A few years ago I researched Miller for a Toronto business magazine and was in contact with a woman who knew him and would visit his place. She did not speak ill of Miller but noted that he kept no photos in his house and was also keen on plastic surgery and getting cryogenically frozen.
Miller was known as a media-shy hermit who had a separate entrance built for himself at his company office so he wouldn't have to see his West Island workers.
His wife left him somewhere along the line and moved to the States.
He once hired a couple of retired NHL hockey stars to play on his company team so the squad could come out on top.
Later on a friend of Coolopolis provided more inside info on Miller.
Miller's father David Miller worked for Harry Ship, Montreal's gambling den king of the 1940s. The Montreal gambling Jewish gangsters were math whizzes who leveraged their quick computational skills to build an underworld fortune. Robert was also clever in that same style.
Harry Ship's son Neil - who called himself Neil Sheppard as an adult - became close friends with Robert Miller, who was a math whiz with a great memory.
The late Neil Ship told Coolopolis in a correspondence between 2017 and 2020 that he suspected Robert had pedophile tendencies and he mused about writing about Miller.
"Robert had very awkward bullying skills, that he folded into a recipe on how to become a billionaire.
His dad worked for my dad, and we grew up together. We competed for a woman who I ended up marrying.
Robert begged me to come with him to Rider College when he started because I was the one who broke the ice with people and I picked up the girls when we were a team and were really hot and did some wild and crazy shit.
We had two French girls we used to visit once a week or so. They lived together. Had some crazy scenes. But he was as loony as they come. I even dated his sister Shirley Ann for quite a while.
After he made it big he came to visit me in NY. He offered me a position in Future Electronics said he'd move me and my wife to Boston I think it was, and promised I'd make $100,000 in the first six months and that was in the 1980s.
We kept in touch but I always suspected he had a double life. I didn't suspect it had to do with pedophelia but I can absolutely see it now. Lots of stories and inside shit I was thinking of selling to a publisher.
I was going to tell you about this but let it go. We fell out after someone had said something to him which I never had a chance to defend or even learn about.
Robert could make anyone do anything. Total strangers were putty in his hands, although when he did it back then it was all part of a comedy routine back then. If told you some stories you'd think I was crazy!
David Miller (l) and Harry Ship on trial, 1946
When we were 17, 18, or so his dad owned a used car lot on Decarie he worked with high end sports cars and luxury rides. Robert picked me up every night in different exotic! A Mercedes 300 XL Gull wing. A 700 HP Corvette Stingray. A Ford XL with a 425 that we took up North Robert drove over 150 MPH back to MTL totally buried the speedometer!
One day were in a convertible Vette a beauty. People are staring wherever we go. It's a hot summer day I'm wearing docker slacks and a cotton shirt somehow Robert's in a suit and tie. We pull up right next to a bus on Sherbrooke St. the entire row of passengers on the right are gawking at the car looking down at us. Robert 6'3" casually gets out of the car, stands up and takes off his jacket and puts it behind the seat and gets back in as he pulls a distorted moronic face like Mr Bean.
At the green light the bus goes. Robert sits there not moving, watches as they get to the next red light, then burns rubber & fishtails to catch up again. He pulls up exactly in the same place gets out and takes of his shoes, puts them behind the seat! Doesn't move til they reach the next red... He peels out and we're beside them again!
Now he brings his enormous foot right up to the steering wheel and one by one removes his socks.
BTW Throughout all this he has a face like Mr. Bean totally and he's making snorting sounds too. Like a depraved lunatic. I have to keep a straight face always. I usually don't know whats next either. This routine was new to me.
Next light he pulls up bare footed, looks up at them as if he just noticed, and nonchalantly puts his foot up to his mouth and starts biting his toenails! Not just biting...he's snorting and grunting it looks like he's making a meal of it, as he spits out pieces with his dumb Mr Bean face.
He does this for two more lights until everyone in the bus now, not just on one side, but all isles are up out of the seats and fighting for window space! Even the bus driver stands up, opens the door and stands on the step there watching and scratching head. As they are now at a fever pitch, Robert slowly drives away. Leaving them all freaked out.
There are crazier stories that only go to show his total lack of caring what people thoughtb or how he looked. That gave him a power that is unimaginable.
Still, oddly when he went to Ryder College in Trenton NJ, he called me the night before and asked me to go with him. He didn't want to go alone. I said no but he spent two days breaking me down even threatening to skip college entirely if I didn't go with him.
Just a little side track story. to illustrate that genius, crazy and fearless types permeated that bookie joint. My uncle Louis was not a midget but an unusually short man. I think 4' 6" He was so fast with numbers he never used a calculator and was often challenged that he could add faster than a calculator. In fact he won every time. I'm talking about the old mechanical ones they used. With the electronic ones it was a dead heat.
It's amazing there are many still in my family my a cousin Rona Ship, and other who have math skills. Robert and his father Dave had it even more."
