Parlez-vous bebe?

Montreal and the queen of the desert

Marta (born Martha) Becket, 84, has become something of an underground celebrity in the past half-century, after establishing her unlikely, anachronistic "opera house" in the middle of the desert.
A classically-trained ballet showgirl who was making a name for herself on the nightclub circuit just as the genre nosedived, she was guided by some sort of providence in the 1950s to rent this abandoned hall in a Death Valley, California, ghost town. With barely a penny to her name, she established the Amargosa Opera House just a few miles west of the Nevada state line, in a place that had once prospered on the production of borax.

For decades, Becket had staged her poorly-attended performances and concocted a world of her imagination, where unseen, 16th-century ladies and gentlemen applauded her every step from their seats in the gilded terraces. So few people actually turned up to watch her shows -- sometimes as few as zero, she even painted a crowd on the walls, lovingly, by hand, and gave her full performances to the empty hall. After years and years of this kind of thing, Becket was of course discovered. She became something of a local, and then national, underground sensation -- but one who could now afford to eat. Now pushing 90 years, she
is still performing -- only now to packed houses, even if she can't kick as high as she used to. So what's the Montreal angle? We're getting to that. A few years back, her memoirs came out, To Dance on Sands, in which Becket tells of a short but decisive stay in this city. In fact it was in Montreal, where she performed at the Samovar club for a month in 1944, that she settled on her stage name. As she explains, a French-language nightclub reviewer wrote glowingly of her performance here while mangling her given name as Marta, instead of Martha.

The Samovar club was on Peel Street. It was owned and operated by Carl Grauer, a controversial, gay nightclub impressario who was tough, but he had the heart to advance some cash to Marta when she needed it most. Her account is a fascinating slice of wartime life in this city. One can forgive her few mistakes. For example, she gets the name of a church wrong (it was probably St. Paul's -- now the Mary Queen of the World -- and not St. Peter's), and that of the Royal Victoria, and she remembers Peel Street as Queen.


We pick up her story about 99 pages in, as a U.S. booker informs her of a Montreal gig.

Frank Lewis was glad to see me, and said he had heard I was quite a hit at Bouche's Villa Venice. He told me he had a booking for me at a Russian restaurant in Montreal called The Samovar, for a whole month, and then another after that called The Old Romanian down on the lower east side.

To fill in the next few blank weeks with smaller bookings, I went to visit Harry Stone and Frank Byron.

I was shocked to see that Frank Byron was no longer in business, and Harry Stone was in the process of closing for good. When I walked into his office, he looked surprised to see me.

"Thought you were caught up in the 'big time,'" he said.

"I was. I still am," I replied.

"Good for you," he quipped. "You'd better get what you can, young lady. Vaudeville died twenty years ago, and now the nightclubs are closing. The ones that aren't closing are cutting out floor shows. Singers and bands, that's what they want now. I'm closing up and moving out."

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"I'm quit'n show business, been in it too long. I'm going to join my brother and his wife on their farm in New Jersey."

Upon returning home, Mother announced that we were going to have to move. "They're raising our rent, and we have to stay within our budget," she said.

Mother and I agreed on one thing, we should look for a loft that could be lived in and used for a studio. The next week was spend hunting for a loft and preparing for the month's engagement in Montreal.

"You know," said Frank Lewis when I was signing the contract, "your meals and room are provided as part of your salary, but not for your mother. She will have to pay for her own room and meals. You know that you can't have your mother tagging along aftre you forever, don't you?"

Bouche would like you back at the Villa Venice next summer, without your mother," he added. "Think about it."

My contract was ninety dollars a week. There would be plenty of money for Mother's room and meals.

Mother didn't seem as upset as I had expected. As long as my loyalty was ever present, she was satisfied. Arrangements were made to stay at a rooming house within a short distance from the Samovar on Queen Street.

Our rooming house looked something like an illustration from Charles Adams, with high ceilings inside, a huge square staircase and dark wood paneling everywhere. Dim, electrified gas lights illuminated the dark brown hallways. I was dismayed to see that there was only one bed.

"This job doesn't pay for two beds, dear. We'll save the money by sleeping together," Mother said sternly.

