 40. Byron was a melancholy son of the black St. Antoine scene and friend to a buncha West End Gang guys, including Doonie Ryan. He didn't own a record player so he'd bring his Sunnyland Slim album to my place and close his eyes and sing along soulfully and without any inhibitation to Declaration Day. In discussing the Expos, Byron taught me that there are two types of people in this world. When mentioning good players, he'd say: "pay the man!" unworthy players were: "what's he done?"

One summer a moustacheod Gino named Frank moved to that building on Mackay. He was from Boston. He perched out on the stairs at the corner of Kinkora. He'd buttonhole anybody who'd walk by so he could babble on about rawk shows he had allegedly attended. It was unclear why this needy young soul had moved to Montreal. He eventually horned in to a few dinners around the neighbourhood but succeeded in irritating everybody enough to make a pact to avoid him. One day cops brought him back to the States to face the justice system he had been fleeing, apparently due to something about selling cocaine.

Then there was Michel, an effusive astrology freak who'd launch into long incomprehensible speeches about the planets and what they do. He eventually worked as a courier and married a girl from Germany. He'd brag about his proficiency at sneaking into big empty houses and just live there for free. There was a method to his squatting madness. Never turn on the lights. Don't let anybody see you enter. Michel was obsessed with the Trudeau mansion but never managed to get in. He told me that he squatted in a big house and when he was caught red handed the owner, rather than being angry, put him to work fixing stuff up. How much is true, who knows? Like John, the taxi driver from Ottawa, Michel had a crush on a tall, thin skanky punk junkie stripper named Cathy W. who had allegedly spent some time in jail. She lived with Marla the dog groomer somewhere on Overdale. Cathy wasn't shy. She drove me to the lookout one day in a car she'd borrowed. Nobody drove on Overdale so her ride was a great novelty. I wasn't keen on Cathy but I canoodled with her dog groomer friend a few times until her jealous Doberman pooped on my old white carpet, brazenly staring at me while doing it.

One summer an old Scot started perching on the narrow wood staircase in front of the Kinkora Avenue rooming house across the street (pictured left). Great accent. He'd greet me, "Hey there laddie." Just hearing that beautiful voice would make my day. He'd talk about the horses or how shockingly wicked John Delorean was. One day he asked me what I thought he should do about this pain he had in his leg. I suggested the hospital. Next thing I know, guys in white full-body suits and facemasks were spookily cleaning up his apartment. His kitchsy old suitscases were tossed in the garbage. It was a saddening, pathetic sight.

The last remaining structure, the Lafontaine mansion, two years ago and today, you'll notice the metal fire escape thingy has been removed from in front. I only went inside once, when a blonde guy with a moustache tried to sell me his freeweights.
The view from Mackay street, just south of Dorchester then (around 86) and now. Mostly old people lived there. You'd see them waiting on the sidewalk on welfare day.

I lived on the Overdale block from age 18 to 25, from 1981 to 1988 or so. Everybody I mentioned above (except Oruna, Ronni, Chichester and the old Scottish guy) was also in their 20s at the time.

How conductors stopped getting rich

From Popular Mechanics; March, 1906. Click the image to read a larger version of the article.

Rivers of tears - no gondola for Montreal

Nobody sent us a press release to Coolopolis Towers, so this is the first we've mentioned the $100 million gondola that we could have if it weren't for someone named Claude Benoit of the Old Port. The proposer of the thingy, Jeff Jorgenson - supposedly a helicopter pilot - has gone on a publicity tear against this person, blasting him (her?) at every turn for refusing the project, repeating that the Benoit is unelected. The gondolas would go through those islands whose names we can never remember and end up at the Old Port. So basically they would be going from nowhere to nowhere. He says it can transport 5,000 people per hour, which is more than the Victoria Bridge, so it's an environmentally friendly thing. He thinks it would be our Eiffel Tower, and so forth. He says it could be built by May 2010 and would cost $12 per ride. Free if you've played James Bond in a major motion picture.
Jorgenson has stuff to learn about how to manipulate the media. Rather than constantly scapegoating the Old Port, he should get the usual chorus of braying sheep on board with their guilt trippery which works particularly well with Catholics like Mayor Tremblay. We need to solve the gondola housing crisis. We need affordable gondolas. People below the poverty line are suffering without gondolas. We could have a moveable food bank for the poor on the gondolas. We could use the gondolas to feed the poor abandoned cats on Island Jean Drapeau and so forth. That's the way to swing in this town baby.

