Coolopolis

According to Peter Raimondo, who has chronicled the St James Cliff area on his site, this was the lay of the land in lower NDG in the 40s.

The goats (that grazed on the cliff) belonged to Mr. Pasquini. His farm was on the hill where Upper Lachine road and St. James (now St. Jacques) meet. I remember working on the farm pulling weeds from the onion beds. I lasted one day. Mr Pasquini also had a horse and chickens. The number 31 street car used to terminate its run at this intersection and return to the Craig street terminus which was downtown, on St. James west of St. Lawrence Blvd. The Aubin Farm ( Hector) was on the north side of St. James about 200 yards past the intersection mentioned above. I believe there is a Aubin Motel on the site today. About 300 yards father on, there was another Aubin farm on the hill ide. Then there was the Nittolo farm and others. Cavendish Blvd. did not exist in those days.

Back in July of 1881, this guy made himself a protective rubber suit. He planned to venture alone into the Lachine Rapids to try it out. If he survived, whoever he was, he intended to take his act to "the exhibition."

Giovanni D'Amico, 41, of NDG, is a familiar face to many in the west end. I met him first maybe 12 years ago. He was a smooth talking gosh-golly, anglo souvereignist who lived with his sister in what he happily described as an underpriced apartment. Gio D'Amico started a web site company that vowed to donate a big percentage of its money to good causes. He asked me to write an article about his initiative. Seemed like such an invitation to phoney accounting that I declined the offer but another journalist took him up on his effort to get freebie fan press. I had previously developoed a bad feeling towards him after bumping into him at a terrace cafe on Mackay. He uncharacterstically stared blankly ahead while I tried to make small talk. Now he has been arrested and charged with beating up and raping several street hookers. WTF? What exactly would be the point of doing that? I just don't get it. Weren't those women on his list of corporate charity recipients? He has plead not guilty. Ugly, ugly, ugly.

Sometimes while sitting at the red lights I don't run, I try to figure out who the biggest names living on the planet are right now. Nelson Mandela (happy birthday baby) would surely clock in at number one. I guess Bin Laden, Putin, Lech Walesa (slidin' fast), Thatcher, Brad Pitt...well you could fill out the top people on your own ...but surely my favourite female notable on this planet is the statuesque, gracious, ball-smashin' vixen Venus Williams. It's been love at first smash for me and over the years I've egged her on through the TV to beat that shrimpy little Belgian Henin and Blisters and Morelesbo and now that phoney arm pumping Ivanovic who I am praying will get steamrollered here by The Godess. Word is, however, that a very young sister team in Montreal could -and this is an extreme longshot - become our version of the Willliams sisters. Elizabeth Abanda, 14, and Francoise Abanda, 12 are kickin' up dust on the kiddie tennis circuit, winning left and right in Canada. The knock on Elizabeth is that she's very short and probably won't be getting any taller. The younger one, seen here shopping in Italy, well it's a bit early to tell. The two kids sent a videotape urging Serena to come to Montreal to play alongside Venus, so we salute their spunkiness.

Montreal, summer 2008...what a flop!

That's because tourism is deadsville this summer, or at least its pulse is like that of a hibernating grizz.

A combination of the high petroloon, US election year, staggering gas prices, a lousy US economy, the Quebec City distractions, have combined to make Montreal 2008 a tourist write-off.

Montreal's restaurants, skintraders, festivals - all recently glittering local cash industries - now sit alongside our exporters weeping at the bread queue. It makes you nostalgic for the hipsville boomtown Montreal post ice-storm 2000-2003 when so many people were flocking to the city that you couldn't even find shelter.

The days of nightclub city, Bradgelina movie shoots, the 77 cent dollar are gone and so are the visitors. We've become a fast-aging service economy where people ride bridges to suburbia at night.

These changes are supposedly good. We are richer now, after all, thanks to the oil-bearing tar sands of Alberta. Forget your nostalgie de boue Montrealaise. Our old ways could return but it would require the Canadian dollar taking another stunning tumble. But that would involve raising the deficit and debt and screwing up our economy. Maybe we should have been in Iraq after all. But we don't want debt. The Fort McMurray Revolution is here and has forced Montreal to permanently evole.

Alas it seems we'll become a bit of a Switzerland. Too expensive to visit for all but a few devoted Japanese who really want to see that house in Charlettown.

Canada's oil prosperity should continue. Mexican government meddling looks set to doom that country as an oil supplier to the US, leaving us increasingly needed down there.

Canada will get more banking towers and shiny imported cars and the potholes will be fixed and we'll be able to buy imported stuff on the cheap. Your maple leaf napsacks will be a ca-ching sign for beggars in street abroad as the red bud will be a sign of wealth.

But Montreal could hurt in many other ways. The Canadian dollar might make it a little too expensive to study here, which is particularly problematic for our city, which keeps expanding its universities without any real justification. More specifically it could hurt English Montreal which has replenished its constantly falling numbers by students who end up sticking around seduced by the local je ne sais quoi ambience, now threatened by its lack of cheapness.