I was anxious to get to the Samovar, hang up my costumes and look at myself in the dressing room mirror. I hoped that I would see my reflection, not Mother's.

We got to the Samovar in time for dinner. The Samovar was exquisite, a remnant of old Russia. Paintings lined the walls and pillars surrounding the dance floor. There was a show orchestra and a balalaika orchestra.

A man came forward and introduced himself as Mr. Carl Grauer. It certinly wasn't a Russian name, but he was the owner and manager of the establishment.

We were ushered to the dressing room where I was surprised to see Litia Namora, the East Indian dancer from Bouche's.

Dinner was being served to us out in the dining room. When Litia and I walked in, a male tap dancer with red hair and a beard sat at the table already dining. His name was Eric Victor. Mother was talking to Mr. Grauer, and then came over to me.

"I'm going down the street to the cafeteria for dinner," Mother said. "The meals are too expensive for me here. Don't worry about me. I'll be back in a little while and then we can go to our room."

Like a whisk, she was gone. Litia broke the spell Mother left me in.

"Here's the food. My, doesn't it smell good?"

I turned, and in front of me were a hot bowl of borscht and a large plate of purutchki, a small pastry filled with meat. This was certainly some of the best food I had ever had. For a moment, I wished Mother was there to enjoy it too. And then the conversation and the exotic food broke my train of thought, and for one full hour I did not think of Mother at all.

A few doors from the Samovar was a ballet school and rehearsal hall. I was there the next morning to practice my barre. After that, Mother and I went for a short lunch at the cafeteria and took a look-in at her office. Mother wanted to take in some early afternoon sightseeing before going to the Samovar for band rehearsal. I was not too enthusiastic about the idea. Mother insisted, so we went.

We decided to take in St. Peter's Cathedral. While wandering about gazing up at the great central dome, marveling at the light which filtered from the tiny openings, I heard a scream and turned. There was Mother, flat on the marble floor by a stone step she must have missed.

"Help me, help me!" she cried. The few tourists ran to help her up. I felt it must have been my fault. If I had been beside her, holding her hand instead of gaping at the dome, she would not have fallen.

We took a cab to Victoria hospital. I was shocked to learn that I had to put down a deposit before Mother could be admitted.

Mother had broken her wrist. It cost ninety dollars for my deposit, my first week's salary at the Samovar. The whole thing! I wondered if Mr. Grauer would give me an advance.

I hurried down the hill on Queen Street by foot, all the way to the Samovar. I had no money left for a cab and I was embarrassed at having to request an advance on my salary from Mr. Grauer. I had made a good impression, and now I feared that this favor I was asking was not going to be good for my opening night.

When I reached Mr. Grauer, he smiled, until I made my request. He had already had words with my mother concerning her meals. I could see that Mother was a bigger factor in my presence here than I was.

"How much do they require at the hospital?" he asked.

"Exactly ninety dollars. My whole' week's salary will go toward Mother's deposit. They said they'd wait for the rest." I stood paralyzed with embarrassment.

"It's strange that they want exactly ninety dollars," Mr. Grauer said. "I'll give it do you. But you'd better live up to the praise I've been hearing about you. The critics will be here tonight, you know."

I paid the full ninety dollars to the cashier at hospital. I was told to return next morning when Mother would be released.

I left the hospital feeling as if I had been through a steamroller. I got back to the Samovar in time to rehearse with the orchestra before supper.

Somehow, the anticipation of being without Mother for a full twenty-four hours in itself was comforting. Because of an unexpected accident that whisked her out of my life for a short time, I was given space to think for myself.

After orchestra rehearsal, I sat down at my dressing table and, staring back at me, was my own face. I put on my makeup and, for the first time, Mother was not reflected in the background of the dressing room mirror.

Opening night came and went. I could tell by the reaction of the audience that my act went over well. Later I had a chance to sleep in a room by myself in a strange city. The exhiliration of that first opening night without Mother was a time I savored.

When I arrived at the Samovar the next day, Mr. Grauer was all smiles. He held up a French newspaper and said, "You did well. You made a fine impression. I'll read it to you and then translate it."

