During the occupation, Benjamin Franklin would visit, to try and build support for the revolution, and he would bring a pro-American printer, Fleury Mesplet, who would go on the start the city's first newspaper - which would become today's Gazette montrealgazette.com/news/local-n...

Yesterday was the anniversary of the surrender of Montreal to the revolutionaries, who took the city without a shot. While the Catholic church and the seigneurial class supported the British, many of the city's merchants supported the Americans, who would hold the city for around seven months

While Starts have generally declined in Montreal since the bylaw came into effect, many of the city's suburbs have had similar declines and, so far this year, home building is on the rise in the city.
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I took a look at the claims made by Soraya Martinez Ferrada and her campaign about home building in Montreal and the data from CMHC doesn't match the picture she's presented.

The numbers, presented to shore up a promise to scrap a 2021 city bylaw his party says has stifled housing construction in Montreal, were from 2023 to 2024 and only seemed big because construction in those suburbs had crashed the year before - the year after the bylaw came into effect.

There was just one problem, every single suburb named by Gariépy had fewer starts in 2024 than 2021

He quickly found a clue: lead in the trees. That lead was too old to have come from leaded gasoline and matched the lead found in leaky city pipes:
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The discovery was something of a surprise, earlier research in other cities found street trees fared worse during droughts because the concrete around them increased heat and didn't let what little water there was seep into the ground.

The lawsuit claims police and prosecutors withheld evidence that would have challenged the credibility of the key witness, fabricated other evidence and that prosecutors ignored police misconduct

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Paquin, who spent 18 years in prison and more than 20 years on supervised release, is now suing the City of Montreal and Quebec's attorney general for $64 million.

He alleges he was convicted based on the testimony of a paid informant who later admitted to playing a major role in the killings.

But two of those customers got hefty tariff bills because the guitars entered the U.S. as products made of wood, which are tariffed, rather than as guitars.

And Florian Bouyou of Millimetric Instruments says he now can't get a straight answer on whether future shipments to the U.S. will be tariffed

Diafouka's father told me he knows there may have been things happening in his son's life that he didn't know about, but that he hopes a more thorough police investigation would bring that to light.

My report:

www.montrealgazette.com/news/article...

Diafouka's parents and older sister say he never showed any signs that he might want to take his own life and they don't know where he could have gotten a gun. They allege police didn't talk to his friends, or his girlfriend and ignored other evidence.

And he thinks the city also failed to take sufficient action about fire code violations in the building.

Victims' relatives have said their loved ones were trapped in windowless rooms and survivors have said they didn't hear fire alarms.

My report:

www.montrealgazette.com/news/article...

However, the coroner's inquest won't start until the criminal justice process is finished.

I spoke to the father of one of the victims, he believes building's owner and a man who illegally ran short-term rentals there also bear responsibility, because, he alleges, they knew the building was unsafe

We know a convicted killer, who had escaped from prison, was at the scene and was considered a suspect. He has denied starting the fire and has since been returned to prison.

A coroner's inquest, which could lead to recommendations intended to prevent similar tragedies has also been ordered

Chief Inspector David Shane wouldn't tell me what charges police have recommended, nor whether the investigation focused on one suspect, or multiple people.

He did say that murder, arson and criminal negligence are among the possible charges.