We'll be a place seen as solid and utterly forgettable. We won't have much of an international profile because nobody will want to visit a place where it costs the equivalent of a weeks salary to visit the amusement park.

Presumably however immigrants will be banging down the doors because a strong loonie will be an a fantastic thing to send back to your mother in Manila and your grandpa in Guatemala.

All this assumes that the bright brains of the third world will want to move here. Assuming that third world governments resist the temptation to meddle, the third world might see a bit of a bucolic renaissance. High food prices could lead the west to slash many of its food import tariffs - including the ridiculous EU embargo on Africa produce. Developing worlders could shun emigration for the farm, knowing that there's money to be made in them there fields.

Canada's prosperity might kill international tourism but it should help attract talented immigrants who can stand bitter winters where the wind binds your lashes together as you wait for the morning bus. Immigration will flower and that's something far more valuable than tourism in these times of boomer decline.

Thus Montreal should transfer some of its efforts from seducing tourists to seducing permanent talent.

The province must also get rid of those ridiculous throwback language barriers that have discouraged potential immigrants from moving here.

If you get your wine at the fill-your-own-bottle government booze outlets you've suffered stigmatization cuz their wine had no label. You'd feel chintzy if you pulled one of these suckers out. May as well wear a barrel on skid row. But it was still worth it cuz you'd pay like $6 to $10 for vino that would otherwise cost twice that price. You'd also have to go through the corking ritual which involved some dexterity and could be quite dangerous if you were drunk from all the free sample sips you'd nipped. Luckily the provincial government oppressors now offer screw top bottles and you can slap your own label on that they supply at the stand. The stickers are a pain to take off if you want to reuse the bottle, you'll probably just end up slapping a new sticker over the old one.

The big red truck at 969 Louvain contains the auctioneer who sits at the top thingy on the second Wednesday of every month starting at 9 am. In this shot he's selling the higher end bikes, which go for around $80 on average.

The shittier bikes go for about $75 for a group of four or five. I bought 4 for $50. They need repair, but at least one looks pretty good.
There are about 30 sheds full of various seized junk. The entire contents sell for anywhere between $5 to $800. One guy got a good looking deal, fridge stove and various other junk for $210, although you couldn't see clearly what exactly was in there.
This one, with the fancy TV went for over $700. Some full of boxes were going for $400, an aging emaciated midriff-baring biker chick kept buying them as if she was expecting Honus Wagner rookie cards in the boxes rather than shitty Christmas decorations.



There were two sorts of cars. The pre-owned city cars and those which were seized. The city cars - former police cars and so forth -went for like $700 each. They were pretty old and rusty. You're allowed to put 25% down immediately and return with the rest of the cash within a few days. They start the cars, back them up and make them go forward, but otherwise there's no guarantees on their condition.
The rest of the cars were the seized. They don't start them or allow you to pay partially. You've got to haul them out before 4 pm and not allowed doing repairs on site. You won't even known if they have a motor inside. This 2002 Pontiac Montana went for $1,700. The passenger seats behind the front row were missing and the electronic window controls on the driver side were gone, perhaps other stuff was fubar as well. I was tempted to bid on it anyway. I kicked myself.

This rock-on-occo staircase bannister was originally in what was arguably Montreal's most important building. The building is still in use but for other purposes. Can you name it?

Answer: Kate Mc figured it out. It's the old courthouse, now used as an annex for city hall, where they do finances. It has won architectural awards and whatnot.

At the last borough council meeting, all 8 elected reps of Verdun voted to build a second bridge to Nun's Island. It's a good idea because currently the only access is via the Champlain/Bonaventure, which is often crowded or under repairs. The bridge (in green on the map) is going to cost something like $15 to $20 million. We're not sure who pays for this, but usually it's the feds that build bridges. 71 percent of mainland Verduners and 74 percent of Nuns Islanders supposedly want this bridge. However they won't be allowed to actually use it, as only buses, bikes, pedestrians and emergency vehicles will be allowed to cross. Borough Mayor Trudel fears that it could be overrun by people trying to get a shortcut to the south shore.

Seems that Trudel needs to rethink this.

The 60,000 residents of Verdun should get a special sticker for their car that would allow them to use the bridge. That would restrict traffic dramatically. It would offer incentive to live in Verdun. Or else the municipal authorities could further restrict it to Verdun residents willing to pay an annual fee to use it. Or thirdly they could charge a big toll on the bridge for anybody who wants to use it, thereby allowing the trickle of cars that go through to pay the at least part of the $20 million price tag.

It's fashionable to hate cars but in fact all sorts of good things happen when a car can get somewhere. The guy who fixes your fridge ain't takin' the bus, nor are those who stock the shelves of your grocery store with delicious grapefruit. There's a limit to the anti-car movement. The idea of a bridge linking Verdun and Nun's Island is absolutely great. Refusing to cars to drive over it is bad.

