{"id":904,"date":"2008-05-14T09:26:23","date_gmt":"2008-05-14T14:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/2008\/05\/14\/a-publicity-stunt-with-a-life-of-its-own\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:24:42","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:24:42","slug":"a-publicity-stunt-with-a-life-of-its-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/05\/14\/a-publicity-stunt-with-a-life-of-its-own\/","title":{"rendered":"A publicity stunt &#8220;with a life of its own&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/christopherdewolf\/2487142593\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2099\/2487142593_c0cef8dffb.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When I wrote on Sunday about the <a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/05\/12\/mouvement-boulevard-lucien-rivard\/\">Mouvement boulevard Lucien-Rivard<\/a>, I mused that the campaign to rename the Main after the 1960s gangster was one of the &#8220;quixotic quests&#8221; that are as much a part of Montreal&#8217;s history as any underworld hero. Many readers were a bit more cynical: they suggested that it was little more than a viral marketing campaign for Charles Binam\u00e9&#8217;s new movie, &#8220;Le pi\u00e8ge am\u00e9ricain,&#8221; starring R\u00e9my Girard as Lucien Rivard, which will be released this summer.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out those readers were right: Alan Hustak confirms in today&#8217;s Gazette that the MBLR is indeed a publicity stunt for the film. But Binam\u00e9 insists that the campaign was meant as &#8220;a joke, but it has taken on a life of its own, so we don&#8217;t know where this is all going.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;Rivard was an honourable bandit and honest thief,&#8221; said Gagnon, of the Mouvement Boulevard Lucien Rivard.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Who is more honest, someone who offers the bribe or the politician who takes it?&#8221; he asked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Rivard is more in tune with the unsavoury character of the lower Main than St. Lawrence, a 3rd-century Christian martyr. There are other streets in the city named for rebels and scoundrels, why not him? Rivard is famous &#8211; Canadian Press voted him Canada&#8217;s Newsmaker of the Year in 1965.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Others in the film industry and officials with city hall&#8217;s Commission de toponymie describe the publicity stunt as &#8220;ridiculous&#8221; and say it shouldn&#8217;t be taken seriously.<\/p>\n<p>There is already a Rivard St. in Montreal, named for S\u00e9v\u00e8re-Dominique Rivard, who was mayor in the 1880s.<\/p>\n<p>Gagnon hopes to get 10,000 signatures; as of last night, 726 had visited the website.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I wrote on Sunday about the Mouvement boulevard Lucien-Rivard, I mused that the campaign to rename the Main after the 1960s gangster was one of the &#8220;quixotic quests&#8221; that are as much a part of Montreal&#8217;s history as any underworld hero. Many readers were a bit more cynical: they suggested that it was little<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/05\/14\/a-publicity-stunt-with-a-life-of-its-own\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;A publicity stunt &#8220;with a life of its own&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":0,"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":[7830,7839],"tags":[2395,283,2394,2393,2373,346,125,2397,23,2396,2392,74,2391],"class_list":["post-904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-neighbourhoods","tag-alan-hustak","tag-canada","tag-charles-biname","tag-gagnon","tag-lucien-rivard","tag-mayor","tag-montreal","tag-politician","tag-posters","tag-remy-girard","tag-severe-dominique-rivard","tag-the-main","tag-viral-marketing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A publicity stunt &quot;with a life of its own&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\/2008\/05\/14\/a-publicity-stunt-with-a-life-of-its-own\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A publicity stunt &quot;with a life of its own&quot; - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I wrote on Sunday about the Mouvement boulevard Lucien-Rivard, I mused that the campaign to rename the Main after the 1960s gangster was one of the &#8220;quixotic quests&#8221; that are as much a part of Montreal&#8217;s history as any underworld hero. 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