MONTREAL HARD DRUGS AND CHAOS

MONTREAL HARD DRUGS AND CHAOS

  Wow, Montreal! What a place. I was dumbfounded when I stepped foot in Berri park. The whole park was full of punk rockers just getting fucked up and the punk chicks were fuckin’ hot as hell!

   I ran into a buddy of mine, Drew, panning on St. Catherine st. I’d met him in Toronto, he was also from Halifax and told me I should head to Quebec City because there was going to be a riot! I was stoked! Fuckin’ riot? Hell yeah! Let’s get it going! 

  Back then, every St. Jean Baptiste in Quebec City people would just get wasted and riot just for the hell of it. I think the riot in ‘96 was the last one they had for St. Jean.

  It was $10.00 for a bus ticket from Montreal and I was there in three hours. I remember there were some people on the bus that I started talking to because they were heading there for the same reason and they had LSD so I showed up in Quebec high as hell, so that was a bonus.

  I was supposed to meet Fox at the Carre D’Youville, which was in old Quebec. There was thousands upon thousands of people there just getting fucked up. It was awesome! Fox and I were panning when a couple of French separatists started giving us shit because we didn’t speak french. This was, after all, the birthday of Quebec so we almost got into a fight. Fuckin’ dicks. Anyway it must’ve been around 11pm when shit started to pop off. First there was this huge fight between Nazis and sharp skinheads that was just insanely brutal but fuckin’ entertaining as there must have been like 60 of them going at it. It was really something to see.

  We were just outside of an underground parking lot and thenext things we knew there were 200 or more riot cops coming up from the parking lot with shields and fucking huge riot clubs. I’ll never forget when Fox came limping up to me almost in tears telling me he got whacked by one of those things in the knee cap. Ouch, poor bastard, ha! Anyway we started throwing whatever we could at them: beer bottles, rocks, whatever. Then they started back with tear gas. I was forewarned to bring a pair of swimming goggles and a bandana to cover my face with. I had the goggle that someone had given me but I didn’t have a bandana and when the tear gas hit, holy fuck! So I ended up using my misfits t-shirt to cover my face. Thenthey started with the water cannon, and man that thing could give out a healthy dose of water. It was funny as hell watching people get blasted with that thing!

  The cops kept pushing us down the hill towards downtown and this must have gone on for a couple of hours. So we raided a store for lots of beer and smokes and went and found somewhere quiet to sit down and drink for a bit. We were on our way to find somewhere to sleep, I think, since the riot had died down and uptown was in ruins. We were walking down the street when I saw a half broken window and decided I was going to finish it off so I kicked the rest of it out and from the back of me I hear “Hey, you!” I knew right away that they were cops so I took off running, only to be caught a couple of blocks away. I hid down some stairs, but should have kept running. They caught me a couple of minutes after and started to beat me up. 

  I found myself in jail. I was sentenced to two months for participating in a riot, well worth every minute because it was the best experience of my life. The juvie jail was fun as hell there, too. I was really lucky that I was a juvie because people that were over 18 were getting like 7 years for that shit. Well, I did a month and a half and then they sent me back to Nova Scotia to do the last two weeks. They sent me back because I was only 16 and they couldn’t release me on my own. I also had a warrant in Nova Scotia for skipping out on my probation. I ended up in Waterville, NS for my last two weeks. When I got out I thought for sure the cops were going to be waiting for me to get me for those warrants but nope, they just gave me a bus ticket for Sydney, Cape Breton. I ended up only taking it to Halifax then jumped on the highway. I was going back to Montreal. Fuckin’ right I was!

  On my way back I stopped at my grandparents house in Moncton to say hi. The funniest thing happened… for me anyway. I knew where Grampy had kept his liquor, well, since forever, but this time I took a 40oz of vodka. He kept it under the sink in the kitchen and the bathroom was right there so I grabbed the bottle, went in the bathroom and mixed a drink, but when it came time to put the bottle back he was in the kitchen so I had to hide it in the towels ‘till later. So, I take my drink and go downstairs to watch the hockey game and proceed to get wasted. I made a few drinks in between but I needed a break after a couple so I decide I’m going to go down the road to Tim Horton’s to get a coffee, leaving my half-drunk glass hidden under the bed downstairs. So, I go get a coffee and when I get back downstairs my grandfather had my drink on the table, so he says to me “Pretty strong drink you have there, Mark.” He tells me if I just give him his bottle back I can have another one when I finish that one. So I tell him why I couldn’t put it back earlier and go to the bathroom and get it and give it to him, well when I finished my drink and asked for another he told me I had too much! Fucker blackmailed me! After the fact I found it funny. Out of my family my dad, grandparents, aunt and brother are the only ones I care about or talk to. My grandparents died ten years ago. If there’s a heaven they’re in it.

