A young man who watched his friend deal a fatal blow then helped him flee the country was sentenced to two years this week. The friend, who came back and turned himself in a year later, will face trial next spring.
Updates from August, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
Stefano Sollecito, jailed while waiting for trial, accused of a 2011 mob murder and – by implication – a list of others, will remain behind bars despite pleading for release to be treated for cancer, which may well kill him before the trial takes place.
-
Kate
La Presse has reposted a small sheaf of columns by Pierre Foglia. His style, intimate yet prickly, is inimitable.
On Saturday, La Presse posted a four‑part article drawn from discussions Foglia had with Marc Cassivi fifteen years ago, and then another selection of his columns.
On Sunday, La Presse reposted a series of Foglia’s columns on various instances of the Olympic Games.
Monday, La Presse gathered all the recent Foglia material in one place.
-
Kate
Cécile Dionne, one of the famous quintuplets, has died at age 91. Only Annette now remains of the family that became a media sensation in the 1930s.
(On social media, more than one commenter confessed to a double‑take over the name Cécile Dionne in a headline.)
-
Kate
A court case against an alleged cannabis trafficking network may be thrown out of court after the admission of an affair between a Crown prosecutor and a defense lawyer.
At least it was only cannabis in question.
bob
“In 2023, she was found guilty of drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident after she hit another vehicle while parking her car.
When a witness called police, Bourbonnais-Rougeau took refuge in her apartment, telling responding officers she was a Crown prosecutor and refusing to allow them to enter until they produced a search warrant.”
So, she’s still a prosecutor – how? If fleeing the scene of a drunk driving accident and sex with defense counsel doesn’t get you fired, what does?
Nicholas
It would be funny if the prosecutor’s office keeps her employed until literally the day she’s disbarred.
walkerp
She sounds sketchy but also seems pretty flimsy stuff to throw the entire case out. The defense attorney was just as guilty, so why does his side benefit? Can not the judge just evaluate what might have been compromised and adjust the proceedings accordingly?
H. John
While she was found guilty of drunk driving, her case is still under appeal.
“She appealed her conviction in Superior Court but lost the appeal last fall. She’s now appealing that decision before the Quebec Court of Appeal.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/drug-case-montreal-conflict-of-interest-1.7598591
Nicholas
walkerp, it’s not about the sides, but the prejudice to the defendants. The defendants did nothing wrong (well, except all the alleged crimes), just their lawyer. Obviously if this was a plan to compromise a lawyer to cause a stay that would get them in (more) trouble, but if it’s lawyers acting on their own, the judge will evaluate whether it’s justice that was perverted, or just these two.
-
Kate
As many as 222 bird species have been recorded in the remaining natural habitats near the airport, on which Aéroports de Montréal is preparing to build. There is some concern about the secrecy in which the airport authority is holding consultations about its enlargement.
Jim
Funny how airports spark outrage over birds, but wind turbines stay above criticism. At least at Radio Canada/CBC.
dhomas
Wind turbines create renewable energy, can be planned to mitigate habitat disruption through proper planning, and new technology is being applied to turbine designs which make them move slower and therefore safer for birds. The turbines can also be stopped and bird life returns to normal, if necessary.
Airports take away the bird habitats forever. The increase in airplane traffic results in immense consumption of fossil fuels, which in turn creates pollution. With an urban airport, the pollution directly and immediately affects the population.
The comparison is not even close.
MarcG
Brandolini’s law in action
Jim
Yeah, it was not so much a comparison between airports and windmills. More about the birds, or how critics can be shared about one thing, but sound like ‘cursing in a church’ on another topic. Don’t want to insult anyone, I am all for renewable energy, but in the best way possible. I just don’t believe in windmills (even while being Dutch, lol), and think they are counterproductive. But that’s all off topic as for the airport article.
Nicholas
I assume it’s less bird strikes and more bird habitat loss, as dhomas says. But there’s also just a massive scale difference involved for bird deaths in Canada per year:
Cats: 200 million
Power lines, both collisions and electrocutions: 25 million
Collisions with houses and buildings: 25 million
Collisions with vehicles: 14 million
Game hunting: 5 million
Agricultural pesticides: 2.7 million
Agricultural mowing: 2.2
Commercial forestry: 1.4 million nests, equivalent to 900,000 adult birds
Communications towers: 220,000
Wind turbines: 16,700I would assume many of the birds will find other habitat nearby, as there is some green space that would remain in that area, and, of course, lots and lots of other green space around, though yes some will probably not survive. But the orders of magnitude are just very, very different. Cats kill 6 birds a second. Cats kill more birds in three quarters of an hour than wind turbines do in a year. Power infrastructure kills more birds in six hours than wind turbines do in a year. Oil and Gas is not in the top ten either, nor is deforestation from buildings (but it is from logging). Canada has 10 billion birds, and we’re killing a lot, but cats kill twice as many as all other causes combined. I think cats are great, but if you care about birds, and are focusing on anything other than cats and collisions with buildings, vehicles and power lines, that’s like, well, focusing on the aviation industry to reduce emissions: sure it’ll help on the margin, but you’re ignoring what are by far the biggest sources of the problem.
bob
$10 billion to build a $1 billion project, and the concern is birds. WTF is wrong with people.
Kate
I’ve said this before: I do not believe the figures about cats. Birds are under pressure from deforestation, from insecticides and pesticides killing off their food sources. Even from flying into windows. Cats are negligible compared to these things but they’re easy to blame because a cat can kill a bird.
Do bobcats and lynxes kill birds much? They eat rodents and rabbits. Given the ratio of effort expended per prey, a cat will always go for the smaller mammal.
jeather
I also believe that the cat numbers are incorrect, but also it’s not very difficult to have indoor cats. Mine are only allowed in my balcony and any bird they manage to kill on a balcony would probably have been doomed anyhow.
The issue with domestic cats vs wild cats is in part that domestic cats just kill for the pleasure of it and in part because there are a lot more of them.
Kate
I may even have to look into how the cat figures are arrived at, but I suddenly had a suspicion. Domestic cats have been destructive to bird and other species in situations where they were brought by settlers to small islands where there hadn’t been predators of that type before, and where cats were able to wreak havoc. I suspect those numbers have been generalized to bigger places where they don’t apply. Do we have hordes of domestic cats living in Canadian forests and fields? Are our cats bringing home songbirds to eat?
No. It isn’t the cats. It’s us.
MarcG
The methodology for calculating numbers is in here if/when you dig into it https://abcbirds.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Blancher-2013-Estimated-number-of-birds-killed-by-domestic-cats-in-Canada.pdf
-
Kate
Weekend notes from La Presse, CTV, CityCrunch, CultMTL, Silo57, Tourism Montreal.The big event this weekend is Osheaga.
It’s going to be sunny and hot.
-
Kate
The offices of Quebecor’s Journal de Montréal and TVA in the eastern Plateau were vandalized late Thursday, windows smashed and paint thrown onto the building. TVA itself says there had been a protest about Palestine held near the building a short time before, but they don’t know whether there’s any link or what the motive for the vandalism is. There have been no arrests.
MarcG
Explanation here”
Reply