{"id":22621,"date":"2013-03-27T08:41:55","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T12:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/?p=22621"},"modified":"2013-03-26T23:00:53","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T03:00:53","slug":"1950-54-caron-inquiry-montreal-in-the-grips-of-the-underworld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2013\/03\/27\/1950-54-caron-inquiry-montreal-in-the-grips-of-the-underworld\/","title":{"rendered":"1950-54 Caron Inquiry: \u201cMontreal in the grips of the underworld&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Part 3 in our history of corruption in Montreal. Check Spacing Montreal each day this week for the latest &#8220;episode&#8221; in this century-long soap opera.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Between 1949 and 1950, <i><span>Le <span>Devoir<\/span><\/span><\/i><span> ran 61 articles all written by <span>Pacifique<\/span> <span>Plante<\/span>, under the headline <\/span><i><span><span>Montr\u00e9al<\/span> sous <span>le<\/span> <span>r\u00e8gne<\/span> <span>de<\/span> la <span>p\u00e8gre<\/span><\/span><\/i><span>. During the 1940s, <span>Plante<\/span> had been chief of the police \u201cmorality squad\u201d and successfully shut down brothels, bookies, lotteries, after-hours watering holes \u2013 even church bingo sessions. He\u2019d had ambitions head the police force, before his rival, Chief <span>Langlois<\/span> landed him with a reprimand and eventually dismissed him from the force. Plante\u2019s descriptions of Montreal\u2019s underbelly in <\/span><i><span>Le <span>Devoir<\/span><\/span><\/i> were rich with scandalous, yet titillating details, gleaned during his years as a lawyer in the recorder\u2019s court, and then with the police morality squad.<\/p>\n<p><span>Incensed by this relentless media blitz, citizens formed a Public Morality Committee to demand an inquiry. <span>Plante<\/span> became chief prosecutor, despite the fact that several accusations within the police force had actually happened under his own watch. His assistant prosecutor was Jean <span>Drapeau<\/span>, a lawyer who had previously run in two provincial and two federal elections without success (even losing to Communist candidate Fred Rose in 1943).<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Judge Caron took on the impractical task of laying blame upon individual police officers and executive committee members for the general atmosphere of tolerance towards organized crime that had permeated the city for decades. 15,000 allegations were brought before court and in the end two dozen police were found guilty of infractions such as falsely reporting that they had padlocked a brothel door.<\/p>\n<p><span>It took Caron 17 months to produce his report. The same day as it was released, <span>Drapeau<\/span> announced his candidacy for mayor of Montreal, and was elected <span>soon thereafter<\/span>. <span>Plante<\/span> also won his dream job: he was appointed police chief. The Caron inquiry may as well have been a $500,000 publicity campaign by two politically ambitious men.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span>Drapeau<\/span> continued his morality campaign during the three decades that he remained mayor, going as far as clearing Mount Royal\u2019s undergrowth to prevent couples (particularly gay lovers) from taking a romp in the bushes. He might have been more effective at eradicating illegal gambling: he introduced Canada\u2019s first governmental lottery, originally called the \u201c<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/ville.montreal.qc.ca\/portal\/page?_pageid=165,230383&amp;_dad=portal&amp;_schema=PORTAL\">voluntary tax<\/a>,\u201d and opened the city\u2019s first casino.<\/p>\n<p><em>Much of the information summarized in this post originates from:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/classiques.uqac.ca\/contemporains\/brodeur_jean_paul\/delinquance_de_ordre\/delinquance_ordre.pdf\">La d\u00e9linquence de l\u2019ordre<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0<em>Jean-Paul Brodeur.\u00a0<em>Images from Montreal City Archives:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca\/archives\/democratie\/democratie_fr\/expo\/crises-reformes\/pegre\/index.shtm\">Montr\u00e9al sous la r\u00e8gne de la p\u00e8gre<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Part 3 in our history of corruption in Montreal. Check Spacing Montreal each day this week for the latest &#8220;episode&#8221; in this century-long soap opera. Between 1949 and 1950, Le Devoir ran 61 articles all written by Pacifique Plante, under the headline Montr\u00e9al sous le r\u00e8gne de la p\u00e8gre. During the 1940s, Plante had been<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2013\/03\/27\/1950-54-caron-inquiry-montreal-in-the-grips-of-the-underworld\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;1950-54 Caron Inquiry: \u201cMontreal in the grips of the underworld&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5022,"featured_media":22633,"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-22621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>1950-54 Caron Inquiry: \u201cMontreal in the grips of the underworld&quot; - 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\/27\/1950-54-caron-inquiry-montreal-in-the-grips-of-the-underworld\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"1950-54 Caron Inquiry: \u201cMontreal in the grips of the underworld&quot; - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Part 3 in our history of corruption in Montreal. Check Spacing Montreal each day this week for the latest &#8220;episode&#8221; in this century-long soap opera. Between 1949 and 1950, Le Devoir ran 61 articles all written by Pacifique Plante, under the headline Montr\u00e9al sous le r\u00e8gne de la p\u00e8gre. 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