There was one line that said, "Marta Becket personifies the dance itself." This stuck in my memory for years. Also, I kind of liked the way they misspelled my name. I stored this in my memory.

The review in English had a line about my "performing able toe work indeed." Perhaps my performance and the good review would make up for the request I'd made the day before.
When I went to pick Mother up, she was sitting in a stuffed chair waiting for me. She greeted me with a forlorn smile and muttered something about my being late. She had a cast on her left arm which hung in a sling around her neck.

"Take me to the board room dear. I've already missed the opening prices," Mother said.
I took Mother down to her office and left her there in the front row. Her eyes immediately glued themselves to the tape.

For the rest of the month I made up my mind to enjoy my engagement. It was particularly difficult at night, in that one small bed, trying to sleep, and Mother's cast hitting me as she turned.

Still Hoping ... we find that abandoned car

The high cost of living in the U.S. States

You've heard it all before. Jackie Robinson, the baseball great whose destiny it was to shatter the colour barrier of Major League baseball, played for the Montreal Royals before doing so. He was, by all accounts, adored in this city, as this quote from WikiTree.com pioneer and New Englander Chris Whitten suggests: "During away tours, (Robinson) had to endure the onslaught of racial hatred and violent fans, but when returning to Montreal the fans welcomed him as their local hero."

Six years later, as a resident of a prosperous New York suburb, this happens:
As published in Jet magazine, 1952.

Q - wussat all about?

This structure played a role in the history of Montreal. What was it?

Hint: We're gonna short-sheet you soon. Whatever it was, it is not associated with the year 1966 or ealier.

Time's up. This was a prototype of the structure that the Federal Republic of Germany selected as its Expo 67 pavilion. The above shot presents it around the time it was unveiled at a design fair in West Germany.

As the original photo caption read: "You won't see this strangely shaped tent at local campgrounds--but if you're going to be in Montreal next summer, you'll find it at Expo 67 sheltering a display from Germany. The tent was developed by a German study group for industrial forms, and was presented at a recent show given by that group in Konstanz." (from Popular Mechanics, 1966.)


And here it is a year later on steroids, with the Monorail zipping past. The concept, which -- though expensive -- was light, practical, easy to set up, and expandable to suit any kind of landscape, would also be adapted for the Olympic swimming area at the 1972 Munich summer games.

Frei Otto got credit for the idea. His partner's daughter, who lives in New York, still uses the look in her own designs.

Montreal's aqueduct - a lost chance

As this article demonstrates, in 1913 Montreal real estate developers were hatching a plan to turn the area near the Aqueduct into a highly desirable place to live. It was close to much of the action - including the jobs on the highly-polluted and industrial Lachine Canal. According to this artist rendition, pedestrians would be encouraged to walk alongside the water, peer over railings or even walk down stairs so you wiggle your toes in the watery St. Lawrence drink.

The pretty road would be named Aqueduct Boulevard - which of course is now known as de la Verendrey, which is as hard to spell as it is long to say. As the patched-together picture on the left displays (between Church and Woodland) what was eventually built allows no access to the water along the north side of the canal. The West Island appears to have been called Highlands. What's now known as Ville Emard was known as Rockfield. And the area between Lasalle and Verdun was known as the Bronx. Some residents of that area still call it that, and one or two stores still bear that monicker.

One hint that the area might slowly fulfill its potential as a pleasant waterside area can be found in the big series of condos finally completed near Church and St. Patrick.

Who sez disco launched cocaine in Montreal?

In 1913 someone hosted a bang-up cocaine party in Montreal. Soon after someone named Mike Glover was a corpse and several others arrested.

Stuff you find on google books...

Jack Johnson and Montreal

Several accounts suggest that the great boxer Jack Johnson, who ran into trouble in the USA due to his ability to conquer white men as well as white women, found a temporary haven of tolerance in Montreal where he arrived with his white lover July 25, 1913. The story promotes the idea that Montreal was a place where black men could date white women without anybody being bothered by it, which wasn't the case in the States, where he was sought for participating in exactly this custom with girlfriend Lucille Cameron.

While there may be some basis to the notion that black men could date white women unmolested in Montreal, it's not necessarily proven by Johnson's story. Another version of this story - told by Roger Kahn 

(somewhere in googlebooks) also claims that Johnson furtively entered Canada pretending to be a member of a travelling Cuban baseball team. 

