Blue Bird remembered by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR As her husband John slept upstairs on the evening of Labour Day, 1972, Mary McGimpsey and her daughter played Scrabble in their Ville d'Anjou kitchen. Their other daughter, Kathryne, a 20-year-old Sunday school teacher, office clerk and recent graduate of Dunton High, was at the Wagon Wheel, a downtown country-music club, upstairs from the Blue Bird Café. "My daughter didn't drink because she was on a diet, she said it was the only place you could get a Coke or something and they wouldn't laugh." When the radio reported a fire on the west side of Union street between Ste-Catherine and Dorchester, Mary and John, who had already lost another daughter to a never-apprehended hit-and-run driver 11 years before, rushed downtown. "I remember jumping over a fence, like they had it cordoned off. I panicked like everything. My husband went to the morgue; it was a nightmare. We were so damn heartbroken and crushed." Kathy McGimpsey died 27 years ago this September first, along with her companion that night, Linda Livingstone, who had recently moved here from Ireland with her family. In all, the flames and smoke claimed 37 mostly working-class, English-speaking youth. Three young drunks, who had set the blaze after being refused entry, were sentenced to life in prison for the reckless homicidal stunt. But it was the men in suits who came from the ashes to make the tragedy worse. As the bar's fire exit had been blocked, it was widely assumed that the Fire Department and the owner of the bar, Leopold Paré, would be financially accountable for the disaster. The lawyer for the victims' families spoke of a $9-million suit against the city, club owner and land-owner, who united to fight the families of the deceased. But the families' lawyer, Colin Gravenor Jr. (who it gives me no pride to admit is my half-brother) was inexperienced and no match for the tight-fisted Drapeau-led coalition in court. "We went to court once and the city lawyers asked if Kathy drank, what hours she kept and so on," says McGimpsey. "It was like she was on trial." Gravenor Junior eventually recommended that the families accept the ludicrously low offer of $1,000 to $3,000 per deceased. Drapeau--who around the same time had no trouble finding hundreds of millions for the Olympics--even tried to pressure the families by threatening that everybody would lose the paltry settlement if anybody held out. "So my daughter's life was worth $1,000," says McGimpsey. "I've long since forgiven the three boys who set the blaze. But there are others I still blame." Paré, she says, simply re-opened a bar elsewhere. When John went through a depression following the event, his employers at Gulf Canada threatened to fire him. And though deep in mourning, McGimpsey still thought of others: when she heard of a pregnant mother widowed by the inferno, McGimpsey gave her a new crib. Sharon Share was the child who slept in it. "I never met my father, Jerry Share, who was 23 when he died three months before I was born. He was working as a car jockey at two different jobs. He called my mother at 10:30, saying he'd be home soon. The fire started at 10:45." "Dad and mom were sweethearts from age 17, when they were neighbours on Pacific street in the Pointe. He was the bread-winner--when he died our world turned upside down. The government kept sending mom these welfare cheques for eight dollars, but she kept sending it back because it was useless with four kids," says Share. "And to this day, my mom has never visited his gravesite because it would just be too upsetting for her." Today on Union street nothing marks the spot of the fire. The attendant at Popular Parking, where the bar once was, didn't know about it. Let us finally remember the 37 people we lost. And let the city compensate the families of the victims that Drapeau and the businesses hard-balled so mercilessly. Montreal has much to answer for. You can contact me at: kgravy@cam.org.