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Coming up on 100 Days of Donny, we’re excited to review what he has said would be a landmark for him in office.

The phrase “Sweet Fuck All” comes immediately to mind.  No legislation passed from either house, just some executive orders, some press conferences and of course, golf at Mar-A-Lago where the Secret Service detail has to pay full pin for accommodation and meals to keep Donny safe.  About 9 trips in 100 days @ $3 million per, not to mention the protection for the missus in NYC plus coverage for his other issue and their spouses while on Trump business.  Oh well.

Actually, what The Republican President has been doing is straight out of the Vladimir Putin Playbook.  You ever notice how every two days or so, some new outrage comes out of either his pie-hole, or the gullet of one of his fart-catchers like Shitstain Spicer, or Kellyanne “My Microwave is Spying on me because of Obama” Conway?  Almost like clockwork, they mouth off.  It isn’t a coincidence.

Every 48 hours the boss has to have some media coverage for an elegant reason:  It keeps the media, real or imagined (Hello, Breitbart!) covering that particular outrage, lie, hallucination or 140 character illiterate toilet-seat Tweet.  By keeping the media chasing and fact-checking all Republican Presidential Utterances, the media is playing Donny’s Game and not spending real reporter time investigating the real issues.  The follow on effect is that with the constant barrage of nonsense from the White House, people are becoming over-saturated and eventually immune to anything coming out of the White House.

In about six months if Donny was taped sodomizing a giraffe at noon on 4th tee at Mar-A-Lago with Mike Pence as lotion-boy, the population would either: A) Not believe it as it is from mainstream media who hate Trump or B) Say it’s just Donny being Donny and he’s going to lie about it anyways and we can’t do a damn thing about it.

What he’s doing is burning up what little credibility the media has left in the eyes of the citizens.  He’s changing who the citizens believe by making the citizens not believe anything any media says about him.  The fallback reaction is going to be it’s all lies, not just a little bit, but all of it, so screw it, who cares?

A compliant citizenry (who don’t believe anything anyone says) is a mass of citizens that you can exploit.  You can make them believe that War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength when they’re unable to react by exhausting their will to care.

In an very good article from Vanity Fair this month is on page 96,  (Titled In Trump’s Amerika) author Mike Mariani breaks down exactly how Vladimir Putin and his adviser Vladislav Surkov have, over two decades, destroyed any media credibility that existed in Russia.  At the same time they have exhausted the citizens’ sense of outrage over practically everything, from food, to the lack of jobs, to invading the Crimea to supporting Assad in Syria.  Russian citizens just want to be left alone.  Or, if not left alone, at least comforted by an alternative reality that doesn’t taste too much like utter bullshit.  “We’re at war with Eurasia wasn’t it?  No, it was Eastasia, no Eurasia is our enemy, no Eastasia is our ally”

(The better-read of you will recognize that from Orwell’s 1984)

In fact, Donny is trying that stuff now.  Mexico is the source of all bad hombres, Canada is responsible for our dairy industry going broke because they won’t let us in.  NAFTA is killing American Industry, North Korea is a rogue state and Syria is in league with Russia killing kids with gas, while terrorists walk the street, waiting to kill us all if we don’t convert to Islam and Medicare is a massive fraud, worse than Obamacare that is too hard to fix except for the tax reform and Clean Coal that nobody wants but they can dump their sludge in the river and Mexico will pay for the wall.  We’re Making America Great Again!

By exhausting our ability to discern truth, or at least a few highlights in the neighbourhood of truthiness, The Republican President is making the US Citizen compliant by forcing them to opt out of any media in a state of frustration.  You probably know people who don’t watch the news, or read newspapers, or listen to the radio.  These are also the same people who refuse to vote, the usual reason being “It doesn’t make any difference who I vote for, so screw it”  This what Trump’s Amerika wants.

To quote Mike Mariani from the VF article: “By hijacking headlines and warping the news cycle through sheer gravitational force, Trump is rupturing the journalism landscape one land-mine tweet at a time.  The effect, it would seem, is to undercut any attempt at vigilant analysis or coherent investigation into his administration”

How to fix it?  News directors can dedicate 15 seconds in the news, probably in the first segment to “Today’s Distraction and Lies from The Republican President”  Two or three quotes from Spicer should suffice, keying of a big red X over the most egregious lies and falsehoods, with the closing of “And we dare the White House to prove us wrong”  For the ink-stained wretches, a simple boxed story on the front page, below the fold, same hed, same big X.

Then get on with the real news, weather, sports and lifestyle happy-chat clutter.

Meanwhile, let your meanest investigative reporters loose.  Command them to find anything and everything and pull the story together.  Spend the money, spend the time and do another Washington Post.  Bring that crooked little pissant into the glare of evidence that nobody can ignore, especially the House and the Senate.

You probably have a year to make it happen and bring The Republican President down.

If you don’t, then we’ll be at war with North Korea, Russia, China, Canada, the UK or Eurasia, Eastasia or Oceania.  Fix it.

We’ve talked briefly about our vacation to Barbados earlier this year and now, having sorted through several hundred images, we’ve come up with a few representative samples and stories to go along with them.  As a reminder, we tend not to go to the tourist traps.  Sure, if we were in Rome, we’d check out the Vatican, but it wouldn’t be the main focus.  We tend to hang where the locals hang, as that tells you more about the place, the people and the real stories.

Barbados is fabulously gorgeous.  The condo complex contains a marina with slips right out your front door.

No, we didn’t have a 60 foot ocean-going vessel at our disposal, but many of the residents do.  Some are Dock Queens, others are used often and well.

Beach time?  We’ve got you covered.

On a couple of days the waves were up and we gleefully got tossed around in the Caribbean Sea.  Some days you could see the cruise ships coming into or leaving from Bridgetown on the horizon.

Considering our vacation was about rest and relaxation, we didn’t want to pack it full of travel and tourism things.  There were some, but not a lot.  The north shore, or as the locals call it, Down North, is on the Atlantic and is as wild a coastline as you could want.

Being down north and having a kitchen in the condo, we did make sure we were well-provisioned.  Speightstown was the closest town and on our first day there we made sure to hit Jordan’s Supermarket for the essentials.  A reasonable number of international brands (Kraft, Nestle, Unilever products) and many local or imported brands as well as local produce and salt fish.

Barbados is not inexpensive, as the vast majority of grocery items are imported and that adds to the cost.  The odd one we found was New Zealand cheese and butter, being imported from a half a world away.  Yes they do have Cheerios, but they also have plantain chips from Costa Rica and sweet potato crisps from Trinidad.  (We were well-advised to bring our own coffee, so we packed a pound of St. Arbucks in the luggage.)

Speightstown is one of the older towns and has some architectural leftovers from colonial times.

The streets are narrow and yes, they drive on the British side of the road.  We didn’t hear much of the Egyptian Brake Pedal/Ha Noi Turn Signal, just the occasional honk of recognition from one driver to the other.  Bus transport is inexpensive and everywhere on the island.  Like bus travel in most countries, it is only for the strong of constitution.  Bus drivers are hired on the basis of their daily consumption of amphetamines, or their complete disregard for their own lives.

We did sneak in some history.

 

Food and drink are important to us when travelling.  Eating local means you learn about culture and the history.  Being surrounded by oceans, Barbados has plenty of sea food, especially flying fish,  all impeccably fresh and well prepared.  Fisherman’s Pub in Speightstown is where the locals go.

Buffet style, choose what you want as mains and your sides.  Lunch was about $12 BDO.  Speaking of Barbados currency, the official exchange rate is $2 BDO = $1 USD.  Canadian banks like CIBC and RBC are all over the place and invariably their ATMs give you the best exchange rate, even better than at the counter, as the computers in Toronto do the exchange at the best rate and spit our $BDO. Fortunately we bank with CIBC, so getting cash was simple.  Visa, MC, Amex are accepted almost everywhere.

Rum is one of the more important products of Barbados.  The rum selection is impressive, some we can get in Ontario, like Cockspur and some we can’t.  One of our trips was to St. Nicholas Abbey, a Canadian-owned sugar cane farm that also produces rum from their sugar cane.  St. Nicholas Abbey has been a sugar cane plantation since the mid-1600’s.  The history is long and some of it dark in corners as this was also in the days of the slave trade.  Barbadians don’t shy away from their history, but they don’t dwell on it either.

That handwritten list in the photos is the value of some of the slaves for tax purposes from the ledgers of the plantation back in the day.  After the cane is crushed and the juice extracted, the bagasse is put in the sun to dry, then burned to create steam to run the machinery.  Yes, it’s a good tour, worth your time and yes, they do give you a Rum Punch as part of the tour.

Speaking of Rum Punch, yes, there was drinking on this trip.

Wine is plentiful, almost all of it imported, but if you’re in a country renown for rum, why in the name of all that is holy would you drink wine?  We brought back a few bottles.  To answer the question, does Marylou drink?  I was the one with the camera, so she was naturally and gorgeously, the subject.

More stories and pictures to come.

The Republican President took a shot at Canada’s Dairy industry last week as being unfair to US dairy producers and that he’s going to renegotiate treaties like NAFTA so US dairy producers can move into Canada.  Of course, shit for brains was speaking in Wisconsin and beating his chest with his tiny hands about America First.  Funny how facts never actually entered into his bloviating.

The particular issue is what is called Class 7 diafiltered milk.  Essentially take the leftovers from making butter (the non-fat solids), then concentrate it by membrane filtering to a 42%, or more, protein content.  This stuff is sold to Canadian producers at a certain price to make cheese.  Not necessarily good cheese, think commercial cheese, or those single slices wrapped in plastic that can also patch your fibreglass canoe.  You can also make yoghurt, ice cream or that green can “Parmesan” cheese out of Class 7.