In fact, from what we can tell from from this article, Johnson left Chicago by car Tuesday June 24 and stayed one day in Montreal before leaving for for Le Havre France on his way to St. Petersburgh Russia for a boxing match. 

Courage, your name is Stumpy

Hopping in black and white: Expo's pathetic legacy

After the flukey success of Montreal's world's fair that almost didn't happen, Mayor Johnny "Two Flags" Drapeau (who was actually opposed to Expo 67 when it was first announced) clamped his jaws on the rose-coloured notion that the world would come back here forever. It didn't. Eight summers after the mid-'60s fiesta rolled in and out of town, Montreal was still trying to flog this sucker to suckers.

The only real winners in Man and His World were the countries that had built pavilions for Expo 67 -- by signing over their buildings, they saved big bucks by not having to demolish them.

This ad appeared in a New York magazine. Who wrote this crap -- the same guys who do the translations for Touring, the CAA-Quebec laugh-a-zine?

The branding, the imagery, the Basque clowns -- nothing would bring the crowds back to this playground for pyromaniacs. The poor thing finally got shuttered down -- well past its best-before date -- in 1981.

And what replaced it? That other legendary blockbuster! A flower fair: The Floralies. Remember? (Zzzzz - Chimples) Close to perfect, indeed.

World-famous landmark moving to Montreal!

(Click me, you fool.)

Butt in flames, Montrealer gripes

Short shorts: The thigh's the limit

Shtop shnickering! Short shorts are back for men. That is, if you can believe Now magazine (May 13-20 edition), from Toronto -- which always has the last word on things sartorial. (Stop, stop! You're killing me. - Chimples.) But dare you go as high as Freddy Mercury, seen singing Another One Bites the Dust during Queen's one-and-only filmed performance, at the Montreal Forum in 1981?

Some group denounces Sulpician densification

A group that doesn't seem to translate its name (CRE-Montréal), mission or website has come out against a plan to convert the old Marianopolis College greenspace into a crowded little upstuck village. (And this courtesy of a mayor who campaigned against Bourque's Atwater de-greenification by saying, What's green will stay green.)

Here's what Google's traslate tool does, unedited, to their well-meaning-but-dishwatery press bulletin:

Stop the Marianopolis
The Regional de l'environnement de Montréal (CRE-Montréal) asks the city of Montreal to intervene to protect the site of the former seminary in Philosophy in the historic and natural borough of Mont-Royal (AHNMR ) by refusing all new construction. Recall that the promoter CATO inc. has acquired the site in 2008 and hopes to build over 325 housing units. This is not to question the ability of the sponsor to offer the city of Montreal a quality project but rather to the principle enunciated in the draft Plan for the protection and enhancement of Mont Royal on , the "carrying capacity" of the mountain to receive new construction. Because the project Marianopolis pave the way for all other redevelopment projects of the institutions on the slopes of Mount Royal, the CRE asks the city to implement this principle.

The Main doesn't get much better than this

Panorama from a 1972 show by Melvin Charney at the Museum of Fine Arts. The photos were taken in November, 1965. (Click it, d'uh.)

A Seville show, as seen by a local hack

From: The Billboard; July 26, 1952; Page 17

Seville Theater, Montreal

(Friday, July 11)

Capacity, 980. Price policy, 50 cents to $1. manager, Mark Mehr. Booker, Ray Cooper. Show played by Len Howard ork.

Bucking the tropical heat wave, exodus of patrons to Laurentians, and many other big local attractions, Gisele MacKenzie surprised the management by opening to good business, and standing room at night.

Standing straight, introducing her numbers simply, and singing easily earned the girl solid applause. Her numbers include "I'll Walk Alone," "Song in My Heart," scoring particularly well with "Jolie, Jolie Jacqueline." Her "Whistle My Love," and "Fiacre" fit in very well as both records have had good local sale. Her comic showmanship came to the fore in her Texas version of "Kiss of Fire." "Watermelon Weather" is OK, with her "Johnny" number being done with all emotional stops pulled out.

