JDG: You get some interesting cases.

AB: Woah, we get interesting cases. Well you’ve been sitting here, you heard some of the stuff we had today. This is typical.

JDG: Well, I’m just scratching the surface. What exactly do you do?

AB: Well, it’s a nonprofit organization. We essentially assist people who are having problems with the Rental Board. Mostly tenants. Some small landlords.
And we basically provide them with additional advice that they won’t necessarily get from the board. We have lawyers, either as volunteers or on staff. We help them write their letters. We have a building technologist who will help them do inspections and testify in court. We have lawyers who will go with them to court.
And we have a hotline apart from these. The hotline operates five days a week. The clinic operates two days a week. And we’ve been doing this, basically continuously, since 1981.
And on a more or less regular basis since the mid-seventies.

JDG: Yeah, I remember you from way back. So this is basically the 25-year anniversary that you’ve been doing it basically full-time?

AB: We started doing it during the Bill 57 campaign in the fall of 1981, which is also when I started the Gazette column that I had for about seven or eight years. And the first ten weeks we were basically telling people how to get free money, so we were getting 200 people a week. We filled Victoria Hall. It was quite something. We discovered during that campaign, which was supposed to be an intensive campaign to get people to file for this money,  we directly induced about 30,000 people to file.  We discovered there were many, many other problems that people needed regular assistance on. That it was not sufficient to do what tenant groups did in those days, which was to have occasional press conferences and offices hours only in the middle of the week and so on.
So essentially we were the first organization to set up a weekend service. We were the first organization to set up a permanent hotline with someone actually someone answering the phone live, eventually twelve hours a day five days a week. And to provide all these additional services.
And as I said, we’re a non-profit. We used to have some government funding. We have no government funding now. We operate basically off private donations only.

JDG: Anybody getting rich here?

AB: On the contrary. Not only is nobody getting rich here but this is paid for out of pocket.

JDG: What was Bill 57?

AB: Bill 57 was a special law that was adopted in the late 1970s, when they abolished certain taxes on apartment buildings. And at that time, the MCM (Montreal Citizens Movement, a municipal political party) lobbied Quebec: ‘If you’re going to abolish taxes on big apartment buildings, then tenants should get a cut.’
But instead of Quebec making it an automatic cut, of course, being the government, they decided to make people do it the hard way. So they said, ‘You can get the money, but the tenant has to go and apply to the rental board. And they figured maybe only a few people would.  Forty-five thousand eventually did, largely because we did a campaign that went on for two years.

JDG: Is the Quebec rental board a generous system or a just system?

AB: There are problems with it, but on the whole it’s probably better than anything else I’ve seen in North America. Toronto, on some levels, Ontario used to have a better system for new tenants, but on the other hand, Ontario excluded anybody from rent control over a certain rent level. So it was obviously in the interest of these big landlords to force the rents up and get people out of rent control entirely. And of course, Harris went and gutted the system.
So the reason Quebec’s got the best system is because, even with all the home-ownership encouragement and whatever, the old City of Montreal you’re looking at 70 per cent tenants. Island of Montreal, it’s still a majority of tenants. Even throughout the province of Quebec, there’s a very large minority of tenants. So it’s basically political suicide for any government, no matter how quote-unquote free-market they are, to mess with this.
As the Liberals discovered back in the late 1980s, when they wanted to allow unrestricted condo conversion and then backed off dramatically and, in fact, improved protection for tenants.
There was actually a mayor of Westmount who was booted out of office because he refused to support the tenants on the issue of protection of tenants against condo conversions. This was in the campaign in 1987 and May Cutler got elected over Brian Gallery as a direct result. All those little old ladies south of Sherbrooke went out and voted en masse to kick out Gallery. That is the only time a sitting mayor of Westmount was thrown out by the voters and that was the reason why.

JDG: Did you like Robin Hood?

AB: What?

JDG: Were you a fan of Robin Hood?

AB: Oh yeah. And in fact, we run non-profit housing in N.D.G. And when we set up this non-profit housing, we called it Habitation Sherbrooke Forest (laughter) and there’s a great big Robin Hood logo on the building.

JDG: Is it one building?

AB:  It’s actually close to 500 units that we’re running in N.D.G.

JDG: How did you get started?