Having such math skills would presumably allow people like Miller and others in the gambling racket to utilize card-counting as an advantage to win at card games. While card-counting is apparently perfectly legal in Canada (but not necessarily in other jurisdictions), the practice could clearly raise the ire of those who eventually realized why they would consistently lose at such games to the point where revenge could easily result. Then again, gambling is for suckers, not to mention an addiction for many.
ReplyDeleteThe gambling these guys ran was dice games in the form of barbotte. The math skills came in handy when they were forced to offer immediate calculations to insure large bets from other illegal casinos. So some other gambling place would call up Ship's guys and say "this guy is placing a huge bet on such-and-such" and Ship's guys would be forced to immediately figure out an appropriate price to insure the establishment in case it was forced to pay out a huge sum. This is why Ship was described as an edge man, although I've seen that term used in many different ways. I've recently acquired a good description of a gambling den, not run by Ship, at Stanley and Demaisonneuve from the 50s (I know) and there was card fixing there as well as a scam to get winners back to the table when attempting to leave.
DeleteYou may remember that during the many years leading up to when lotteries and then casinos finally became legal as an obvious tax source for the government, the rule was that a casino had to be placed far away from residential areas in order to discourage the convenience of impulse gambling by those living nearby as well as to prevent new businesses from opening up which might be tempted to take advantage of their location in a questionable manner, such as prostitution, etc.
DeleteThis is why Expo 67's relatively remote France pavilion was eventually transformed into the Montreal Casino. Subsequent suggestions that more casinos be built closer to residential areas have thankfully been rejected.
The Melbourne Casino, being located close to a residential and commercial district, has indeed experienced problems related to such "convenience".
An analogy can be made when people keep complaining about how "far away" the Olympic Stadium is located. But, "far away" from WHAT since parking, the Metro, and bus access is perfectly satisfactory. A new stadium built nearer to downtown would only exacerbate traffic, something the city, does not need.
Cautionary tales regarding an inappropriately-placed casino. Don't ever allow this to happen here!
Deletehttps://www.gamblingcrank.com/correct-crown-casino-crime-calculations-concealed/
Crazy stuff. I worked as a business reporter in Toronto for a few years and Robert Miller was always on the all-Canadian rich lists since at least the 90s, but there was never anything on him. The man without a trace. No pics, no bio, no real explanation of how he got rich or what the company did. Front for something else given the family mob ties?
ReplyDeleteHarry Ship thing is interesting - making this whole thing even more Richlerian. I note that a hitman in old articles about Harry Davis was also named "Miller":
"Louis Bercovitch (alias Joe Miller) shot and killed Harry Davis in front of his gambling parlor at 1224 Stanley the afternoon of July 25, 1946."
Toronto Star article from the 70s mentions Miller's dad and someone else named "Leo Berkovitz"
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/116828857/the-montreal-star/
I wonder if Olivier street in Westmount was Miller's main residence or if it was just the venue for his Epstein / Nygard shenanigans
July 1, 2023
ReplyDeleteAccording to the latest reports, the City of Montreal has received the funding from the provincial government to proceed start the ball rolling with the Cavendish Connection between the City of Cote St. Luc, over the railway yards, and into St. Laurent and beyond, yet inexplicably no tenders have been called for contractors to make their bids for the actual work to begin.
Why? What is the delay?
Unfortunately, the Cavendish Connection is the linch-pin that is preventing the long-awaited, long-promised Blue Bonnets housing project from getting off the ground.
But wait. Now we are hearing the suggestion that if the city is unwilling to proceed, they should sell the Blue Bonnets property back to the province--which would be a FATAL MISTAKE sending us right back where we started: getting nowhere.
If anyone truly believes that the provincial government would be more inclined to re-open the Cavendish Connection can-of-worms and finance the housing project, they are dreaming in technicolour.
Just as with previous provincial governments, the CAC under Legault has treated this issue as a hot potato--a ping pong game where every excuse is raised to do nothing. It has been all talk and no action. The more they procrastinate, the more excuses they inevitably will find: fears of a recession, the inevitable, increase of construction costs over time, pandemic-related , the different opinions, promises, and policies among the political parties vying to take power prior to and following elections, other "higher priority" projects elsewhere that are deemed "more important", etc.
We've heard it all before.
The potential scenario: Mayor Plante gets voted out of office, Premier Legault refuses to move on Cavendish and Blue Bonnets, the media and the mayors of CSL, TMR, and STL rant and rave but to no avail, the affected residents (mostly Anglo) who are entitled to road access and public housing, are furious but to no avail.
In response, the provincial government (who, historically, has never been inclined to favour ANY major project that would benefit Anglo districts), once again places Cavendish "on the back-burner" and, despite public outrage, decides instead to build a casino or arena on the Blue Bonnets property--the ideally and centrally-located property where, after all, didn't a race track once stand for decades?
Why not continue to encourage the building of ugly condos rather than affordable housing, the government will ask, when enormous tax revenue can be reaped from the rich who can afford those condos or, better yet, another casino or arena?
Let the "whiners" move out of Quebec, they will (quietly) say to themselves.
If there ever was a time for the public to scream loud and clear in protest, it is NOW.