Since it’s not considered “milk”, but a protein ingredient, it’s not subject to a tariff rate quota.  Diafiltered milk was invented in the US, post-NAFTA, so it’s not covered by NAFTA.  American producers have sprung up along the border states to sell it to Canadian cheese producers.  Diafiltered milk is not used by American dairies.  As an aside, 42% protein means there is very little waste from the cheese-making process, essentially skim milk, that is dumped, used as animal feed, or dried to make skim-milk powder.

Last year, Canada’s dairy producers lowered their prices for dairy ingredients to match what American producers were selling their diafiltered Class 7 products, to encourage Canadian dairies to buy Canadian.  This is called “the market at work” and the tariff loophole went away.   To quote this article

Al Mussell, a researcher with Agri-Food Economic Systems in Guelph, Ont., has argued against American farmers being portrayed as victims of North American trade. In fact, under NAFTA it’s been the opposite, he’s written.

 

Grassland Dairy Products in Wisconsin announced that since the market for Class 7 protein concentrate in Canada has gone competitive, their market has dried up. Grassland notified 75 dairy farmers that supply them, that they no longer have a place to sell, as of May 1st.  Coincidentally, Grassland is building up a 5,000 head herd of their own cows to provide their own milk, at their own price.  Conveniently, they won’t need the milk production from other farmers.

For our American readers, Canada is a separate country from the US which means we have our own rules regarding many things and dairy products are one of them.  We have what is known as supply management.  The production of milk is controlled by the government to keep dairy farmers in business.

Our dairy industry is not set up for export, but for internal consumption, which means we produce what we need at a reasonable price for the farmers and producers.  New Zealand and Australia are net-exporters of dairy, as evidenced by the preponderance of NZ butter and cheese in Barbados during our vacation earlier this year.  Australia recently approved a $450 million dollar bailout for their dairy industry.  The EU offered their dairy producers a 500 million Euro support program last July.  American dairy producers in the US received $3.84 BILLION in direct payments to producers in 2012 and several dairy price support programs in the millions of dollars range.  A truly free market.  That is the problem.

There is a global oversupply of milk.  Everybody makes too much of it.  In the US, where the market rules, dairy farmers are gong broke; the cost of production is higher than what the market pays.  Supply management means Canada has enough milk being produced to meet our needs and let the farmer make a buck at it.  Our milk price is about the same as Australia and New Zealand, who are also on the market price, but a bit more than the US, who seem content to crush their own dairy industry and then blame someone else when we compete with them on price.  Quality?  We’re so far ahead on quality, US producers are but a speck in our rear-view mirror.

Being our own sovereign country means we also have rules regarding milk quality and purity.  Canadian milk is not allowed to have any traces of antibiotics, steroids or growth hormones.  None, as in zero.  If a cow needs to be treated for milk fever or bovine ketosis (two common dairy cow health problems) the milk from that cow cannot be sold or processed until there is no trace of antibiotics or steroids in the milk.  There are heavy fines for any farmer who tries to wangle it through and any dairy that tries to get away with it is also fined.  Heavily.  Not only does the farmer test for purity, but so does the dairy before the milk gets in the building.  The reason?  We insist on only the purest, cleanest, safest milk.  It’s the law and part of the responsibility of supply management is a ferociously high quality standard.

America?  If you can get it out of the cow, you can sell it, at whatever price you can get, preferably with a government subsidy tacked on the end, even if the product is from sick and medicated animals.  Yep, that’s what you call the free market with “yuge” subsidies.

At the end of it, Grassland Dairy used a loophole to create a market on a price they determined, while trying to cut back on the price they paid to Wisconsin dairy farmers, by building up their own herd and shafting 75 local dairy farmers.  They got caught when we matched them on price and encourage Canadian manufacturers to buy and use Canadian dairy products.  So, being caught red-handed, the usual step is to blame someone else.

As the added twist, someone handed The Republican President a Post-it note in Wisconsin that said NAFTA bad, American Jobs, Dairy, so that moron you elected mouthed off without a smattering of knowledge.  He’s an idiot-savant without the savant.

What it really means is we’re kicking your ass in a competitive market and you’re crying over spilled, subsidized, sub-standard, over-produced milk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Thursday, the Government O’Canada started the wheels in motion to legalize the possession and consumption of recreational quantities of cannabis.  The anticipated date of the law being changed is July 1, 2018, a little over a year from now.  The ostensible reason is harm-reduction and adding controls to the cultivation, distribution and consumption of weed.

The real reason is taxes.  (For our American readers, taxes are how Canadians pay for Universal Health Care.  We pay more Federal and Provincial income tax that you do, so if I break my ankle tripping over my own two feet, I don’t have to sell my house and move into a cardboard box down by the river to pay my medical bills.  Canada took that decision first in 1954 in Saskatchewan and it spread country-wide by 1966.)

Will the legalization of cannabis generate tax income for the Feds and the Provinces?  Does the Pope shit in the woods? Does a bear wear a funny hat?  Did I get those analogies wrong?

What the Feds are doing is establishing a network of growers, licensed, certified, legal farmers and distributors of cannabis at a known strength, without additives (like fentanyl, horse tranquilizers or insecticides) in regulated quantities.  Just like tobacco, beer, wine, or spirits.  Then they’ll tax the crap out of it.

The Feds are being wise, leaving it up to the Provinces to decide who gets to retail the end product and what other rules will have to be applied.  As with beer, wine and spirits, you’ll have to show ID if you look too young and of course, there will be serious penalties and jail time for those who don’t choose to come under the taxation umbrella.

Where to sell?  Since the government doesn’t like street-corner retail, the likely outlets will be provincial liquor stores, as they have the security and expertise in place for retail alcohol sales, which would be more or less the same protocols for cannabis.  The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) could have a kiosk next to the Vintages section, in the same stores, right next to the wine coolers and growlers of local brew.

Being pragmatic, legalizing recreational-use quantities and taxing it, is sensible.  It generates legit income for producers and has the potential to generate a lot of tax revenue, perhaps even more than lotteries or other vice taxes.  Colorado has seen no real increase in the numbers of citizens who smoke weed, the number bumped for a month or two, then settled back down.  Colorado suspected it was actually pot tourists that accounted for the blip, not locals losing their minds, switching from Coors Banquet to Aspen Bud.

We’ve had medical cannabis up here for several years, with store-front dispensaries in most provinces, generally sitting right on the edge of legal, depending on the attitude of the police on any given day.  There has been no increase in the number of cannabis consumers walking around dazed and confused.  There have been no reports of crazed dopers running rampant looking for human sacrifices because we have medical cannabis up here.  No bus loads of American tourists crossing at Prescott, ON, to blaze up and eat all the Doritos.  Note to American stoners:  Get Cheezies if you get the munchies.  Much better than Doritos, or Cheetos and they’re made in Belleville, Ontario with actual cheese from Canadian milk.

We have no great issue with adults smoking cannabis.  The usual effects are not unlike that perfect two-drink moment when one is relaxed, happy and calm.  One more drink and you start to get a little sloppy, so one aims for that golden spot of contentedness and peace.  Much like alcohol, some folks go giddy, some get hyper, others get sleepy, or chatty, with the slight lowering of social inhibitions from weed.  Not everyone reacts well, some people feel ill, or wobbly, or not fully in control, which is upsetting.  Like alcohol, not everybody drinks, and not everybody will ingest cannabis.

Where the problem lies is in operation of a motor vehicle while under the influence of a substance that affects your judgement.  For booze, the standard is .08 milligrams of alcohol will impair your operation of said motor vehicle.  The science on .08 is long and it has withstood legal challenges over the years.  How much cannabis causes impairment is not fully understood.  If the standard is One Joint, then I’ll contend that I only smoked one joint, except is was made Jamaican-style with a page from the Racing News as a paper and close to four ounces of high-potency BC bud that would drop a quarter-horse to her knees.

Our solution is simple:  Do away with the blood-alcohol level number or its equivalent for cannabis and change the various provincial laws to Impaired Operation of a Motor Vehicle, boat, snowmobile, aircraft or other type of conveyance.  Impaired means you’re not on your game, not coordinated enough, or lacking in judgement to safely do it.  How you got there isn’t the issue, the fact that you’re a danger to the rest of us is the issue.

A Field Sobriety Test is a well-understood test administered by police to determine if you’re not in complete control of your faculties to safely operate said conveyance.  That’s the real determination:  Are you safe to drive, boat, snowmobile or control that vehicle?

If I take a common over-the-counter cold medication, I don’t drive, at all.  Why?  Because Contac-C makes me hallucinate like the great old days of 1974 when I would see my grandma climbing up my leg with a knife in her teeth, cursing in Swedish.  Grandma wasn’t Swedish.  In aviation, using Benylin cough syrup with Codeine is an immediate medical disqualification for at least 12 hours:  You can’t fly as the standards for aviation are significantly higher than for driving or boating, but the end result is the same:  You are not in full command of your faculties.

Using a Field Sobriety Test to determine judgement for the safe operation of a vehicle would catch those who are not paying attention due to other reasons.  One alcoholic drink and one Ativan (lorazepan) should most emphatically disqualify you from driving, except you would blow a low number on a field breathalyzer and technically, be fine to drive.  Chemo-fog for cancer patients is another one, as well as side-effects from blood pressure medication.  You’re messed up, but not in a way that the police can legally intervene.  For that matter, one could argue that texting and driving is Impaired Operation of a Motor Vehicle.  There are enough studies out there that suggest that texting and driving is roughly the same as driving while drunk.

