Will Anticosti Island make Quebec rich?

   Quebec could be in line to become considerably richer if estimates of an oil deposit prove true. The claim was made two years ago concerning oil riches reaching up to massive 300 million barrels of sweet crude in and around Anticosti Island, an almost-uninhabited government-owned island off the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
  Premier Pauline Marois recently gave a speech in which she gleefully attempted to mobilize this news into support for separation, as she pointed out ruefully that under the current Canadian structure, a share of the future oil windfall would have to be redistributed to poorer provinces. She omits the fact, of course, that Quebec currently receives something in the area of $7 billion per year from the Alberta oil fields.
    Whether or not the 200-300 million barrels of oil said to lie around the island are indeed really there is another question, but previous attempts to make the island profitable have always ended in fiasco perhaps best symbolized by the shipwrecks that the island is known for.

   The companies that have suggested the possibility of great oil wealth from the island are Corridor (CDH - currently trading at .73 cents in a 52-week range of 48 to 87 cents) and Petrolia (PEA - currently trading in the 60 cent range after being up to about $1.50 last year at this time).

   Repeated attempts through the ages to turn the island into a forestry resource have failed and the province has loaded it up with deer - which now number a staggering 160,000 -  and yet no wolves or bears or other predators prowl around to limit their population. 

   So anybody who pays for one of the government's pricey hunting trips to the island will have an easy time gunning down the gentle beasts, which are known to walk right up to tourists when not stripping every bush dry of its fruit and eating every new sapling dead.

That's your Anticosti Island right there

    The deer have a reputation of being quite small, alas.
  French industrialist Henri Menier bought the island in 1895 and established a bunch of crazy rules, residents were not allowed to wear white or own dogs, but he gave up on his attempt at building a feudal settlement. He sold it to Consolidated Bathurst in 1926. Their longstanding attempts to exploit the lumber proved too costly and they solid it to Quebec in 1974 for around $25 million.
  Quebec immediately tried to make it into a hunting and fishing tourist destination but it was a money-loser, gobbling up $5 million a year from the start, so they handed it over to five outfitters to manage.
   One of the older claims had it that the island had no mosquitoes or flies.
   The first thing I would do to the place would be to drop a few wolves into the forests and a few bears while you're at it.
    Also, according to the rules of the inevitable, there will be several highly-unanticipated black swan events occurring around within the next few decades, which I predict will include one that requires a mass exodus from a country or two.  
  These environmental refugees could use a place like this to settle and I would say that we could fit something like 2 million people on Anticosti. 

Sam Fattal's anti-Westmount crusade comes to screeching halt

 Samir Fattal, aka Sam Fattal, was recently judged a vexatious litigant, seriously compromising his longstanding battle against the City of Westmount, which he feels has made his job as a landlord difficult.
   As a result of the April decision, Fattal has been banned from launching any new legal action against the city or its employees.
   The bad blood started around 15 years back when Fattal transformed an industrial building on St. Antoine in Westmount to residential, without the proper permits.
   Westmount then shut the building down for code violations and Fattal started sending the city mail accusing Westmount administrators of anti-Semitism, complete with concentration camp and Gestapo references.
   He jammed up their fax machine, stalked staffers at their homes and put up denunciatory posters and flags at his building and home on Edgehill in Upper Westmount.
   According to the court document, "On a number of occasions, Mr. Fattal faxed gruesome photos of himself, bare-chested and gagging.  One photo showed a tortured Mr. Fattal, with bulging eyes, and an iron bar across his mouth." And: "A further incident in the autumn of 1998 alarmed Westmount’s building inspectors.  One day, Westmount’s employee, Mr. Michel Poulin, was performing an electrical inspection at the Saint Antoine building.  Mr. Fattal suddenly appeared behind Mr. Poulin wearing a Saddam Hussein mask and brandishing a baseball bat.  Mr. Poulin was frightened, but Mr. Fattal later called it a joke."
    He even launched a series of small claims court suits for $7,000 each - all quickly rejected -  against various inspectors, which seems pretty clever but ultimately jams up the system for legitimate litigants, who currently have to wait about two years to get before a judge.

