Colin Gravenor and his bizarre Chomedey Street den of assistance

 The subject seeking counsel would sit on the first of three of high-backed black chairs pushed against a dark wood paneled wall in my father Colin Gravenor's gloomy-lit office at 1430 Chomedey.
   My father, sitting behind a massive wood desk near a buzzing electric typewriter, would wheel his chair closer and loudly describe the problem.
   "You see Pat Walsh, here, Pat got in trouble for going to Central Station and looking for women with their legs crossed. He'd masturbate under his raincoat whenever he saw a woman kicking out the top leg."
   Walsh would sit silently throughout this non-judgmental, open discussion of his woes, while my father vowed some sort of societal rehabilitation while furiously typing unsolicited letters offering help for subjects ranging from urban renewal to curing leukemia.
   He would eventually give Pat $2 to hand-deliver the hastily-typed missives, a similar sum which he offered to fellow frequent visitor George Greenford, a younger and intensely-talkative, nattily-clad 30-year-old with delusions of marrying Sam  Steinberg's daughter.
***
   Not all of those who sat in that chair was down-and-out.
   One who occasionally occupied the seat seeking free assistance was Jerry Shears a scrappy Jewish-Montrealer who became lightweight boxing champ in 1947 and went on to head various Canadian boxing committees.
   The political infighting in those committees could be ferocious and Shears sought input from my father on how to wrestle rivals and government onside.
  Writing letters under fake names was my father's favourite tactics, although some recipients might have identified the paper and typewriter font rather quickly.
  My father's other strategies might have been more diabolical. My friend Patrick Gelinas insists that Colin had his father's photography business burned down after failing to repay a debt. That alleged incident took place before I was born and I saw no such incendiary streak in my father.
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   "This is is Jerry Shears and he is here because he has been pushed out of his position at the Canadian Boxing Federation. His problem was that he was too nice."
   Shears sat silently, looking stressed.
   The ritual left an impression that Shears was a failure.
   But in fact Shears was a successful insurance broker and left such an impressive legacy that his hometown of St. Laurent named a park after him following his death in 2010.
   Unfair though appearances may be, the ritual presented the 52-year-old Shears as a man desperate for help from my father, aged 67 in 1977.
   The tiny splinters of light that fought their way through the wooden window shutters of that first-floor office facing Chomedey Street did not flatter those who sat in it.
 ***
   Others who put their ego on hold to solicit assistance from Colin Gravenor included animal-lover Bill Short who enjoyed media attention as much as anybody, as witnessed in a 1965 La Presse article explaining how Short's German shepherd Silver was earning him $15,000 a year in TV and film appearances. In his golden years he became a media-friendly advocate for elderly owning dogs.
   My father, Short and myself assembled at the downstairs Dilallo's burger place on De Maisonneuve one day in around 1988.
   The elderly Short aimed to launch a neighbourhood newspaper on the South Shore full of crosswords and other such easy-to-obtain content.
   The notion seemed a little random, as if he announced he was going to launch a pop singing career.
   Midway through lunch Short exited for the adjacent depanneur and openly sucked back a beer from a paper bag while standing on the sidewalk. He returned to the table and carried on. My father didn't comment on the display of desperate speed drinking.

**

   Self-help was a bigger industry back then and my father was a Machiavellian Dale Carnegie to these people during an age when Wikipedia and Ted Talks were not there to instantly advise on your next step.
   To one friend whose two sons were failing miserably he offered this jarring assessment: your sons are failing because they want to have sex with their mother.
   The shock therapy coincided with a change in fortunes for the family and both sons turned out to be big successes.
   Colin would think nothing of tastelessly accusing an interlocutor in a crowded restaurant, something like: "the reason that you can't keep eye contact is because you are masturbating too often."
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   Others who filled that chair included mob boss Vic Cotroni who left a costly Burberry raincoat in that office that was later passed down through our family. Journalist/politician Nick Auf der Maur also dropped in as my father kept tabs on his initial run for city council, which he surprisingly won against his powerful incumbent friend. Car dealer Harold Cummings and real estate king Alexis Nihon were among his friends over the years but I never saw them at his place. 