Begged off with "Silver and Gold," averaging nine songs per show to big applause. (Gisele is the only girl, other than Ethel Smith at opening, Rosemary Clooney, and Gloria DeHaven to do business at the Seville.)

The supporting show included Wright Brothers, two fast moving tap dancers; Paul Rich playing harmonica including his "sexy' number and "St. Louis Blues," which does very well; Roby and Dells do a hand balancing and acrobatic bit that fits in okay, and Will Jordon's mimicry about a ball game with famous spectators would be better if all the audience understood English. Frank Heron, local veteran emsee, introduced the acts, and Len Howard's ork cut the show.

Colin Gravenor.

The bummer of '42

Night clubs were hurting all over, according to an article by Paul Denis of The Billboard in its edition of 15 August 1942. The States had only recently joined the war effort, while we in Sin City North had been shoulder-to-the-wheel (or pretending to be flat-footed) for about three years.

This item goes on to blame government restrictions on operating methods, food and liquor problems, labour shortages, talent shortages and unsteadiness of business. It concluded, "The day of the easy-going, vulgar, sloppy, poor-business man type of night club owner is over." (That's why you guys don't run a club like your dad did -- Chimples) One local victim of the times was the previously bustling Chez Maurice on St. Catherine, which went down in in a cesspool of debt, only to be sold to New York promoters.

That being said, a news brief in the same edition of The Billboard also announced that Rockhead's Paradise was reopening, with its "all-sepia revue" (read: black). So things couldn'ta been that bad.


What's more, things weren't so tight that the more confident talent couldn't afford to be selective. At the Gaiety burlesque theatre, the French chanteuse Irene Hilda had been booked to play but she refused to step on stage when she learned that the other acts included strippers. Lawsuits were threatened.

While hardly a legend, but in perhaps her mind, Irene Hilda (whose photo is hard to come by), went on to a long, but hardly stellar, film career. She also did stage work, as her cover credit on this original cast recording of Cole Porter's Can Can, goes to show.

Just railing on about trains

This shows what was a proposed railway service, back in aught-six. Three years later, it was running. It's the Goose Villiage stretch (see Forfar, Menai and Conway) that tugs at the ol' ticker, now that the neighbourhood has been swept away by the home-wreckers.

The Montreal and Southern Counties Railway was a standard-gauge electrical line that, at its height, stretched between Montreal and Granby. The company ceased operations in 1956. Now everybody drives. Consequently, it's harder to visit the zebras at the Granby zoo... (You never mention the apes! - Chimples) ... er, not to mention the apes.

There are still some of the original equipment around. This illustration is courtesy of a rail museum in Kennebunk Port, Maine. It shows a train at the MSCR's McGill Street terminal (now transformed into this ugly little square. But at least the circular paving scheme evoke ye olde turning around of the trains).

Westmount at $5 a month

An ad from the old Herald, March 1906. Notice the promoter's name: Marcil. That's one way to get a street named after you -- not to mention a fine fortune. The train below would be a Grand Trunk steamer, and that looks like a ship being towed along the canal. This idealized view could represent just about anywhere along the steep, "well drained" incline between, say, Atwater and Cavendish and bordering on Dorchester, St. Catherine or St. James West. By the looks of it, you're talking towards the west -- which sure isn't Westmount. The name of Westmount already carried a lot of weight in those days, when Golden Square Milers looked down their noses at that suburb.

Why the ink?

It's exactly seventy years ago today. Why would the average Montreal newspaper reader care about this group portrait?

Hint: The fame of maman and papa was eclipsed by others who did not make this photo session.

No takers?: You are looking at the Dionne Quintuplets' family, on a visit to Toronto (Now that's work -- Chimples) -- minus the quints, who were paying a visit to the King and Queen, then on a Royal Tour of Hawgtown on 23 May, 1939.

Books with blank pages

One of the brite younge summer interns pointed out that writing a book takes a lot of hard work. Then nearly everybody who sees it will only glance at the cover. So why bother actually filling the pages? In this effort we offer the first in hopefully a very very very long series of fine quality tomes which don't actually have any words printed on the pages but have impressive thought-provoking covers.