There are always outlier examples.  One person I know used to grow a couple of acres of high-count, winter-hardy weed for personal consumption and would blaze up several times a day, over 30 years.  Did he get ‘high’ in the conventional sense?  Not really, but when he dies it might take a few days for the flames to go out when they cremate him, as the resins in his lungs will keep burning.  Other outliers include a former co-worker who could drink a half-bottle of vodka for lunch and still be fully functional, or the other guy who’s motto was “24 hours in a day, 24 beer in a case.  Coincidence?”  Both worked in jobs that needed your full attention and due care and both were usually significantly over the legal limit but you wouldn’t know it.

To follow on, if you pass the Field Sobriety Test, you’re likely good to go, but we would give the officer administering a bit of leeway.  Let the officer decide to ground you for 12 hours if he or she is not fully certain that you’re on your game.  Or, arrest you, impound the car and take you to the crowbar hotel for a blood test to determine your level of impairment.  It’s a judgement call, yes, but an important one.  Make the penalty for a 12-hour suspension three points off your license, a $300 fine, plus the tow and impound fees and you will see a very rapid decrease in the number of people driving while impaired.

We have no issue with people getting relaxed, however they get there, but we have a significant problem with people operating boats, cars, snowmobiles, trucks or aircraft when they are not in full command of their faculties.

Let’s see where this is going.  The Republican President, distracted by golf, let the US Air Force drop the Massive Ordinance Air Burst GBU-43 (MOAB or colloquially the Mother Of All Bombs)  on a tunnel complex in Afghanistan, killing 36 ISIS fighters in their holes.

No big issue with that:  Killing ISIS members is a good thing, as they don’t respond to reason any more than a rabid fox would respond to reason.  Since reasoning is out, killing is Plan B and we don’t have much of a problem morally or ethically with it.  If you’re going to fight, fight hard, dirty and fast.  Try to keep the collateral damage to a bare minimum, but don’t flinch either.  Yes, it’s a fine line and one that takes some courage to do.  Then, be prepared to do it again.

We don’t care for armed conflict in the slightest, because at the end of the day, nobody really wins.  If you can settle something without violence, that’s the better way.  If you are going to get down, get all the way down as that scares the hell out of your opposition and they will run away, convinced you’re crazier than they are.  The Marquess of Queensberry was a twat: Bring several guns to a knife fight.  It works 99 percent of the time; your opponent will mysteriously have a more pressing appointment, far, far away.

That one percent of the time, when it doesn’t work, is when you are confronted with someone who is truly off their meds.  North Korea comes to mind.  Their leader is crazy and the whole country is crazy because the secret police ensures that you remain alive only by fanatical devotion to Kim Jong-un, their crazy leader.  Starving population?  No matter.  Hundreds of thousands of ‘political’ prisoners executed for nothing more than having the wrong haircut?  No matter.  Where one gets into problems is with North Korea’s penchant for testing their nuclear devices and missiles.  That matters.

Right now, the USS Carl Vinson battle group, who were next door in Singapore, are now bobbing around in the neighbourhood of Korea in the Sea of Japan.  Various countries have a military presence there, mostly submarines, in a smallish bit of ocean where the potential for bumping into each other is rather high.  This older posting  from 2006 gives you the scorecards for the various players, none of whom are particularly calm right now.

If North Korea decides to test out another missile or another nuke, what will be the response?  The Republican President has said nothing, keeping with the Theodore Roosevelt dictum, which might be the wisest course right now.  Yes, I just said Trump is being wise:  I gagged while writing it, but there it is; he is either listening to his advisers or someone has taken him off Adderall.

Does the US have the GPS coordinates of most, if not all the North Korean missile and nuke plants ready to hand?  Considering the number of National Reconnaissance Office overflights from space, the Air Force surely does and has interesting technology to reach out and touch them.  Would Russia and China add their targeting information to the US library?

Here’s where it gets fun.  It is in the best interests of both China and Russia to have a slightly crazed USA go off and kick North Korea’s ass into next week.  China has for several dozen years tried long-timeline diplomacy to contain the North Korean cowboy behavior and not really succeeded.  Russia is always interested in anything that pisses in China’s cornflakes and Russia really isn’t happy with another nuke-wielding nutcase in the area.  If they two of them do it right, they’ll push the Republican President into doing their dirty work for them.  The Republican President can take the heat for doing what China and Russia have always wanted to do, which is kick Kim Jong-un (earlier, his Daddy) to the curb.

Russia and China get to puff up their diplomatic shirts in a display of of “tut-tut” but secretly laugh up their sleeves knowing that North Korea is no longer a threat and President Cheeto will be gone in a few months, back to his golf vacations at Mar-A-Lago to write a book about how the fake news media fabricated evidence about most of his advisers and cabinet who were on the take from various organizations.

Done well, it will demote the United States to a taxi league player but with a big stick that can be manipulated nine times out of ten.

 

Humans are like batteries, we need the occasional recharge to come back up to four bars and to work efficiently.  How one recharges differs from human to human.  Having been a workaholic for many decades, we never really had the time, money or the inclination to engage in a real vacation.  There was always something more important, more pressing than taking the time for a vacation.  Even our honeymoon in 1988 was cut short by a Federal Election call.  A few extra-long long weekends here and there, sure, but no actual, we’re-down-for-ten-days-sit-on-your-ass break from everything.

Until a couple of weeks ago.

The spousal unit received a very special reward from her employer, ten days and airfare to the owner’s condo, free of charge.  All we had to pay was food, drink and whatever other monkeyshines we wanted to engage in.  So we did exactly that.

Barbados is a small island, 34 km long and 23 km at the widest with about 280,000 people.  The island itself is more or less the same general latitude as Nicaragua but on the Atlantic side, a bit off the north coast of Venezuela.  As a fellow Commonwealth member, we get the EZ Lane when it comes to admittance from Canada.  Is Barbados incredibly beautiful?  Oh yes.  Are the people friendly?  Wonderfully so.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll post some pics and stories from Barbados.

Why am I mentioning a vacation?  This bit of vacation, the relaxation and, yes, the rum, is the reason RoadDave is coming back.  We got to recharge the batteries.

 

 

For those who have been loyal followers of RoadDave, it’s been quiet for more than a year and some have asked why.  We owe you a bit of an explanation.

Writing is not easy.  It takes a commitment of time and emotional energy and if the well is dry, then all the pumping in the world won’t bring up the water.  Those of you who write professionally understand that dynamic.  Since RoadDave is driven by the relationship of current events, observations and human behavior, it’s almost predictable that things will occasionally go dry.

The animal show south of the border is so corrosive that as soon as one put words to keyboard, reality changed to something even weirder.  We couldn’t keep up with the strangeness, the vindictiveness and the pure unreasoning hatred that spewed out of the US election campaign.  It hurt to watch and it still hurts to watch a good neighbor and good country eviscerate itself for no good reason.

That’s right, the United States of America is gutting itself in a mean-spirited, unthinking, knee-jerk, flame-out of global proportions.  The last time the US was this polarized, they decided to have a civil war, North versus South, freedom versus slavery, rich versus poor.  It did not end well.

America has gone mean and stupid.  Merely as a for-instance, the United Airlines passenger who was dragged off a flight Sunday.  United overbooked the flight Chicago to Louisville, and asked for volunteers.  Nobody stepped up, even when compensation was up to $800 a seat, pax wanted to get to Louisville, which is why they buy airline tickets in the first place.  United needed four seats to reposition a crew to Louisville for a Monday morning flight and United knew full well the flight was full, if not overbooked.  Where the moron-fest started was United actually boarding the flight before they had their volunteers.

So instead of being a little more generous in their compensation, United selected four people at random, already on the aircraft and told them to get off.  Three did and one guy didn’t so the gate called Airport cops who dragged him the length of the cabin and removed him.  Of course it was all videoed by pax and posted far and wide.

Then following along with even more stupidity and mean-spirited behavior, the CEO of United apologized for having to ‘re-accommodate’ passengers.  An interesting definition of ‘re-accommodate’ which now involves dragging you down the aisle by the wrists.  That ranks up there with requiring passengers to avail themselves of the free anal cavity inspection offered by the TSA as a condition of being allowed on the a/c.

The old proverb is Fish Stink From The Head.  Meaning, the leadership of an organization sets the standard for the company.  Using mealy corporate bullshit like “re-accommodating” to describe forcibly dragging a passenger off a plane for doing nothing more than sitting on his arse, trying to get home, is about as mean-spirited as you can be, without actually trying to take back that bone marrow you donated to your cousin in 2014.

Had Oscar Munoz, the CEO of United Airlines, simply tweeted.  “This doesn’t seem right.  We’re looking into it.” and then shut his pie hole, there would not have been this rather expensive shitstorm that faces United Airlines, and their shareholders right now.

What has it cost United?  A calibrated thumb guesstimate would be in excess of $100,000 in lost revenue and passengers who are changing their bookings.  The ‘goodwill’ cost could be significantly higher.  It could have been settled for less than $5,000, before the aircraft was boarded.  Had United upped their offer to a Thou or even $1,200, they would likely have pulled their volunteers, nothing untoward would have happened and everyone would have gone on with life.

