Far from its colourful mayoral past, Montreal gives election candidates a collective yawn

Election day 1944 was just like any other in Montreal: rival candidates hired teams of thugs to smash windows and fire pistols at each other (17 men suffered bullet wounds), while “telegraphers” impersonated dead voters at the ballot box.

When the glass had been swept up and the results were tallied, the enormous, swaggering Mr. Montreal, Camillien Houde, had been re-elected, mere months after completing a four-year stint in a prison camp for urging French-Canadians to dodge military service. Dressed in spats, with a pearl-grey vest and an ascot tie under his morning coat, he twirled his Malacca cane all the way to City Hall.