In January, a young man was found dead in a park in DDO, and police quickly concluded it was suicide. His parents don’t think so and want a more thorough investigation to be done.
Either conclusion would be tough for a family to accept.
Updates from April, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
TVA is leaving its old headquarters on de Maisonneuve and moving to Frontenac, and the building will be converted to 600 residential units.
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Kate
A young man is facing multiple charges over an arson attack on Beth Tikvah synagogue in DDO last December. Despite his efforts, damage to the building was minimal.
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Kate
After a long debate, the city has stood up the local residents and decided to allow Ray-Mont Logistics to build their terminal at the boisé Steinberg.
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Kate
Last year, the CAQ frittered $6.5 million on the Presidents Cup golf tournament on Île Bizard (and messed up access to the island for all its residents for a week), with the promise that it would bring 45,000 tourists here from outside Quebec.
In the event, only 13,156 tourists showed up and most who attended were local.
Uatu
Once again the caq have proven themselves as top guns of running government like a bidness! Northvolt, Hydro prices, sante QC manager salary raises… Da Caq is the bestest bidnessmen! Quelle leadership! Lol
Joey
Like the story of the LA Kings subsidy, the amount is basically trivial but the decision is revealing about what is automatically assumed to be deserving of public funds (and what isn’t).
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Kate
The Journal de Montréal claims that rents are falling, although only by 1% in Montreal in March.
CBC says tenants are feeling ignored by the federal election campaign.
Blork
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an article about rent that hasn’t been a bog of statistical maybes. For example, all these articles that say the average rent for a 1BR apartment in Montreal is $1500 are only drawing from a curated list of availabilities — which are almost all for new (or newish) construction apartments as far as I know. It doesn’t include the rents that people on average are actually paying, or the ones that are advertised privately, or are advertised in outlets that are not part of the curated list.
That doesn’t mean rents are not high; just that the media articles are at best generally indicative and shouldn’t be taken literally.
Same with this article. There is no way anyone’s rent has actually gone down. What’s happening is the pool of advertised vacancies collectively show, on average, a slight decrease. There are many possible reasons for this, and the most likely is that the pool of advertised vacancies has expanded. Maybe they are tapping more sources now, or maybe a bunch of long-term leases with lower rent have recently been given up.
The main thing is that if you were looking for an apartment two months ago, and the guy standing next to you is looking now, you will both have seen a range of apartments and a range of rents, but the guy next to you is seeing — on average — rents a tiny bit lower. On average. Which is to say mathematically when adding them up and averaging them. It is not to say any given apartment’s rent has come down.
roberto
The push for building new housing will decreasing housing scarcity and keep rents lower. This isn`t a maybe. I`m not sure why the federal campaigns don`t add this to their `home buiding` campaigns. It`s an easy added value and not a ‘maybe’.
Joey
@roberto – I think politicians feel they have to tread carefully; the same market forces that you describe (more housing = lower rents) theoretically also reduce the value of someone’s home (more housing = lower housing prices). As much as you want to be seen as acting to keep reduce the burden on tenants, you also don’t want to be the politician who promised to reduce the value of people’s houses, which (like it or not) is probably most homeowners’ principal long-term investment.
@blork – all true, but a couple of things. First, in the absence of a rental registry, there isn’t very much data about the trends in rental prices, so journalists/analysts are stuck with whatever data is available. I imagine StatCan collectes and reports on housing trends, including rent, but they probably don’t report frequently enough to do this kind of trend assessment. Second, and perhaps more importantly, taking the angle of only looking at what’s currently available is obviously not comprehensive, but it is instructive if the social/policy problem we’re concerned with is how individuals can navigate the current market. If you were looking for an apartment, it wouldn’t matter to you that the occupied units in a building are rented at $X – you’re only interested in what the rent on an unoccupied unit is. So, yes, the average rent of all apartments is probably lower than the average rent of available apartments, but the trend we’re interested in keeping an eye on is really about the latter and not the former. To come back to your example, what’s important to take away is that it’s a (very) little easier for the guy looking now to find an affordable apartment. (Also, the article really doesn’t imply that individual rents are going down, only that the average of available units has diminished. I really don’t think we can fault the newspaper here for being misleading…)
MarcG
Similarly to how childhood deaths have a big impact on average life expectancy, a single terrible apartment available for cheap could bring the average price down significantly depending on the size of the dataset.
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Kate
This Global piece on bus crash driver Pierre Ny St‑Amand includes a brief but shattering account of the man’s history.
MarcG
The mother’s statement “we all have stress in our life” leaves a real sour taste in the mouth after reading about the horrors the guy’s been through. Something to think about the next time a friend says to you “I’m so tired all of the time” or “Life has been so hard lately” and you respond with “Yeah we’re all tired and everyone’s life is hard” – maybe you don’t know the whole story. Obviously she is hurting and she raises a good point about support needed for the parents and kids involved that seems to be lacking.
