Mayor Camillien Houde had already announced he would not seek re-election. And Drapeau, then a 38-year-old lawyer, had worked as an investigator on a vice probe headed by Justice François Caron, who chose to unleash his report on the Montreal police force’s tolerance of prostitution and illegal gambling less than two weeks before election day.
Caron fired the police chief, barred the former police chief from holding office for 10 years, fined 18 other active and retired members of the force, and levelled severe criticism at city councillors who were complicit with the police in allowing illegal gambling to take place.Drapeau won in a landslide.A generation earlier, the 1925 report of a commission of inquiry headed by Judge Louis Coderrecreated tumult that overshadowed Mayor Charles Duquette’s victory a year earlier over longtime mayor Médéric Martin. Coderre’s report condemned long-standing collusion among Montreal police, municipal politicians, gambling houses and bordellos across the city.Duquette didn’t run in 1926.Or consider the fate of Hormisdas Laporte, a reformer who was elected mayor of Montreal in …

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