Except for the gate agents.  You can hear their performance review in a few months: “You cost your employer an extra $5,000 in April by being overly generous with compensation.  That’s not demonstrating a commitment to corporate profitability and is now on your permanent record.  We will be reviewing this at a higher level for further action”

That sums up America now.  Everyone, especially those in power, are looking for the slightest weakness to ream someone else and put them in as precarious a position as they can.  That, along with just about everything that falls out of DC now, stinks of the constant, blood-thirsty, striving to get something on someone else, as hard and as fast as possible, to wield power like a crazed despot, over anyone and everyone.  Clerks at Wal-Mart, Congress, the Senate, Refugees, Undocumented people, people without health care or just the other guy in the line at 7-11.

That’s mean-spirited and that’s what America has become.

EDIT April 11, 2017 1607 Hrs.

CEO Oscar Munoz has issued a fulsome and complete apology.  Herewith the quote:

Statement from United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz on United Express Flight 3411

The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment.  I share all of those sentiments, and one above all: my deepest apologies for what happened. Like you, I continue to be disturbed by what happened on this flight and I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard.   No one should ever be mistreated this way.

I want you to know that we take full responsibility and we will work to make it right.

It’s never too late to do the right thing. I have committed to our customers and our employees that we are going to fix what’s broken so this never happens again. This will include a thorough review of crew movement, our policies for incentivizing volunteers in these situations, how we handle oversold situations and an examination of how we partner with airport authorities and local law enforcement. We’ll communicate the results of our review by April 30th.

I promise you we will do better.

Sincerely,

Oscar

 

It might be coincidence, but United Continental Holdings dropped close to $300 Million in market capitalization today, but is coming back up.  Did Oscar look at his portfolio and suddenly have a change of mind?

We’ve stayed out of the US Primary commentary for a two sensible reasons. One, it’s natural selection at work, as the fringe candidates are winnowed out through the financial warfare that is raising money for a campaign. Two, the US primary system is so messed up with pollsters, advertising and partisan gerrymandering that one can barely tell the nuts from the flakes.  Think of a sandwich made by a six-year old with a very bad attitude and poor hand-eye coordination.

The winnowing is more or less complete and it has come down to about four candidates and we can feel reasonably confident in our assessments and observations of the personalities that wish to be President of the United States of America. Trump, Rubio, Clinton and Sanders.

Frankly, we wouldn’t trust any of them to run a vending machine, let alone sit in the Big Chair. The Republican Party has devolved into the most fractious of the two, to the point that the last ‘debate’ became nothing more than seeing who could shout the longest, while others were talking at the same time.

Trump, leading in the polls, is nothing more than a parade float of troll memes. Red, white and blue plastic flowers (made in China) on a chicken wire frame, rolling along on the stripped down chassis of a 1972 short-wheelbase school bus.

Rubio is a garden gnome, with all the gravitas, dignity and forwarding looking vision for a better America of a garden gnome engaged in a “I know you are but what am I?’ playground battle with the schoolyard bully. Note to Rubio, when Trump demands your lunch money, tell him you left it on his wife’s nightstand.

Bernie Sanders is actually progressive because he wants to change things. The problem is that he wants to change things in a country that does not want to change and join the latter half of the 20^th century.

Clinton? To reduce her to a lying, cheating, narcissistic power-mad monster is unflattering.  Fair comment usually is.  Shaking hands with her is an exercise in counting your fingers after you’re done, then grabbing the hand sanitizer.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the Democratic and Republican campaigns is the massive spike in Google searches for “How do I become a Canadian Citizen” from American households. We’re flattered by your interest, but we’re not taking applications at this time.  We’re busy building a wall along the 49^th to keep the illegal immigrants out.  Sorry.

We know America isn’t this dumb. We know you can do better, choose better and be better.

We’ve written about the Jian Ghomeshi trial before, here and it is worth a look back, now that the Wheels O’Justice are turning.  The short form is that back in October of 2014 a very famous CBC personality was canned by the Mother Corp for engaging in somewhat violent, not necessarily consensual saucy antics with more than one woman.  Since Ghomeshi’s very public mea culpa, Jian has remained, wisely, out of the public spotlight.  He is now having his day in court and it is bringing to light the state of the justice system when it comes to cases of sexual assault.

Our moral position is still the same: When it comes to saucy antics, we have three rules.  One, the parties involved must be of legal voting age in the jurisdiction where the saucy antics are happening.  Two, all parties must actively consent to the saucy antics.  Three, show some class and be discreet. Get a room.

Using our moral test, children and animals are off limits as they cannot actively consent or are not of legal voting age to consent. The rest of it, might be personally uninteresting, unhygienic, or simply too weird for words, but it is Not Our Business.

Notice we’re not using the terms BDSM, rough sex, or kink. They’re loaded words, much like the term porn is a loaded term.  The reason we’re not using those terms is it is too easy to label something and then dismiss anyone associated with it, as perverts and they’re getting what they deserve.  The running joke is that stroking your lover with a feather is sensual, but using the whole chicken is kinky.  We’re trying to communicate the concept, not judge, as per our moral position of Not Our Business.

The hard part is consent when combined with our adversarial justice system. When it comes to what consent is, or isn’t, there are no firmly drawn lines.  In the world of, let’s call it non-mainstream sexual behavior, consent is a very important concept.  Someone with a ‘forced sex’ penchant would struggle and cry out for help, which is part of the excitement of being ‘forced’ to engage in various antics.  From the outside it would appear to be sexual assault, but with one little exception.  One person has asked the other person to ‘force’ them into a situation and given active consent to engage in that kind of scenario.

Technically, in their struggles, they have used the words stop, don’t, don’t make me, and so on to indicate their unwillingness to proceed further.  Technically, this is now sexual assault as the consent has been rescinded with commonly accepted terminology.  Which is why the non-mainstream sexual community have the concept of a safeword.  A safeword means all activity comes to an instant halt and all restraints or other things are immediately undone, ceased, or brought to an ending.  The use of the safeword means “I’m not kidding, consent is rescinded, stop immediately!”  For those who engage in non-mainstream sexual play, that agreed-upon safeword is inviolate:  Everything stops, immediately, all assistance and comfort is given.

With our current justice system, the behavior of the victim is just as much on trial as the behavior of the accused. There have been literally hundreds of trials where the undergarments of the victim were on display, the defense arguing that her wearing black underwear was her way of ‘asking for it’ and then regretting her choices, leading the accused to sexually assault her.  After all, he’s just a man and well, you know, she’s a slut so it isn’t really rape.

(Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I can’t believe I just wrote that last sentence as it goes against so many things I hold as important in gender relations, sexuality and consent politics)

Under the adversarial justice system, the defense’s duty is to get their client off. (Insert your own joke here) By painting the victim(s) as willing participants, it removes the burden of the accused having to provide a reasonable assumption of consent.  Consent means there was no sexual assault, and can we all go home now?  Unfortunately, consent is a fluid concept that is rarely written down, notarized and witnessed by an officer of the court for the swearing of oaths, etc.

The problem is that our judicial system isn’t very good at consent politics when it comes to sexual behavior.

Had the accused explicitly talked with the victims beforehand and both were in agreement that this was the kind of sexual expression they were both willing to participate in, then, get a room and get to it. The caveat being if one of the people involved yells ‘Mariposa’ or ‘cribbage’ or hums the theme from Batman, then playtime stops immediately.  As long as that is how things went down, then anything after the removal of consent can be considered actionable.  Before that point, Not Our Business.

Which is why we see photos taken after the assault, of the accused and one of the victims being entered in evidence by the defense to show that everything was just fabulous between the two of them. If there was an assault, why would the victim appear to be happy after the fact?  Why was there no rape kit done?  Why didn’t the victim immediately call the police?  Why didn’t she run to Emergency to get a doctor to look at the bruises, or injuries?  That’s what you call reasonable doubt and that’s the defense doing their job.

It isn’t quite as vile as putting her underwear forward as evidence, or having her list everyone she’s ever romped with, but it’s in the ballpark.

This where the judge, William Horkins, comes in.  A judge sets the tone and sets the bar as to what can and cannot be considered.  Fortunately, Horkins looks like he has a common sense approach and will give both the Crown and the Defense some latitude in keeping with the idea that it’s not the victims that are on trial, but the accused.

Perhaps this is going to be an enlightened trial. We hope so.

Every year we get an update from WordPress about our most popular posts. Every year, the same thing comes up. Bars in Ottawa Pt 1.  The backstory is that when RoadDave was originally created, it was a personal website that was frequently updated, on Microsoft’s user-oriented spaces for Hotmail users.  There was no such thing as ‘blogging’ at the time: you had to use an archaic plug-in for Word that created half-assed html code that you could post and render as a web page.  Eventually Microsoft go out of hosting user websites and sold everything to WordPress.

Naturally, when I ported over to WordPress, it picked up the wrong space and created the initial ds46ont.wordpress.com site, based on the email associated with the account. Which wasn’t what I wanted.  After a few days, we got that straightened out and what you know as RoadDave.wordpress.com came into being.

To make a long story, shorter, Google still picks up the old WordPress site and this story. Nine years after the fact, we still get hits and comments on it.  To commemorate our long-running stream of unconsciousness, with the comments and spelling mistakes intact, we present Bars in Ottawa Pt 1

 

Bars in Ottawa Pt I

Posted on December 1, 2007 | 66 Comments | Edit

I was doing some reflecting the other day, not in the sense of reflecting light, as I do that well enough, without any special training, but reflecting, in the sense of remembering things.  Bars seemed to come back to me.  Bars, as in licensed beverage alcohol parlours.