These images were shot at the base of the St. James Cliff at around St. Remi and St. James, it's the hill one block south of the Vendome metro, it separates St. Henri (Turcotte village area) from NDG (St. Raymond's parish area).

My father made some cash off this cliff. One day - I'm guessing around 1960 - he read in the paper that a kid died slipping down the cliff. So Gravenor called CN and offered to buy the land at the top of the cliff for one dollar. The strip of land was literally one foot. The CN liked this offer because if anybody else died, my dad would get sued rather than them. So he became the owner of a 12 inch slice of land at the top of a cliff that extended quite some distance.
This was around the time that Place Ville was being built and much excavation was taking place downtown. Builders needed a place to dump the dug up soil. So my dad arranged to have it dumped at the edge of his one foot strip. So with every dumping of land, the one foot strip extended slightly. He must have somehow had the right to do this because presumably every truckload of dirt would also swallow up land beneath the hill.

Soon the one foot strip became much larger and he had literally made land. He then rented the land out to commercial businesses, used car lots, car washes, marine laundry and so forth and had a steady revenue stream from that.

Beneath the hill was a lively neighbourhood known as the St. Elizabeth du Portugal parish largely populated by Italians. The church by the same name was built in 1956 and demolished earlier this year. The adjacent St. Raymond's area also became an Italian neighbourhood, so perhaps many of the Italians from below the hill moved up the hill in the way people from the Point eventually moved to Verdun and continued west. The area is also known for the Home Depot, the Louis Cyr statue, and the former home of the Dubois brother crime clan.

These photos are from Andrea Mancini taken from an awesome site by former resident Peter Raimondo (he now lives in Brossard). The site has existed for at least three years but was only brought to my attention by Peter McQueen.

You've surely noticed that powerwalls have been banned in Montreal. Didja know that not only did those cigarette wall displays help sales, but cigarette companies would pay the stores to put them up - they were good for about $5,000 a year to the typical depanneur.

Without ciggy revs and payoffs some corner stores could go broke, which means that you won't have anywhere to buy your eggs when you run out, so you'll starve and die.

So we've got a partial solution that's so obvious that we're surprised it took a superintelligent chimp with a brain implant to think it up. Now that the wall is covered up, the only thing to look at is the cashier. Since your peepers are firmly trained on the person behind the cash... why on earth aren't they wearing something like this?

I was on CJAD discussing Coolopolis for half an hour a few nights ago with excellent late-night host Peter Anthony Holder... here's a link to the audio.

I try not to watch this because I find myself humming the darn annoying song for days afterwards..then again they say humming clears the sinuses..so there's a bit of upside to this stuff.

..drunken Finns got way too drunk at an illegal after-hours bar and one ended up in a pool of blood...

Possibly one of the five greatest Montreal songs of all time gets a heapin' helpin' of lip stretching by Michel Pagliaro.

Bedbugs are said to be spreading fast in this city. Exterminators charge $400 to steam a room. Too expensive. So you can rent the Polti Mondiale and kill bugs and their eggs with hot air much cheaper. You can rent these machines - which cost over $2,000 -at Simplex Tool Rental shops, $46 weekend rate. It blasts dryish steam at a high pressure into cracks and everywhere. When you're done, go around the room and put caulking everywhere you see a crack around the baseboards and quarter rounds. You can also use it to defrost a freezer, clean clean your oven or blast away stubborn worn-in dirt from the floor. It takes some time to heat up but stays hot for a long time. Simplex has a strong demand for these machines so they can be hard to rent. Other companies, such as Lou-Tec and Gamma, don't even rent them, which is a shame.

Montreal's only must-attend annual parade starts at noon tomorrow at Dorch around Guy.

What essential item does a cell phone have that a plug-in-the-wall landline phone does not have?

A 'send' button.

Long ago at my first grown-up job connecting calls around the world - USSR, India, Lebanon, etc - our ancient equipment had an important button to the top right of the desktop keyboard.

The send button made it clear to the machine that you had finished dialling the number. It was important because not all countries have 10 digits to reach their home.

With a cell phone you've got to press 'talk' to get your call out too.

The fact that send buttons aren't universal on all phones limits our telephone number possibilities.

With send buttons, not all phone numbers would have to be 10 digits. The phone company could make money too, by charging more for people willing to pay extra for a shorter phone number.

It would also make dialling easier than the currently prevalent 10 digit dialing system, and the constantly new arriving area codes -( 438 - !? Puh-lease!) would end.

If you had a chance to pay $5 extra per month to have a six digit number, wouldn't you consider it? It'll never happen until manufacturers put those send buttons on all phones.

For the record, the only shorter numbers going are zero, for the operator, 311 for the city of Montreal, 411 for information, 611 for repairs, 711 for deaf services - accessible only for those with TTYs, 811 for Montreal health department (since May) and 911 for emergencies, call 'em up and ask them the score of last night's hockey game.

So the campaign starts here - Canada must pass a law ordering all phones have 'send' buttons on 'em.