The War Amps begins its 2018 key tag mailing to households this week with the theme, “Still Much to Do,” as the Association celebrates its 100th anniversary.
Éloi is a member of The War Amps Child Amputee (CHAMP) Program.
Amputee veterans returning from the First World War started The War Amps in 1918 to assist each other in adapting to their new reality as amputees. They then welcomed amputee veterans following the Second World War and established the Key Tag Service to gain meaningful employment and provide a service to the public. The War Amps innovative programs have grown over the past 100 years from assisting war amputees – whom they still serve – to all amputees, including children. But there is “Still Much to Do” to ensure amputees have the artificial limbs they need to lead independent and active lives.
Louis Bourassa, Director of The War Amps CHAMP Program (Quebec), wrote the letter which accompanies this year’s key tags. He lost his right leg at the age of four in a lawn mower accident. A member of The War Amps Child Amputee (CHAMP) Program, he later started work with the Association, the war amputees he had come to know while growing up continued to provide advice and support on living with amputation. He says, “It moves me greatly to think of how these remarkable First and Second World War ‘amps’ enabled me to overcome my amputation, and I have been proud to, in turn, help the younger amputees who have come after me.”
The Key Tag Service continues to employ amputees and people with disabilities and has returned more than 1.5 million sets of lost keys since its inception. Each key tag has a confidentially coded number. If you lose your keys, the finder can call the toll-free number on the back of the tag or place them in any mailbox, and The War Amps will return them to you by courier, free of charge.
The War Amps receives no government grants. With the public’s continued support of the Key Tag Service, the Association’s programs for amputees will carry on long into the future.
Those who do not receive their key tags in the mail can order them at waramps.ca or call toll-free 514 398-0759.
Who needs ice when you’ve got enthusiasm: A group shot of Laval Senior Academy Hockey Day supporters, including LSA students, Canadian Forces soldiers and elected officials from the Laval area.
Martin C. Barry
The unpredictable weather that the Laval and Montreal regions have been experiencing in recent years played havoc with Laval Senior Academy’s annual Hockey Day event recently.
Scheduled to take place on Feb. 23 and 24, the two-day gathering – which has been highly successful in past years – was reduced this year to just two hockey matches when unseasonably warm temperatures melted the frozen surface on the Chris-Karigiannis and 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infrantry Memorial Rink behind the school on Souvenir Blvd.
MNA Guy Oullette helped with the ceremonial face off.
Mother Nature stole the ice
“The rain and the temperatures stole our ice,” said Daniel Johnson, a special education technician at Laval Senior Academy, who has been the driving force behind the tournament each year. “We had to improvise. We decided to join the weather rather than fight it.”
Had Mother Nature cooperated, the schedule on day one would have seen teams from Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board elementary schools play some outdoor ice hockey games, followed by matches of student sledge hockey, followed by an LSA vs. Laurentian Regional High School hockey match.
The schedule on Saturday would have included some Laval minor league hockey games, student ringette, a regular Memorial Cup game involving Canadian Armed Forces soldiers with local police and staff, followed by a ceremony celebrating Laval Senior Academy Hockey Excellence and Alumni.
The guys from the Laval-based 4th Batallion of the Royal 22nd Regiment were on hand to face off against their comrades from the Alberta-based 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.
Memorial Cup mini-match
However, going with the flow, the participants – including the soldiers from the 3PPCLI who flew in from Alberta as they do every year to take part – played ball hockey in the warm sunshine on a quickly-improvised rink set up in the asphalted area just behind the school, and settled for a short and improvised Memorial Cup match.
Soldiers from the Laval-based 4th Batallion of the Royal 22nd Regiment also helped out with a BBQ. A La Belle Province restaurant operator pitched in with a donation of hot dog and hamburger meat for the grills. Although there was no hockey action on the ice, the LSA students and the military personnel got the chance to renew friendships.
Opportunity to make friends
While the number of spectators was lower than in years past, those who did attend enjoyed the celebration, while helping to promote student leadership and access to community sport. In the Memorial Cup game, soldiers from 3PPCLI in Alberta played the 4R22R battalion stationed in Laval.
The soldiers from 3PPCLI spent the days leading up to Hockey Day with students at the school. Chomedey MNA Guy Oullette helped perform the ceremonial face off. The Laval Police Department’s Cst. Jimmy Mourelatos was among those who turned up to show support.
