Me Mom & Morgentaler • Deja Voodoo • Mado Lamotte • Ellen Gabriel • Francine Pelletier • Ivan • Michael Pintard and amuna baraka-clarke • Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick • Pascale Bussières • Steve Galluccio • Michel Tremblay • James DiSalvio • Nicole Brossard • Édouard Lock • Mack Mackenzie • David Fennario • John Kastner • GrimSkunk • Cecil Seaskull • Gros Michel • Ian Stephens • Great Antonio • Harry Mayerovitch • Robin Spry • François Gourd • The Gruesomes • Tiga • Five poor neighbourhoods

In memoriam

Five Mirror cover subjects who have since passed on

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Time stops for no one, and so mortality inevitably plays a part in any retrospective. Many people who have appeared in the Mirror, not to mention some of its contributors, have died over the course of 20 years, of causes natural or other. Below are five characters, now deceased, who have appeared on the cover of the Mirror, thanks to their contribution to the city’s cultural, intellectual and artistic scenes.

Gros Michel (d. 1991) The cover of the April 29, 1988, Mirror featured Foufounes bouncer and legendary nice guy “Gros Michel” Larouche—more specifically, his enormous belly—for the bar’s fifth anniversary as the nexus of Montreal’s underground. “There aren’t words big enough to encompass the character and girth of this Foufounes mascot,” wrote Marian Macnair at the time. Indeed: many a young music fan saw their first live show at the venue, thanks in large part to Gros Michel’s liberal interpretation of legal age limits. The Harley-riding doorman also founded the peintures de fesses evenings, in which lucky artists could paint his very large rear. When he died of a heart attack in August 1991, tipping the scales, according to some estimates, at 350 pounds, Notes From Underground columnist Jenny Ross described him as a “tough, gentle guy whose biggest part was his heart.” He was 34. Ross died in July, 2002.

Ian Stephens (d. 1996) Singer/poet/Mirror contributor Ian Stephens’ cover story on living with AIDS appeared on the May 5, 1994 cover. His first-person story, “A weary state of grace: Clowns, gowns, drugs and blood—a patient’s perspective,” traces his encounters with never-ending hospital stays, tests, drugs and his own helpless anger. Revered by many of today’s generation of poets, Stephens was generally considered a spoken word pioneer, not to mention an often caustic literary critic for the Mirror. Out and outspoken, in 1992 he released Wining, Dining, Drilling, a punk rock/spoken word CD with titles like “Loser With a Hard-on,” “Coroner Wants a Kiss,” “I Started to Get Sick in New York” and “The AIDS Guy.” He died in March 1996 of AIDS-related complications.

Great Antonio (d. 2003) The titanic actor/strongman/wrestler/oddball was born Antonio Barichievich 80 years ago in Zagreb, Croatia. On the cover of the May 12, 1994 Best of Montreal issue (the week after Stephens’s cover), Mirror readers voted the Great Antonio Best Great Montrealer. He agreed: In the article, he boasted to Al South that “The Great Antonio is more popular than the Pope. There is no human being on the planet like the Great Antonio.” He achieved fame in the 1950s for pulling buses and other feats of strength, as well as his long, matted, tangled hair. In his later years, he turned his hair into a golf club and challenged Tiger Woods to a match. The stakes: $100-million. Woods didn’t accept it. Despite winning numerous consecutive Best Montreal Weirdo awards, the Great Antonio faded precipitously as he grew older. He was often spotted sitting alone in his “office,” a Dunkin’ Donuts on Beaubien and St-Michel, or in the Berri metro station selling postcards of himself in action. He died of a heart attack in 2003, age 77.

Harry Mayerovitch (d. 2004) Born in 1910, Harry Mayerovitch was a Class-A kind of guy: artist, author, architect and accordion player, so it was no wonder the Blue Metropolis literary festival celebrated him in 2004 as “Montreal’s oldest living hipster.” Besides being a celebrated artist—from his wartime career drawing propaganda posters at the NFB to his last book, Way to Go, published by Drawn & Quarterly—he was also an adjunct professor at McGill’s School of Architecture. As Sarah Musgrave wrote in her March 25, 2004 story, he confronted mortality largely through humour, still working at his easel and still keeping in touch with the younger generation of artists. “I feel part of the scene, so to speak,” he told Musgrave. “This is luck on my part, to have all my marbles, I still do the things I want to do.” On his 94th birthday, April 16, 2004, three weeks after appearing on the cover of the Mirror, Mayerovitch died in his sleep.

Robin Spry (d. 2005) The Montreal film director/producer was interviewed by Suzan Ayscough for the August 26, 1988 Mirror cover story about his latest movie, Obsessed, in competition at the World Film Fest. The movie revolves around the mother of a young Canadian boy who was killed in a hit-and-run by an American, and her subsequent search for justice. Spry’s five-decade career spanned both film and TV, and won 10 Genies, three Geminis and a BAFTA. Spry’s 1973 documentary Action: The October Crisis of 1970, won seven Genies alone, and was followed by Reaction: A Portrait of a Society in Crisis the next year. In 1982, disillusioned with government bureaucracy at the NFB, he left and joined Montreal production company Téléscene. Other credits include 1989’s Malarek and 1993’s The Myth of the Male Orgasm, both Montreal-set and made. Spry died on March 28, 2005, in a car accident, age 65.