Some of these establishments are long gone, but a few still exist.  Others exist hazily as I was probably drunk when I went in and drunker when I came out, but I do have vague recollections of their decor.  Herewith, a list of Bars.

The Maple Leaf in Ottawa, site of much illegal drinking during high school.  A classic linoleum floor, Arborite tables and fluorescent lights.  Cheap draft and ghastly chuckwagon sandwiches that were reheated in a metal box, with what looked like a 300 watt lightbulb inside to heat your lunch.  After you got your chuckwagon sandwich and tore away the partially charred cellophane, you used mustard packets by the handful to douse the taste of the sandwich.

The Ottawa House, Hull.  Long gone, but a huge beer parlour that sat five or six hundred at a go and had a balcony surrounding the main dance floor.  Quarts of beer served to anyone who could see over the bar.  Also home of my first brush with the original 12 percent Bras D’Or beer.  There was usually a band in attendance.  The Guess Who played there toward the end of their career and apparently I saw them.  Getting puked on from the balcony was a hazard of the Ottawa House, but they didn’t care if you took the party into the street too.

The Eastview Hotel, Eastview.  (I refuse to call it Vanier, it’s Eastview, dammit!) Also long gone.  Had basement rec-room ‘oak’ panelling in the bar and a perpetually sticky floor from spillage.  Apparently there were people who lived in the Hotel. but I’m reasonably certain those folks never actually ventured out in daylight.

The Chaud, Hull.  There were two Hotel Chaudieres.  The Rose Room and the Green Door.  The Rose Room was upstairs, where you took a date.  The Green Door is where you went to get drunk and fight.  Both held more than 2,000 patrons at a go.  You were brought a quart as a matter of course; only girls were brought pint bottles.  The servers all had bus-driver change machines hooked to their belts and could carry at least 20 quarts and four jugs on a tray, with one hand.

In the glory days, the Chaudiere saw Louis Armstrong play the Rose Room.  Later, bands like Sha-Na-Na, the Staccatos, Octavian and the Five Man Electrical Band played there.  The Green Door was the kind of place where when you opened the door, you immediately ducked down, as there was either a bottle or a chair headed your way.

The Chaud was also home of Gerry Barber, the toughest bouncer on the planet.  One story about Barber will suffice:  A patron was being unruly and Barber asked him to sit down and shutthefuckup, tabernac!.  The patron objected and showed his displeasure by breaking a nearly full quart beer bottle over Gerry Barber’s head.  Normally, this would knock most humans to their knees.

Barber laughed out loud, in the face of the patron:  The 2,000 drunks in the room instantly became very quiet, as we knew what was going to happen next.  Barber grabbed the patron by the face and genitals, throwing him in the direction of the door, over a couple of tables.  When Barber strode over to where the crumpled patron lay, he was still chuckling to himself.  He picked up the patron by the belt, then used the patron’s head to open the door and toss him into the parking lot.  The band resumed playing and the rest of us resumed drinking.

The British Hotel, Aylmer.  The British sold something they called “Porch Climber”, which was a fortified wine-related fluid:  Sort of a high-test sangria, without the fruit slices, juice, or images of Spain.  Porch Climber was sold in pitchers, like draft and if memory serves, was $3 per 64 oz pitcher, while beer was $5 a pitcher.

Why it was called Porch Climber was never explained.  However, after a pitcher of that stuff, you’d be unable to get up on the porch, or for that matter, off the front lawn, where you had passed out, face down, the night before.  It also stained white Addidas three-stripe running shoes permanently.

The World, Ottawa.  The World was Ottawa’s premiere blues bar and had 300 as its’ listed capacity.  When bluesman Buddy Guy played The World, they sold 700 tickets and everyone showed up.

Women, on those nights when the house was full, (Long John Baldry would also pack the joint), would routinely be assaulted, or to use the vernacular of the time, “felt up”, as they tried to move through the crowd.  On occasion, a woman would be body surfed on the top of the crowd over to the bar, or the rest rooms, depending on where she wanted to go.

The Grads. Ottawa.  Originally a old fashioned “Ladies and Escorts” and “Men’s Entrance” type of tavern, it evolved into a watering hole for most of Carleton University, at one time or another.  The colour scheme was beige and red, like an old streetcar or the Ottawa Transport Company buses of the time.  The nicest thing about the Grads was the sign out front in Art Deco typography and design.  The restrooms were from the Night of the Living Dead.

Friends and Co.,  Ottawa.  In the disco era, Friends and Co was a meat-market of oak and brick, the concept being the ‘beautiful people’ of Ottawa would come together to drink and go home with someone different every night.  The beautiful people did congregate there and it was a spritzer and fern joint of the worst kind.

The Talisman, Ottawa.  The Talisman Hotel had a bar in the basement, which was done in full-on tiki lounge, with bamboo lamps, reed wall coverings, woven rattan furniture and servers in mahalo shirts in the dead of winter.

I can remember vaguely, some of, the Zombies they served, as well as the sounds of a South Korean disco band doing “That’s the Way, I Like It” in very bad accents.  However, they did have a full horn section of stone killers and the keyboard player had a Hammond B3 with the lightweight Leslie speaker cabinet that he knew how to play.  He made the table lamps shake with that organ when they did “Gimme Some Lovin’ by the Spencer Davis Group.

Barrymore’s, Ottawa.  Barrymore’s had an interesting history.  Originally, the Imperial Theatre, it was a movie theatre on Bank Street, then it was shuttered for a number of years, with the seats and screen still intact inside, covered in dust.  After a decade or two, it was reopened, at least the balcony and loges section, as Pandora’s Box, a strip club that was needlessly upscale for the time and neighbourhood.  Pandora’s restored some of the elaborate painting and gilt work of the original Imperial and recycled some of the velvet draperies for the peelers’ runway.

Then it closed again and reopened as Barrymore’s, a pre-eminent live music bar and showcase.  Any big act playing Ottawa at the Civic Centre, if they could, would stay over an extra night, or come a night early, to play Barrymore’s.  Barrymore’s held, legally, 550 people.  I was fortunate enough to see George Thorogood and the Destroyers, Tina Turner and Huey Lewis and the News in Barrymore’s.

There’s something galactically Right about seeing Huey Lewis or George Thorogood in a packed, smoky bar, with the entire place jumping up and down in unison, everyone, including the band, piss drunk.  Tina Turner had just released “Private Dancer” and was a mega-star, who had booked Barrymore’s months before, as a warmup date for her tour.  A Rolling Stones tribute band, the Blushing Brides, used to own the place when they played there.

Licensed as a bar, Barrymore’s didn’t have a bad seat in the place.  A big stage, left over from the strippers, and one of the first GE Talaria video projection systems that was installed for non-band nights.  They’d fire up the video system and play some of the very first music videos on the big screen at ear-splitting volume.  On very quiet nights, they’d hook an Atari Pong game up to the big screen and you could play Pong on a screen that was twenty feet wide.

Pineland.  Ottawa.  In what looked like a small, warmed over rural arena, next to a rental go-kart track, some of the 60’s and 70’s best local bands played Pineland.  The CFRA Campus Club for Coke, with Al Pascal, used to host the bands.  Pineland was the home for the Townsmen, the Staccatos, Octavian, Five Man, the Cooper Brothers, Bolt Upright and hundred more bands.  Ostensibly, Pineland was not licensed, but Gilbey’s Lemon Gin was readily available.

I’m going to end it here, for now, but if you remember some of the old Ottawa hotspots, like the Red Door, the Laf, Salon Diane and Salon Colette, as well as the Claude, the Elmdale, the VD and some of the other holes, drop me a line.

There are more stories to be had.

66 responses to “Bars in Ottawa Pt I”

1. sherry | September 6, 2008 at 11:07 AM | Reply | Edit

These are great stories, hope you don’t mind some additional info about Barrymore’s.   The Imperial Theatre opened in 1914 and seated 1200 people.  A floor was installed in the 1960’s, running from the bottom of the balcony to the back of the original stage.  This space was eventually rented to Canada’s first all nude strip club, Pandora’s Box.  A floor was also installed at the front of the building over the original lobby, and was used as a massage parlor.  The strip club kept the original balcony theatre seats and had purchased the red velvet curtains from the Capitol Theatre when it was demolished, but never did any restoration.    Pandora’s Box was closed in 1978 for it’s failure to meet building safety standards.  4 partners bought the lease and renovated the space to open as a disco/supper club.  Cost overruns and a bad review by Ottawa Citizen Dave Brown columnist forced the club into bankruptcy within 18 months.   In 1981 the lease was purchased by 3 partners who thought it would make a great live music venue.  And so it was for more than 10 years.  What many people may not know is the club’s legal capacity was 198 people, posted on the liquor licence behind the lower bar.  Security’s first priority was to make sure aisles, stairways and exits, were clear, especially if the club was over capacity.  Liquor, fire and police inspectors would drop in from time to time to make sure patrons were safe, and responsible managers were on duty.  The highest attendance was for George Thorogood, more than 550 people.   The owner’s biggest concern was that the poured floor did not have enough support.  On busy nights the ceiling of the Nervous Onion would move up and down.  Perhaps that is why it is closed now.   Aloha,

1. Chris | May 15, 2009 at 3:22 PM | Reply | Edit

Yes Gerry Barber was a very tought bouncer, Im trying to find out more about him or if theres a family historian or any pictures, see i am somehow kin to gerry barber, he was my moms cousin and i googled his name today and thats how i came across your blog, if you know anything elts about him please e-mail me at chrisstgermain83@hotmail.com or if you can point me in the direction of someone who does thank you.

