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Dueling dildos >> Two sex-shop owners sling mud over city zoning regulations by PHILIP PREVILLE
Perron's Boutique Séduction--apparently among the largest sex shops in the world at 6,000 square feet of lingerie, massage oils, condoms, X-rated videos and magazines, vibrators, dildos, butt plugs, blow-up dolls and one two-and-a-half-foot long, eight-inch diameter rubber penis--closed its doors for good on September 17. Séduction's shutdown was the culmination of a five-year legal battle which began immediately after the erotic megastore opened in June of 1993, when neighbouring Club Sexe filed a complaint with the city. The final nail in Séduction's coffin was hammered down by the Supreme Court of Canada, which refused to hear Perron's appeal after the Quebec Superior Court ruled against him. "I think the whole thing is ridiculous," says Perron, who insists that Séduction was a respectable erotic boutique and lingerie store. "The city's zoning regulations basically prohibit nice establishments and encourage seedy porno shops." The entire drama has exacerbated tensions between the two owners, who were once business partners. Moreau used to sell Perron's dildos and blow-up dolls when the latter was just an importer; now, there's no love lost between them. "The city went to court to defend a man who has a criminal record for selling pornography," says Perron of Moreau. "All of my merchandise was perfectly legal. But this is the kind of individual the city wants to do business with." Moreau was visibly surprised when confronted with the accusations by the Mirror. "All my previous run-ins with the law were battles over his [Perron's] merchandise, back when I used to sell his stuff," says Moreau. "I was fighting his battles for him." What's more, Moreau says he made Perron into the successful businessman he is today. "He was importing plain nylon vibrators. And I kept telling him, 'That stuff is boring. Get me some lifelike rubber penises. Get me some blow-up dolls.' He didn't think they'd sell, but I knew they would. They sold like crazy." City of Montreal zoning regulations for sector C5C (Ste-Catherine between Guy and Papineau) require that erotic boutiques be at least 25 metres from one another. Since Club Sexe had been in business since 1981, Séduction had to shut down. "Séduction was taking away all the good clients--the couples and madams," says Moreau. Perron is currently looking for a new location for Séduction, but says it may be impossible to find. For one, sector C5C is the only sector in which new erotic businesses are allowed to set up shop (sex shops located in any other part of the city were there before the zoning regulations were adopted, and could not be shut down). For another, says Perron, "I don't merely have to be 25 metres away from another erotic store. I also have to be 100 metres away from any park, hospital, school, library, even from any pinball arcade!" All of which has Perron considering yet another legal battle. "What I'm doing isn't illegal, and the city has no right to prohibit me from doing business. They can control erotic boutiques, but they can't forbid them. That's basically what the zoning laws amount to-a prohibition."
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If you ask Claude Moreau, owner of the Club Sexe erotic boutique on the north side of Ste-Catherine at Clark, justice has finally been served. But if you ask Claude Perron, owner of the erotic superboutique Séduction on the south side of Ste-Catherine at Clark, he is the victim of a grave miscarriage of justice.