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Born on the first of July >> Montreal movers, the generals of the annual July 1 offensive, tell the weirdest war stories you've ever heard
by PHILIP PREVILLE Photo by Jason Felker
"Basically, I was moving garbage," Trudeau recalls. "There was no furniture and no boxes. Nothing but little white plastic grocery bags filled with their junk, the stuff they had collected off the street. They had enough to fill half my truck. They were both drunk, and when we got to their new place I just started tossing the bags off the back of my truck. It was really weird." Then there was the time he helped some guys move their pot plants. "They were new in the growing business, and they were totally nervous. They tried to hide it by putting all the plants into boxes. They thought we didn't know, but it was so obvious." Or the time the stairwell collapsed beneath their feet while they were carrying a refrigerator upstairs. "It wobbled, started to fall, then ended up leaning against the house. Nobody was hurt, but it put an early end to the day." Trudeau has an endless litany of strange, bizarre and unbelievable moving day stories like these. He's not alone: all experienced movers, like aging war veterans sipping beer at the Legion Hall, can talk your ear off with strange tales of danger and derring-do.
Police escorts And some of their stories truly resemble dramas from the theatre of war. "I've done dozens of midnight moves, often for women getting out of abusive situations," says "Uncle" Costa Alexandrakis who, like Trudeau, runs his own small moving company. "Often the jealous boyfriend shows up, he gets pissed off, starts yelling and making a scene. But he can't hit his girl in front of witnesses, so he decides he's going to take it out on me. I've never gotten into a fight, but I've come close many times." Amid all the bad scenes, there's one he remembers almost fondly. "I got a police escort out of Greenfield Park once," he says. "This guy had threatened to kill his girlfriend, and she'd gotten a restraining order. When we showed up to move her out, the cops were already there. They had the place surrounded, keeping an eye out for him while we packed the truck. Then we sped down Taschereau surrounded by police cruisers. Flashing lights, sirens, the whole bit." Cameron Campbell, who spent numerous summers working for a major moving company, says his worst memory of on-the-job assault involved a six-year-old child and a cardboard poster tube. "It was a big job, moving valuable stuff into an Old Montreal loft and Nephew came over to watch," he recalls. "The kid got all excited during the move, which is to be expected, but Auntie didn't do anything to keep him out of the way. He picked up the poster tube and whacked me in the balls with it. "He thought it was funny until I threatened to strangle him. I made the kid cry, but he retreated to a neutral corner after that."
Sexy, sordid tales And all veteran movers like to swap dildo stories. "Once I had to pack this woman's sex toys," says Campbell. "I started thinking about where they'd been and got really grossed out." Uncle Costa, however, one-ups Campbell with his yarn. "This one woman's dresser was falling apart, but she refused to empty it. When we got it down the stairs, the bottom fell out and dozens of dildos spilled out all over the road. Black ones, double-headers, everything. It was like a sex shop had exploded."
Both Sean (576-9261) and Uncle Costa (361-4104) are still available for moves. Cameron Campbell has gotten out of the moving business. Check the Mirror classifieds for other available movers |
Every July 1 for the past 12 years, Sean Trudeau has been moving Montrealers from one end of the city to another. But there is one move he remembers as the most bizarre of all, and also the most quintessentially symbolic of Montreal: the day he moved an aging bag lady and her street-beggar boyfriend from one run-down apartment to another.