AB: Back a very long time ago. I started covering it as a journalist for the McGill Daily during Milton Park. And then I got elected to city council in 1974 and, of course, housing’s a big issue, so practically the day after my election my first complaint was a landlord complaint. As it turned out, that particular tenant was a total nutbar, and it wasn’t legitimate, but afterwards we got many, many other cases that were legitimate.

JDG: So there were a lot of things that needed to be addressed and you saw yourself as a guy who could do it, eh?

AB:  Well, basically I started doing it as an adjunct to other things I was doing as an elected councillor and it basically took my life over. So even after I stopped being a councillor I continued doing this. And then I branched into the other area, because I’m involved in N.D.G. community groups and we decided to actually take over buildings in N.D.G. and convert them into affordable housing. We initially did this, taking it on contract from the City of Montreal because during the Dore administration a lot of this was done. But then after Bourque got in, they stopped doing it, we went directly to the Quebec government, got the grants, bought and renovated buildings. And now we’re involved in a project at Benny Farm, creating affordable home-ownership. So I have my fingers in a lot of pies in this area.

JDG: How many people do you think you and your volunteers helped over the years.

AB: On the phones, half a million. In person, at the meetings, 50,000.

AB: Well, basically the math on it. On the phones, over a given year, we do about 25,000 calls and at the clinics we do about 2,500 in-person interviews. So, you know, put it together, do the math.

JDG: I didn’t notice a sense of desperation or nervousness when I came in her. People seem to think, ‘I’m going to be O.K.’

AB: Well I don’t know. A lot of people, yeah. But I think you walked in after some of the early people today. They were pretty desperate. We had one person here who has a psycho roommate, who has made physical threats and she wants to get out somehow and that was very difficult. The police wouldn’t help her. I don’t understand why. We have another woman whose landlord physically assaulted her and she defended herself. And now he’s trying to get her evicted through the rental board. So we turned her over to one of the lawyers today. We have other people who have just discovered they have an infestation of bedbugs and the landlord’s trying to blame them.

JDG: Are tenants nervous to stand up for their rights in some cases? Like they don’t want to cause trouble, right?

AB: Yeah although people are better educated now. You don’t have that many people coming in anymore who think they’re going to get evicted if they refuse a rent increase. You’ll find some people who don’t realize they’ve got rights, but most people — even recent immigrants who just got off the plane two months ago — have got some idea that they’ve got certain rights and that that there are organizations that they can go to. And you’ve just got to keep spreading that information.
One thing that we learned is that it requires constant repetition and education because people — unless they’re directly affected — if it’s not a basic issue that everybody knows about like, they can refuse a rent increase.  If it’s something more obscure, people will not know. Because people don’t go around reading the law in their spare time.

JDG: Have you ever been threatened?

AB: Ahh. We’ve had a couple of threats. Not lately but I have some interesting notes I’ve dug up from my old files.

JDG: I guess this is evidence you’ve got to keep on hand until whatever blows over. Um, how old are you?

AB: Now? Fifty-five.

JDG: And you’re been doing this since you were, what, in your twenties?

AB: Yeah.

JDG: Can people do a lot of this stuff themselves? Do they come here just for encouragement, do you think?

AB: Some things people can do themselves. Some things we consider that people need expert assistance. Cases that have any legal twists on them, we recommend that people have legal representation when they go to the Regie (du Logement). Even though you’re supposed to not need a lawyer when you go to the Regie, you don’t get the respect. Now, if it’s an ordinary, routine, open-and-shut case like, ‘My tenant did not pay the rent’ and/or ‘I’ve got this repair that needs to be done and here’s the picture’ or ‘I don’t like this rent increase and I’d like the Regie to look at the landlord’s bills.’ Those are fairly simple. You do not need a lawyer. But if it’s an eviction, you do not go to the Board without a lawyer. If it’s some complicated thing involving points of law, you take a lawyer.

JDG: Do you ever help landlords?

AB: I’d say maybe about ten, fifteen per cent of our clientele. I mean we’re talking small duplex owners. I don’t have the big property owners coming in here. They’ve got their own network.

JDG: Have your volunteers and staff been with you a long time?