Mar 2 – Police are investigating a home invasion in Duvernay that left three people in hospital after being pepper-sprayed during the incident. The trio of unidentified victims were maced at around 1 a.m. at a house located on Montpellier St. They were transported to hospital for decontamination.
Police could not confirm if the three individuals were residents of the house.
Body of Missing Teen Girl Found Behind School
Mar 1 – Police confirmed the lifeless body of 14-year-old Athena Gervais was found Thursday afternoon in a stream behind her school. She’d been missing for three days.
She was last seen leaving her school at lunchtime on Monday, February 26th, and was reported missing after she failed to return to school or home after lunch.
Laval police set up a command centre at the school she attended in Fabreville, École secondaire Poly-Jeunesse, and urged anyone with information about Gervais’ whereabouts to come forward and speak confidentially with investigators.
Firefighters participating in the search for the missing teen discovered Gervais’ body in the creek behind her school on Thursday, March 1st, at around 4:30 pm. Police had also called in a canine unit and a helicopter to assist with the search.
According to one report, Gervais and some friends allegedly stole cans of the alcoholic energy drink FCKD UP from a nearby dépanneur during that fateful lunchtime. The drink contains 11.9 % alcohol and extremely high amounts of sugar. It was denounced by health experts last fall as a dangerous drink being marketed to adolescents.
Geloso Group states their alcoholic drink, called FCKD UP, was created in response to American-made Four Loko
A preliminary report from the autopsy comfirmed that there were no signs of violence on the body, and concluded the girl’s death was accidental. The exact cause of death was not disclosed. A more detailed autopsy report, expected in the coming days, will reveal whether she consumed any substances and establish the official cause of her death.
Grief counsellors were sent to the Fabreville high-school on Friday to assist students and staff cope with the loss and shock.
Suspicious Fire at Hair Salon
Mar 1 – Laval’s arson squad is investigating a suspicious fire that broke out in a hair salon in a strip mall on Boul. Samson early last Thursday.
Firefighters were summoned to the hairdresser’s when the fire alarms went off just after 3 a.m. They arrived to find smoke coming from the salon and a small fire burning inside the locale. After quickly putting out the flames, firefighters found traces of a liquid that may have been used to start the fire.
The salon’s owners could not be reached
Third Round of Drug Raids Nets Zero Arrests
Feb 22 – Laval police officers were among the task force that carried out a third wave of raids aimed at breaking up a drug trafficking network linked to the Hells Angels. More than 60 police officers fromvarious police services were involved with executing warrants in five municipalities north of Laval.
Eight raids were carried out in residences, warehouses, and a commercial establishment.
Spearheaded by the Sûreté du Québec’s anti-organized crime task force, the third wave included members of the Laval and Montreal police services, as well as the RCMP. The raids took place in Mirabel, St-Colomban, St-André-d’Argenteuil, Ascension, and Prévost.
National Human Trafficking Hotline Human trafficking is a heinous crime that disproportionately affects women and girls, particularly Indigenous, newcomer and low-income individuals. The Government is committed to putting an end to gender-based violence and proposes to provide $14.51 million over five years, beginning in 2018–19, and $2.89 million per year ongoing, to Public Safety Canada to combat human trafficking by establishing a National Human Trafficking Hotline, including an online portal and a referral mechanism to social services and law enforcement. This hotline will help protect those vulnerable to being trafficked and enable victims to access the necessary social and law enforcement services they need. As this initiative proceeds, the Government will work with provinces and territories to ensure effective implementation.
(TLN) Laval mayor Marc Demers has announced that two city councillors will henceforth be representing the city on committees at meetings of the Union of Quebec Municipalities (UMQ).
Aline Dib, Laval City Councillor
Dib and Tassoni
Saint-Martin city councillor Aline Dib and Laval-des-Rapides city councillor Isabella Tassoni were selected for the task of interfacing with other member municipalities at UMQ meetings.
While Dib will be sitting on the UMQ’s Commission for Culture, Leisure and Community Life, Tassoni will be on the UMQ’s Commission for Women and Governance.
Isabella Tassoni, Laval City Councillor
Representing Laval
“I am very pleased to see that the respective competencies of Mrs. Dib and Mrs. Tassoni have been recognized within the UMQ,” said Mayor Demers. “They are certain to do an impeccable job while positioning Laval and its large projects among those of the major cities in Quebec.
