Life began in a small town in northern Ontario, called New Liskerd, where on January 19th, 1981, I was born. If you don’t know where New Liskerd is just look for the biggest cow in the world, I’m pretty sure they got it. Anyways, after spending my first three months of life in a foster home, on March 9th,1981, I was adopted by Helene and Albert AKA “Bizz” Montfort.
I remember when I was young I used to sit on the floor with my father and paint even though he had no artistic talent whatsoever. We would do watercolor, acrylic and we would even draw sometimes. So I guess you could say I’ve always been artistic and I have Bizz to thank for that. I spent all of elementary and high school just doodling away at anything I could get my hands on. I didn’t take too many art classes in high school cause most of the teachers we had didn’t approve of my styles of art. Apparently skulls and demon faces don’t belong in the French catholic school board, who knew?
So I left high school in route for hard labor. I had decided that I was going to work with electricity and started an apprenticeship with a local company. Everything was going well, even did the whole night school thing for 2 years, and then 911 hit. Most of that company’s business was in the states and therefore started to go under slowly. Then lay-offs. So from there I went from factory to factory until I got a good factory job at Siemens VDO.
It was at Siemens that I got my first tattoo. My first tattoos were the words “SMOOTH” and “STYLES” on the inside of my forearms and from there on out, I was hooked. I had proceeded to get my arms sleeved by Jay Stirling of Bulletproof Custom Arts. I met him through a friend and after a few sits we became good friends. I guess if you sit with anybody for 80 hours you’re gonna become good friends, right? During the process of him working I got the chance to watch and learn some things. So after a while I started drawing some pictures and doing some stencils for Jay and decided that I should give tattooing a shot. In December, 2005, for Christmas, with Jay’s help, my parents bought me my first tattoo kit. It was an International kit that came with 2 machines, a power supply and whatever else you needed to get started. So I guess this is the part where I say my thanks, so thank you to my parents for getting me started and a big thank you to Jay for helping them out.
After I got my kit, I started an apprenticeship with Jay at Bulletproof. This is where I learned all the ins and outs of tattooing, making needles, cleaning, stencils and most of all machines. Me and Jay would sit there and talk about machines all day long. Nothing made us happier than machine building. I worked with Jay for a full year and things kinda went sour, I guess. I left Bulletproof in January of 2007 and started to tattoo in my own private studio.
I left my private studio after about a year and made the big move to the Oshawa area to start tattooing in a shop environment again. After a short stay at one shop, I now find myself working at The Art of Affliction Tattoo Studio in Oshawa, Ont. with my wonderful wife.
So then here we are. I have family now, a beautiful wife who supports me and loves me, and a wonderful new addition to the family, a gorgeous baby boy. Tai was born on July 16th, 2007 and he is the most important thing in the world to me and I love him very much. If you come and get a tattoo you’ll definitely meet him. If you want to get a hold of me you can e-mail me at mofotats@hotmail.com