Sad tale of Noella Doucet

Noella Doucet was savagely beaten last October in an attack which left her full of stitches and in a coma. She lost her apartment while in convalescence and is now stuck in a non-wheelchair accessible basement where she requires someone to lift her every time she wants to leave her home. The local CLSC has failed to help her find suitable lodgings. Doucet, 68, was one of thousands of normal Quebec orphans illegally placed in insane asylums in their youth and who were only compensated a laughable pittance by the governement - a maximum of $15,000 per head. Consider that the bureaucrats hired to administer the payments (they made sure to stretch the process out for a very long time, about one year) were paid $1,000 per day for their pencil pushing. Victims such as Doucet were given a fraction of what comparable victims of much lesser traumas were given in other provinces. They also failed to have their false mental records cleared and never received an official apology from the provincial government. Doucet says she never recovered from the harrowing years at the St. Julien hospital and has renounced the Catholic faith in which she was raised. The Duplessis Orphans still hope for a better deal from Justice Minister Kathleen Weil. Doucet is pictured in this recent photo posing with fellow Duplessis Orphan Survivor Clarina Duguay.

Mtl buiding shots from 50 years ago

The top photos were from an article about illicit gambling halls in Montreal. The last two from an article about an infamous gangs that battled around Ontario and St. Andre.

Q-now with bonus hint foto!

This is the area around the St. Peter the Apostle Church on Dorchester, the plans are meant to be the early proposals for the big CBC HQ on 1.5 million square feet west of Papineau and Dorchester to St. Antoine. The drawings were done by the "Centre Commercial" Development Committee led by Gabriel Gregoire. Here's the article.

From 1879. Durham Street was renamed Plessis around the same time.

(from the same excellent link provided by Busby in the robbery post below).

Peace off!

Maybe this is what Prince was on about when he sang, When Doves Cry.

One hundred of these doves (presuming they were doves) were released from their pens to commemorate Youth Day on Sunday, August 6, 1967, at the Expo 67 outdoor stadium, Place des Nations.

The crowd had a flocking good time ... for a while. But nobody thought about what doves do after you let them go. (Who cares? - Chimples) They just want to go home. And they want to eat. And, peaceful fowl that they are, they don't fight back when hunted and pecked by nastier winged critters.

So that's what happened. The 100 endangered North American doves (only an estimated 150 remained in the wild) flew away, to the thundering applause of thousands of onlookers. But then the birds just landed on makeshift perches all around the stadium, having not a clue about what to do or where to go next.

Days later, they were stil haunting the place, swooping down on people in hopes of birdy num-nums or any handouts. Here they are seen, still shifty and confused, four days after the gaffe.

The SPCA got in on the act. Its director told the Youth Day organizers, "You kids better round 'em up and bring them to me for care." The yutes retorted that the birds were nothing but "light coloured pigeons" and told the SPCA to "Forget it!"

On second thought, maybe this was what Prince was on about when he sang, "Poo-poo rain."

Shimpshon's Shold Shex

What does it say there after Jamaica? Bachelor Party Tours (escorted). They went "all the way," indeed! (Put me down for 21 day special! - Chimples) From the Gazette, 10 August '67.

Remember when Ogilvy's sold stuff?

Summer of '67. Twenty-years before they ethnically "corrected" the former department store, renamed it and ground Ye Merry Olde Hinglish off the sign at Mountain and St. Kate.

70 years ago.

This marks around the 70 th anniversary of the robbing of Napoleon Boileau. The 75 year old Frontenac street resident was walking down a staircase on Ontario Street and fell down. Another guy came to help him, and then robbed him of $2 in a nearby alley. Coolopolis was seriously considering reopening the case. Please send your information to us about this 1939 robbery if you have any, justice needs to be served.

The goode olde dayse 1969 in Montreal

Nadia Comaneci's Montreal life

Nadia Comaneci was 14 when she did the Montreal Olympics in 1976. She then lived unhappily under the reign of dictator Ceausescu who denied her visas to compete outside of the country, supposedly because he was jealous of her fame. On November 25, 1989 -with the help of $5,000 and Constantin Panait, a Romanian American roofer and father of 4 - she snuck into Hungary. They went to the States where journalists accused her of being a homewrecker. She claimed that he was beating her up and keeping her enslaved, along with his wife Maria's help.

