A young man was sentenced to 13½ years Wednesday over a crash in 2022 when he drove suicidally at 180 km/h in a 50 km/h zone and killed another driver. Kevin Turpin has ten years left to serve.
La Presse’s account, posted a bit later, shows the scale of explosion that the collision sparked.
Quebec is changing its Consumer Protection Act to allow restaurants to charge no‑shows but it’s pretty minimal: it’s a $10 charge that applies only to groups of five or more people, and if a single member of the party shows up, it doesn’t count as a no‑show.
It might even be counterproductive. Since the $10 charge only applies to groups of five or more, anyone booking for fewer than five people may perceive it has ‘having no obligation to cancel’. leading to even more no-shows for smaller reservations. But it’s a start…
I was stunned when I heard that there are people who actually have the audacity to book several restaurants for the same evening just so they can choose one. It sounds so selfish and entitled and just wrong.
If charges are too low people often see it as an optional fee, eg, “it’s ok, I paid the $10 cancellation fee” or even worse, “it’s ok,it’s only a $10 cancellation fee”.
Restaurants could solve this problem themselves: Charge a non-refundable deposit to make your reservation. Charge some amount like 75% the cost of a typical meal. You show up, you pay a little more for your meal. You don’t show up, restaurant makes almost as much as a meal with none of the work.
The five-person minimum thing is dumb, even if it’s easier for a restaurant to fill an unexpectedly empty table of four. The rationale doesn’t suddenly change when you’re up to five people.
@Ian in practice the fine would be higher – if you book a table for six and don’t show, you’ll be charged $60; the burden to collect from your fellow deadbeats is on you, but in the meantime you’re out the whole amount. That being said, the famous example in all the textbooks is a daycare that had to introduce a late fee because parents were showing up late to pick up their kids. Once they implemented it (something like a dollar a minute), more parents started showing up late – specifically because the fine structure was interpreted as an optional additional fee. For $10 you could afford to be a 10 minutes late, etc. The psychology behind fees is interesting.
@Chris it seems pretty evident that restaurants *cannot* “solve this problem themselves,” as it would likely violate the Consumer Protection Act
I wonder how it could be solved. Tickets, like a theatre?
A tricky thing with restaurants is the amount patrons are paying is highly variable, unlike a show (given a specific seat). I could go to a fancy place and pay $25 for an entree and drink water, or go to the same place and get three courses and three glasses of wine and pay over $100. What’s a fair price for a no-show? It can’t really be higher than the minimum of what you’d pay, because then it might be more than the cost of the meal, but then it could be only a small fraction of what you’d actually pay.
I go to a number of events where the cancellation policy is you only pay the service fee for the credit card or booking provider if they can fill the space, and otherwise you either lose your money or lose a percentage of it, often depending on how late you cancelled. That could work for busy restaurants that will fill the table, if done early enough. For less busy restaurants, well, why would you book a reservation, or them to expect one?
I have booked a table on one of the online platforms because I didn’t know if it would be busy or not and found myself in a near-empty restaurant.
There was an interview with a restaurant owner on Daybreak this morning and he said he only does reservations over the phone because it results in fewer no-shows than online booking. His theory was that it creates more of a relationship between the person calling and the restaurant and because it’s more work, people aren’t just mindlessly booking a reservation on an app and forgetting about it or not caring that they’re bailing (he also saves money on fees for the booking platform).
A Tesla dealership in Snowdon was paint‑bombed in magenta on Wednesday morning. There have been two arrests; the accused were later released.
Is that indeed Snowdon?
No, it’s “The Triangle”, Snowdon ends at the train tracks and this dealership is at Ferrier. (This is common use, it is Snowdon per municipal electoral districts.)
Hmm. Thanks.
Officially it’s Mont-Royal. I didn’t realize it crossed over Decarie like that. https://spectrum.montreal.ca/connect/analyst/mobile/#/main?mapcfg=-%20Vue%20d'ensemble
Err, make that CDN-NDG, it’s sitting right on the border with TMR.
Isn’t the Triangle a marketing term for the developments east of Decarie just north of Jean-Talon? In any case, the Triangle wouldn’t extend to the west side of Decarie. I never think of Snowdon extending as far north as Jean-Talon, but I guess the few streets that are west of Decarie but east of Hampstead are indeed Snowdon. But they stop at either Plamondon or Vezina, basically at Decarie Square/the train tracks. The Tesla dealership is right on the border of the part of TMR that nobody thinks of as TMR (or didn’t until TMR realized it could let Royalmount be developed).
Wikipedia says: “Snowdon is bordered by Macdonald Avenue (Hampstead) in the west, Victoria Avenue (Côte-des-Neiges) in the east, Côte-Saint-Luc Road (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce) to the south and Vézina Street and the railway tracks (Le Triangle) to the north.[2] Furthermore, the northwest end borders Côte Saint-Luc and the southeast end borders Westmount.”
