The Old Montreal building that burned this week had 15 apartments rented out on Airbnb in a section of Ville-Marie that does not allow short‑term rentals, although another anecdote in this piece suggests that there may have been longer‑term tenants as well.
No alarm is said to have gone off inside the building when fire broke out, either.
Update: Workers will start taking the façade down on Sunday.
Noticed lately I’m getting spam comments generated by ChatGPT. They come from plausible-sounding names and read like relevant responses to topics, but the key thing is that the user link is not an individual’s, but something being promoted for Google ranking – diet pills and NFTs today, for example.
I’m watching comments with closer attention now but if anyone spots something that looks shady please don’t hesitate to let me know.
Just out of curiosity Kate, would you consider posting a sample?
I emptied the spam queue, unfortunately. But I’ll keep an eye on it and post later if I find more.
People living in St-Michel near the Francon quarry have no peace after snowstorms as incessant queues of massive trucks roll up to deposit their load through the ports at the edge of the old quarry. The sheer scale of the thing is striking.
The suspect and the three victims in the triple homicide this week have been confirmed to be part of one family and the ages suggest they were the suspect’s parents and a grandparent. Arthur Galarneau is to appear in court Saturday.
The Journal says the victims were Galarneau’s parents and his grandmother.
These killings were #3, #4 and #5 of the year. Radio-Canada has an interesting observation. The first two homicides were also apparent matricides, and both also carried out with knives.
Update: Galarneau was charged with three counts of second-degree murder on Saturday. CTV has names and photos of the victims now.
As many as six people are missing following the fire in Old Montreal this week, and the remains of the building are still too unstable to search. CTV talked to a relative of one of the missing people.
“..they couldn’t get out because they were no windows in the room”: that would violate our building code, as I understand.
But then when you look at the place, there’s lots of windows. It’s more window than wall. Unless the owners were sticking people in the middle of this narrow wedge shaped building, which seems unlikely.
There are some photos of the interior here, and going by the looks of that “bathroom” you can assume that a lot of other non-standard design choices were made. There were 15 people in the building and 4 listed apartments.
I expected a classier renovation job in a building like that. A toilet next to a fridge?
Oh yes look at that: crammed in, a disaster waiting to happen. I’m sure the vultures at AirBnB Inc. won’t be liable, sure they’ve taken care of that.
Actually, if the owners were doing AirBnB and didn’t have commercial insurance, the Insurance company can wiggle out of paying it, claiming it was commercial activity and not covered. Worse, if they had a residential mortgage, they violated the mortgage, so they bank can call the mortgage. Or the worst of all scenarios, they have to pay to rebuild with no insurance money while still having to pay a mortgage on a non-existent property. Ah, the stupidity of it all.
It’s just such a scam. Sorry, I just hate AirBnB.
Yep, Airbnb is definitely a factor here.
La Presse now confirming that the building owner is lawyer ****** , who owns a lot of other properties.
Actually Le Devoir has more info. *****
The Journal had a couple of paragraphs on him already at the end of this piece on Thursday, but I hesitated to name him because angry lawyers can cause a world of hurt, and I don’t have a budget for that. So please forgive me for eliding your comments, shawn.
There are a few names I don’t want mentioned here because I don’t want to turn up in Google searches.
Ah, right. Sorry.
shawn 20:51 on 2023-03-18 Permalink
Montreal Globe and Mail correspondent Les Perreaux speculated earlier on twitter that a tragedy like this might make the city take the problem of illegal AirBnBs more seriously.
Josh 11:51 on 2023-03-20 Permalink
Shawn, just a small FYI, Perreaux left the Globe some while back. He’s now the editor in chief of the journal Policy Options.