You still can't bring your wine home

   You still can't bring your bottle home when you go to a restaurant in Quebec, a policy that puts property rights into question and that government officials had promised to change.

   The Liberal government, which had vowed to slap down the rule, was voted out and nowadays many diners believe that the law was already changed, so these days many-an-awkward moment is playing out at various eateries in the province, as waiters have to tell their customers to leave the damn bottle on the table.        
   A restaurant can technically lose its right to serve wine if the waiter allows one to get away, so expect a fight if you try.
  The current practice also increases the chance of drunk driving, as people would likely rather finish their bottles than just leave them.
  Waiters have the difficult task of policing the rule, but on the other hand they often drink the unfinished wine after the restaurant closes, so they're rewarded both ways. If you're a real smart cookie, you'll just get your wife, girlfriend or lesbian lover to put on a wine rack bra and you'll drink from your own supply.

Metro riders: beware of shoe thieves

   Those who dare taking the city's metro system already expose themselves to countless risks, including potential exposure to lunatics, felons, hipsters and other hopeless miscreants but the previously-unknown shoe thief, who descends on people that cross their legs is a new one. As you can see, you barely realize that your boot is gone by the time he's out the turnstiles. I'm thinking that the thief sells them to amputees around the world, people who only need one shoe.

Quebec women tend to dye their hair red more than blonde. Why is that?

  The photo at left, taken at the Super Aqua Club, a former sand quarry-turned beach at Oka, (or more precisely Pointe Calumet, just before Oka) demonstrates that Kweebeck wymyn lurvve to dye their hair red, rather than blonde, which is the primo colour of choice for damsels outside of this province.
  And so why is it that they do this and what does it tell us about Kweebeck demoiselles?
  You'll have to read through, or jump over a couple of rambling parantheses to find out.
   (Firstly, ever notice that nobody dyes their hair brown? It proves that as a colour, it sucks for hair.)
   (Citation: I read this factoid about Qc women preferring to go red in an article article about 10 years ago that proved fridge-sticking-worthy. I tried to relocate this information in the newspaper data banks but failed to retrace it, so I'd have to go to the landfill and find it to find said fridge to learn what exactly the article said, or else call a hair dye company to ask if it's indeed still true).
  Anyway, the reason women dye their hair blonde? To look younger, as pigment only starts to come in stronger with age.
  In contrast, women dye their hair red to look sexy, as it's known that red makes men think about sex. In fact, studies show that men rate women wearing red clothing as prettier, so the Lucille-Ball look is easy points on the scoreboard of seduction.
  So that is tells of the psychology of ze women hauling those Clairol boxes to the cash at the local Gene Cooto and Shoppers Drugge Marte in Laval, Repentigny and Ville-Emard. 

Terrebonne tenant ordered to pay $14,000 for six month nightmare

  On July 1, 2009 Serge Lescault was moving to Winnipeg for a while so he rented out his house at 1700 des Bernaches in Terrebone to some guy named Nicolas Desjardins for $900 per month.
  The new tenant decided he was going to do car repairs in the basement, so he pulled out the carpet, yanked out doors, demolished part of the house and started fixing cars and dripping oil into the basement.
   Desjardins eventually just took off in January 2010 without paying the rent.
   So Lescault tracked him down and slapped him with a $28,837 suit at the rental board, the highest number I've ever seen at that joint.
  The Rental Board ordered Desjardins to pay Lescault $13,737.
   Whether he ever will or not is another question.
  Lescault's insurance company also refused to pay for the damage which they estimated at $9,200. They said it the damage was caused by natural degeneration of the structure.
   A judge noted, however, that it was clearly vandalism and that wasn't exempt from the policy so the judge ordered Union Canadienne to pay him an additional $7,000.
  So Lescault won both court rulings but had to deal with a ton of headaches. Keep an eye on your house when you rent it out.

Miss Montreal beauty pageant - good times were had!