Nicholas
If a friend almost killed my child, and did kill two of my child’s friends, I probably wouldn’t have much empathy either, especially if I felt there was little support for us. We can all feel empathy for those involved in a tragedy, and you should expect that from your friends in a normal situation like described, but it’s a little much to demand empathy from one victim while seemingly lacking it towards her.
I would add that I haven’t seen in this case if there were any signs before this happened, but pilots would be immediately put on leave with even minor things, and when we put people in charge of multi-ton hunks of metal with huge engines, we should consider whether psychological issues should lead to a loss of that privilege.
Meezly
“We all have a past, we all have stress in our life” really does beg the question… Is being a victim of war and abuse an excuse to inflict trauma on others? According to one psychiatrist, St-Armand was aware that he was crashing his bus into the daycare at some level. Gave me the chills when I read that. The mother not being particularly empathetic towards St-Amand is completely understandable, at least for me, after her child was nearly killed by him.
jeather
Yeah I can’t blame one of the parents involved for not being sympathetic, or for being dismissive, or for many other unkind but understandable responses. That’s why we do an impartial (ish) justice system instead of letting the victims and their families mete out justice.
Blork
I think the question isn’t “Is being a victim of war and abuse an excuse to inflict trauma on others?;” it’s “Can being a victim of war and abuse cause a person to have a psychological breakdown to the extent that they are not fully aware of, or in control of, what they are doing?”
If you’ve ever witnessed a total psychological breakdown — I don’t just mean being sad and crying, I mean a break with reality — then you know that even if at some level there is awareness, it is nothing compared to the break from reality that is washing over it.
By comparison, look at when people simply fly into an angry rage, or become obsessed with proving that someone on the the internet is wrong, and see the kind of stupid things they do and their lack of judgement. Now multiply that by 1000.
Major Annoyance
Yikes. I empathize with the poor man’s horrible experiences, but isn’t the question here how he managed to score a public-facing job driving a 10-ton machine while mentally ill? Is psychosis usually an episodic thing?
jeather
On thinking about it, I think it was wrong of the journalist to feature that quote from the parent, it was cruel to use. The stuff about how the families are not getting as much or enough support was the important part, not what various parents of children there do or don’t feel for Ny St-Armand.
Nicholas
If the journalist hadn’t used that quote, we probably would not be talking about if the mother and her child, and all the other victims and family, have been getting the support they need. Maybe it will shame someone with power into acting. Certainly nothing else has. (And this has nothing to do with what punishment or support Ny St-Armand should get.)
MarcG
Something that came to mind reflecting on the story and my own comment above is that workers are often forgotten. Some of the daycare employees are presumably deeply affected by this as well. I don’t know if this is related to the fact that it involves children and we’re quick to focus on them and their parents, leaving everyone else in the shadows, or if it’s a general problem where workers in our society are simply not valued.
In regards to questions about mental illness, many conditions are very complex and don’t always show on the surface. People can become very good at masking their feelings from themselves and others in order to get by, and there can be episodic breakdowns of that coping mechanism. Not to make everything about the current POTUS but he’s clearly in the DSM somewhere and a lifelong masker-of-feelings, and he’s also driving a 10-ton machine.
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Kate
Anjou’s Luis Miranda is considering putting himself up for the city mayoralty.
Miranda, 70, made headlines in 2022 for ranting at a teenager for asking a civil question during a council session. He hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell.
Notice how all the opponents of Projet are going to be, one way or another, on the side of motorists.
Robert H
Yes, motorists are the squeaky wheel, and Bicycle paths are the convenient, all-purpose poster issue for everybody who’s annoyed at Valerie Plante and Projet Montréal not only in the city itself, but throughout the whole CMA. It’s a perfect issue through which an activist or politician can channel, consolidate and weaponize resentment and frustration. Of course, it doesn’t matter that les pistes cyclables take up less than 1.5 % of Greater Montreal’s transport infrastructure. It’s the visibility that counts. Everybody knows c’est la faute de la clic du Plateau qui fait la guerre à l’auto.
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Kate
The SPVM say they’re carrying out a swoop Wednesday morning on the Italian mafia, but there’s very little concrete news yet. La Presse’s colourful headline on this quasi‑story: Le SPVM sert un Americano amer à la mafia.
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Kate
The family of a port worker who was driven to suicide by relentless workplace bullying has received death benefits and an annuity from the CNESST. The background here is a climate of intimidation among unionized workers at the port.
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Kate
A driver who hit a pedestrian in Montreal North on Tuesday morning was then attacked by a passerby. The driver’s injuries proved fatal later in hospital. The attacker has been arrested; the victim of the original accident was not badly hurt.
Update: The Journal interviews the widow.
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