Robert Ménard (10 June 1934 – 16 August 2016), better known as "Shotgun Bob", was a Canadian policeman. In 2016, the journalist Tu Thanh Ha described Ménard as a "legendary" policeman in Montreal famed for his intelligence and toughness.
Contents
From delinquent to policeman
Ménard was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec into a working class French-Canadian family, the son of Hector Ménard and Cécile Robidas, and grew up in Cookshire. As a youth, he was frequently in trouble with the law owing to his petty crimes. Ménard's father served in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War and was killed in the line of duty. His widowed mother worked in a variety of jobs in Montreal to support her children. At the age of 12, Ménard planned to rob a bank, which led him to be placed "in care" at a Catholic reform school. Ménard recalled that the beatings and whippings he endured from the Catholic priests led to a change in attitude as he stated: "You had the choice of either remaining a little punk or shaping up. I chose to shape up." Ménard afterwards served in the Canadian Army and then worked for the Canadian National railroad.
In 1958, he applied for the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal and was refused under the grounds of his criminal record. Ménard then asked for the help of his Catholic priest teachers, a Brother Julien, who was able to persuade the police to accept Ménard. In the spring of 1959, Ménard joined the Montreal police as a constable. He was assigned to station 14 in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighborhood. On his first shift, he arrested two automobile thieves after a chase down the streets.
In 1960, he was assigned to the intelligence section of the police and used for undercover work. Ménard's first undercover mission was to infiltrate an illegal gambling house. Menard was assigned to infiltrate a Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) cell in the 1960s, and found himself being subjected to numerous political Marxist discussion meetings alongside readings of the poems by Charles Baudelaire, whose poetry the FLQ adored, but which Menard hated. Ménard said of Baudelaire's poetry: "I fucking hate that stuff." The working class Ménard described the FLQ members he knew as a group of intellectuals-turned-terrorists whose fondness for poems by Baudalaire and Marxist tracts he found difficult to endure. Ménard's alias of a hippie poet led to the arrest of the FLQ cell, who were planning several bombings. During Expo 67, Ménard adopted the guise of a cab driver to foil a FLQ bombing plot. Over the course of his police career, Ménard adopted 17 different identities. In a 2006 speech, Ménard stated about undercover work: "You have to be a good actor to do this job. You have to have the instinct of the hunter and control your fear". Ménard married Carolyn Galloway, by whom he had two children, Joelle and Marc. His marriage ended in divorce.
The Violi assignment
In December 1970, Ménard was assigned to infiltrate the Cotroni family by renting an apartment just above the Reggio Bar owned and managed by Paolo Violi, the underboss of the Cotroni family. Ménard brought along an attractive blond buxom woman who played the role of his "wife" who was actually the girlfriend of a policeman. Ménard's "wife" served to distract the lecherous Violi who kept staring at her breasts. After starting suspiciously at Ménard, Violi agreed to rent the apartment to him largely because he liked his "wife". Ménard who used the alias Robert Wilson was supposed to go undercover for three months, but instead served undercover for about five years and paid $125 per month for a small apartment just above the Reggio Bar. Ménard recalled about the bugs he installed all over the Reggio Bar: "Violi couldn't go anywhere in the building without us hearing what he said." The wiretapes planted by Ménard showed that Violi viewed him as a "big, dumb mook". The police gave "Robert Wilson" a false criminal record with convictions for numerous petty crimes to avoid attracting the suspicion of Violi. Ménard described himself in a 2012 interview as playing a "slightly silly" electrician, which served to disarm any suspicions that Violi might hold against him.
Ménard under his Wilson identity hardly spoke at all to Violi during his first two years as his tenant and was most surprised when Violi wanted to speak over a meal of pizza and wine in 1972. Peter Edwards, the crime correspondent of The Toronto Star newspaper wrote: "Imagine Gene Hackman with twelve cups of coffee in his system and you have a pretty good picture of Bob Ménard. You would never catch Ménard saying he liked Paolo Violi, although it is clear he had a certain respect for him." Ménard described Violi and his fellow Mafiosi as a better class of criminals than the French-Canadian bank robbers who shot off most of his leg during a failed robbery attempt in 1985. Menard stated that Violi's eyes had "intelligence, but ruthlessness. Total ruthlessness. Paolo would kill, but he'd do it in a much more intelligent way....You want to know the difference? They [French-Canadian bank robbers] will kill you indiscriminately, for no reason, while Paolo would kill you if he had to for power and for position and for advantage. That's the difference...They'll [French-Canadian bank robbers] kill because they don't like you having a toothpick in your mouth. That's the difference here. Goddamn animals. Nothing else...Paolo would use killing as a means to an end, a method. If you kill someone that you're trying to gather money from-unless you want to use him as an example-what the hell's the use use of killing a source of revenue?...That's not businesslike. Real smart guys don't kill until it absolutely has to be done."