   I think I must have some sort of brain ailment, (I'm blaming it on the cat-brain parasite that maybe I got from reading cat-brain parasite defender Kate's site) because I can't look at an old photo like this shot of the Miss Montreal beauty pageant in the 1940s and simply immerse myself in the event portrayed.
   Instead, my brain makes me wonder where they all are, if they're dead, if I could reach them on the phone and so forth.
   The absolute worst is when I see photos at the hockey rink of young athletes from 10-15 years ago. Rather than allowing the image to come alive again, I ruin it by asking myself: how old are they now? what sort of work did they get as adults? did they stay in the neighbourhood?
   I just wish I could let an old photo come back to life.
   The Miss Montreal beauty pageant lasted decades but effectively ended sometime. And yeah there are still beauty contests here and there but they generally run by carpetbaggers who force the girls to pay big money to join and often don't even reward the promised prizes.
   Some say beauty pageants are demeaning, but so what? What activity isn't demeaning. If the same young women were standing behind a counter at McDonald's would they be totally undemeaned? Digging a hole? Coding a website? Every activity is demeaning, so let them stand around in bathing suits and be what they want to be.
   In the photo above, the four contestants on the left are all holding a small trophy and other seven are looking over at them. I think the ones on the left are being politely eliminated.
   The two at the far left are no great shakes, the one after is a chinless big bird and the the attention-starved fourth one is just generic and insipid.
   The seven other candidates are all pretty solid but look a little dour. The tall one has the leggy gams and the one in the black negligee to her right could probably squeeze your head like a chestnut with those muscular thighs.
  My vote goes to the middle-candidate of the seven on the right because she looks a little drunk and fun to be with and her costume is a bit more see-through.
   The great Rene Ferron did an exhaustive 10 minute report on the Miss Montreal in 1989, when politically-correct thing made it all about who could talk the best.
   Eighty percent of the marks were based on interviews with these young women which is way too much. The girl in the freeze frame thing below, Edith Fortin, (appearing at around 3:00) couldn't compete in Miss Montreal 1989 cuz she was only 17 but man, she was ambitious, she went on to do a ton of such contests and eventually became one of main dancers in Starmania.
   But there you go, I'm doing it again, where are they now? Let's just try to focus on where were they then.



 
 

Ethan Allen Capture Park. Are you kidding me?

   Parc de la capture d'Ethan Allen, aka, Ethan Allen Capture Park, ever heard of it?
   I have, probably because I live next to a park that was given a dumb name when nobody was paying attention so I've developed an ear for such things.
 That's the new name of an east side park in Montreal, so named in 2008.
  There's plans to put a beach just around there and so it's an increasingly-important area on the river.
  Here's a few reasons why it doesn't make sense as a name.
1-Ethan Allen did not surrender at that spot in 1775. The building where he signed his surrender treaty now sits nearby. The structure had been preserved and transported to that location from further west but it's currently being used as a daycare, so it's not a place you can even really go. There's just a plaque.
2- It celebrates a minor skirmish, won by Guy Carlton, aka Dorchester, a Brit, whose team had recently beaten the French.
3-It's a tasteless insult to Vermonters, (not that I'm too upset with insulting Vermonters, they are very nice people, I'm told, but the ones I've dealt with have always been strangely unpleasant).
4-There are much worthier locals to celebrate, such as Sarah Maxwell, the schoolteacher who saved all those kids on Prefontaine St.

Scenes from a Wednesday in May

We see this countless times at intersections every day - pedestrians forced to start dashing while crossing at a light which is starting to turn red. Younger people have no trouble dashing those three or four extra steps but older individuals don't necessary have what it takes to suddenly accelerate in order to survive oncoming traffic. My Romanian nanny Minna drove me nuts when she insisted we "wait for a fresh green." But many local geriatrics have been killed in Montreal by such red-light-tick-tock doom. The red-switch issue will worsen with the ill-conceived upcoming terrestrialization of the Turcot Interchange, as pedestrians will be forced to walk across eight lanes of traffic now sitting currently blissfully overhead. Big prize to anybody who concocts an innovation that permits pedestrians to be able to cross without suddenly being forced to start running.

 What do you see in this photo? I see someone who's wearing a helmet that should not be wearing a helmet. Half of the fun of riding is to feel the wind in your hair. The insurance industry will eventually pressure city administrators to force every cyclist to wear a dorky shell on their dome and that will be a tragic day for all. Personally I rode a bike throughout all the seasons for about 12 years and never felt the need for a helmet. The trick to safety is: drive slow. Slow down on your bike and you'll be fine.


