{"id":22599,"date":"2013-03-25T08:45:04","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T12:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/?p=22599"},"modified":"2013-03-28T15:39:30","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T19:39:30","slug":"1909-montreal-saturated-with-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2013\/03\/25\/1909-montreal-saturated-with-corruption\/","title":{"rendered":"1909 Royal Commission: Montreal “Saturated with Corruption”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Montreal Corruption Retrospectives are\u00a0<\/em>all the rage<\/a> these<\/a>\u00a0days<\/a>, and for the spring 2013 edition of Spacing Magazine, which was released last Saturday, I put together a feature piece on corruption inquiries through the ages. Check Spacing Montreal each day this week for the latest “episode” in this century-long soap opera.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

“Il semble que le d\u00e9roulement d’une enqu\u00eate soit un processus cyclique o\u00f9 l’on passe du scandale \u00e0 l’indiff\u00e9rence.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIt seems that inquiry proceedings are a cyclical process in which we pass from scandal to indifference\u201d writes Jean-Paul Brodeur in his book La d\u00e9linquence de l\u2019ordre<\/a>, published in 1984 (which was the source of much of the info here).<\/p>\n

The \u201cRoyal Commission\u201d of 1909 may have been the first to invoke the monarchy, but it was not the first probe into corruption in Montreal, nor even the first of the century. Inquiries in 1864, 1877, 1894, 1902 and 1905 had been attempted, ignored, abandoned, aborted, and hushed up, respectively. So it is little surprise that by 1909 citizens were clamouring for a general and complete scrutiny of all seven departments of city hall (police, fire, roads, hygiene and statistics, finances, water, and lighting).<\/p>\n

Judge Lawrence Cannon, who headed the inquiry, concluded that city hall was \u201csaturated with corruption,\u201d with no less than 25% of the city\u2019s revenues making their way into the pockets of elected aldermen’s friends and family.<\/p>\n

For instance construction contracts were sub-divided to bypass calls for tender, then handed over to firms in the aldermen\u2019s inner circles. Furthermore, dozens of liquor-license infractions had been ignored when business owners contributed to election coffers, and a position in the police, detective or fire department could be negotiated for about $25.<\/p>\n

Cannon\u2019s scathing report, which convicted 23 of the city\u2019s 40 aldermen, was published in La Presse<\/i> shortly before the 1910 municipal election. Anticipating the political consequences of his revelations, Cannon specified that the next<\/em> elected city council would be responsible for implementing his recommendations.<\/p>\n

\"23<\/a>
23 of the 40 Montreal City Council aldermen were found guilty in the 1909 Royal Commission
Source: Ville de Montr\u00e9al Documents et Archives VM6,S10,D015.22-5<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The inquiry had far-reaching implications: the provincial government reduced the number of elected aldermen by half, a board of commissioners \u2013 which later became the executive committee \u2013 was created to oversee municipal services including the police force, and the police were endowed with a \u201cmorality squad.\u201d<\/p>\n

The citizens\u2019 committee that had launched the inquiry ran their own candidates and won the 1910 election by a landslide. But with new faces in office, the inquiry was quickly forgotten: none of those convicted in the report faced civil or criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

See the Judge Cannon’s report and recommendations<\/a>\u00a0on the City of Montreal website.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0caricature representing juge Lawrence John Cannon is from La Bombe, Sept 15 1909, and reproduced from Patrimoine, histoire et multim\u00e9dias blog<\/a> by Vicky Lapointe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Montreal Corruption Retrospectives are\u00a0all the rage these\u00a0days, and for the spring 2013 edition of Spacing Magazine, which was released last Saturday, I put together a feature piece on corruption inquiries through the ages. Check Spacing Montreal each day this week for the latest “episode” in this century-long soap opera. “Il semble que le d\u00e9roulement d’uneContinue reading “1909 Royal Commission: Montreal “Saturated with Corruption””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5022,"featured_media":22600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7837,7840],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n1909 Royal Commission: Montreal "Saturated with Corruption" - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2013\/03\/25\/1909-montreal-saturated-with-corruption\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"1909 Royal Commission: Montreal "Saturated with Corruption" - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Montreal Corruption Retrospectives are\u00a0all the rage these\u00a0days, and for the spring 2013 edition of Spacing Magazine, which was released last Saturday, I put together a feature piece on corruption inquiries through the ages. 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