The family later moved down to the Bahamas. However he didn't swear off sailing, indeed he took a long luxury yacht cruise around the world with his family in later years. My father knew him and wrestled against him, said that he was incredibly rich but would still dicker over the price of golf balls. He also said that he specifically stipulated that the mall built where the ballpark used to stand must bear his name. So he might've been a bit of an egotist.
Nihon had three other kids, including two sons, both of whom wrestled in the 1968 Olympics.
Nihon died in 1980
One of those sons, apparently his successor in the business, died in 2007 of an undisclosed ailment. The death was described as a mystery by the papers which announced it in the Bahamas.
Nihon immigrated to Canada and made a ton of money and his name remains a household word in this town. He got rich by investing heavily into real estate after getting into business in Montreal upon his arrival from Belgium.
Tony Acurso
ReplyDeleteNothing fails to amaze me how the old Gazette was even more trivial than today's Suburban...street addresses of everybody involved, perhaps so gawkers could take the streetcar out and look at them? And, a few pages onwards, the earth-shattering news of where Lawrence Cannon's grandfather was heading to for vacation...
ReplyDeleteMontreal has never been a city known for having "crusading" newspapers.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, this blandness and low-key approach is one of the main reasons why Quebec governments over the last several decades have run rough-shod over its citizens--particularly tax-paying Anglophones.
Only Pat Burns (the outspoken CKGM radio hotline host, not the Canadiens hockey coach) of the mid-sixties had the guts to really retaliate against the separatists, until the anonymous death threats mounted and he was pulled from his popular talk-radio show and moved over to the sports department.
In general, with rare exception, the media here is wimpy, whiney, and gutless, afraid to rock the boat.
You would think (and hope) that energetic, young writers would stop wasting their talents writing for sleaze rags and take a more confrontational stance, but I must be dreaming if I will ever live to see that day.
I shake my head in disgust when I see former Quebeckers taking pot-shots at us from their safe-and-secure Toronto condos.
Either you are on the front lines or keep your stupid mouths shut.