• Fitz | October 19, 2014 at 9:28 PM | Reply | Edit

Yes Good Old west end Gerry .One summer after noon at the stanish Hall he escorted me out for being to mouthy .I know my right ear must be a inch longer then the other now as that’s how he was directing me out.Me be the drunk monchoman .I went to the side sreen window and starting yelling some really nasty things throw the window when I looked to the side their was Gerry running across the parking lot in full tilt I ran to my motor cycle and the stupid Yamaha junk wouldent start and he was comeing and foaming at the mouth Their must be a god because the bike started and I just got away .Good thing as I know I wouldent be typing this right now.Deap down Gerry was one hell of a nice guy and new my brother,s well

1. Pierre | December 26, 2009 at 9:38 PM | Reply | Edit

Your write-up brings back memories, only because I left those places almost sober and remembering everything that went on. Just to make a note about the Chaud, short for Chaudiere Golf and Country Club. It was situated on the Aylmer Road in Aylmer, not in Hull, across from the Glenlea Golf an Country Club, known today as the Champlain Golf Club. The Chaud was a conbination of two watering holes. The Rose Room, situated upstair, was a very classy, old style dance hall with a mezzanine or balcony level on all four walls. The Green Room, on the other hand, was more of a dive bar where you could get wasted on beer and shop for your favorite drugs. Drugs were peddled in the same manner as peanuts and popcorn at a baseball game. “MESC, ACID, HASH!”The Chaud was sold after the owner, JP Maloney, died. It was levelled and replaced by what is now known as the Chateau Cartier Hotel and Resort. The golf course is in much better shape since the change.Another good place for seeing bands, such as the Cooper Brothers, was the Gatineau Golf and Country Club. The building was destroyed by fire and replaced by a Loblaws and strip mall in the 80’s.What memories we have!

1. Jim | July 6, 2010 at 3:20 AM | Reply | Edit

Oh, Pineland. I worked there for a couple of years taking money and stamping hands. But more than that, I painted the pictures and murals in dayglo. I painted a wild mandala on Octavian’s drum kits but it flaked off after a couple of shows. Fun times.

• RICK JAMIESON | October 26, 2010 at 11:48 AM | Reply | Edit

grew up with Kirk Dorrow the drummer. do you have any picks of his drum kit. Any info on Octavian would be appreciated. Rick J

• Wayne ( Eggs) Benedict | March 31, 2014 at 7:40 PM | Reply | Edit

you where on of our favourites Jim. As I recall Jenny and I picked you up at home most Saturday nights before the gigs at Pineland. And you did a great, honest job.

1. David | July 6, 2010 at 9:03 PM | Reply | Edit

Thank you Arnold, for droppnig by. And also a large thanks to others who have commented and filled in some of the gaps in the memories.

1. Tom | October 6, 2010 at 10:33 PM | Reply | Edit

just a small comment re the Chaudiere Green Door – I ‘lived’ there back in 1971 – 1973 when I graduated to the Rose Room after they got rid of Terry Carisse and started bringing in rock bands and I can tell you there’s no way you could fit 2000 people in the Green Door (maybe a couple of hundred); Rose Room – yes, GD – NO

• Road-Dave | October 9, 2010 at 11:56 AM | Reply | Edit

Tom:

OK, I’m guilty of exaggeration 🙂 Thanks for your comment. I’ll refer you over to the main site, which is roaddave.wordpress.com. The ds46ont one was used just for the migration from Live Spaces. See you around.

Cheers! David

1. Brent | October 11, 2010 at 2:55 PM | Reply | Edit

Great stories!

1. al d. | September 29, 2011 at 4:17 AM | Reply | Edit

What was the name of the tavern in the old Union Station in Ottawa. It was across from the Grand hotel (bar) on Besserer st. and Sussex

1. FRANCINE | January 27, 2013 at 10:21 PM | Reply | Edit

So glad I came across this info – I had requested photos of The Chaud and here I am… About the Glenlea – was that across the The Chaud a bit down the road on way to Aylmer? I spent lots of weekends @ The Ottawa House – Loved the bands… what was the name of the blind singer -he was so good. Ray Hutchison? There was a nearby venue that I saw The Platters @ – same side as The Chaudiere – maybe further heading again to Aylmer… and The British Hotel in Aylmer – Western singer – Huey Scott… he took forever to prepare – warm up for his shows – back in the 60’s. My then husband’s favorite artist. What about the hotels downtown Hull like the dance halls @ Chez Henri & there was another popular one around the portage area. Not far from The Ottawa House. Man… it sure feels good to go back in time – I miss those days!

About the tavern on Besserer & Sussex – it’s on the tip of memory. Shoot! Wish I could read more about Ottawa/Hull’s past entertainment venues.

Oh… I used to go dancing on Bank Street – One b4 the exhibition grounds.. and the Oak Door – anyone remember those two?

I sang @ age 14 @ La Salle Hotel on Dalhousie – My dad took me and put me on stage – Food was served so I was allowed in. I sang “You Made Me Love You’ lol How I miss my teenage & 20’s years.

One last place was @ The Riverside in Eastview (Vanier) on Rifer Road. Gino Vanelli performed there he said @ his last show in October @ Nepean Centrepoint Theatre.

I saw Elvis in 56 when he came to Ottawa – hmmm was it the colosium?

Anyways – Thanks for the memories…

• Jack | February 7, 2015 at 8:37 PM | Reply | Edit

When I was going to Aylmer to see Huey Scott, he played at the Chamberlain Hotel not the British…….Unless he played there before or after….

1. richard | January 29, 2013 at 8:38 AM | Reply | Edit

Youngsters all what about the rendezvous or the masque rouge maybe Le soleil and for any one with an ounce of class cafe le Hibou

• Susan Smith | May 3, 2013 at 11:57 PM | Reply | Edit

I was looking for info on the Rendezvous when I came across this blog. It was my tavern style experience as a University Student, when the bars closed in Ottawa that was where everyone went.

• Brent Beatty | May 4, 2013 at 7:37 PM | | Edit

When I drove cab for ABC in the early 70’s, the shift would end about 1:00 am for us and we’ed head over to the Rendezvous. It had an atmossphere that we liked; kinda smokey and not too pretentious. The back room was our favourite and we would be left alone by the bouncers as long as we behaved ourselves, which we usually did. But I remember one night when about a dozen or us, guys and gals, showed up and took a table in the back. I had to use the washroom and wasn`t there very long but by the time I got back to the table, the entire crew were getting the bum`s rush out the door. I still don`t know to this day what the Hell happened but somebody must have pissed off a bouncer to a great degree and that was that. I miss the place even today as it represented the old Hull before all the Fed. Gov`t buildings went up. Fond memories, B

1. raoul duke | March 27, 2013 at 3:46 PM | Reply | Edit

I remember my first visit to the Chaud; the after party for our grade 12 ‘formal’ (held at the Talisman, natch) which shut down early after a crew member burned half his face while setting off a phosphorous flash-pot with a match, but that’s another story.

What I clearly remember was someone setting off a backyard sized firework (the ‘Volcano’ sort) on a table next to a back wall of the Green Door. It went off for about a minute. And no one noticed or did anything about it. Coolest thing I have ever seen in a bar.

Gerry Barber was the reason the Chaud wasn’t a biker bar. ‘Nuff said.

1. Les | August 10, 2013 at 11:27 AM | Reply | Edit

The Plaza…Sparks St. west of Bank St, 1960’s -1970’s. Bar downstairs, 25 cent drafts, music upstairs, saw Canada Goose perform there.

Le Soleil, Hull Disco Viva, Hull Sacs Disco Bar, Hull Bests Bar, Hull Rotters Club Chez Henri, Hull

Trying to remember the name of a disco on Riverside that my parents used to go to in the ’60’s….

• Brent | August 21, 2013 at 9:33 PM | Reply | Edit

If I recall, and it’s getting harder to do that these days, it was called The Rib. But I stand ready to be corrected, among other things. Brent

1. Michael Krushnisky | August 30, 2013 at 11:55 PM | Reply | Edit

The nickname for the Riverside Tavern and Disco was “The Rib”. Upstairs, you could find the disco that had Playboy Bunny replicas serving drinks in the early to mid 70’s. The Tavern downstairs, (very similar to the Maple Leaf Tavern located on the corner of Montreal Road and St. Laurent Blvd.) was where all the heavy duty power-drinkers threw back quarts of ’50’, ‘EX’, etc. Fights were pretty common but generally just included fists and boots. Some taverns actually had what they called a ‘panic button’ in their bathrooms, if you got jumped you could reach to hit the buzzer so the waiters could come to your assistance. I remember being able to buy a quart for .75 cents at the ‘Leaf’ and the ‘Rib’ taverns, only place cheaper we knew of was the Ottawa House tavern across the Ottawa River in Hull Quebec for .70 cents. I also remember being able to purchase beer at any of these Taverns long before I turned 18 which was the “drinking age” at the time. As I sit here writing this response to the above comments I realize that I could likely talk about these places for days on end, I somehow completed Grade 13 at Rideau High School inspite of it being located down the road from the ‘Leaf’ (“ML”). I actually remember a teacher at Rideau whose class was scheduled on Friday afternoons, with most of the class down at the draft room of the Maple Leaf each Friday for long lunch hours, he finally relented and even taught a few classes while quaffing drafts with us at the Maple Leaf Draft room. “Those were the days my friend” however different from the old theme song of the All in the Family sitcom – “I knew they would have to end”, HA-HA.