The Night Squad
After the Violi assignment was completed, Ménard was assigned to the Night Squad. During his time with the night squad, Ménard was involved in a brawl with Normand Dubois, one of the 9 Dubois brothers at 4: 30 am in a back ally. The journalist Tu Thanh Ha wrote: "... the police had no qualms about meting out violence when dealing with career criminals. He [Ménard] recalled clearing outlaw bikers from a bar by approaching the leader and smashing his flashlight on the man's face." As a member of the Night Squad, Ménard played a key role in bringing down the Dubois brothers, though as Langton noted that methods used by the "notorious Night Squad" were quite ruthless and "... would not necessarily be approved of by outsider observers." Ménard's partner André Kourie stated: "When there were night club raids, Bob would come up on stage with his .12 [shotgun] and yell, 'Nobody move, your hands on the table!' It did not persist!" The fact that Ménard always had a shotgun with him during his Night Squad work led to him having the nickname "Shotgun Bob".
The Homicide and Robbery Squad
Ménard was then assigned to the homicide and robbery squad in 1980. During one robbery which he was only supposed to observe, Ménard chased, took down and arrested the thieves as they fled. Kourie recalled: "He couldn't help himself. Each time he saw a bad guy he had to run after him. It was tiring for us." In September 1984, Ménard used his shotgun to wound a bank robber during a shoot-out. On 31 January 1985, Rock Blais, a thief who had robbed a Steinberg's grocery store, pointed his rifle at Ménard, who used his shotgun to kill Blais. A judicial review ruled that Ménard was justified in killing Blais, a violent career criminal, who had pointed his gun at him.
On 28 March 1985, Ménard was involved in a shoot-out with two bank robbers in LaSalle. A bank had been robbed of $13, 232 at gunpoint by two thieves, Christian Bouchard and Marc Lorange. Ménard responded to the robbery call and a shoot-out ensured where some 143 bullets were fired. During the shoot-out, Ménard killed Lorange with his shotgun. In the course of the shoot-out, Ménard was shot in the chest and in both legs. He recalled: "It felt like I was hit by a baseball bat. I saw the blood come out like a fountain." Ménard said of the robbers who shot him: "Look in their eyes. What do you see? You see hatred. You see no fucking soul. You know what I see? I see an animal."
Retirement
Ménard was forced into a desk position because of his wounds. At the same time, his son Marc died of brain cancer, which greatly saddened him. Marc Ménard had followed his father into police work and had just joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In 1989, Ménard retired after 30 years on the police force. Ménard settled in the Pointe-Claire district. The information collected by Ménard between 1970 and 1975 in Montreal was so useful to the police that he was declared an honorary citizen of Agrigento to honor him for his anti-Mafia work. The information collected by Ménard led to several convictions of Mafiosi in Italy. In his acceptance speech given in Agrigento in Italian in 2005, Ménard stated that the honor was not due to him, but rather all his colleagues on the Montreal police force. In 2016, he was the subject of the documentary Shotgun Bob. Ménard died of a heart attack in 2016.
Books
Cedilot, Andre; Noel, Andre (2012). Mafia Inc. The Long, Bloody Reign of Canada's Sicilian Clan. Toronto: Random House of Canada. ISBN 9780307360410.
Edwards, Peter (1990). Blood Brothers: How Canada's Most Powerful Mafia Family Runs Its Business. Toronto: Key Porter Books. ISBN 155013213X.
Langton, Jerry (2015). Cold War How Organized Crime Works in Canada and Why It's About to Get More Violent. Toronto: HarperColllins. ISBN 978-1-4434-3255-9.
Schneider, Stephen (2009). Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada. Toronto: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0470835005..