Westmounts racial purity laws

If you are going to get lucky in Westmount, the authorities must be alerted beforehand. According to Westmount law, you must inform the municipality if someone plans to stay overnight at the home of a Westmounter. The city needs to know before 11 pm otherwise they will ticket your non-Westmount car for being parked for more than four hours on the street after 11 pm. This is Westmounts way of keeping non-Westmount douchebag commoner blood from mixing with pure rich-folk elite blood. It is unfortunate that the gene pool doesnt always self-censor but such measures are, unfortunately, necessary.

Since nobody else said the obvious....

Good news: no more provincial elections for four or five years. Bad news - the Parti Quebecois did well enough to be taken seriously again. Where is Andre Boisclair when you need him? The reason for the surprisingly strong showing by Enemies of the Canadas: It was cold. Old people who vote for the Liberals didnt want to go outside to vote. Hairy cegep students were less intimidated by the weather. Anybody over 60 years old should be allowed to vote by phone or something, that way the pesky radicals can be kept out of power forever.

Seville theatre, nothing but heartaches

Who in this city does not have a theory about the ongoing miserable state of the block of St. Catherine between Closse and Chomedy? The strip, which once contained the Seville theatre, a laundrymat, a couple of restaurants, a bar, a market and so forth, has - over about 25 years - slowly descended to a shell of nothingness lined with inexplicably cheerful Inuit panhandlers.

Meanwhile relative prosperity reigns on all sides, north is home to a posh apartment complexes, west is Westmount and east is miles of thriving downtown shopping strip.

About five years back Claridge Inc - aka Stephen Bronfman, son of Charles, last remaining Bronfman Montreal male - had big plans to transform the empty areas into an eco-friendly residential and commercial development. They bought up the land and hired big name eco-friendly builders and made big presentations about the idea. The concept was to have 40 percent commercial, 14 percent residential, 12 percent offices and some common space. It was to have geothermal heating, solar chimneys, passive solar heating, hollow walls, green walls, green roof, waterwalls and a lot of other cutting edge enviro friendly stuff. The problem apparently was that the big enviro-chains just werent that keen on setting shop there and supposedly Bronfman took a big hit in his wealth when his portfolio went down. Sad story.

Why no Harper and Charest at Grey Cup?

This snap of Trudeau sitting next to arch rival Rene Levesque at the Grey Cup game in Montreal in 1977 shows that past government leaders had the fooballs to sit through freezing cold weather - was it cold ? yer darn tootin - and tricky company in order to be seen at the definitive annual Canadian sporting event. Unless Coolopolis and its unpaid interns and superintelligent simian staff missed it, there were no such photo ops at this years show. We arent even sure if either attended the game.

Montreal suburb to name park after this guy

This is Louis Laberge, labour leader during the bad old years when everybody was on strike. If there was a bus strike it was no big deal because the school was probably on strike too. Some place called Terrebonne, which we imagine to be a pretty exciting place, will be naming a park after him starting in June.

Overdale, in loving memory

These noble turreted greystones bathed in afternoon sun for generations on Mackay between Dorch and Overdale, east side, before Douglas Cohen and Robert Landau had them demolished and replaced with a parking lot. Thanks to Michael Fish for the photo. Read all the grisly details about this unforgiveable Dore-era scandal in the beefed-up Overdale wikipedia entry. More such photos to come. (Many thanks to Shawn for doing much cleanup on the wikipedia page.)

Did this movie star bring you a fridge?

One of Hollywoods studliest stars did some serious slogging in the Montreal heavy lifting trenches in the 80s.

According to James Tupper, 43, who went to Concordia to learn the acting craft that put him near the A-list...

"One summer in Montreal I had a job delivering refrigerators and washers and dryers. We had a truck and we'd pick up 80 refrigerators in the morning and deliver them all day. The guy I was working with didn't speak a word of English, only French and I only spoke English, and knew a few words of French. Basically, we just worked it out and by the end of the summer, we became the best of friends."

December 6, 1989

More on the womens prison mess ....

