But rarely enforced bylaw provides for $85 fines
Published March 24 , 2010
By Martin C. Barry • TLN
‘When the kids are playing hockey, they’re not really disturbing anybody’
Cst. Frank Di Genova
While some people on Montreal’s West Island are furious over a bylaw that makes playing street hockey illegal and subject to $75 fines, a spokesman for the Laval Police Department says the situation isn’t nearly as strict here and the police are more likely to turn a blind eye.
Steamed on West Island
After a father was recently fined for playing street hockey with his seven-year-old son and friends in Dollard des Ormeaux, more than 500 people signed a petition demanding the bylaw forbidding street sports be struck down. A D.D.O. bylaw forbids playing any sport on the street. The man pleaded not guilty and plans to further contest the charge.
In Laval, sub-article 118 of municipal regulation L-6070 makes it illegal to engage in any kind of play activity on the public roadway and provides for a $60 fine plus up to $25 court costs. Sub-article 11C of another bylaw, L-10519, imposes a $50 fine for a similar offence. As to which bylaw the police might choose to enforce, that’s anybody’s guess.
Which bylaw?
“I guess you could apply both,” says Cst. Frank Di Genova, a community relations officer with the Laval Police Department. “But if you were to ask me how many of these tickets has Laval actually given out in the last year or two, first of all I’d have to check, but the honest truth is that I think there wouldn’t be much.
“When the kids are playing hockey, they’re not really disturbing anybody, they’re just playing,” he adds. According to Di Genova, what the police in Laval usually do in such cases is to tell the kids to be careful to move out of the way when cars come along on the street and that’s the extent of the intervention. He added, however, that hockey would be strictly out of the question on certain busy streets, even though most kids are usually playing in fairly quiet residential areas.
Tolerant policy
“We try to be as tolerant as we can,” says Di Genova. “But we have to take into consideration that it is a street and drivers have to be able to circulate to get from one point to another. At the same time, there’s also the safety of the kids.” While he has been at this desk job for the past three years, Di Genova could not remember any tickets being handed out in Laval for illegal street hockey at any time.