I don't give to beggars because I think it erodes their legitimate claim to equality. As long as they can get a couple of squares and a roof that should be all they need. But I can understand their sense of isolation and boredom, which forces them to want to interact with other and sometimes even entertain. This high-heeled Inuit cup-holder spotted yesterday on Berri and Dorch was vamping with the strut-pout-put-em-out in a rather entertaining way. Go girl!



How how was it in Montreal Wednesday? The Rose Bowl thermometer suggests it was 34 degrees. That's pretty darn hot for May. No complaints here.

Nancy Donais' double roof heartbreak

Nancy Donais and the burnt-out home

Diane Pomerleau

  The home at 571 Honore Beaugrand, pictured at left, is a wreck because last year single mama Nancy Donais neglected to pay her insurance and the joint burned down, leaving her and her five kids scrambling for a roof.
  Friends attempted to raise cash to help her fix the place but I'm not confident that succeeded, because the phone line remains disconnected.
  Now, there's another newer home-related heartbreak involving a Nancy Donais that I'm confident is the same person.
   Nancy Donais' mother Diane Pomerleau was a stripper and escort for many years. She claimed in court documents that she was making a lot of cash money in the sex trade in the mid-90s but died at age 53 after disappearing in the east end on January 17 2008.
  Prior to her death, however, Pomerleau launched a lawsuit against her ex-boyfriend Richard Boisvert, with whom she went out between 1987 and 2001.
   Pomerleau said she gave him $40,000 cash - money she earned from the sex trade -  to buy a cottage in Lac Alphonse in 1996.
   After they broke up, Pomerleau filed a lawsuit to get the cottage back from her ex-boyfriend. But on March 28 Superior Court Judge Thomas Davis ruled that Donais - who inherited her dead mom's claim - has no right to the cottage because her mom's name wasn't on any of the documents.
  So not only did fate deprive Nancy Donais of her home on Honore Beaugrand, but it also frowned on possibility of recovering a cottage that her mom felt should be hers.

P.K. Subban, hockey's Jackie Robinson

   I watched Game Three of Montreal's playoff series with a white anglo-Montreal woman in her 60s. The woman was purportedly supporting the Canadiens but had no shame in singling out P.K. Subban for various alleged sins, which she had a hard time describing.
   She was apparently oblivious to the awkwardness of the fact that she has singled out the only visible minority on the team.
   I wanted to suggest that she put herself in his place, being the only white competitor in a group of blacks, whether she'd be impressed when the black onlookers singled her out for harsh invective.
   Later I went onto a YouTube video of Subban and noticed countless commenters unhesitatingly using the 'n' word and other insults towards him. It made me wish that there was some sort of filter I could click on to not have to see that horribleness.
   This crazy reaction to this beautiful hockey player saddens me tremendously, as Subban is not just obviously a helluva player and passionate competitor but he's a lot of fun to watch, not just for me but for countless hockey fans.
   So why the widespread resistance to the top-notch, artful display that Subban puts on every night?
   I imagine that when certain hockey fans see Subban skate by top white players with relative ease, it provokes the fear of hockey becoming a black sport, or exposes them to the notion that NHL players are inferior athletes to those of the NBA and NFL, which are dominated by Afro-Americans.
   Subban, being the first bonafide black hockey superstar, has to bear the brunt of these anxieties through not fault of his own.
   Sixty years ago Jackie Robinson played in this city and broke down some important barriers of racism and prejudice. The same thing is playing out before our eyes, as this beautiful young player fights similar battles, cloaked in different forms.

Cats: time to ban them?