AB: Everybody who’s with me now has been with me for a long time. Because I don’t use the government grant programs anymore. Some of the people started on government grants and then I hired them. Pretty much everbody. (Indicating person sitting next to him. Barbara Cyr is executive assistant and staff coordinator. Her duties include the running of the hotline.) She’s been here 18 years. But at a certain point, the government programs became unsatisfactory because anybody who — most people who are any good, they didn’t want them going on these types of programs. They basically wanted to send me people who were essentially unemployable, so at that point I said, ‘Forget it. We’re not a psychiatric institution here. We’re trying to help people.’ So I only kept people who were good.
Some of these people — she’s been here the longest — but I’ve had people here ten or fifteen years.

JDG: And the current real-estate market, how is that affecting tenants?

AB: Well, it was very bad a few years ago. I mean, you’ll remember ten years ago, when the market was dead, you had a seven-per-cent vacancy rate. It was very high. Landlords were begging people to take their apartments. Then it took a nosedive. It was even lower than Toronto at one point. And as a result, it wasn’t so much that people were getting gouged as existing tenants. Because a lot of those people knew they could refuse an increase. But if somebody moved out, a lot of the landlords were just jumping the rents two hundred bucks at a shot. We even saw some buildings where they were going up five hundred at a shot.
And because very, very few tenants who are new tenants realize that they can go to the board and get a rollback, or wanted to get into a scrap with the landlord about it. This drove rents up very high, very quickly.
Just to give you an idea: we run some non-profit buildings on Fielding in N.D.G. When we took these buildings over from the city in the early 1990s, they were at market. That is, they were 4 1/2s going in the upper five-hundreds. They’re still — because we don’t raise it except for cost — they’re still in the lower six-hundreds. But equivalent apartments in N.D.G., you can’t get below eight or nine hundred now. So, of course, we’ve got we’ve got almost no vacancies. Because people would be crazy to leave that kind of situation. But it shows you essentially what’s happend.  You know, the existing tenants who’ve stayed where they are, they’ve kept their rents down. But where there’s been turnover, the rents have gone up, up and up. So now, even thought the vacancy rate has improved. It’s very difficult for people to find affordable rents in a lot of neighbourhoods.
And it’s really going to hit the fan in some neighbourhoods in January, because as you’ve noticed the property valuations have gone very high in a lot of districts — especially in the southwest of Montreal, which up to now has been spared. And suddenly they’ve got tax increases, surtaxes, the energy costs are a big problem now, particularly for oil. It’s not going to be fun for tenants in 2007.

JDG: Particularly in the southwest, then?

AB: Southwest will be the worst, because of the taxes. But because of the energy costs and other problems that the city’s been having, generally all over.

JDG: So where are the emerging neighbourhoods, if people want to find affordable housing? Is there anyplace left?

AB: (Sighs) It’s getting more and more difficult. You see people moving off island.

Barbara Cyr: “Even then, it’s not cheaper off island.”)

JDG: And who will carry on your work in fifty years, when you’re pulling back?

AB: I have no idea.

JDG: Who else helps tenants.

AB: Well, there are many tenant organizations in the city. A lot of French organizations but they’re district-based.  The reason that I started to doing it — I used to work with a tenant organization in N.D.G. And then I left, I went to the private sector. And because I’d done all this radio work, we were getting calls from all over the place, because there was no service anywhere west of N.D.G. So they were getting all the calls from the West Island and the South Shore and Laval and people who were there, after I left, said ‘We don’t we don’t want to take all these calls from out of district.’ And I had a big fight with them and I said, ‘You can’t cut off all these people, they’ve got to go somewhere.’ So I started doing it basically out of my back pocket. You know, taking calls at my house. And then eventually, I gradually developed this whole — I tried all kind of, I tried government grants, I tried private-sector sponsorship at one point. That lasted for about a year. And eventually it ended up the way it is now.

JDG: And do you have a sideline? Make a living from this?

AB: Well of course, I don’t make a living from this. This is my volunteer work. I pay out of pocket for it. I have the consulting business that I do very well at.

JDG: In what?

AB: Corporate translation. That type of thing. Corporate communications. You know, like if you remember the referendum studies that they did in the last referendum? The secret studies?

JDG: Yeah, the ones that we didn’t find out about.

AB: Yeah well, I found out about them because I had the contract to translate them. (Chuckles) I used to do Lucien Bouchard’s crib notes for federal-provincial conferences, do a lot of stuff for law firms, calls for tenders, specifications, environmental impact studies — you name it. Collective agreements. Nurses unions.

