Ranking Montreal's hottest celebrities : 2002 experiment revealed the ugly and beautiful truth

 Montreal Mirror city columnist Kristian Gravenor (stop referring to yourself in the third person man! - Chimples) pumped a few dozen Montreal notables into the now-extinct hot or not dot com site to see how they'd fare on the one-to-ten scale in the eyes of people around the world. This happened in 2001 or 2002. The results were published at the time but we think it's time to remind you. 

 Read these results and weep... or weep without reading them... no... actually, don't weep if you read them or not. Note that the photos in this article aren't the same as those used in the experiment. 

 Hot?… or not?

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

It started when a second person spontaneously wrote me in love-stunned praise of CFCF News reader Debra Arbec. Personally, I like Debra Arbec plenty but never really thought of her in “that way.”  

The late Nelly
Arcand, 9.5 

So to put an end to the confusion of who’s hot and who’s not in this town, I downloaded as many pictures of noted Montrealers as I could and posted them on the website hotornot.com where viewers rate photos of others on one-to-10 scale of attractiveness.

Considering that only a picture of Lucien Bouchard was rejected for breaking the no-celebrity rule, it can be assumed that the vast majority of viewers hadn’t a clue that they were rating Montreal’s finest.

Site co-founder James Hong tells me that two thirds of raters are men and the site has received an amazing 6.2 billion clicks in its two years. It’s huge.

I tried to post the best available picture of whomever I could find. Except for known separatists. Louise Beaudoin was rated a 5.9 and filmmaker Pierre Falardeau got a 7.4 on unflattering photos.

There are surprisingly few photos available of local celebs on the net. Except for St. Urbain pop singer David Usher. This guy must be keeping photo development labs working overtime, man. He scored a 9.4. 

Global TV’s Andrew Peplowski was rated a 7.3, co-host Tracey McKee
9.5, Stuart Greer 6.1, sultry Rob Lurie scored a 9.6, making him the king of the Montreal babes. Jamie Orchard got 9.4, Jonathan Freed 8, Eramelinda Boquer 7.4. CFCF News’s Bill Haugland got 7.4, Mitsumi Takahashi 7.3, reporter Todd Van der Heyden, on a terrible snap, still scored a babe-a-licious 9.2. Dennis Trudeau, host of CBC’s Newsbotch, or whatever they’re calling it now, got 6.8, reporters Gerri Berrer got a 6.9 and Shari Okeke 7.4. Musique Plus host Anne-Marie Withenshaw was rated a 9.8 while Anne-Marie Losique of some other French show got 8.7, VJ-turned-makeup model Genevieve Borne scored a 9.6. 

Borne 9.6

A jokey-looking Melissa Auf der Maur rated 8.7, Mayor Tremblay 6.8, pro protestor Jaggi Singh 7.5, Robert “Bicycle Bob” Silverman 6.8, city councillor Marvin Rotrand, looking less beautiful than usual, still managed a solid 7.6, while colleague Helen Fotopulos got a 8.8. South Shore porn goddess Abbraxa scored a 9.2 wearing high heels at a marina. Sex columnist Sasha earned a 9.6 lying on the

floor, midriff exposed. Counterpart Josey Vogels was deemed a 9.8 until I recropped her picture to remove the advantage of a protruding nipple. She dropped to 9.4. Novelist Nelly Arcand earned a 9.5.

Vogels 9.8 or 9.4

Both sexes habitually rate photos of women. Only women – in general – bother to rate men, according to Hong. And sometime females rate men inexplicably, for example, sauve-looking uber-capitalist Pierre-Karl Péladeau rated a 6.1 while an unintentionally comical picture of anglo-activist Howard Galganov in cowboy hat earned a 7.4. This proves that women should have less say in male attractiveness and that maybe cowboy hats are underrated.

Mario Dumont is the hottest political leader, in this sense as well, scoring 9.2 to Jean Charest’s 8.3 and Bernard Landry’s 7.

Journalists Noah Richler rate 8.6, Leah McLaren 9.5, Rebecca Eckler 8.6, Jan Wong 6.2.  Politician Sheila Copps is a 7.4, singer Mitsou 9.9 while Brossard film star Christy Chung – once voted sexiest Asian celebrity – is a 9.8. CJAD’s Kevin’n’Trudie earned 5.7 and 4.8 respectively; colleague Tommy Schnurmacher gets 4.8 and Marianna Simeone 9.1. Cirque de Soleil chief Guy Laliberté rates 7.9, psychic Jojo Savard, 7.3, Jacques Villeneuve 7.6. 

Gumper 8.4

I submitted a shot looking even more insipid than usual. I was rated 6.4. Pretty depressing considering that old pix of puck-scarred goaltending goof Gump Worsley rated 8.4. But rather than opting to get a Gump-like buzz-cut, I sneakily replaced my photo it with one of those fluke lucky shots taken before my facial wart infestation and 200 extra pounds. It earned me 9.3. 

But I still don’t know if Debra Arbec is hot or not. I couldn’t find a picture of her. I guess some things are meant to be mysteries. Comments? kgravy@openface.ca