David S. Wells: The Montreal adult magazine publisher who died behind bars

   The splashiest documentary to zoom out of Montreal featured a character whose subsequent fate would have shocked people, had they ever heard about it.
   David S. Wells served as the perfect villain in Bonnie Klein's 1981 anti-porn doc Not a Love Story.
    Society was at a philosophical crossroads, as many believed that the rising wave of pornography could and should be stopped, while hippie hedonists and free speech types thought the otherwise.
   Bonnie Klein lined up one feminist after another to echo her point of view.
   But the proceedings would have been a complete bore without a villain championing and articulating the joy of pornography, preferably with a slick British accent.
   But where to find one?
   In walks David S. Wells who, from about the mid-1970s, ran five adult publications from Montreal: Elite (launched in around 1975), Rustler and Mink, with centerfold entitled "Pick of the Litter."
   Wells would occasionally publish photos that he had no right to, such as from porn films and other publications, or feature clothed celebrity women who had no ties to adult fare such as Brooke Shields or Margaret Trudeau.
   Wells appears in the movie, in a 1978 encounter, offering a brazenly unapologetic vision of male pleasure, which involves a woman on her knees.
   He says that within the previous year, the eight porn magazines available in Canada had ballooned to 32 and were of a raunchier nature.
    The clash between Wells and Klein is pure dynamite, as viewers can practically see Klein's ears burn and sizzle listening to this outrageous heresy.
   What is less known is that things started falling apart terribly for Wells in the years following his noteworthy appearance.
   Wells had moved to Montreal from the UK as a young man and toiled as editor in one of the many trade publications of Scotsman Joseph Wallace's 19-title magazine empire.
   But his own business dealings led him to be targeted by lawsuits and fraud charges.
   He fled to the Caribbean but was captured by bounty hunters and hauled him back to the United States where he was tried sentenced and imprisoned.
   Wells, a lifelong chain smoker, was diagnosed with a terminal disease while behind bars.
   He complained that he was not properly treated for his health woes.
   Wells managed to get transferred to a prison in his native U.K. but nothing could be done to save him.
   Several orthodox Jewish rabbis visited him in his prison cell and prayed for him and offered him moral support during his waning days behind bars, even though he was a committed atheist.
   Wells died behind bars and little is remembered of his pioneering efforts or his devotion to the pleasures of the flesh.
   Wells, who was divorced, left a son and a daughter behind in Toronto. Daughter Elissa was sentenced to 55-months in prison in 2013 in connection to her husband's phone fraud operation.
   As for the documentarian Klein, she suffered a stroke in 1987 leaving her quadriplegic and dependent on a respirator. She now walks short distances on crutches or rides a motorized scooter.
  One of Wells' adversaries in the documentary, stripper-turned-feminist freelance journalist Lindalee Tracey died young, having succumbed to breast cancer in 2006 at the age of 49. See my acclaimed book Montreal 375 Tales for stories about her role in Montreal history.