Two years after this - July 2, 1948 - the prison closed its doors, at least temporarily, for the first time. The reason was that the contract between its administrators and the province had run its course. Montreal Police Director J.A. Belanger was told that the prison refused to accept 10 women from the city jail. They had been nabbed in a whorehouse on St. Hubert just south of Ontario. The prison was set in two sections, one run by the Sisters of the Good Pastor and the other by a combination of Protestant groups.

Montrealers abusing cops -- ah the good ol days

From Beefeaters to speed cops in half a century - Montreal Policeman's lot was far from happy one in old days

Modern Force has changed attitude of people to one of friendliness

The Gazette 14 April 1951

Widely Diversified Responsibilities have replaced average man's job of patrolling beat, bringing in drunks

By Fern Labrosse

Often jeered, insulted and kicked in the ribs, the cop on the beat seldom won any popularity contest here at the turn of the century.

The fashion of the times - if a man wanted to impress his girlfriend and acquire neighborhood fame - was to walk up to a burly policeman, insult him, tear off his uniform and start punching.

Even children, who were frightened out of their wits at the sight of a gendarme, used to join in the act by sending a volley of snowballs or razzberries at the baton-wielding oficer.

"I can vouch for that, because I got nicked plenty of times when I joined the force in 1907," recalls Assistant Director Alfred Belanger, at 64 the oldest active member of the Montreal Police Department.

It was a far cry from today, when everyone looks up tot he constable as his friend and protector, and when a group of idolizing youngsters crowd around the man in blue at every street corner.

Keeping pace with the complete change in the public's hostile attitude toward policemen within the past 50 years has been the steady streamlining process that has turned the force into an efficient, highly-trained, fully-equipped and widely-respected machine, waging constant war against crime and disorder.

To grasp fully, however, the real extent of the face-lifting job which the department has undergone since then, a close analysis of conditions existing here in 1900 is necessary.

Most noteworthy - and least known to many people - of the factors that contributed to a policeman's lot at the turn of the century was the public's mental attitude toward him.

"It was the fashion then to get drunk and resist police," said Asst. Dir. Belanger, his stalwart six-foot four frame a reminder of the burly cops of yore.

"You could get a 40 ounce bottle of gin for 85 cents at any grocery store and street fights were going on all the time. Not only with fists, mind you, but with clubs, knives and hammers.

"A man didn't come into his own until he had fought with police, and then he'd brag all over the neighborhood. In the downtown section of the city, which was more like a village compared to its size today, constables had to be well over six fet tall and for reason."

There was a widespread tendency - more prevalent among the lower class of people - to attack a constable in the act of arresting a drunk.

According to John Loye, 70-year-old Montrealer whose father - the late Capt. Frank Loye - founded th Police Amateur Athletic Association in 1896 the "beat" constables were bigger and taller then.

"They were corpulent specimens, big, powerful, fat men who were known far and wide as beef eaters," Mr. Loye said.

"I suppose the only explanation for the public's lack of sympathy toward the police stemmed from the fact that authority breeds resentment."

People gradually swung away from this antagonistic outlook, but not before many a constable had had his uniform torn off his back.

Records show that out of 7,977 arrests made in 1895, 69 were for resisting police, 18 for insulting police, 45 for interfering with police and six for tearing police uniforms.

Conditions began to improve a few years later with the introduction of the patrol signal and patrol wagon system. Prior to this, constables had to bring prisoners to the stations without any help, often dragging the lawbreakers for several blocks.

The public's changeover was a painfully slow process, however, and sheet iron kiosks had to be built over the signal boxes to prevent them being smashed to bits.

Meantime, resprenretatives of law and order in Canada's metropolis were maintaing a sharp vigil over the growing city.

Instead of bank robberies, kidnappings, car thefts and frigidaire smuggling, they dealt with law infringments such as attempting to rescue prisoners, buying liquor on Sundays, coining bad money, drawing a loaded pistol exciting a crowd, furious driving, acting disoderly in a disorderly house, keeping a music saloon, selling putrid meat off the market, using threatening language. etc.

Under close watch by police at the time were shebeens - low drinking shops without the outward evidence accorded by the eixstence of a bar and, therefore, more difficult of detection. Police also made several arrests in efforts to stamp out the increasing crime of wife beating, which authorities aptly described as brual and cowardly."

In 1895 the force's full completment of 350 officers and men operated on a budget of less than $500,000.