JDG: Are you passionate about this?

AB: Yeah, otherwise would I be crazy enough to take money out of my own pocket and give up my weekend every week?

JDG: O.K. Could you do this in your sleep kind of thing?

AB: Phone it in.

JDG: You’ve heard it all, right? Have you heard it all?

Barbara Cyr: No, there’s something new comes in every time.

AB: Well, let’s see. We had the woman who thinks the witches are cursing her through the wall. Um. We had — my favourite one from years ago. The sweet little old lady who comes in and she’s complaining about the neighbour upstairs who’s making too much noise. O.K., we’ve heard that one before. ‘What kind of noise is this neighbour making?’ ‘He’s walking around in circles, dragging things.’ ‘Why would he be doing this?’ ‘Oh, he’s worshipping the devil.’ ‘Oh, really? How do you know that?’ ‘Well, he appears to me in smoke over my bed.’ ‘Oh, I see. And what’s the landlord say about this?’ ‘Well, he’s willing to let me out on a month’s notice, but I don’t think that’s fair.’ ‘Well, ma’am, I think you’d better take the offer. You’re not going to be able to prove this in court.’ ‘Oh, I was hoping you could help me.’ ‘Well what did you want me to do, get you an exorcist?’ ‘Yes, actually, I was hoping you could recommend on.’ (Laughter) Fifty people in the room, trying not to bust a gut laughing while this was going on. (Laughter)

Barbara Cyr: Then they guy who took the toilet bowl off because it was against his religion.

AB: He claimed that he had some religion that it was against his religion for him to use a toilet. So he took the toilet bowl out and he was using the hole. I have never heard of this. He came from some other country, but I have never heard of any culture that has that position. So I think it’s probably the one where somebody talks to him with tinfoil. (Laughs)

Barbara Cyr: It’s like the lady who put the tinfoil on her ceiling, over all her plugs and everything because the aliens who were coming in.

AB: I had the one woman in the ghetto who claimed the CIA was coming in in the middle of the night and beating her up while she was asleep. And she had a little tent in the middle of her living room and she was building campfires.
I had the one who had the boa constrictor in he bed because it had crawled down from her neighbour’s apartment and she took it and threw it out the window in the blanket. (Laughter)
Oh, I sent one of my inspectors to this guy’s place, because he was having a beef with his landlord about something or other. And he goes in the back room and he found that the guy had a pet snake. He was keeping a farm of rats that he was letting run loose to feed the snakes and the rats were pissing everywhere. This guy’s been in all kinds of places to check stuff for me and he said he has never smelled a smell like that in his life.

JDG: You’ve got non-profit housing in N.D.G. Anywhere else?

AB: No, we do N.D.G. There are other organizations with mandates in other parts of the city.

JDG: What’s the bottom line on Benny Farm. Will that be a good place?

AB: Well, yeah. Benny Farm was a hard fight. It took us about fifteen years but, as you may have noticed, there are a lot of good projects going up there. Now the ones that went up first, that are already there. Those were done under the nonprofit thing. But we went the hard way. We bid against for-profit companies to do affordable home ownership and we beat them on the bid.

JDG: Staffwise, what do you have?

AB: I have people who do letters. I have a paralegal who does accompaniment. I have a staff lawyer, we actually pay her salary, she goes to court. I have two other lawyers who come in here pro-bone, but then they take clients on the side. And I’ve got people who do the hotline and people who do computer research and whatever.

JDG: Do you look for new volunteers at all?

AB: Volunteers I could use. I could particularly use some law students who are about to start because one of my lawyers I need to replace, you know, back her up. Otherwise I don’t hire new people. I’ve got enough people.

JDG: What are accompaniments?

AB: Well accompaniment basically means if it’s a routine case that doesn’t need a lawyer I have a paralegal who will go to court with them because she knows her way around there and she’ll sit with them and keep them calm, make sure they’re prepared, whatever.

JDG: Thank you very much.

Originally uploaded by jdgravenor.

Everybody looks dry, but two of the four (and the photographer) had just dumped their canoe in the lake, a good kilometre behind us. It didn’t take long for us to take shelter ashore, get dry and down to the business of making dinner and dreaming of cheeseburgers. (Mid-August ‘06)

Whatever happened to Beth Manley? She worked the overnight shift at (formerly) bilingual Montreal radio station CKVL. Here’s a story about her from a local paper. I like the reference to drunks. And what was that traveler up to, hooking up with not one but three female tourists? To all those with a torch (or a highball) to carry, I dedicate this recycled feature story to you.