Comaneci arrived in Montreal in March 1990 and stayed with Robert Miller and his wife Margaret Miller for about three weeks in the old Charles Bronfman Westmount mansion. (Robert Miller is a reclusive Montreal billionaire known for giving Money to the Quebec Liberal Party. He's generous to friends, owns the West island based Future Electronics and has never been seen in a published photograph. Miller keeps his photos locked up in the basement because he's scared of kidnapping, even though his two sons - one brainy & ambitious, other less so - are adults. He's around 70, health conscious, wants to be cryogenically revived later if possible & had a nose job about six years ago. Margaret was from Romania, had worked for CJAD and developed the Promenades Hudson mall as well as a mall near Plattsburg).

Nadia Comaneci then moved upstairs from Alexandru Stefu, who owned a triplex in Rosemont. He was a fellow Romanian immigrant and rugby coach. He corroborated Comaneci's claims of beatings by Panait. Comaneci got a contract to be spokeswoman for Jockey Canada. She was flabby and overweight. She was seen on buses dressed rocking the Communist Bloc flabby, pale, too-much-makeup look. I was told that she lived on Louis Hebert near Beaubien. I've seen no evidence for a Stefu around there in the Lovells directory. While living in Montreal she travelled often. She went to Reno where she hosted a live show called The Mystery and Majesty of Nadia. She visited Pope John Paul II and attended a Quebecois gala where she received a 2 minute standing ovation. She was gym buddies with then-vedette Veronique Beliveau. She was supposed to write a book with a local author Georges-Hebert Germain, but never did. She could speak a little French but her English was good even back then.

Stefu, 47, drowned while scuba diving and spear fishing alone in Lake St. Francis near Valleyfield on Labour Day 1991. But then Comaneci had developed a relationship with gymnast Bart Connor and moved to Florida, around that time, although we speculate that she moved to Fla before the winter got nasty here. She lives in Connor's hometown of Oklahoma City.

Libraries the city has known

A reader found this page in a used book he bought and wrote Coolopolis trying to figure out what kinda joint both sells and lends books. We went through a buncha old Lovells and found that long ago certain Montreal people randomly just declared themselves libraries apparently. These included: The Mary Arden Lending Library on Park. The Patricia Circulating Library on Christopher Columbus. The Golden Dog Lending Libary on Sherbrooke. Mrs. D. Smythe (widow Samuel) on St. Denis. And so forth. The area around Sherbrooke and Decarie seemed particularly rife.

Quiz time

So what's with the numbers?

Well done, Steve, right on the money. Here's the rest of the story (click to enlarge):

Libraries in the city's past

A reader found this page in a used book he bought and wrote Coolopolis trying to figure out what kinda joint both sells and lends books. We went through a buncha old Lovells and found that long ago certain Montreal people randomly just declared themselves libraries apparently. These listings are a bit weird cuz they include both the French librarie (which means bookshop) and the library as the rest of the anglo dominated planet knows it.

Miami Vice stylez hits Montreal 20 years late

Mo' Church Street in Verdun

The bottom photo shows two buildings demolished last fall. They top photo shows what has become of the spot since. It's a large extension of the CLSC.

Wanna date?

Since the proliferation of massage parlours in Montreal - they're bigger than depanneurs - the idea of whoring by the roadside seems so passe. One of the last holdouts to brazen daytime street prostitution is at Prefontaine and St. Catherine. The one on the right was picked up by a guy in a car a few seconds after this. The other came over and talked to me about her life after arriving here from the North. She bemoaned the presence of a crackhouse across the street apparently run by some Greek guy. A few minutes after she went inside the crackhouse.

Jesus please save my shite little box of a house which should be torn down anyway

On Woodland somewhere near Lasalle.

Heartbreak graffiti - in St. Henry next to elementary school

Mammys gone forever!

As we reported in January 2007, Mammy's Fish and Chips on Church Street in Verdun - just north of Verdun Avenue - was going to be a goner. The building has recently and finally been demolished, as has the electrical fixit joint next door. Supposedly there's condos going to be planted in there.