Oh no.. there goes my shares value

Is there still such a thing as a cat burglar?

hahaha I don't know, but that's one cute burglar!

Home invasions are big in Montreal too.

In one of the latest incidents a girl knocks at your door asking for help or something, meanwhile 2 guys barge in after and take everything in front of your eyes :scared:

There was another one i heard about some guy from the city wanted to "check some plumbing/wiring", the person let them in and they quietly robbed them while they were supposedly fixing something.

The worst thing about these crimes is that there is no particular bad 'area' - the targets are chosen completely at random.

The greater Montreal population is only 3.5M

How common are these incidents?

Home invasions here are an ethnic crime, they're common in areas such as Markham but not likely to be an issue for people from the UK.

Now it turns out that the Delta Chelsea business was a love triangle murder suicide involving two Swiss tourists and a German one. Really, the riff raff we have to deal with in Toronto.

We went through a spate of them earlier this year. One week there was at least one a night. The police believe they were mostly related.

In reality, they're not that common.

Montreal is still a far safer place to live than some cities of comparable size.

Neill, did these take place downtown Montreal or out in the "burbs"? I lived in the West Island prior to moving here 2+ years ago, we'd hear about these things in the paper but they were usually confined to "bad" areas like St-Laurent and the East end of Montreal where more of the 'underground' operate (mafia, hells angels, rock machine etc).

Personally though, if anyone showed up at my door asking to be let in and I hadn't been notified by my service provider or municipality of work being done before hand, I would tell them to have their offices contact me first for permission.

Alot of these crimes you listed could be avoided if people practised common sense... but having said that, the difference is that I feel if the same ploy was being used by criminals here in the UK and it failed, instead of moving on to the next house & trying again, they're just as likely to force entry by attacking the home owner.

I may be way off base, but it just seems people are more likely to physically attack a person here then they would be in Canada. *shrug* Just an impression/feeling I get though, may just be because I'm living in a foreign country that I feel different.

This post was on tiscali (UK) website tonight

Gunmen reportedly kill four in Montreal
13/09/2006 19:32


By Robert Melnbardis

MONTREAL (Reuters) - Up to three gunman dressed in black army fatigues opened fire in a downtown Montreal college on Wednesday, and early, unconfirmed reports said four people had been killed.

RDI Television quoted unofficial sources as saying that 16 people may also been injured in the shootout. The network said one gunman had turned his weapon on himself and committed suicide, while a second had been shot and killed by police. This could not yet be confirmed.

"A suspect has been neutralised, which means he is not shooting any more," said Ian LaFreniere, a police spokesman.

Montreal police said they believed there were between one and three suspects.

A health agency official told reporters that at least six people have been taken to hospital, of which three are seriously wounded.

The shooting took place in the cafeteria of Dawson College, in the heart of Montreal, Canada’s second biggest city. The college has around 10,000 students aged from 16 to 19.

The shooting triggered memories of a 1989 massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, where a gunman killed 14 women before killing himself.

That gunman, Marc Lepine, 25, left behind a three-page letter claiming that feminists had ruined his life and naming 19 high profile Quebec women he wanted to kill.

Television pictures from Dawson College showed panicked students fleeing from the campus and a pool of blood on the front steps of the college.

"I could see him fire several times ... I ran into a classroom. It was like something from a movie," student Michel Boyer told CBC television.

"He was less than six feet tall but I couldn’t see his face ... he was completely covered," he said.

"To be getting out through an emergency exit and having police officers and SWAT teams run in and say ’Where’s the guy?’ holding their guns up, words can just not (describe) how frightened you are."

Boyer said the gunman was dressed in black army fatigues and had been armed with what looked to be a sniper’s rifle. "I heard at least 20 shots."

Robert Soroka, a professor at the college, told Reuters he was in his fourth floor office when heard shots being fired. He immediately ran down the hall and told teachers to keep their students in classrooms and close the doors.

"This could have been a very bad situation, if it had happened five minutes later when the students would have been exiting their classrooms during the changeover," he said.

Soroka said the shooting began at 12:45 (1645 GMT) and shots continued to be fired for about 30 minutes. He said he heard at least 20 shots being fired.

"It was shocking then and it’s shocking now," Soroka said of this shooting and that at the Ecole Polytechnique.

Thats pretty awful. But not really indicative of Canada (or even Montreal) as a whole. Thoughts are with the victims and the familes left to pick up the pieces.

They jumbled up the stories on the CBC, there was a report on Sean Penn smoking indoors in Toronto followed by an eyewitness report that went:

"It was the most scary thing that has ever happened to me," student Michael Boyer told CBC Television. "We ran out of the building as a SWAT team was coming in. They were screaming ’Where is he? Where is he?’ And when you have 20 police running at you with guns you really know that your life is in danger."

At the time, I shook my head at the fuss Canadians make over their bylaws. It was only later I discovered that the stories had been mixed.

This is a bit confusing, it is mixing two seperate crimes/occasions together in this arcticle. I dont doubt that either event happened but the way the article you posted above reads, it amalgimates events from botht eh 1980's Ecole Polytechnique and the current Dawson College events. Poor journalism I think.

Having lived in Canada I was not worried about crime, but this is the sort of press you get about the crime in the major cities in Canada and visa versa about the UK. Years ago I lived in West London and was not afraid to go out at night, but the media give you the impression its an unsafe place to live.

I really think you need to worry about crime in either country unless you are part of a biker gang or some drug/gun running cartel.

I know my father was worried about walking around Montreal at night a few years ago when he visited there as he read alot about crime in Montreal.

Just visit Russia and the get stopped in a taxi buy a guy with a machine gun demanding money. Thats pretty scarey!!

The biggest worry I had living in Canada were hitting a moose or deer which on a number of occasions driving late a night scared the hell out of me- not some nutter with a gun!!
Where I last worked last we had quite a few fatalities or serious injuries. I lost one employee, another disabled and another needed surgery.

On a lighter note a Canadian teacher at my sons secondary school is taking a Uni hoc class after school. So those street hockey sticks we brought back may have so use after all.

Sadly I think Montreal is far worse than London, england for violent crime but much less on petty crime .

It really brought it home today, I walked past Dawson college, as I do every day ,20 minutes before the shooting happened.

There was a drive by a few streets away on Monday night a man opened fire on a women and 2 children from a minivan (gang members?!!!), oh and also a bus driver stabbed in a random attack.

These crimes in the UK would have made it to the front pages of the Daily mail in the UK making people think it's much worse than it really is. In Montreal it doesn't make it too page seven.

The petty Crime here is bad enough, you just have to look at the heavily vandalised state of Montreal buses and bus shelters to see it

I can't speak for Moose Jaw or Red Deer, when I look on the map they seem pretty far away from anywhere with small populations, so naturally they are low on crime.

This place is pretty bad

Jonathan