A gang of ten people is alleged to have entered Fairview after hours and made off with a safe and some goods from a jewelry store there, worth a total of $3 million. Police picked them up quickly with the tools and the swag. The suspects are all from South America.
Updates from April, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Having just emerged from prison on corruption charges – after serving only eight months of a four‑year sentence – Tony Accurso was scooped up by police this week and brought back to jail. The authorities haven’t disclosed why.
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Kate
Before declaring bankruptcy, Just For Laughs was the victim of a bank fraud by email which saw $813,657 intended for its creditors vanish into the void.
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Kate
The mayor has created a working group to find out how other cities go about helping the homeless who don’t want to be helped. Put more bluntly, how do you persuade homeless folks to move out of the public eye when they’re not interested in “moving up” to sobriety, a small subsidized apartment and a boring job?
jeather
Are we truly at the point where we’ve helped all the homeless who DO want to be helped? Because I bet we’re not. (I also don’t know — do all of this group not want to be helped at all, or do they not like the restrictions on the help on offer.)
Kate
They need to find ways to help all of them at the same time. There will certainly be some people in a condition of homelessness following misfortunes or setbacks, who can be helped with a hand up to get a place to live, especially now with rents so high and places so difficult to get, because they do want to get off the street. It’s hard enough to get money and political motivation to deal even with these willing folks. But there seems to be a growing cohort of people who’ve placed themselves permanently outside society, maybe because they’re mentally ill – and self‑medicating with dangerous drugs, making their physical and mental state worse all the time – who basically don’t give a shit what happens to them. How do you mobilize the kind of resources it will take to persuade them to come in out of the cold?
jeather
I’m not saying we shouldn’t help them too, I guess I feel like this working group is a way to put off helping people who do want help.
Kate
I doubt most of them will even be aware of it.
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Kate
The Gazette’s Andy Riga explains not only the differences between the Mohawk Mothers, McGill and Quebec over how to handle searches for graves at the old Royal Vic, but also gives more about the background and plans for the site than any other piece I’ve seen.
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Kate
It’s 25 years since Jolène Riendeau, a ten‑year‑old living in Point St Charles, went out to the dépanneur and never came home. Remnants of her body were found in 2010 near the old Champlain bridge. Police, and the girl’s mother, identified a suspect, but he has never been charged.
Meezly
I think the suspect is still in prison for other charges and various parole violations. He’s a ticking time bomb and for once, the penitentiary system seems to be keeping this repeat sex offender from being a danger to the public.
Kate
Good news. I’d wondered why he’d been at the Palais de justice in 2012 in that photo of Jolène’s mother clobbering him (a real catch by the news photographer).
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Kate
Three levels of government have announced a new project promising 763 social and affordable residential units in eastern Ville‑Marie.
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Kate
For its own inscrutable reasons, Parks Canada has removed all the trash cans along part of the Lachine Canal.
Spi
It worked for metro platforms that’s as urban a setting as it gets so why couldn’t it work along the Canal?
Kate
Among other things, people are not usually picnicking on the metro platform or walking their dogs there.
Spi
Sure but there also aren’t nearly as many users passing through the canal park as the metro. Frankly this isn’t a problem that’s solved with more trash cans, user behaviour needs to change to an extent and just putting a sign doesn’t do much to help that.
I’d like to think there’s a more holistic approach to this beyond just removing trash bins.
Kate
In theory I’m fine with this, except we both know that a significant percentage of passersby will simply chuck stuff on the ground rather than either a) minimizing waste or b) packing it out.
MarcG
I don’t think we’re mature enough for this level of responsibility.
Ian
Sounds like a lot of greenwashing budget cuts to me.
steph
IIRC the loss of garbage cans in the metro was terror washing. “We removed the garbage cans because terrorists might hide bombs in them”.
IIRC the loss of garbage cans on certain city streets was a solution to overflowing garbage cans; No can, no overflow. Problem solved, pat on the back… a bunch of lazy bureaucratic goons.
Spi
the removal of platform level trash and recycling bins had nothing to do with “terrorism”, a cursory google search would have shown that. The STM at the time was claiming that trash was causing service delays and interruption because it would at time prevent metro doors from closing.
Kate
Spi, to be fair, I’ve seen it mentioned here and there that the platform bins were removed because of fear of bombs, but I also remember several pieces about the difficulties caused when papers blow into the tunnels and block drains. But that problem has largely been ended by daily papers ceasing to print.
The bomb idea may have been copied from bigger cities where terrorism has been a more pressing concern.
bob
Whatever bullshit reason they give, the real reason is to save the salaries of the people paid to empty the trash bins. For every three garbage bin emptiers fired you save enough to fund an entitled mediocrity’s sinecure. And, of course, one bin will remain on the Canal – the canal.
qatzelok
Biking along bike paths in suburbia, there are zones where there are hundreds of cute little bags of dog-crap attached to tree branches. I doubt that the squirrels are doing this, so it’s probably because of lack of garbage cans that dog-owners are doing this and hoping that “Mother Nature” takes cae of it.
Greenwashing, as Ian says… With very brown results.
carswell
Was hoping to check out the situation for myself yesterday but clients and the weather kept me housebound. Early reports (on Agora Montréal, for example) are complaining about the number of cigarette butts suddenly littering the ground and about the many bags of dog excrement left attached to urban furniture; the former is an ecological hazard and the latter a public health hazard. Expecting the bins to be reinstalled before the summer is out.
Wondering, however, whether the canal mightn’t be a good candidate for automated waste pickup. Until they were removed, almost all the receptacles were alongside the bike path, meaning they were easy to access. Plus, electric scooters excepted (alas), there are no motorized or parked vehicles on the path, no curbs or parking meters to get in the way. Sounds like an ideal scenario for a slow-moving, waste-bin-dumping robot.
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Kate
The Journal’s Louis-Philippe Messier tells a sad tale of the rise of crack smoking in town.
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