This sounds right to me, though the CSL border in the northwest is a little misleading, since it’s just half a block of CSL; practically speaking, the neighbourhood to the northwest of Snowdon is Hampstead.
The hill I will die on: CDN-NDG should not be a single borough, and much of what we consider CDN-NDG isn’t really either (i.e., it’s Snowdon).
It is indeed CDN-NDG although in some sense it’s neither Côte‑des‑Neiges nor NDG. Which is why I wrote Snowdon originally. (I completely agree that CDN‑NDG should be broken up.)
There is some really odd enclavery around that area, Joey, with bits of CSL inside Hampstead. Here’s the map I rely on, when checking this stuff. It was originally made by a CTV staffer but I snaffled a copy.
Some explanation here.
I think most people agree CDN-NDG should be split up, probably along CSL road.
The Triangle is a marketing term, but I just can’t figure out a better one for where the Tesla dealership is, because it sure doesn’t feel like Snowdon.
I once listened to a podcast that called the Orange Julep downtown.
To people in deep suburbia, pretty much anything between Cavendish and Pie‑IX, the Met and the river can be downtown.
@jeather to the extent that I’ve ever heard that area referred to as anything, it was Royalmount. If ever there were a candidate for a geographical area that didn’t really merit a name, it’s that stretch of soulless low-slung mystery commercial buildings. I can’t imagine anyone who lives in Snowdon or the Triangle would consider that stretch of the city to be a part of their neighbourhood.
It’s got some good housewares stores, actually — and of course the full of soul big orange. But it’s not a neighbourhood in any sense, I agree.
@Kate: Downtown is from IKEA to the Big O. 😛
I worked with someone years ago who grew up on the West Island and was living there after leaving his parents’ house. He declared that he was “moving downtown.” I asked where and it was deep into CDN, near Décarie. When I mentioned that CDN is definitely downtown, he said for people from his part of the world, it’s definitely downtown because its’s east of Décarie.
The city finds that potholes are patched year after year in the same spots.
And I found out that bears are defecating in the woods.
I spotted my first sinkhole in Rosemont last weekend, a sure sign of spring.
Wait you mean the quickie ‘fill the hole with tar’ job doesn’t last a year? Shocking!
MarcG 09:01 on 2025-03-20 Permalink
Suicidal person put in place that makes people more suicidal. Nice society you’ve got there.
Kate 09:46 on 2025-03-20 Permalink
Looked at one way, yes, but this was also a person who used a busy street (Henri‑Bourassa) for his attempt, not considering the possible damage to anyone else. Would you tell him to go home and remember to take his Prozac?
MarcG 09:48 on 2025-03-20 Permalink
Definitely not suggesting I have the solution to the problem but it’s clearly not this.
Nicholas 11:11 on 2025-03-20 Permalink
The government will help you commit suicide if you say the right words, and counsel you against it if you say other words. Regardless, there are lots of ways to take your life without risking harming anyone else; I’m sure his brain wasn’t working properly here, but if he doesn’t go to jail he’s going to a facility for a while. Story also mentions he couldn’t afford the psychologist he was referred to. Since this happened there is now a public system for that, covered by RAMQ, though there is a long wait, last I saw was two years. Hopefully the next case like this will get the help they need in time. And final point is that cars should not be able to go that fast. Cars should not be able to go above, say, 120 or 130 km/h. Just a hard limit. There are systems that can adjust based on the speed limit, and I’m partial to that too, but no car should be able to go 180 km/h, ever.
Kate 13:22 on 2025-03-20 Permalink
Have they ruled yet on whether someone can request MAID here purely on grounds of intractable mental illness? In general, the public mood suggests many of us are OK with someone getting help in dying if they have incurable physical illness, but not so much for someone struggling with unliftable depression.
jeather 14:32 on 2025-03-20 Permalink
As of 2 years from now you will be able request MAID for mental illnesses (without a concomitant physical illness), though that may change. I suspect there will be stricter rules even than for those whose natural deaths are not reasonably foreseeable.
In Quebec you can also make an advance request, if you have something that will lead to a later incapacity to consent. I do not believe this is true elsewhere in Canada but won’t swear to it. I believe that this is still against the criminal code but that there is an agreement not to prosecute.
Tim 14:39 on 2025-03-20 Permalink
The court got it right: 12 years is certainly not an insignificant amount of time and reflects the gravity of the outcome. The convict can get out in his early 30’s to salvage the rest of his life.
Blork 17:18 on 2025-03-20 Permalink
I’m pretty sure this guy would not have qualified for MAID. I don’t know the details of the case, but it sounds like his issue was depression and repressed rage, which would be considered treatable. Or at least MAID would be deferred until it was shown to be untreatable.
Which is all moot anyway, since he was clearly out of his mind at the time and not likely to just kick back and call the MAID line.