   Montreal is home to an estimated 500,000 cats and that's a cause for concern because recent studies have shown that people who own pets have been getting infected with the Toxoplasmosis brain parasite that alters their personalities, which research has demonstrated makes people reckless and more prone to being involved in motor vehicle accidents.
   The toxoplasma gets into the food chain through mice, the t. gondii or toxo, as it's also known hides in the rodent's immune system.
  The bug gets to the mouse's brain and it turns the rodent fearless, making it easy prey for cats.
   The cat then gets infected with the bug and transmits it to humans.
   A British study has shown that 1,000 people a day are getting toxoplasma through cats or poorly cooked meat. Leading researcher Jaroslav Flegr says that due to their high-consumption of bloody meat, the French have an estimated rate of 55 percent infection.
   A recent study from Sweden indicates that people infected with toxo have higher rates of schizophrenia, depression and other mental ailments.
  Flegr's studies suggests that men infected with the parasite become sloppy, mistrustful and introverted, while it does the opposite to women, who "tended to be more meticulously attired, many showing up for the study in expensive, designer-brand clothing. Infected men tended to have fewer friends, while infected women tended to have more."
   Those infected by toxo "were about two and a half times as likely to be in a traffic accident as their uninfected peers."
   So if you have a cat, you might consider these things and possibly get a blood test, apparently a malaria medication called Clindamycin can help get rid of the bug.
    So it won't be long before someone crunches the numbers and finds out what this easily-avoidable cat-borne parasite is costing the public purse and the continued co-existence with cats subsequently put into question. 

Cannibalism in Quebec

   Was delighted to see Anthony Bourdain praise Montreal last night on his culinary travel show but lest people believe that we actually eat beaver meat and ice fish and eat outdoors after playing shinny in public parks in St. Hank, sorry it's not entirely the case.
   Nonetheless I think he has overlooked one obscure element of the Quebec diet that is rarely discussed: human flesh.
   Recent news that cannibalism was practiced by American settlers has shocked some people but it's really nothing new to our part of the world.
   Here is one example, written up in A.W. Brian Simpson's Cannibalism and common law: a Victoria yachting tragedy

   A  peculiarly grim case, involving in all probability both mass murder and cannibalism, occurred in 1828-29 on the island of Anticosta (sic) in the gulf of St. Lawrence. Four men landed on the island and visited a hut at Godin’s Post. Inside they found “the carcases (sic) of four human beings with their heads and legs and arms cut off, and the bowels extracted, hanging by their thighs in the room, and the others cut up in the same manner.” There was also a store in a trunk, and a pot with flesh in it. This larder had not, however, saved the last survivor, who lay dead in a hammock. The Times, at the instigation of the Lloyd’s agent at Pictou, published an account of items found at the site, where numerous other human relics were strewn about; this account derived from an affidavit sworn before a local justice of the peace. It transpired that the remains came from the Granicus, which had been wrecked on the island, then largely if not wholly uninhabited in winter, about November 20, 1828. Between 17 and 20 persons had been on board, and the last survivor was a sailor whose name was Harrington, the son of Mary Harrington of Barrack Street, Looe.
Bloodstains on the roof and other evidence suggested that a number of his companions had died after a violent struggle; he presumably simply froze to death.

   The same book tells of Captain Timothy Gorman who ferried Irish immigrants to Quebec in the 1840s  and brought timber back to Europe. He had eaten two ship hands but that didn't seem to slow down his career.
   And of course the battle for Quebec, which was part of the larger seven years war, was won largely because the Brits were able to blockade the Atlantic  preventing French from sending much in the way of reinforcements  but also because the Brits had the upper hand with relations with the native Indians, as some key leaders believed that the French had eaten their people, although some starving British troops also indulged in human flesh in those battles as well. 

The Jalbert sisters' final night on de Lorimier

Celine Jalbert

Solange Jalbert

Sisters Celine Jalbert, 18 and Solange Jalbert, 20, were found strangled to death at their apartment at 5950 de Lorimier on January 17, 1979.
   The sisters were from what is known today as a dysfunctional background. Their father abandoned his five children and their mother had psychiatric issues, including serious depression requiring hospitalization. Both had been sexually abused as children.
   Celine moved out at 16, as did Solange. They did a variety of jobs, including stripping and  Celine worked in a tobacco family in the daytime and a doughnut joint at night.
    Solange moved to Victoriaville to be with a boy. Celine was attempted suicide in August 1978.
   So Solange moved in with Celine at the apartment on de Lorimier in December 1978 and both were suddenly without work and went out partying a lot, coming home with different guys, according to neighbours.

   They also started hanging out at a club on Pie IX known as a biker hangout as well as another one on St. Hubert, also known for its intense criminal element.
   Some of the guys they hung out with were known to be serious criminals and one hypothesis had it that they were killed because they knew too much.