City Like Montreal Is Lonely Place, Beth Tries to Make It Friendlier

The Herald, Montreal, Wednesday, August 1, 1956

by GEORGE ABBOTT

No loneliness can match that bred on solitary confinement in a big city apartment and Montreal, like all big cities, harbors a huge throng of lonely hearts which couldn’t be more unhappy were they banished to the solitude of a prairie, a desert or an Arctic waste.

Maybe it’s the presence of so many people who remain total strangers. Or maybe it’s the shock of finding yourself friendlss in the place where you least expect to be lonely.

But the lonesome ones — the small town folk who knew only homes filled with voices and laughter, the old and infirm banished away in rooms and basements, the torch carriers and others who are here in their untold hundreds.

Top authority for this is Beth Manley, Montreal disc jockey who caters to the lonely hearts with a program that runs midnight till 4:30 am five mornings a week from Radio Station CKVL.

“This town harbors hundreds of victims of worry, despair and insomnia,” Miss Manley says. “Hundreds more are just plain lonely.

“They phone in night after night, not necessarily because they want something, but frequently just because they need someone to chat with.

“They’ve got to get it off their chest, and I gather some pretty grim tales in consequence,” she says. “But I’ve always maintained a strict rule of forgetting everything they tell me.”

Montreal’s overnight disc jockey has doubled as a personal adviser, an authority on domestic problems and ailments, frequently as a philosopher, sometimes as a diplomat and at least once as a matrimonial counsellor.

Hundreds of Miss Manley’s callers are night shift workers. Hundreds more are the wives sitting up for them to come home. Lonely wives, she reports, donate many of the prizes offered on CKVL’s lonely hearts show.

Then there are the torch carriers, served up with special discs at 4 am nightly — “Torch Time.” They show appreciation by phoning in to say the tunes and sentiments havce brought them solace. Many send small gifts, too.

Most of them Miss Manley has never met and doesn’t ever expect to meet. It’s the same with other lonely folk, the widows and widowers, the lone tourists and the travelers.

There was the lonesome serviceman from St. Petersburg, Fla., who had a memorable vacation in Montreal because he met three lonseome girls from Philadelphia, thanks to an interchange of messages over the torch carrier’s mike.

Miss Manley remembers Gordie and Jo-Anne. Jo-Anne liked Gordie up the street and wanted to date him. It all worked out after CKVL beamed a dedication tune at Gordie. The couple subesquently became engaged, finally married.

Beth Manley says she gets much fun from drunks who phone up in the dim hours calling for some fast music because “they wanna live a little.”

“Usually I tell them to have a drink for me and then I play something sweet and soft,” she says. “That makes them maudlin. But they call me back and tell me amid sobs just how much they liked it.”

A big number of the night session discs are dedication numbers and sometimes they’re directed at a distant loved one on the other side of the country.

But there was one dedication number that didn’t make the grade. An excited fan called up one night and asked Miss Manley to play a disc for Tony.

“By all means, but who is Tony?” she asked.

The breathless one: “She’s my German Shepherd dog. She’s just had four pups!”

Miss Manley doesn’t believe dedications are much consolation for German Shepherds.

But in the human realm, those overnight discs used to enliven lonely heards do an important job.

And she gets stacks of letters, countless messages and expressions of heartfelt thanks to prove it. For a big city can be one of the loneliest spots on earth.

Montreal’s own William Shatner was making headlines for his acting chops 50 years ago this month. According to the online Canadian Encyclopedia, it was the year of his big break, “when he replaced Christopher Plummer on three hours’ notice in the role of Henry V, after Plummer was hospitalized.” (Plummer — who grew up in Montreal, attending the High School of Montreal — now called MIND High FACE, an arts-intensive public school (thanks for the correction, Kate M) — and learned his craft here, had made his big splash two years before in New York.)

You’ve got to hand it to him: he did very well for himself over the years — a Golden Globe award, a couple of Emmys (as well as three Emmy nominations in ‘06), plus his induction into the Television Hall of Fame. And he’s still going strong.