  I ended up getting into a fight with some neighborhood kids the next day and got beat up but my grandmother refused to call the cops. That’s how awesome she was, by saying “Mark will only get in trouble.” That was a solid woman right there. 

  I hit the road the next day back to Montreal and when I got back I couldn’t find anyone on St Catherine. I was told everyone was up on St. Laurent at Ave de Pins. So I headed up there and found everyone outside the grocery store 4 freres. This corner became my stomping grounds over the years.

  I met this hippy type kid named Todd and we hit it off good so we started to hang out and get fucked up all the time. The twins who I became good friends with were selling liquid LSD at this time and had a place right around the corner where everybody hung out all the time.

  Around this time was when I first seen someone high on heroin. I remember it was a really big deal for me back then. I remember giving this girl, Anic, shit for using it. There was a saying back then, “Punks not junk.” I find it funny now.

  There was this wicked punk bar that we used to go to called Lonnie’s on St. Laurent and Rachel. This place was awesome especially for a 16-year-old kid. I didn’t get ID'd and the place was always bumping. One night this girl walke din there and she was so fuckin’ hot I fell in love right there. After a couple weeks drooling over her I gt up enough nerve to talk to her and she told me her name was Fredrique so we ended up hanging out but I never did fuck her, which sucked.

  The funniest thing happened but it was scary as well. One night we went back to a squat downtown and when she went to go in the first step she took she bottomed out and she went right through it. Luckily it was only a few feet she fell. She could have fuckin’ really hurt herself or died! She’s a kick-boxer now and kicking ass even though I haven’t seen her in a while.

  I remember the first sentence I learned to say in French. One day we were all sitting in Berri park and buddy Dutun says to me “Hey Mark, go task these girls over there tu sus ta bien.” I forget what he told me it meant but I should’ve known better. So I walk up to these two chicks and ask them that. Well I tell you I almost got fuckin’ slayed. They were all over in the corner just laughing their asses off. So I go back over and ask him what I had just said and he tells me I just asked them if they suck good? Fuckin’ prick! No, it was totally funny!

  Around this time I met the Devil. Todd asked me if I wanted to shoot some coke. I was curious, so what the hell, let’s get it going. Man, that first hit I did I fell in love. I remember all I was saying for like 20 minutes was “Need to go find Fredrique, need to go find Fredrique.” It was the beginning of life of me being trapped in a bottomless pit that I still, 21 years later, haven’t climbed out of yet.

  I started staying up for ten days straight eating nothing but maybe a peanut butter sandwich from a drop-in center, called the Bunker, or a few donuts from the dumpster across the street from the hotel/shooting gallery that I ended up staying at with Jeff and Rich from Toronto. They had shown up from Toronto and were renting a room there. I remember one night I told Rich to wake me up if I fell asleep. God knows how many days I had been up for but I ended up falling asleep and waking up at like 2:30 in the morning and Rich was gone. MAn, I started to cry. I wanted a hit that bad. I was pissed because I couldn’t make 20 bucks by myself at that hour. I wanted to kill Rich.

  This guy,  Corey, that was staying there as well, had a pitbull named Stark. Well, this dog had the bare minimum to eat, and was basically mentally abused so he was fucked in the head. One day I came back to the room and when I went in Stark freaked the fuck out, lungiing and snapping at me. I fRich wouldn’t have had a hold of his leash I would’ve gotten mauled by this fuckin’ huge pitty. But who could blame him for being so fucked up?

  We were staying on the third floor and they sold coke downstairs on the second floor 24/7. Early one morning me and this girl were coming back from squeegeeing and we got a quarter gram of coke each and went upstairs to do it. I had the keys for the room but it was early and we didn’t want to wake anyone up and more importantly we didn't want to share! The whole floor shared a bathroom so we went in there to fix. So I do half of my shit, come out of the bathroom ringing like a motherfucker, the other half of my shit in my needle in one hand and I go to open Jeff’s door with the other hand. Bang! The fire exit door behind me comes crashing down. It was like 15 cops with guns drawn. So I squirt my shit out and drop the needle behind me. They run over, throw me and this girl up against the wall and cuff us. They ended up taking me to the police station because I’m only 16 and I’m not allowed to be on my own, especially in a shooting gallery with track marks all over my arms and looking like I hadn’t ate or showered in two months. They ended up calling my grandparents. Imagine.. “We found your grandson in a shooting gallery and he has track marks everywhere and looks like he’s about to die.” Well I felt like shit after the cops told me they had called them. 