Last month, the City Executive Committee approved 1951 budget estimates totalling $7,561,186 for the police department, which boasts personally of 7,858 - still 1,000 under the required number, according to Albert Langlois, MBC director since 1947.

By 1907, when Asst. Dir. Belanger joined the force, constables were earning $600 a yer, as against a minimum of salary of $1,750 for today's rookie cop.

"Life was indeed harder in the horse and buggy days," he said. "Our regular shifts were 10 hours in the day and 14 at night. After working the night shift, we often had to spend the day in court," since there was no liaison officer at the time.

"Strikes were a common occurence, and during a stevedore walkout on the waterfront, I didn't have a chance to go home for nine straight days."

The grey-haired veteran couldn't help laughing aloud when he recalled the first time he was appointeed to traffic duty- back in 1910 to direct the "quick" flow of hand-brake street cars and wagons at St. Catherine and St. Denis streets.

"Why, I remember when we lost drunkenness cases because the patrol wagons were so slow in answering our call. By the time the horses came around, the drunk had sobered up."

Traffic cops bought their own raincoats and rubber boots then. Today, a uniform for every occasion is given traffic policemen and if the latter has to spend a dollar on clothes, the department pays him back.

Police were not allowed to carry firearms at the turn of the century. It was only after two constables had been shot and severaly injured while trying to nab an armed thug that they were authorized to carry a gun - but from 6 pm to 6 am only.

Ten years later, every officer of the law had a gun in addition to this baton. Blackjacks secretly carried by men - against orders of the chief, naturally were discarded since the men could then meet armed thugs on an equal footing.

"Before getting our weapons we'd do our best to talk an armed man into giving himself up. Some of them came peacefully but.... " .. article to be continued.

Papineau and St. Catherine

Gotta love this snap from 1979 of Papineau and St. Catherine, with the Louvre Tea Room at the Southwest corner and the Calex Gas station on the Southeast slice. Calex was bought out by Olco in 97 and the station is now closed. Adjacent to the gas station sits a multiplex movie theatre. The view is supposed to become as below...
Ottawa developers Canril now own the corner and have popped up this picture of upcoming condos. But Canril has told Coolopolis that they are no longer going to put condos up at the spot, possibly opting instead for something a bit more commercial, although the ideas are still up in the air and the project is not on their site.

It might be slightly harder to leverage cash to build these days but the price of homes on the island should encourage builders to get cracking.

Scenes from around town

The 110 year old Neo-Gothic Viger Station Hotel is way too great a building in a great part of town - just east of city hall - to be allowed to be used as a magnet for firebugs. The CPR built it as a hotel but it closed in 1935 and was used as a city building ever since and other stuff like the offices of the Rehabilitation Society for Cripples. The city sold the magnificent building to Developpement Telemedia for $9 million in July 2005.

Our ol pal Cameron Charlebois is heading the initiative to get it back into usage. There are meetings... and experts... and hearings. Its... ever ...so ...democratic. But as the clock ticks the danger of a fire or other damage grows. I am told that water damaged the building rather seriously last winter. Also, as one industry veteran commented, Charlebois has gotten a bit long in the tooth to develop the property. Developers have to be young and hungry. When you hit your mid-50s its hard to roll the development dice for fear of losing your retirement nest egg. Developers, as we know, always go broke. Its an adage, look it up.

Long, long ago I wrote a spicy article about Charlebois complete with some unflattering quotes about him. But he took it like a man and returned my calls afterwards, as did his pal Phil O Brien, who built that World Trade thingy on McGill during the recession. OBrien didnt much like the piece I penned but remained civil with me because he realized probably nobody really read that darn thing I wrote anyway.
This monstrosity sits across from the Jewish General Hospital, which is the turf of City Councillor Saulie Zajdel, who must put in at least 45 minutes of work a week on his city duties, judging by his performances at borough council meetings. How people could be forced to look at this mess from their hospital beds is beyond me.

These scenes are from Bannantyne and Church where a female crossing guard was run over and killed a few days ago. The 2 top photos from a day or so after the accident shows a little makeshift shrine. The bottom photo, from about 6 days later, shows the womans replacement, as well as the ongoing monument to the victim. If anybody in the city had a brain theyd realize that the problem with this crossing is lights. It should be a four way stop. The guard was killed when somebody sped up to try to catch the tail end of a green and ended up in a collision with another vehicle, which skidded into the guard on the sidewalk. Time for the city to start scrapping the traffic lights which emperil innocent people by encouraging speeding.

