Dr. Noel Decarie (1893-1968) was a familiar name for Montrealers after starting practice in the 1920s, as he advertised endlessly and festooned his name on gaudy signs - including a cutting-edge spotlit rotopanel billboard - all slung high on his building at Phillips Square and St. Catherine.
Phillips Square was a major hub at the time, as it had transformed from horse-drawn cabs to terminus for long-distance bus trips. The Montreal Museum of Fine Art was housed on the square, as was Kraussman's Pub, a favourite for Germans.
Decarie - a member of the longtime Montreal family who owned the farm on land that now bears the street name - was also an innovator, as he offered service by a team of dentists.
His claims that such teams do better work than a single dentist got him disciplined by dental authorities in 1934. And nobody was too impressed when a patient died in his chair due to a reaction to anesthetic.
Decarie, one of seven children, was educated at St. Leon's in Westmount and attended dental school near Boston. He fathered only one child, a daughter.
He also donated loads of cash to Adrien Arcand's National Unity fascist upstart party, to the point where he was seen as the main support for the movement, of which he was also a prominent member.
Circumstances were to conspire against Decarie and Arcand, alas, after the Allies declared war on Germany.Britain arrested their fascist party leader in May 1940 and Canada's RCMP followed suit by rounding up Oswald Mosley's Canadian penpals a few days later.
Canada deemed that the gang was a menace to the security of the state and had defied Articles 39 and 39a of the Defence of Canada Law.
Decarie and eight fellow fascists, including Adrien Arcand, J. Romeo Barck, Hugues Clement, Marius Gatien Paul Giguere and Henri Arcand were sent away to an internment camp for the duration of the war.
Conditions for such alleged turncoats at the camp were harsh, with heating and beds being of limited quality and treatment by guards famously unkind.
Authorities, it was said, located a radio hidden in Decarie's office, they believe was used to stay in contact with Germans coasting down the St. Lawrence in submarines.
The dentist who subsequently took over Decarie's offices vigorously insisted that he had no ties with the disgraced orthodontist.
After his release in 1945, Decarie attempted to sue the government for $588,000 in 1948, much higher than the seven others, including Arcand's claim for $75,000 and tailor Romeo Barck, who attempted to score $75,000 for being detained uncomfortably in Ontario.
It's unknown how much, if any, money the plaintiffs managed to get.
My mother was a radar operator watching the Saint Lawrence for those submarines. She was in the Canadian Navy, WRN.
ReplyDeleteGo to Wikipedia, "Battle of the Saint Lawrence" and read -- in fact some towns in the Gaspe were shelled, but it was kept secret to avoid panic.
Small world, my wife was married to a member of Montreal`s Decarie family, we still have some of their furniture that dates back over 100 years.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia, not the most intellectual source on Earth. Could start here for background on Adrien Arcand: https://adrienarcandbooks.net/
ReplyDeleteMy mother, Marjorie Clarke, was briefly employed in Dr. Decarie's office. She often told the story of being summarily fired by the doctor after entering a prohibited room on the premises and accidentally discovering the doctor operating a ham radio. Not many months later, she read of his arrest as an alleged German spy.
ReplyDeleteMy mother, Marjorie Clarke, now deceased, used to often tell of her first job as secretary for Dr. Decarie's office. The job was short lived, however, for after only a couple of months she was fired after stumbling in upon the doctor in an off-limits room, speaking on what she called a ham radio. My mother said at time she was quite upset, and her grandmother admonished her for losing a "good job." It wasn't long afterwards, though, that they read the doctor had been arrested for spying as a Nazi sympathizer, and that the true purpose of the radio was to send messages to German submarines secretly making their way up the St. Lawrence.
ReplyDeleteWow!
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