This Canadian Press item comes from the Montreal Herald, Wednesday, August 1, 1956.

His co-recipient of a 1956 Guthrie Award, Marie Day, is the daughter of a former Toronto mayor. She won for costume design. She is also a published author of children’s fiction.

Fittingly, the man who handed out the awards — Vincent Massey, who was the first Canadian-born vice-regal (i.e., the ceremonial representative of the British monarch to Canada) — just happened to be the brother of Raymond Massey, one of Canada’s greatest movie stars.

Tyrone Guthrie (after whom the award was named) was a pretty interesting chap, too. A legend of the British stage, he accepted an unlikely posting to Canada and helped build the Stratford festival into one of the world’s great Shakespearean attractions.

Philippe Nicol, the guy on the right, did pretty well for himself — if you don’t mind living in a fishbowl. And maybe he — and his wife, Rose, on the left — didn’t mind. They billed themselves as Count and Countess Philippe Nicol. He grew to a height of three feet exactly. She was a handful of inches taller. (In their day, they were called midgets, a term that has been replaced by dwarves or little people) Here they are pictured at home in Montreal in the 1920s or ’30s. They lived at “the Midgets Palace” at 961 Rachel St. East, a home that the wealthy Mr. Nicol had adapted to the couple’s stature. The furniture was tiny, the grandfather clock (it’s at an Ontario museum now - link) was tiny, etc.

The house was, for many years, a popular stop on Montreal’s tourist circuit — even long after the original, famous residents were gone (Philippe died in 1940). A newspaper story of the late 1980s estimated that about 5,000 people a year paid $3.50 each to check out the rooms. (Doesn’t sound like a lot, when you divide by 365 days.)

Here’s the English-language portion of the commemorative pamphlet in full:

Cover
Page 2-3
Page 4-5
Page 6-7
Page 8-9
Page 10-11
Page 12-13
Pictures 1
Pictures 2
French cover

Philippe was born in 1881 in St. Henri de Levis, Quebec. His family were all of commonplace stature. At age three, his parents signed him up with various circuses that toured the world. He became associated with the Barnum and Bailey Circus where, I suppose, he was given a nickname to match that of the legendary General Tom Thumb (I wonder if they ever met). He was granted the right to keep proceeds from the sales of his picture, and did quite well by that — making more money on the pictures than on his handsome salary, apparently.
Here are some postcards from the Michel Bazinet Collection of the Quebec National Archives:

After the birth of Philippe, Jr.
Tourists gawk
The “Count and Countess” in the smoking room

I talked a bit about this place on CBC radio if you want to hear about it - link.

Here’s a link to the English-language pages of the website of l’Association québécoise des personnes de petite taille (which smartly translates to “the Quebec association for people of small stature.” )

From a defunct monthly publication: La Canadienne, July-August, 1921.

Here’s my translation:

Your face is beautiful

But what about your nose?

Nowadays, if you want a successful life, it is necessary to to pay special attention to your appearance. Not only do you want to look as attractive as possible, primarily for your ownsatisfaction — and that’s a good enough reason alone, but you also realize that the world increasingly judges you foremost, if not exclusively, on your countenance. Therefore, it would benefit you to look your best at all times.

Don’t let people see you any other way — your success depends on it! Whether you succeed or fail in life depends on the consistent impression you make. On which path will your destiny unfold? Our new nose reformer, “Trados” (model 25) corrects nose deformities without surgery, quickly, effectively and permanently. The treatment is without discomfort and, because it works at night, will not get in the way of your everyday activities.

Ask for our free brochure, which explains how to correct a deformed nose. There is no charge if you not satisfied.

M. Trilety, Facial specialist
1568 Ackerman Bldg., Binghampton, N.Y.

Found this little gem in the May 1, 1933 edition of the Montreal Star. Seems that, in the political turmoil that the Great Depression fomented, a homespun fascist movement got legs. The Montreal Star, to its credit, hints here of its discomfort with the brownshirts and their “Fascist salutes.”

Patenaude, at this point, was a former Conservative MLA (member of the Quebec Legislature), federal Member of Parliament and cabinet minister. In 1934, the year after this article was printed, he was appointed to the ceremonial post of Quebec lieutenant-governor.

