The Mystery of the Great Antonio, the Montreal Giant Who Could Pull Buses | The Walrus

Intro to the article:

How one of Canada’s legendary figures turned self-invention into an art form

There’s a story my mother has told so often it’s burned into my brain and has become a family legend. In 1980, when I was four, I was walking with her on avenue Papineau in Montreal, eating ice cream. A shadow fell over us: a mammoth of a man with an iron towing chain around his neck, his long, matted dreads interwoven with rope and capped with electrical tape. My mother was afraid and yanked me back but wasn’t quick enough to stop his giant hand from alighting on my head—with a softness that rivalled hers.

What happened next is my addition to the story. He turned left on rue Beaubien and found his true target: a bus full of passengers stopped at a red light. Seeing noses pressed to the glass and onlookers starting to gather, he attached his chain to the bumper, barked at the driver to put the gear into neutral, and started to pull. The light turned green, but traffic didn’t dare move. At first, the wheels didn’t turn, but he kept rocking. The bus finally gave, first a few inches and then a few feet. The giant opened his mouth to the sky and let out a victory shout.

Meet Antonio Barichievich, a.k.a. the Great Antonio. The strongest man in the world.

At least, that’s what he called himself. Sometime in the early 1950s, the Great Antonio began pulling trains, cars, and buses in Montreal—either empty or full, with a chain or with his hair—and lifting whatever else he could. He travelled Canada throughout the late 1950s and ’60s, fighting bears, resisting horses, and wrestling up to ten men at a time and claiming to have never lost. He and his sweetheart and manager, Jeannine Larue, repeated these shows across the United States, including at Madison Square Garden, several times.