John Mahoney/Canwest News Service
The Cafe Cleopatra is one of the remnants of a once bustling red-light district in Montreal.
MONTREAL — If asked to name the lobby groups wielding power at city hall, strippers, transvestites and fetishists would probably not figure high on the list.
But a grass-roots movement to save a St. Laurent Blvd. strip club and showroom received a boost from Montreal’s public-consultation office on Thursday. After months of study and public hearings, the municipal body is recommending that a planned redevelopment of what was once a bustling red-light district retain some traces of its seedy past.
The section of St. Laurent, known as the lower Main, has been deteriorating for years, and most storefronts are now boarded up. The Café Cleopatra is one of the few holdouts, with strippers performing throughout the day and an upstairs showroom that hosts drag-queen shows and fetish nights.

See the full article from “National Post”

The growth of this population in recent years has become an annoyance for many. Downtown merchants who cater to a higher class of tourists object to young transients squatting in front of stores with their grubby baggage and mangy menageries. Some such retailers and restaurateurs came down on Claude Dauphin, the city councillor charged with the public security file, for saying in an interview that these panhandlers might be unsightly but are something we have to live with. “Maybe some see it as a problem, but let’s not exaggerate,” he is quoted as saying.
City council aspirant Louise O’Sullivan fumed that she was revolted by Dauphin’s let-live attitude, calling the influx of “seasonal vagabonds” an “urban plague” and a poor advertisement for Montreal. Claude Rainville, who heads a downtown development group, insisted these people are very much a problem, causing “numerous incivilities” along Ste. Catherine St. and being given to prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction and assorted other criminality. There have also been complaints about their homesteading in city parks and other public spaces that some use for toilets and refuse dumps.

See the full article from “The Gazette (Montreal)”

What is it about boxing that it lends itself to such untimely deaths, through accidents, suicide or homicide? Victims like Oscar Bonavena, the Argentinian who battled Muhammad Ali, shot dead at 33 outside a Nevada brothel in 1976; Trevor Berbick, 52, the last man to fight – and beat – Ali, killed with a crowbar in a church courtyard in Jamaica in 2006; and in London two years ago, the former British and ABA heavyweight champion James Oyebola, like Forrest one of the sport’s most decent men, killed in a cowardly attack by youths outside the nightclub where he was a bouncer. The 6ft 9in Obeyola, who was 46 and had retired from boxing 11 years previously, had simply asked them to stop smoking. He was shot in the head and died four days later. His murderers have been convicted.

See the full article from “Independent”

IT WAS the bloodiest July in the history of boxing on the safe side of the ropes. Three great champions lost their lives in a series of grisly incidents involving a 12-gauge shotgun, a stripper and two anonymous midnight gunmen.
Alexis Arguello, Arturo Gatti and Vernon Forrest added their bloody fingerprints to a long list of the missed, who fought like true warriors
inside the ring and faced their futures after boxing with a mixture of success and dread. It is not easy being a normal guy after the glory and
glamour of being a ring hero.
…
It was the first full day of their holiday when Mrs Gatti, a retired stripper who had met Gatti at work, found her husband. He was dead. The police report mentioned marks on his neck and a cut on his head. There was a bloody steak knife and his wife’s handbag strap on the floor in the room next to the dead boxer.

See the full article from “Sunday Herald”