Here’s the story, typed up fulltext:

(Note the atmosphere, brownshirt troops, fascist salutes, and all this under the cover of patriotism, with covert praise for overseas fascists and political Catholicism, and the playing on wholesale condemnation of the spread of international Communism.) The Craig Street armoury has been demolished. It would have stood atop what is now part of the Ville Marie Expressway (Autoroute 720).
The Montreal Daily Star, Monday, May 1, 1933

Federation of Labor Clubs Acclaims New Counsellor With Fascist Salutes

Amid pomp and circumstance, with bands playing “O Canada,” a big crowd cheering, a guard of honor standing to attention and giving Fascist salutes, Hon. E.L. Patenaude yesterday afternoon formally accepted the invitation of the Federation of Labor Clubs to become their supreme counsellor.

He indicated that, as he understands it, this position entails consulting with the leaders of the club at any time they wish so to do, and giving them the benefit of his long political, legal and other experience, but does not entail a re-entry into public life. “I have come out of my retirement to take part in this meeting, and tomorrow I will go ack to my retirement,” he specified.

Numerous other speakers indicated the trend of the federation’s political tendencies. They are definitely opposed in every civic administration Montreal has had for a dozen years. They denounce alike the present administration and that of the Houde group which preceded it. They are also definitely opposed to the present Provincial administration, but had words of approval for at least one Liberal MLA, Joseph Filion, on account of his move at last session to ask for the resignation of the Legislative Council.

The meeting was held in the Craig street armoury, and gathered a crowd many thousands strong. At the opening, the armoury was filled except for spacious aisles which were kept cleared, in the centre and at the sides, and a numerous crowd sat on the grassy slopes of Champ de Mars enjoying the sunshine as well as the oratory which came to them through loudspeakers.

GUARD OF HONOR

A guard of honor formed a line at either side of the centre aisle and acted under military commands from their O.C. Capt. H.G. Gonthier. As distinguished guests arrived, they sprang to attention and gave the salute. A suggestion of the Hitlerite brown-shirts was conveyed by the sprinkling of brown peak-caps scattered through the crowd, worn by enthusiastic federation members, and appearing in front the inscription: “Federation of Labor Clubs.”

Two or three speakers had addressed the meeting when the band arrived. As soon as they appeared at the door, the sharp command rang out: “Guard, attention! Salute.” With military precision they sprang to attention and, the crowd following the example of the guard, 10,000 right hands stretched outward and upward in the Fascist salute as the band paraded down the centre, round the hall and up to the gallery, playing “O Canada,” “God Save the King,” and the federation march.

A little later, a sharp blast of a whistle notified the arrival of J.A. Chalifoux, general president, and Pierre Desrosiers, chief organizer of the federation, and again the crowd rose to the salute, the officers walking through a lane of upraised hands to the platform. When Hon. E.L. Patenaude arrived, accompanied by Paul Delcourt, the same greeting was given, each time accompanied by the national anthem played by the band. The guards remained immobile until their captain gave the command to “Stand at ease.”

PROCESSION PLANNED

Mr. Chalifoux, after a brief summary of what the federation had done since its inception in February, 1932, gave some advance details as to the procession which the federation proposes to organize for July 1. There will be 74 allegorical floats in the parade. One will represent a family on direct relief under “the Rinfret regime.”

Another will represent the City Council of Montreal in 1932. Another will represent the City Council today “equipped with binoculars to help them find how many unemployed have died of starvation under the direct relief.”

Another will represent the members of the Executive Committee, “including Mr. Gabias, at Cannes, sending a telegram giving his resignation and inviting his colleagues to follow his example.”

The federation today, he said, had 74 affiliated clubs, and over 81,000 members. “It has condemned alike the Decarie, Brodeur, DesRoches, Houde and Rinfret regimes at the City Hall.”

EXECUTIVE BOOED

Since it has been in existence, some of the things the federation has done were enumerated by Mr. Chalifoux. It had made a wise suggestion to Ald. Legault, acting chairman of the Executive, namely, that he and his colleagues should resign for the greater good of the city.

They had gained two notable victories. They had stopped the extension of the mandate which the present City Council sought at the last session of the Legislature and they had forced the city administration to agree to allow rent payments for unemployed.

Mr. Pateneaude, who was given musical honors when he rose to speak, discussed the danger of Communism in Canada for some time, before giving his reply to the Federation’s invitation to become their counsellor. When he indicated his assent, the crowd rose once more, first to applaud, later to raise the Fascist salute as the band struck up “O Canada” once more.

