The SPVM collaborated with the American drug enforcement authority (DEA) to dismantle a drug importing network bringing quantities of cocaine and crystal meth into the city. Drugs were seized and arrests were made.
Contrary to what certain authorities have claimed, these drugs were not being imported into the U.S. from Canada.
A man whose friend was the shooter in a 2022 murder was sentenced to nine years for involuntary homicide this week.
It’s not clear to me how a person can be locked up for being present when a friend shoots somebody, so there must be more to the story than is told here.
Story seems pretty clear. The guy wanted to go to a party, his friends said don’t go because this guy you have a beef with is there and you’ll get in a fight, he said fine I’ll go anyway but I’ll bring my friend with a gun, they got in a fight, the friend used the gun to shoot the guy. Oh and there were a lot of drugs involved.
Like I was saying just a few posts ago, one could argue this was an accident, at least with respect to this guy. He didn’t intend to kill anyone. Maybe he just wanted to scare the other guy, or show him how tough he was, or protect himself. But instead of trying to avoid a confrontation, he went out of his way to precipitate one, and ensured a loaded firearm came along with all the drugs. He took reckless actions that any reasonable person could have predicted might result in someone’s death. And then it did. Oops.
The original report, when he was found guilty back in February, provided more details his participation:
And if you have spare time, here’s the very long decision (close to 50 pages) explaining how the judge reached the conclusion that:
“Ayant considéré l’ensemble de la preuve, le Tribunal conclut que le poursuivant s’est déchargé de son fardeau de prouver hors de tout doute raisonnable que M. Barthelus a commis un homicide involontaire coupable à l’endroit de M. Marquez par le biais de sa participation à un projet illicite commun.
Le Tribunal est convaincu hors de tout doute raisonnable que l’accusé savait que son ami avait une arme à feu et que son utilisation pour repousser les actions de Gucci faisait partie du plan.”
https://citoyens.soquij.qc.ca/php/decision.php?ID=0A26CFD88CFBF4FC0B55B30FE3334B4C
Thank you, H. John. I’ll add it to my “to read” pile…
Quebec is planning to use commercial services to distribute voter cards for the November elections.
Canada Post will be resuming partial service as of the weekend.
This info sheet about the strike and the situation of Canada Post was posted to reddit, contradicting various common myths about the service.
Interesting La Presse refers to it, in French, as St. John’s.
And the union can say whatever it wants, but some mail I and many others consider essential is not being delivered. St. John’s had to delay its election because ballots were stuck in the system. My Medicare card is stuck as well. The optional voter cards are also delayed, and though you don’t need them, many people will not become aware that they’re not registered to vote and then won’t be able to register on election day (registration deadline is six days away). And I’m sure there’s more. Will we survive without mail? Sure. Are these sacrifices worth it for the workers? We can make that decision. But calling it a myth that essential mail is not being delivered does not help their credibility.
On the other hand, if their goal is for people to think that only the very limited mail they are delivering is essentially, and the rest is optional, that’s a great way to show people that the service is not that important.
I think that “essential” in this case is referring to things required for life (the Physiological and Safety tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). Can you still receive medical services without your new health card?
@Nicholas, In French it would be hard to distinguish Saint John’s (NL) from Saint John (NB). “La ville de Saint Jean” might mean either one.
When people say St Jean here I usually assuming htey are talking about Lac St Jean, home of maybe the perfect tourtière.
As someone who attended French immersion in St. John’s, we always said St-Jean when speaking French. If needing to differentiate between St. John’s NL and Saint.John NB, we would say St-Jean, Terre-Neuve.
When I hear St-Jean I assume it’s St-Jean-sur-Richelieu (home of amazing fish & chips @ Capitaine Pouf). Also as someone who’s always had trouble remembering which one has the apostrophe-S on it, discovering that NB has a large French population fixed that problem.
Why would you do French immersion in St. John’s of all places??
Interestingly, Saint John, NB is never to be shortened to “St. John.” I’ve heard there’s a bylaw in the city that prohibits spelling the city name any other way on commercial signage. St. John’s is never spelled “Saint John’s.” I’m not sure what the French-speaking population of NB has to do with Saint John, it’s about as English-speaking as it gets there.
At the risk of repeating myself, I was describing a memory aid to help remember which one has the apostrophe-S (French doesn’t use that form -> NB has a significant French population -> Saint John = NB, St. John’s = NF.)
There are some people in the Point who are adament that it is spelt Pointe-Saint-Charles and no other way.
Oh ok, I get it. I thought you were thinking Saint John was a French speaking place. Saint John is a place I went to often so the need for a memory aid didn’t really occur to me.
I was born there and my parents put me in French immersion, why else?
The attack on a woman by three dogs this week has spun off various stories: there are calls for tougher laws; discussion of what the owner’s responsibility is in case of animal attacks, and some not very helpful advice on what to do if you are attacked by a dog.
The only dog of the trio that’s still alive has been taken away.
The victim has permanent injuries but is no longer in danger.
Quebec has tabled its own draft constitution. Will it have a notwithstanding clause written in?
Here’s a post from law professor Leonid Sirota about the proposed law for a Quebec Constitution:
Ceci n’est pas une constitution
Le projet de constitution québécoise n’est pas sérieux
https://doubleaspect.blog/2025/10/10/ceci-nest-pas-une-constitution/
He’s the co-editor of a book/collection of essays on the very subject published in 2023:
The book is available at the BAnQ.
