Stevens was a big-time restauranteur in this town and recently liquidated a local business empire which included many restaurants, buildings and strip malls.
In more recent years this building became a place for about 2,000 Inuit (about 1,400 sick people plus about 800 who just come to accompany them) to stay in Montreal while receiving medical care but in April 2011 it shifted off to Tupper St. after Villeray/ParkEx/St.Michel Mayor Anie Samson opposed a move to her area.
The building will now be used to house certain patients from the Douglas Hospital, I have been told, although that might be incorrect, as the building remains for sale (at least the one on the right for $1.9 million, which means that you need to slap down just under $500 k cash to score the property).
Meanwhile the Inuit and the 100 workers at the centre have been transferred to the former Reddy Memorial Hospital on Tupper.
Since the Reddy Memorial closed, that facility had been employed for housing for newly-arrived refugee claimants prior to that I believe, who were often seen outside, sometimes even hosting elaborate parties on the sidewalk, they injected a lively energy to the area.
Some of the Inuit, are, unfortunately extremely drunk, as they were when in the West End.
I am told by a nearby resident that her 12-old-son recently walked through the parking lot on Ste. Catherine nearly opposite the Alexis Nihon Plaza and witnessed two of our less-inhibited northern natives having sex naked in the plain of day.
My sense of demographics would lead me to believe that about 5 percent of the Inuit give a bad name to the other 95 percent who are peaceful and don't bother anybody. There is, however, no denying that those who engage in a variety is extremely drunken behaviours do actually exist around these facilities.
It was the Town Squire Motor Inn, a member of Friendship Inns International, a 1960s/70s lodging group.
ReplyDeleteBecause of the Inuit in the Dorval Avenue area, the old Zellers store charged a refundable loonie to get a shopping cart...the manager would waive the fee if requested to by a non-Inuit (particularly when I would loudly say, "they don't charge for carts at Wal-Mart!"....I don't know what the policy is now that the store IS a Wal-Mart, but maybe I will have to shout "they don't charge for carts at Target!"
Worse, I've been told that predatory guys go to Cabot Square to rape Inuit women who are passed out from drink. Can't be much of an experience but human nature is such that it doesn't surprise me.
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