Pulling buses and lifting horses with his bare hands, the Great Antonio carried on the great tradition of Quebec strongmen, inking his name into the record books for his feats of strength.
Once a celebrity who made headlines around the world, he lived in poverty and died Sunday night as he was buying a lottery ticket. He was 77.
Long-bearded, dishevelled and chatting in broken English or French to anyone who would talk to him on the streets, he was also one of Montreal's most famous eccentrics.
Once, he was a fixture on the downtown streets, occasionally roping himself to a passing city bus and hauling it several blocks for the sheer fun of it. No one dared stop him.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, the Great Antonio -- his real name was Antonio Barichievich -- carved himself a place in the Guinness world records books, pursued a wrestling career that took him from Tokyo to New York and had a stab at acting, appearing in movies such as Quest For Fire.
For most of the last two decades, however, he cut a more poignant figure, a 400-pound mammoth of a man, dreaming of past glories.
His beard greyer and his pace slower, he was reduced to trying to hawk pencils or old photos of his younger self to anyone who would chat with him on the streets, in the subway or at his "office," an east-end Dunkin' Donuts franchise where he was a regular.
He said he was born Oct. 10, 1925, in the small Yugoslav village of Brevna, the eldest of the four children of a lumberjack whose family originally hailed from Siberia.
Other times, he claimed to be an extraterrestrial.
He came to Canada in 1946 and though he never learned to read and spoke rudimentary English, soon became a celebrity thanks to his ability to pull a loaded train-wagon or four loaded buses all at once.
He was proud of having appeared on The Tonight Show nine times, hoisting host Johnny Carson up in his arms.
Of those years, he proudly kept photos of himself hobnobbing with the likes of Michael Jackson, Sophia Loren or Muhammad Ali that he carried in a bag as he ambled around town.
The Great Antonio was instantly recognizable thanks to his hulkish build, size-28 feet and ankle-length hair, which he braided into dreadlocks wrapped in rope.
He was once married but in recent years lived alone in an unfurnished apartment.
He died of a heart attack Sunday evening in a local grocery store.