“Yesterday,” he said in opening, “I came out of my retirement to accept this invitation. Tomorrow morning I will go back to it.” He found justification for coming out of his retreat, in a handbill which had been distributed during the day, inviting Communists and their sympathisers to manifest on Victoria Square at noon, being May Day, the feast of the Communist International. “As it is the celebration of the International tomorrow, it is only right that we should first have the celebration of the real workers of Canada today.”

DENOUNCES COMMUNSIM

At considerable length he denounced Communist propaganda in Canada. “We have seen in England the development of the Labor movement, in Italy we see a revolution carried out by the Fascist movement and in Germany in recent times we have seen the revolution under Hitler. But in each of these cases, the movement was confined to its own country. None of them tried to prescribe their own type of reform for other countries outside their own borders. Only Soviet Russia seeks to convert all the countries of the world to its own type of political theory.

“Canada is born of the genius of France and of England and has developed following the character, mentality and traditions of these two great nations. If Canada follows alolng these lines, we shall have an ethical character of our own which will render us a type distinct from other peoples, without losing the best characteristics of the two nations from which we sprang.

“Through the centuries we have developed a regime and institutions which suit us, until now we have taken our place among the nations of th eworld.

“The state here cannot make the citizen its property. it comes to his help, to enable him to enjoy his liberties, form his own family circle and live in respect for his religion, for law and order.

CITIZEN’S POSITION

“The base of our economic life is the citizen, not the state. The citizen develops our natural resources, our commerce, industry and finance. But he receives the co-operation and help of the state. There are principles there which we cannot allow anyone to tamper with.

“How could we have our Parliament decree, as was done in Russia, that there is no God, that religion had no place among us, that the family must be broken up and the rights of property and individual initiative have no further value among us? Under the regime whose missionaries Russia sends us along with her trade envoys, the citizen is state property. The state owns and exploits everything. And in order to carry that out it has repudiated its God, its religion, its promises and its debts.”

He noted the progress that Communism was making in some provinces but was convinced that the Province of Quebec would never yield. Far from being Communistic, he said, the Federation of Labor Clubs was the natural gathering of the suffering masses for mutual help and encouragement, in a spirit of full respect for established law and order. He was very pleased to accept the position of counsellor to the Federation and would be glad to receive their officers at any time in his private study or office, and to give them the benefit of any advice he could offer on any problem they might have to submit: whatever experience he had acquired he gladly laid at their disposal.

Other speakers included Joseph Lamoureux, first vice-president; Jules Vincent, secretary of the St. Henri seciton; Joseph Laperriere; J.A. Gamelin; Alfred Acoulon; J.E. Trudeau and F.X. St. Denis.

O.K., well so the pun isn’t that funny. But the tenement is spanking clean (even if Jean Drapeau is just about to expropriate and tear it down). It kind of makes you wonder why they don’t use that “hydro silica” process anymore. Hey, wait a minute! Doesn’t “hydro” mean “water” and “silica” “sand?” Could it just be a kinder, gentler way of saying  “sandblasting?” Well, what do I know? But maybe if you own a dirty building you’re planning to sell, this constitutes good advice. So maybe I should put one of those “donate here” buttons for those of you who pocket a tidy profit because of this ad. But get real, we all know it’s location, location, location. I’ve never heard, spotlessness, spotlessness, spotlessness and I’ve got the wine glasses to prove it — Calgonite, anyone? From The Gazette (Montreal), March 24, 1953.

Well, can you blame them for leaving the bird in the car? What with all the folks scarfing down fowl of every description, it’s an owner’s duty to spare his beloved falcon that. What appeals to me about this story is the sheer filler-ness of it all. And the idea that life in the fifties — and that goes for the 1850s and 1750s, etc., too — was every bit as colourful as it is today. From the Gazette, March 24, 1953.

Here’s a shot from yesteryear that Kate M. might find interesting. (She asked about the Dorchester Bridge — see comments.) This picture’s from a 1953 newspaper article. It shows the south end of the tunnel running through Mount Royal. You’re looking up Mcgill College from, I believe, atop the Dorchester Street Bridge. As you can see, a lot of latter-day landmarks have yet to be built.