Police were looking for two male killers at last word.

Hipster cars got exhaust pipe USBs

   I haven't been to many car shows since 1969 (or was it 1973?) when a British painter named Michael Millman living temporarily in our family garage (?) brought us to a Place Bonaventure where I only recall a Volkswagen seeming very expensive at $4,000. We took the bus home and I stared at length at the statues on the church across from the Sun Life building.
  I have occasionally been tempted to go since but couldn't co-ordinate a freebie ticket so I've sat 'em out.
   The latest show here in January featured a car blatantly marketed towards hipster-nerd-do-gooder-public-transit-users called a Honda Gear, complete with some kinda thingamajig that looks like a fancy USB plug on the back, I guess it's the exhaust. (Could be handy in the winter here in a place where kids get killed when dad's shovelling snow and the pipe gets into the snowbank). The ridiculous car literature claims the car is "Inspired by fixed-gear bicycles" and "Everything that young, discerning urban buyers would want in a car." I drive a car but I also support the anti-car movement because it leaves me more space to park when everybody else takes the bus. 

Proof that the east side of Montreal has way too many gas stations

   These two chunks of land are somewhat roughly the same size, measuring around two kilometers wide by six kilometers on the north/south scale. The area on the left spans the canal to the back river and Cavendish to Westminister. There are something like 30 gas stations sitting on that land, including many sensibly station along the service road of the Decarie Expressway.
   Now the area between Park and Pie IX has somewhere around 85 gas stations, many on smaller streets, many very close to each other.
   So while it might be more convenient to find a gas station on that side of town, it also mans that there's more ugly semi-industrial ugly blights sitting around.
   There's also the environmental factor. Back in the 70s gas stations posed a hazard, as lead would get into the atmosphere and poison people's brains. In fact that could be one of the reasons that the crime rate was so much higher back then: people used leaded gas and it damaged people's brains much in the same way that it led to the fall of the Roman Empire.
   There's no serious price competition between gas stations in the Montreal area, and so it must be asked whether all of those stations are really needed on the east side of town.
   Many gas stations have been removed from the city in recent years and replaced by housing, perhaps most dramatically at the corner of Desmarchais and Verdun where all four corners house a service-station related operation until about a decade ago, when they were all built into condos.  

When crime reporters kill

Robert Leboef and Yolande Desilets

  Robert Leboeuf  reported crime for Allo Police, Journal de Montreal and Nouvelliste de Trois Rivieres, and was known professionally to be a difficult fussbucket who always wanted to get his way, yet he was also remembered for showing up and leaving his office with a big smile and wave to all around him.
  Underneath that persona lived a murderous maniac who would end up killing three people, including himself.
   Robert Leboeuf, 39, Yolande Desilets, 28,  and their 3 1/2 month old son Donald died February 13, 1979.
   At the time, it would appear that the couple was estranged, as Leboeuf had been living in Longueuil, but Desilets had moved to Toronto.
   On this date she was visiting with her parents on Rang 8 in Saint Wenceslas.
   He agreed to pick her up, along with his son and bring them to Toronto together in his '70 Pontiac.
   As they embarked on the 6 1/2 hour drive, Leboeuf pulled over near on Highway 161, the main strip of Saint Wencelas, and had his wife exit the car.
   He then shot her dead with a .3030 calibre rifle. He then shot his baby son, still inside the car, in the heart. He buried them in snow and then shot himself in the abdomen.
   Cops found the abandoned car but only two days later a farmer, driving by on a tractor came across the macabre sight of three dead bodies in his field. 

Bank truck heist gang member shot dead at his restaurant: A photoshop re-enactment

      Jean-Claude Lafonde, 41, was shot to death inside his restaurant, the Louvre, at Papineau and Ste.Catherine, by two men who fled unapprehended in the early hours of Friday January 26, 1979
     Lafonde was one of five convicted in a million dollar Allied Security van heist in St. Jovite on March 21, 1978. He had plead guilty and was released, awaiting his sentencing hearing February 6. The two men came in and shot him dead as he stood near the cash. About a dozen diners and one waitress was on hand while the murder took place. That's his real face but the rest of the image is a collage.