  Well, my grandparents bailed me out per se, but they bought me a bus ticket back to Moncton. If they hadn’t have done that I would have been in Juvie ‘till I turned 18. So the cops stuck me on the greyhound. That was two weeks before Christmas ‘96.

  All I did for the two weeks that I stayed there was eat a lot, sleep all day and occasionally rub one off. My parents ended up coming down from Cape Breton and that was really, really awkward. After Christmas they bought me a bus ticket back to Montreal and gave me a little bit of cash. They knew I’d just run away again anyway.

  Well what do you think the first thingI did when I got back was? The hotel that they sold coke at was right across the street from the greyhound station on St. Hubert st. So I walk 30 seconds across the street and I get three quarter grams then walk back across the street to Cactus the needle exchange and then another 30 seconds to the back alley and off we go.Only this time was different. When I started to get high I was starting to get super paranoid looking everywhere thinking the pigs were coming for me. Over the years this progressed to the point of me being literally frightened thinking people are going to kill me, even my best friend.

  This went on for the winter. Jeff had lost the room so I went back up the hill and started getting high with Todd. We were squatting in an abandoned church on the corner of St. Laurent and Sherbrook. It was fuckin’ disgusting. Fuckin’ huge rats would run over you at night. It’s a wonder none of us got bit. There were like 10 of us staying there. One January night in the middle of the night, this coke head that played stupid recorder for money that we all hated wakes us up and asks us if we had an extra blanket. We tell him no because we really didn’t. If we had one we would have gave it to him. We might hate him but we weren’t going to let the poor bastard freeze to death. So what does he do? He goes downstairs and lights a mattress on fire and runs out of there. If it wouldn’t have been for Todd waking up and smelling the smoke it might have turned out real bad.

  When you were coming into the squat or leaving you had to go up the back stairs, climb this metal contraption thingy, walk across a roof and up some stairs. When Todd woke us up I freaked and ran out with Todd behind me. It could have cost our lives because where he had started the fire was right under the roof we had to cross, so we were lucky it didn’t fall under us! We made it out and ran across the road to the Esso to tell them to call the fire department and that there’s eight people in the church that’s burning. Lucky for us the fire department is just down the street, on Ontario st, so they were there in a couple minutes.

  It was kind of funny seeing them all standing three stories up looking out the broken window, half of them are still high on PCP, the other half drunk or hungover wondering if they're going to die! So the fire trucks are coming, screaming up the road, making a big scene and they had to use the ladder truck to bring everyone down to safety. After this day, I have a huge respect for firefighters. The slickest thing I’ve ever seen in my life was when the firefighter went to take Syd’s dog, Why, out of the window. Syd was passing Why out to him and he dropped her but managed to grab her by the collar. Wow, that was close! Why would have probably died if she fell. We all made it out okay, so that was god. The next day we found that fucker that lit the fire and fucked him up. That piece of shit! He tried to kill us!

  I was squeegeeing on the corner one night and this older woman came by and gave me five bucks. I’d seen her around the neighborhood a few times so I guessed that she lived in the area. Well, it turned out that we started talking and she had a place right above the pizza shop a block from the squeegee corner, and she invited me back to her place to get something to eat and take a shower if I wanted.

  We ended up becoming good friends. Her name was Baja, and she is like a feminist dyke/bi chick that will kill you if you don’t do the dishes properly. She was living with this gay guy named Douglas that was an AIDS activist but ironically died of AIDS a few years later by getting pounded in the poop chute.

  Baja had a car and would let me drive sometimes so that was fun. I used to take her keys at night and drive down to St. Hubert to get coke. I remember the day she was riding her bike and she stopped to say hi. She told me that she had a place two hours away in the country and if I wanted to come up there and stop coke for 10 days she would give me as many blow jobs as I wanted! And then she smiled and rode off. It was funny. Everyone thought we were up to something but we never fucked or anything like that. 

  I caught scabies soon after and gave them to her and all her working class friends. Surprisingly she didn't get that mad. I think today she would kill me though! We still talk today but when I go to visit her it doesn’t take too long for her to start freaking out at me so I don’t hang around too long. That’s her feminist side that comes out. “Fucking men!” she would always be whispering under her breath.