These two photos - the top taken outside ICAO this morning, and the bottom one taken near the Nelson monument last week - prove that one-man placard protesters are still a wacky feature of the city. Be kind to these people and ask them about their initiative. The good karma will serve you well.

MTL inspires Latvian backyard getaways

Low drinking age, devil-may-care driving fun, not being asked what you do at a party -- Montreal is known for many things.

But if you're in Latvia, Montreal is increasingly likely to evoke drink-filled nights in these deluxe "Montreal" camping huts, rodents scratching at the trash as you munch intestine dumplings while the secretary works hard on something and the 0-0 soccer match is blaring.


Oh the joys of a backyard Latvian getaway! Measuring about 15' x 15' inside (22.5 m2), "the excellent 'MONTREAL LUX' can serve as a summer garden house, camping house or sleeping place for fisherman; up to 6 beds." - Total damage: 3,250 Lats (including VAT). That's $7,355.73 Canadian dollars. They don't say what happens if the fishermen eat too many Latvian bacon buns.

The basic, 24 square-metre Montreal camping hut is 3,150 Lats, tax-in installed! That's $7,128.81 Canadian. They're all made at the Rodi factory in Tukum, Latvia.

If your arms are short and your pockets are deep, you can still take care of your baser necessities with this chirpy number. They'll deliver, for about a buck a kilometre.

If you're doing the math on delivery, a straight line from Montreal to the Latvian capital of Riga is 6,336 km / 3,937 miles. Then add a few Lats.

Louise Harel - wannabe mayor

The Queen of the megacity is looking to take over Montreal. Louise Harel, longtime MNA for east end Montreals Maisonneuve district has quit provincial politics. A coupla opposition city councillors have left the Labonte faction (the old Vision Montreal Bourque Party) to sit as independents, but in fact their plan is to support a mayoral bid by the separatist Harel who was the author of the forced mergers.

Kinda interesting trivia: Harel, according to this article, was offered $26,500 by the provincial archivists for her government notes and papers, not in cash but in tax credits, same thing really. Meanwhile the papers of Andre Boisclair were evaluated at a mere $2,500 while Claude Ryan had documents in his desk worth $186,500.

And I'm from Montreal, so...

Some people just "go" with the places they're from. You know, people and places like John Crosbie and St. John's, Paolo Momesso and St. Raymond, Stompin' Tom and P.E.I. ... and, who could forget Theresa Sokyrka of Moose Jaw?

But Toronto, more than Montreal, might be the first conglomeration to enter your mind whenever Naomi Klein's name pops up -- despite the fact that this economist/mega-bestselling writer was born here back in 1970.

Montreal still figures high when Klein talks about what lit her activist wick in her University of Toronto days.

"There was a moment where I became involved in politics as a university student. . . It was a moment that I think Americans won’t remember, but Canadians do, which is known as the 'Montreal Massacre.'

"It was a school shooting, but it was a very political school shooting. It happened at the University of Montreal, and I’m from Montreal so it affected me a lot. And I was in first year university, and it was a shooting at an engineering school by a man named Mark Lepine who had tried to get into this school but he hadn’t gotten in.

"And he decided it was because there was affirmative action for women, so he went into the engineering department and he separated the men from the women and said, 'You’re all a bunch of fucking feminists,' and killed 14 women . . . just gunned them down.

"So this was an amazing political awakening for a lot of women because the politics were just so clear, and we felt really vulnerable as women in universities at that point. So up until then I had really decided, you know, I didn’t wanna be involved in activism and I didn’t want to follow in my family’s footsteps. But that was like a wake-up call."

Coolopolis demands that Benoit Labonte give free parking downtown for the hoildays

Coolopolis and its staff think it would be a great idea to give shoppers a break and allow them to shop without feeding the meters downtown just for the holiday season. We feel that Ville Marie borough mayor should do this for Montrealers. just as a favour to Coolopolis.


Update: Mtl opposition leadear and downtown borough boss has taken up the Coolopolis suggestion and given people free parking downtown around Christmastime - between Dec. 20 and 28. Happy parking! Happy shopping!

For those who thinque this is no great idea - (and u wrong 4 dat!) this stupendous book should help buttress your cause.