1. Road Dave | August 31, 2013 at 12:22 PM | Reply | Edit

In reviewing all these postings, it seems there are several of us with the same mental problem: We were drunk. I’ll add the Sly Fox Disco on Carling Ave (now some evangelical church) that was originalloy the Sampan restaurant. Rumor was the Sly Fox had one of the floor lights from the set of “Saturday Night Fever” in the dance floor. Cheezy Hank (The Chez Henri) was also a fern bar in its’ later iterations.

1. Mike | August 31, 2013 at 1:13 PM | Reply | Edit

This is like eating peanuts, I can’t stop recollecting now. Do you remember the Lafontaine Hotel on Montreal Road, downstairs was the proverbial Tavern with more or less same atmosphere as the Leaf and the Rib, but upstairs was the ‘Golden Rail’ – Country music bands at their finest, packed to the rafters Thursday, Friday & Saturday nights, lots of women seated alone, always friendly and easy to meet. I vividly remember being in there one night when they announced that Elvis Presley had just died, there was literally a hushed silence over the place for a good minute while the patrons dealt with their shock. Another really dingy tavern I remember on Montreal Road was the Eastview Hotel, was definitely a place you wanted to have someone watching your back, lot of tough, dangerous characters frequented the Eastview, some had just been released from Prison or the detention centre on Innes Road (Holiday Innes) as they referred to it. Of course all of Montreal Road had plenty of watering holes and was like the gateway to the “Byward Market” by way of the Cummings Bridge (more stories for another day). Some people I knew kept up that way of life throughout their adult lives – I guess thats why I regularly find so many familiar names, only in their 50’s reflected in the Ottawa Citizen Obituaries.

1. Perry | October 9, 2013 at 2:54 AM | Reply | Edit

The Raceway Tavern on Clarence St. Classic Market tavern with hookers galore. Live music by Paul Henry. Bouncer Gordie Galinger kept us safe and his wife at the bar kept us drunk. Ahh, my sweet university days!

1. Susan | October 23, 2013 at 12:55 AM | Reply | Edit

I remember going to the Chaud to see Cheap Trick, drinking quarts and getting stoned right at your table because back then you could—that was an awesome show, from what I remember, because I don’t remember leaving the Chaud or how I got home that night. Someone mentioned the Talisman had a bar downstairs so for the record I believe it was called the Beachcomber! Also does anyone remember the Black Swan or Club Zink? Great stories …Cheers 🙂

• Road Dave | October 23, 2013 at 12:21 PM | Reply | Edit

I knew the Swan well, and the Beachcomber. Zink, no

• jeff | November 9, 2015 at 4:29 PM | | Edit

club zinc in Hull

1. Rob N | November 8, 2013 at 7:00 PM | Reply | Edit

Wow I am glad I found this page what memories. I grew up in Carp and Saturday and Sunday nights we loaded up a few cars and headed to the Chaud. We never went into the Green Door, although we fought our fair share they had a different code of conduct down in that hole( bottles knives, guns etc). Do you remember the old guy that came around with the flash camera and would take your picture for a few bucks. I still have a pic from there from 83. The only place you could buy anything hash,pcp,lsd,pot uppers downers lol you name it. We just smoked the hash. Remember how the waiters would come around with their coin changers and flash lights. For a small tip they would hold the flashlight so you could see while rolling your joint on the table. If you were in a fight god forbid you had better get your shots in quick and get out of there before Gerry Barber got there and got a hold of you. I saw many a supposed tough guy get the crap kicked out of them be Barber and then ejected with his signature toss out the front door and down the steps, a buddy of mine had that pleasure one evening. One night a buddy and myself went in and had a sprinkle in the can and while we were walking by a stall with the door open we saw a biker looking dude (for lack of a better term) having a crap with the door open. My buddy and I were laughing as we ponied up to the urinal, we stopped laughing emediately when we heard ” hey stretch you think that’s pretty funny eh) my buddy is 6Ft 6 in and had a gun in his ear. Luckily a guy in the washroom saw this and got out and got Barber. The rest is history ( they didn’t call the cops for those things at the chaud).

Anyway lots of great times. They don’t make places like that anymore. As a final note we had to drive through the hull , qpp, rcmp, nepean, Ottawa, opp police forces to get home. Imagine these days!!!

1. Doug | February 19, 2014 at 9:31 PM | Reply | Edit

Seems I just jumped in Mr. Peabody’s wayback machine, yeeesh.. yeah, I remember, or not remember getting home from the Chaud many a times. and damn, I shoulda taken that Raquel Welch poster from behind the bar..

Glad someone remembered the Raceway Tavern. Interesting times were had there. And don’t forget the Albion Hotel. A good place to go when you didn’t want to be around others, or cheerful people. Quite sullen at times, but hey, the drinks were cheap..

Being a west-ender growing up, there was always the CrazyHorse on March Road to fall back on, if you didn’t want to head into the city.

And during the university days, the weekend routine was always the same.. Thursday nights at Oliver’s at Carleton U. ( saw some amazing early acts there, Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, John Baldry, etc etc). Friday nights were always the Algonquin Pub ( Powder Blues Band, Crowbar, Doug & the Slugs, etc), then over to Hull, hoping to find a date for Saturday night. Saturday night it was Disco Reflections at some hotel ( the Delta Inn) with your date, then over to Hull…. Sunday, sleep it all off and start over again..

For a good bite to eat with your beer, there was always the Capri restaurant on Merivale, with their square pizza and huge jugs of beer, or Peter’s Pantry in the Carling area ( really hot waitresses there at the time), and damn, the name escapes me right now of the place on Richmond Road in Westboro where the Mill St. Brewery place is now..Kind of a rundown place, but the same faces night after night after night, each with their own life story to listen in on if they let you….

and if you desperate, really desperate for a date, there was always the singles night at the Concord Hotel on Montreal Road on a winter’s Friday night…

yeah, good times, good times. Thanks for the memories in dragging a lot of these up. The Rose Room was always the fave and the go-to place though. even at 16, with an underage ID card that would do McLovin’ proud, lol

• Road Dave | September 6, 2014 at 9:53 PM | Reply | Edit

The Capri and I have a long history, as I used to work at CJOH-TV. The Capri was where all the crews, most of the staff and a good percentage of management drank and occasionally ate. If you couldn’t find someone, you’d go over to the Capri and check the bar. If they weren’t in the bar, they were on the restaurant side. We’re talking the Old Capri, when they had the hobnail wood floors, before it was fern-bar’ed and redecorated, back when CJOH had a front lawn and there wasn’t a radio station building out front. Mind you, we got hammered at both Capri’s, so, actually it’s all moot.

• richard | January 5, 2015 at 7:47 AM | | Edit

Dave What did you do at CJOH i worked there for some time originally security then on the Galloping gourmet show and Any thing You Can Do game show

• Road Dave | January 5, 2015 at 9:50 AM | | Edit

Commercial Production from 1981 to 1988

• Road Dave | January 5, 2015 at 2:23 PM | | Edit

Worked in Commercial Production and eventually wound up as Manager Commercial Production, then went freelance.

• Jano | September 18, 2014 at 12:03 PM | Reply | Edit

The Kingsway on Richmond Rd in Westboro. Square pizza, joints at the table, # 2 police station around the corner!

• Fitz | October 19, 2014 at 8:59 PM | | Edit

Yup and Terry and Tony would be shacking their fist and yakking in Greek

1. Chantal | March 20, 2014 at 9:55 PM | Reply | Edit

Anyone remember the bar where the Restaurant 18 is now or basement where Side Door is located….I can’t remember the name for the life of me…I think it had the word blue in it but not sure

• Denis | December 14, 2015 at 2:52 AM | Reply | Edit

GuadalaHarry’s, mexican restaurant!

1. Wayne ( Eggs) Benedict | March 31, 2014 at 3:10 PM | Reply | Edit

I remember all of those joints. At the same time I ran dances at Pineland, Parkdale, Lighthouse and Beamish Hill Chalet. Also managed Octavian and Liberation, so have a ton of great memories. FUN, FUN, FUN !!!

1. Dean Hagopian. | April 1, 2014 at 11:29 PM | Reply | Edit

My nerves I’m hemmorhaging mentally from the waves of memories. EAsy on the hemp everyone. Seem to be missing another of my fave watering holes, super for music and talent too, On the upper Aylmer rd, it was a Golf Course also., Owned by Joe Sax, and his two shall we say very entertaining sons, Spent a lot of time there when I was living in Aylmer and working at OY. Super musicians, seem to remember Russ Thomas, before he changed his name and moved to Montreal. Spent many nights when Johnny Nash was there. We(being the Staccatos played at most of the places mentioned, so you can understand how weird my memories might be. Another kick ass quality bar we liked alot was the Duvernay in Hull. Played and got whacked there on many occasions, cause that ‘s what one did in those days and nights. Thanks for the rushes.

• Road Dave | April 2, 2014 at 12:38 AM | Reply | Edit

And thanks for a blast from the past from Dean Hagopian, back when AM radio was Boss! I’ll add memories of Al Pascal, Shelley Emmond, Trevor Kidd, Ivan Hunter, Dave “50,000” Watts, Bill Drake, Tom Lucas, Jim Johston, Art Stevens, Casey Fox, Rick Shannon and the Original Winter’s Nights on BY at the old joint on Richmond Rd.

• Jack | February 7, 2015 at 8:54 PM | Reply | Edit

Dean Hagopian ? Are you the DJ from CKOY in the 60s? Used to listen to you all the time …..

