Canada

            It was quiet outside on Monday morning because Coffeetime downstairs was closed for Canada Day. A lot of the regulars that I usually see come up Dunn Avenue to cross the street to the donut shop instead walked west and came back with Tim Hortons.

            I finished translating the second verse of “Je Suis Snob” by Boris Vian:

Shirts of organdy, zebu-hide shoes

Ties from Italy with a fashionably moth eaten suit

A ruby ring on my foot, no the other one

A nice little handkerchief and a pitch black manicure

I only watch films of the Swedish cinema

and nip into the cafe to drink whisky à gogo

I don't get cirrhosis, nobody does that anymore

I have an ulcer, it's less common and costs a lot more

            I started memorizing “Pour des haricots” by Serge Gainsbourg. I couldn't find a YouTube video of the song and the only one that seems to exist online is a Daily Motion video. Daily Motion is less user friendly and draws viewers into a website in order to see its videos.

            For lunch I had a small piece of chicken and some yogourt and honey.

            I did some exercises and took a twenty-block bike ride.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            I boiled a potato, sautéed half an orange pepper with a zucchini, heated some gravy and a chicken leg and had them with a beer for dinner. I don’t normally drink beer of Mondays but since it was Canada Day I figured I’d make it special and have a Canadian beer.

            I watched an episode of The Untouchables. This story begins with Chicago's number two gangster Bugsy Moran kidnapping Larry, the young son of Halloran, the president of a small truckers union. Moran’s ransom demand is that Halloran recommend him as vice president of the union. He wants to turn the union into a million dollar enterprise by forcing other companies to let their employees join. Moran also threatens to throw acid into Halloran’s wife’s face if he doesn’t give in. Halloran agrees and his son is released. Halloran tries to get Patterson, the president of a big trucking company to let his men join the union to keep Moran from getting his tentacles in. Patterson says he doesn’t any part of a gangster union. Ironically Patterson has gangsters protecting his company from unions and they put Halloran in the hospital. Moran gives a charismatic and convincing speech at the union meeting and they almost unanimously vote him in as vice president. The union becomes much more successful in membership and in funds. When Patterson still refuses to allow the union into his company Moran kidnaps his adult son, Tom. Kidnapping is a state offence and that’s why the Untouchables couldn’t do anything when Halloran’s son was kidnapped but since Patterson’s firm does interstate trucking the feds can intervene. They assume that Tom is being held at the same place that Larry had been taken and Larry remembers the way. He leads the cops to the farmhouse. Meanwhile Tom is sitting on a couch in the farmhouse being watched by weird woman named Thelma who mostly just sits there laughing like a maniac. Moran gets a tip that the feds are moving in and so he tells his man to kill both Tom and Thelma and make it look like a jealous boyfriend discovered and murdered them. Tom is untied but is very weak. Thelma is trying to kiss him when the man shoots them both. The feds arrive too late and both Tom and Thelma are found dead. The union continues in mob control.

            Thelma was played by Barbara Stuart.

            The real Bugsy Moran was never involved in any kidnappings or with any unions. Bugsy Moran was the number two gangster in Chicago and Al Capone’s rival for control of the city. It was Moran’s men that were killed in the St Valentine’s Day Massacre. His birth name was Adelard Cunin and his parents had emigrated from France. He was in jail three times before turning 21. After moving to Chicago he spent another four times in jail. Bugs joined the Irish North Side Gang. When Bugs started his own bootleg operation he came into conflict with Capone but his opposition to Capone was more than competition. Moran hated Capone because he considered his involvement in prostitution to be immoral. The St Valentines Day massacre had been intended to kill Moran but he’d decided to sleep in that day. But the massacre weakened the gang and in the late 1930s Moran left and moved to Ohio. In the 1940s, seventeen years after being one of the richest gangsters in Chicago, Moran was almost broke. Subsequent robberies put him in Leavenworth Prison where he died in 1957 of lung cancer.