A Written Constitution for Quebec?
Thank you, H. John
The Cinéma Impérial, which was to close permanently, is now set to be revamped and reopen in 2027 with grants from the federal, provincial and municipal governments as well as from Quebecor.
A young man was hit by a train in Dorval early Thursday. He’s said to have been lying on the ground beside the tracks. He’s in critical condition.
I’ve looked at six stories now and not one even lists which train tracks they were, CP or CN. And police are all calling this an accident, but as usual I’m frustrated by this word. Unless it was a train employee who fell off a train, the person was trespassing. It could still be an accident, but it’s at least reckless and criminal. But an accident, to me, is you’re crossing the tracks (right on top of the pedestrian tunnel), you slip and fall and get hit, or you don’t see the train. Or maybe, it’s 3 am, you’re drunk and pass out. But only one article said the person was sleeping (on rocky ballast!) or even unconscious before getting hit, everyone else just said lying on it. If you walk onto a shoulder of a highway and lie down and get hit, what part of your intent is accidental?
Well, if he didn’t intend to get hit by the vehicle, and if the vehicle did not intend to hit him, then it’s an accident. “Accident” meaning the opposite of intentional.
“death by misadventure”
Is it an accident if you shoot a gun at a wall in a public place but, unbeknownst to you, there is a person on the other side and the bullet passes through and kills them? What about if you purposefully ignore e coli in a food processing facility you’re responsible for and someone dies? What if there’s a positive test but you let the shipment go out anyway? What if you drive drunk and kill someone, or drive while looking at a phone? Or you drive at 100 km/h on a local street? Nowhere is there any intent to kill someone, but there is reckless behaviour, actions that disregard risks to human life.
I think we are too quick to ascribe “accident” to behaviour that is likely to lead to serious harm just because the person being reckless didn’t intend to hurt anyone, even if they had a duty of care towards others.
Nicholas, you seem to think that referring to something as an accident somehow means that no one is responsible. No, it’s about intention. To your questions:
“Is it an accident if you shoot a gun at a wall in a public place but, unbeknownst to you, there is a person on the other side and the bullet passes through and kills them?”
Yes, that’s an accident. Person on the other side of the wall was accidentally shot… because he was not intentionally shot. That doesn’t make him any less shot, and it doesn’t make the shooter any less responsible. But it was unintended, therefore an accident. But it’s still irresponsible and reckless to have done the shooting. That doesn’t make it not an accident.
“What about if you purposefully ignore e coli in a food processing facility you’re responsible for and someone dies?”
NOT an accident because you PURPOSEFULLY ignored the e-coli. If you had not seen the e-coli because you were drunk or just bad at your job then it would be an accident. But if you PURPOSEFULLY ignore itt then you should know that harm will be done. In either case you’re still responsible for the outcome.
Same with your driving examples. Those are all examples of reckless and irresponsible behaviours, but the driver did not INTEND to cause calamity so they are accidents. The driver is still responsible, but it’s different from if the driver intentionally ran someone down.
What I don’t understand is your insistence that an “accident” is just something that happened on its own with no one responsible. I don’t know why you use that definition. Dictionaries say things like:
“An unexpected and undesirable event, especially one resulting in damage or harm.”
“An unforeseen event that is not the result of intention or has no apparent cause.” (Note the “or” there; not an “and.”)
“An undesirable or unfortunate happening that occurs unintentionally and usu. results in injury, damage, or loss.”
TL;DR: just because it’s an accident that doesn’t mean the person responsible is not responsible or should be let off without assuming responsibility. The word “accident” is simply a word that differentiates between a deliberate act and an unintentional act.
Something that is reasonably foreseeable as a consequence is not an accident. If you shoot a gun at an interior wall, it’s not a surprising thing that the bullet can go through the wall. It might or might not happen, like if I like down next to a train track for five minutes a train might or might not pass during that period, but it’s different from a weird Rube Goldberg set of events where you are lying down in a park and a train derails and hits you, or you are shooting in an outdoor range and someone in a parachute gets blown off course and lands just as you shoot, etc.
This is the missing middle here: there’s deliberate, there’s accidental, and there’s unintentional but come on you knew what risks you were taking.
Nicholas
Those are all examples of criminal negligence, where you don’t need intent but should have known better.
I can’t believe Nicholas Angel left Sanford and moved to Montreal.
“Constable, official vocab guidelines state we no longer refer to these incidents as accidents, they’re now collisions.”
“Right…”
“Why can’t we say accident again?”
“Accident implies there’s no one to blame…”
A woman who had defrauded a previous employer of thousands is now accused of flimflamming Moment Factory of more than a million dollars over the seven years she worked for them in payroll, and some of her friends are also accused of receiving some of the money.
Flimflamming!
The next mayor of Montreal will be facing the issue of encampments spreading across Montreal, but there are no easy answers.
Offer housing, offer treatment, disband camps.
Records found by police in 2019 in the home of Bobby the Greek, killed last week in a Starbucks in Laval, reveal extortion activities on restaurants, and debts to be collected.
Which I suppose raises the question of why he was still strolling around extorting people six years later, and not in jail.
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