Fifteen years ago, Daniel Wickard, then councilman for Ville Marie, lost his 16 year old daughter to a drug overdose. Her death would set off a chain reaction that would culminate in the closure of countless rave venues, most of them on properties owned by various churches.

"There was a time in Montreal that you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a church full of ravers," says Jerome Gauthier, a former rave promoter. "The churches figured they were serving the community. Better for ravers to dance somewhere safe than in an abandoned building, you know?"

That all changed when Daniel Wickard's daughter, Lisa, overdosed on marijuana. "After Lisa died from smoking too much weed at a happy hardcore party, her dad went on the war path. He started harassing all the churches around Montreal , demanding that they stop renting out their property to ravers," says Jerome. "Wickard rallied the troops at city hall, and soon the mayor was pressuring the priests to kick the ravers out."

Raves migrated from church basements to abandoned factories and warehouses. "The city of Montreal pushed raving underground when they stopped churches from renting out their properties to party promoters," says David Noodleman, a 20 year veteran of the rave scene.

Recently, the church has begun reconsidering its party ban. "After our last mayor retired, several priests started reconsidering their no-raves policy," says Rev. Darren Boyard of the First Unitarian Church. "Children need somewhere to go, and we consider renting our basements to ravers as a form of community outreach. In the past, we made mistakes by not ensuring that the laws were properly enforced at these parties, but our church has teamed up with the police to guarantee that ravers have a safe and healthy environment to party in."

David Noodleman says it's a step in the right direction. "There's been half a dozen church parties over the last eight months, and that's a good thing. I think it's sad that Lisa died of a marijuana overdose. I understand why the city decided they had to intervene, but I don't think banning churches from renting out their property to raves was the right move. All that did was shift raving into sketchier locations. Instead of dying of marijuana overdoses in church, ravers were dying of marijuana overdoses in abandonned buildings."

Horrible sights are par for the course when you work as a paramedic, but nothing could have prepared Tyrone Cadwell for what he saw last Tuesday night when he made a visit to renowned psytrance DJ Powder's apartment. "Being a paramedic isn't for the faint of heart, but even I had trouble stomaching the terrible things I saw that night," says Tyrone. "I've seen bodies covered in third degree burns, I've seen throats slashed all the way through, I've seen torsos riddled with bullets, but i've never seen a man cut off his own hand and eat it."

A neighbour of DJ Powder called 911 after they noticed blood seeping through his apartment door. Tyrone and his partner Jessica Smith arrived within minutes of being dispatched. "The victim had left his door unlocked. When we entered his apartment, we discovered him passed out in a pile of his own blood, his face covered in a film of white powder, his left hand clutching on to the crimson meaty rump of what was left of his right hand," says Jessica. "I almost lost my lunch when I noticed the plate on his kitchen table. It had his half eaten hand on it."

Tyrone was rushed to the hospital, where doctors managed to save his life. "He lost a lot of blood," says Dr. Christina Cavis, "but he was brought to us in time, so we were able to patch him up and keep him alive."

The police say they've never seen anything quite like it. "We interviewed DJ Powder after his condition stabilized," says Lt. Scott Lewis, "which is when he told us that he ate his own hand in order to become famous."

Police say that DJ Powder was alone at home, ruminating over the declining popularity of psytrance music. "This young man was desperate to revive the flagging fortunes of the musical genre he had dedicated his life to," says Lt. Lewis. "He got high on ketamine, and during the middle of his trip, decided that the only way he could make psytrance popular again was if he was more hardcore than Vincent Van Gogh, the painter who famously cut off his ear. He figured if he cut off and ate his own hand, he'd make headlines around the world, and people would rush out to download his songs on iTunes."

DJ Powder's prediction came true. "Cannibalism is the new Gangnam Style," says marketing expert Didier Duval. "Two weeks ago, no one had ever heard about DJ Powder, but right now, his songs are topping the charts. Cannibalism might be an extreme form of marketing, but it works. Everyone's listening to psytrance now."

Scooter Braun, Justin Bieber's manager, is rumoured to have met with DJ Powder within days of his album hitting the top of the charts.

"If the rumours are true," says Didier, "and Mr. Braun really is interested in signing DJ Powder on as a client, it just goes to show that succeeding in the musical industry these days requires a stomach that can handle a bit of human meat."

DJ Powder couldn't be reached for comment, though he did update his twitter feed after being released from the hospital. "Tasted like pork," is all he wrote.

Pugnacious party promoter James Dunkirk was taken into custody on Sunday after a dozen police officers laid siege to his single bedroom apartment in Cote Des Neiges. The police action forced dozens of Mr. Dunkirk's neighbours to evacuate their building. "We were all told to leave our apartments," says Edith Valencourt, who lives across the hall from the party promoter. "The police told us that the building wasn't safe, that it could catch on fire, so we had to leave."

The Cote Des Neiges résidents stood outside in the cold as they watched the chaos unfold. "There were explosions, loud ones," says Zangief Marois. "The windows shattered. It was like a scene from a war movie."

Mr. Dunkirk was the subject of a police investigation in what some officers have called the largest gun smuggling ring in Canada. "Mr. Dunkirk has a rap sheet that's longer than Tolstoy's War & Peace," says Sgt. Desmond Batista. "He's been on our radar for a long time. When we first started investigating him, we expected him to be a bit player in Montreal's organized crime community. We were not expecting him to be in charge of a gun smuggling ring worth millions of dollars."

James Dunkirk made a name for himself by organizing dubstep parties. In recent years, however, his events had become much darker. "I knew something was up when he started handing out gun to people at his events," says Lesley Williams, a 23 year old Concordia student. "I've been to a lot of parties in Montreal, but his were the only ones where people gave out glocks as prizes. I remember one day last June, he had a M.C on stage who kept going on and on about how ravers needed to be armed, so that if the police tried to shut down a party, we could fight back, and then the M.C took out a giant duffle bag and started throwing pistols at people in the crowd."

It wasn't long before Montreal police caught wind of what was going on."When party promoters start handing out assault weapons to DJs and telling them it's time to start a revolution, we're going to hear about it," says Sgt. Batista. "James Dunkirk's was over confident. He got away with a lot of small crimes for several years, and because of that he thought he could get away with smuggling thousands of guns into Canada and handing them out to ravers. Well, he couldn't."

Mr. Dunkirk fought the police off as long as he could. "It took us several hours to subdue him, and then an extra twelve to clear his apartment of all the explosives he'd been stockpiling," says Sgt. Batista. "It's unfortunate that this sort of thing is happening in our day and age. Party promoters should be out helping people have fun, they shouldn't be fomenting armed rebellion."