• Hank | March 19, 2015 at 1:00 PM | Reply | Edit

Ottawa lost a good DJ when you moved to Montreal. Can you remember the daily line-up of announcers at CKOY just before you left? Nelson Davis? Overnight Wood vs Kohl (CKOY vs CFRA)?

1. Sue | April 2, 2014 at 4:52 PM | Reply | Edit

K Mart resturant for the Algonquin College students was a great watering hole and dancing on the Rose Room floor as it heaved and moved with all the folks is a memory worth while!

1. Pingback: Bars In Ottawa – Reprint | RoadDave Edit
2. peter | October 4, 2014 at 4:26 PM | Reply | Edit

how about the blind pig below the holiday inn.the bayshore hotel and the loading zone montreal road.my first discoteque for me was the sax on main street in hull later became j.r dallas.met the village people there april 15 1979 after the show at the civic centre awesome show tickets were 15.00

1. peter | October 4, 2014 at 9:51 PM | Reply | Edit

also in the early 70s there was the banana boat duffs in bells corners the old spaghetti factory on york street.when i moved to the west 1974 it was the sanpan in 1975 it became the sly fox then 1978 it became studleys with 1 fifth of the saturday night fever floor.in 1979 it became bobby rubinos chicken and ribs and fantastic onion rings.after it became rentalex and the kraft house and now its the house of god.growing up downtown there was the saucy noodle almost across from the somerset theatre between kent and bank.of course peters pantry cant forget that awesome place the best pizza and the best zombies in the biggest snifter glasses.bells corners famous for branscombs.great bands and music.carling and brodview great chinese restaurant the sun luck.

1. Road Dave | October 4, 2014 at 10:43 PM | Reply | Edit

Let us not forget The Dill Pickle on Merivale Road, The Beachcomber, of course and Capone’s on Carling, out near Peter’s Pantry. And the Lindenhoff Gasthaus.

1. Wayne ( Eggs) Benedict | October 5, 2014 at 2:48 PM | Reply | Edit

and don’t forget the Sunken Dory on Merivale Road. Great ceasers . On the subject of the band Liberation my old friend Billy ” white shoes” Shenkman was the key board player, now a J/V partner at TD place home of the Ottawa Redblacks. He was a fine musician. Lead singer was the pride and joy, . baby boy, Jimmy Young.

1. peter | October 18, 2014 at 7:00 PM | Reply | Edit

how about brandys on york street houlihans.the caprice on 99 laval street in hull.the cosmos in the cfra building on isabella ave.reflections at the embassy west.alexanders on the island.le marginal on eddy street.clu 61 aylmer.disco 2000 in gatineau. le club on wellington street.hurleys all over ottawa the rosebowl steakhouse at 1671 carling ave.which opened aug.15 1974.villa delli across from lawnsdowne park.

1. Fitz | October 19, 2014 at 9:07 PM | Reply | Edit

Don’t for get the Quiet softly spoken places like the Vandom,The steirling west end Boys ya know their was a pair of boots named Wellingtons .The good good old days .Funny iam still kicking

1. Dean Presley | March 10, 2015 at 4:34 PM | Reply | Edit

Great memories of so many of these places . Would like to see photos of them inside and outside .

1. Doghousedonnie | March 19, 2015 at 2:06 PM | Reply | Edit

The market was home to the Commercial Tavern, a classic old tome beer and Country music Joint, which was torn down and became the Hard Rock. And who remembers the Sterling Tavern in Mechanicsville?

1. Will D. | March 19, 2015 at 7:34 PM | Reply | Edit

Oh man. If you had a date you went to the Glen Lea to drink quarts and dance to the Playdates. If out with the lads from St. Pat’s you went to the Texas Tavern in Hull to buy a quart for $.90 and watch the Hull criminal element at play. Their packaged wagonwheels from the microwave would kill you but the pickled eggs from “Cheese Please Louise” were popular.

1. Diane | April 15, 2015 at 1:33 PM | Reply | Edit

Claude Hotel on Beechwood in Vanier drink quarts dance and get hammered

1. J.P. Lanthier | August 10, 2015 at 2:45 AM | Reply | Edit

The barn in Aylmer great groups played there…

1. Dave | August 28, 2015 at 4:06 PM | Reply | Edit

There was the body shop in Westboro

1. Guy Carisse | October 14, 2015 at 12:07 AM | Reply | Edit

About the Ottawa House of the 60’s. Saw the Stampeders but most often was Harry Younge & The Noblemen 66-68! Last saw them at the Wakefield Inn, Wakefield, Quebec in 1999. Sat down and had a brief chat with Harry. Sadly, he died a few years later!

1. Doug | October 20, 2015 at 5:21 PM | Reply | Edit

WOW. OK, here goes. What was the other name of the Stirling? And I don’t mean ‘bucket of blood’. Rick and Dino’s after the Carleton closed? I think Friends and Company was Squires/Nozzle? Speaking of Rideau St, how about Dave’s Den/Rideau Tavern, Black Swan, Arnolds, Mollys, The Grand, The Albion. Saw a midget country band at the Raceway………. Steve’s Steakhouse, open late. Became the Makut. Downtown, Fife and Drum, great bands, had a beer with James Cotton. The Tap Room, big Ed, little Ed and Gil. Bank, the Rotters, 80s, Jungle. Saw John Cale, think it was the 80s Club, above the Gilmour?? The Alex on St Paddys Day, original green beer. Branscombes/Barons? in Bells Corners. Anybody remember a place in Hull, Nouvel Epoch (sp) ??? Bon Vivant, Serge. Back in the days of CFL blackouts, Danny Kelly’s Carlsbad Hotel. Gerry’s on Bank (Hiway 31) close enough to the K&S for late snack.

I know there are more, but I feel better now.

I also think that i/we are lucky to be alive 😉

1. Ed Cain | November 5, 2015 at 4:16 PM | Reply | Edit

Talk about a walk down Memory Lane – this is great. Got into the Ottawa House when I was 16 and never missed seeing Harry Young and the Noblemen when they played there. I don’t think anyone has mentioned the Standish Hall (above the Rendevous) nor the Carleton hotel (near the West End Market. How about the “Longest Bar in the Gatineau” ? Don’t recall its real name or where it was – not one of my better perforrnances.

• Doug Hibbard | November 29, 2015 at 2:29 AM | Reply | Edit

Kazabazua Hotel, longest bar

1. Wayne Windle | November 9, 2015 at 2:22 PM | Reply | Edit

Here are some places that I recall…..The Albion Hotel/ tavern ..25 cent draft, a tray for $2.50….the Del Rio restaurant on Rideau St and their pizza-burger pizzas…the Prescott Hotel on Preston and their meatball sandwiches…the Grand hotel near Parliament Hill and their Friday 5 cent baked bean lunches so long as you had two draft…that Irish Pub on Rideau St.,Muldoons …the Alexandria hotel on Bank St for St Patrick’s Day.. Lenny O’Brien’s St Patrick’s Day blow outs…the Chez Lucien on the Market…the pig n’ whistle pub…the Hay Loft. crocks of old cheese,peanut shells under foot.

1. Mike O’Reilly | November 19, 2015 at 5:46 AM | Reply | Edit

Remember the: Grads, Vendome, Alexandra, Plaza, Ritz, Belle Clare,Grand, LaSalle (one in Ottawa one in Hull),Richelieu, Commercial, Elmdale, Claude, Maple Leaf, Lafontaine, Bytown, Windsor, Capitol, .The only taverns left are the Carleton, Dominion and Lafayette. Oh yeah I just remembered the Chez Lucien and the Raceway. On the Quebec side were the: Belle Amis, Standish Hall ,Rendezvous, Wellington, St Louis, Ottawa House, Texas, Bank, Chez Henri, Montcalm, Glenlea, Chaud(Rose Room and Green Room), Gatineau, Aylmer, British, Chamberlain, Sur Le Lac, Deschenes, Laval (free beans & French bread), Raftsman, Manoir des Rapides. I remember as a kid, down in the flats “The Duke”. This is from memory and I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch, obviously a misspent youth. The longest bar in the Gatineau was. In Kazabazua.

• Mike Krushnisky | November 19, 2015 at 10:34 AM | Reply | Edit

That’s a thorough list of Taverns for Ottawa/Hull, just thought of another one; the old Eastview Hotel – up Montreal Road from the Leaf towards the Cummings Bridge, in the heart of what was then known as Eastview now Vanier. The list was so complete but I think the Gilmour Hotel on Bank Street and the Riverside Hotel (Rib) were also missing. Cheers, Mike

1. Eileen | November 30, 2015 at 3:33 AM | Reply | Edit

The Barn in Aylmer (managed by Don Dugas & family) had many exquisite bands, so did The Glenwood Bowl (managed by Gary Downes). No booze (unless snuck in), just great music and good clean fun. Many local badns including The Stacattos, The Girlfriends, The Townsmen, Robby Lane & The Disciples, just to name a few, played there. People from “everywhere” came to join in on the fun. It was a great place for teenagers to hang out. They were even opened on weekend days so people could drop in to play games, ping pong, etc. It was very well supervised. They had dances in the afternoon (windows blocked to create darkness and ambiance). The Gatineau Golf & Country Club had a fantastic night club where stars like Bobby Cortola and Ronny Dove performed. Those were the days!

1. Thomas Simon | December 22, 2015 at 10:15 PM | Reply | Edit

Does anyone remember The Voyaguer Hotel on Montreal Rd by the Highway before Orleans. Upstairs was a dingy little bar with strippers.

• Doug | December 23, 2015 at 12:21 AM | Reply | Edit

Oh, ya. Went to Gloucester High School…………