    **
    As a young PR man Colin launched his own anti-Nazi league and was the only Canadian non-Jew working with a Jewish organization fighting against Canadian participation in Hitler's Berlin Olympics.
   Indeed a recent book makes reference to his efforts, albeit in a disappointingly suspicious way, although the Vancouver Holocaust  museum honoured his efforts to help Jews in a special tribute.
   During the war Colin sponsored European war refugees, including Glay Sperling, who became an esteemed photography professor at Dawson.
   Tony Oberleitner, who was Austrian right-hand man of that crazy sexual socialist Wilhelm Reich, was also a benefactor of my father's sponsorship.
   Another recent book sheds light on the help he offered to on painter Oscar Cahen, who he sprung from a Montreal-area internment camp, who sadly moved to Toronto and was hastily run over and killed.
**

   My father's big round-fronted redstone building at 1430 Chomedey served as a rooming house as well, as my father would sometimes offer free rent to people who took a shine to, including budding young actor Tony Nardi who went on to become a sought-after talent in Toronto. 

   My father left a deep impression on Nardi who has one barnburner of a story involving Colin helping him take on Paolo Violi's Mafia mobsters. I would recount it in delicious detail but Nardi says he's saving it for his own memoirs and asked me not to repeat it.

   Other roomers included a hard-drinking Andre who worked maintenance at the Forum before he died with the mandatory stack of Journal de Montreals in the corner. And there was a medical student named Manny Cardoso who stood out for his total disinterest in my father's input. 

 **

   Harry Blank was the MNA for the area since 1960 and he needed help after the Liberals decided to replace him.
   He was only aged about 59 in 1985 and rightfully figured that he had many good years ahead of him when Robert Bourassa had him replaced with Jacques Chagnon. My father recommended that he run as an independent. He did and lost. He's apparently still around in his 90s.
   Gordie Griffiths was seen as the bottom-feeder of the bunch. His name came up often but I don't recall him darkening the door. My father would occasionally  have someone deliver $20 or $30 to his sparsely-furnished rooming house abode.
   Griffiths had apparently betrayed my father, or so goes the narrative. My father nonetheless wrote many letters under Griffiths' name to advance his own crusades.
**
  Colin emitted an aura of a helper and would carry that mission with him walking down Ste. Catherine or Closse at the parking lot he owned, offering unsolicited advice to anybody anywhere, including beggars.
   His help was limited to the theoretical kind.
   In my case he never paid my bills or gave me cash and indeed asked me to lend him money a few times for some inexplicable reason, as he was worth millions (indeed I received nothing from either parents when they died).
   Like so many, my father became unintentionally similar to his own father, who he scorned.

   The Welsh-born Percival Gravenor, according to a 1957 New York Times obituary* (which has my father's fingerprints all over it) was a world-traveling socialist author and union organizer who wrote several books, which are now impossible to find, Percival returned briefly to Montreal where he died.
    My father dismissed his father as a dreamer transfixed by pointless utopian notions. But the optics of this claim, like so many of the others, were distorted.
   The men in the chair were no more pathetic or weak than anybody else.
   They were simply more open to his input.

* Percival Albert Gravenor, a former journalist and organizer of cooperative movements for farmers and workers in Wales, England, New Zealand and Australia, died her last night after a long illness. He was 89 years old.
  Mr. Gravenor, an official in the first south Wales miners union, set up the cooperative movements there and in Somersetshire, England, before going to Australia and New Zealand. 
  On his return to England he published two books:  Cooperatives of the Empire and The Growth of Unions.  
  He is survived by a son, Colin A. a daughter, a brother and a sister. Sept 15, 1957, NYT