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| Raymond Dubois |
| Raymond Dubois, the oldest of the nine brothers that would later achieve notorious reputations, was born in St-Henri in the early 1930s. Though he grew up in an environment of poverty, he was strong and intelligent. As children, Raymond was the leader of the pack, coming up with the ideas for many of the brothers' various scams and crimes. He got his first job when he was only ten years old, working as a deliverer for several of the neighborhood's pharmacies. He worked briefly for a florist and then, at the age of 17, became a milkman for the J.J. Joubert company. He immediately hired his brother Jean-Guy to be his assistant. He held several other jobs as well, including hauling around 100 pound bags of coal for Amcan Wood and Coal and as a janitor at a morgue and and a court house. |
Dubois and his brothers Jean-Guy, Claude, René and Normand were arrested in connection with a beating they had given to Robert Miron, a neighhorhood thug, in which a bystander was accidently killed. Miron admitted to the shooting but claimed it was only out of fear of the brothers. Raymond, who wasn't even at the bar when the attack took place, was released by a judge. By the late 1960s, Dubois was the manager of almost a dozen bars, including the Bar des Copains and the Bar Houde. From these taverns, police claim, Raymond ran a thriving loansharking operation. In December 1975, Dubois was called to testify before the CECO. He told the committee that much of his money came from gambling but denied that he extorted protection money from bars or committed other crimes. When asked how he managed to spend $39,000 in 1974 when he had only delcared $9,700 in income, he responded that he was "very lucky." Charles Houde, the owner of the Old Chum Bar Salon, told the CECO otherwise however. He said that when he opened his establishment in 1965, Raymond Dubois paid him a visit and explained that he'd have to pay $100 a week to operate. By late 1975, Houde claimed, he had paid the Dubois Gang more than $50,000. Over a decade later, in 1986, an informant in a narcotics case testified in court that the accused handed Raymond Dubois $20,000-$30,000 in drug profits every single week! Raymond Dubois was found dead in a room at the Au Repos motel in Laval on March 12, 1989. He had rented the room two days earlier and the manager of the motel found the body. The death was ruled a suicide. He was 57 years old. |