“Our accomplishments could serve as inspiration for the ways things are done elsewhere,” added Demers, “while we in Laval will be profiting from the exchanges to add to our expertise.”
Laval well represented
Laval is well represented on the UMQ, with Mayor Demers being a member of the governing board, as well as vice-president of the UMQ’s caucus for major cities.
The mayor also sits along with Laval city councillor Stéphane Boyer on the UMQ’s commission for intelligent cities. In the meantime, Councillor and Laval executive-committee member Sandra Desmeules sits on the UMQ’s committee for its annual assizes.
Set to retire from politics in June when he’ll be stepping down as MP for the riding of Outremont, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says he’s feeling confident about his future on the faculty of one of the country’s leading universities and as the head of an environmental group that organizes Earth Day in Quebec.
In an interview with Newsfirst Multimedia last week, Mulcair – who first entered politics in 1994 as the Liberal MNA for the Laval riding of Chomedey – said he will be teaching political science beginning this summer.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair, seen here in his Outremont constituency office, will be teaching political science at the University of Montreal starting this summer.
New horizons for Mulcair
On Friday last week, the University of Montreal announced that Mulcair is joining their political science faculty as a visiting professor in the newly-created Master’s degree program in environment and sustainable development. Jour de la Terre had previously announced that Mulcair was taking on the leadership of the organization as volunteer board president.
“I can say that I’m in a very good place in my career right now,” said Mulcair. “I’m very satisfied that the number one job that Jack [Layton] and I had set for ourselves we were able to accomplish – which was breaking through in Quebec for the NDP.
Thomas Mulcair running in Chomedey for the Quebec Liberals in 1993.
Proud of NDP’s achievements
“We still have 16 outstanding MPs. And I’ll be leaving at the end of the spring session, but I’m convinced that the party is going to be able to find an excellent candidate to replace me and they’ll be able to take that into the next election and I’m sure that things are going to go well.”
The year 2015, a federal election year, was momentous not only for Mulcair, but for the two other party leaders vying for the country’s top elected position. For the Liberals’ Justin Trudeau, it meant becoming the country’s leader, while for the incumbent Conservatives’ Stephen Harper the election brought about the end of his political career.
June 2006, Betty McLeod of Agape awarding Thomas Mulcair for his continuous support.
A setback for the NDP
As for fate of the NDP, Mulcair said, “We were always very prudent, and I was always very prudent never to get ahead of ourselves. Polls would go up and be in our favour and then they’d go back down. We were convinced we had a good offer on the table.
“And, in any event, we slid back to our third-party position that we’d been in before. But I am proud of the fact that I got the second-highest number of seats in the NDP’s history: 44 seats is the second-highest that we’ve ever had. And it’s second, of course, to the fabulous Orange Wave of 2011.”
A letdown after election
Mulcair said he underwent a period of feeling disenchanted following the election. “You feel a great deal of disappointment that the great ideas we had put forward are not going to come to pass,” he said. “So knowing that Canadians were going to be stuck with the Liberals again, and knowing those Liberals from my 40 years in government, I knew what was going to happen.”
Although he hasn’t been the NDP’s leader since last October when the party’s new leader, Jagmeet Singh, succeeded him, Mulcair remains outspoken in his criticism of Justin Trudeau, whose 2015 sweep set back the NDP and thwarted any ambitions Mulcair might have had to be in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Thomas Mulcair presenting Quebec’s government sustainable development new policies as Minister of Environment.
Still critical of Justin Trudeau
“This is the first sitting Prime Minister in Canadian history to break the law,” said Mulcair, referring to the Parliamentary Ethics Commissioner’s ruling that Trudeau breached the country’s Conflict of Interest Act when he vacationed at the Bahamian home of the Aga Khan.
“Watching Mr. Trudeau be found guilty by the ethics commissioner has an effect on all of us, because it’s a question of ethics. He’s often very flippant when he reacts to that. He tries to pirouette away from it, saying ‘I won’t do it again.’ … A Prime Minister has to show ethics at the highest level. He has to be a model. And Justin Trudeau’s ethics have been shown to be totally lacking.”
Tom’s new book “Strength of Conviction”
A passion for politics
With politics clearly still very much in his blood, Mulcair said it his intention to have his university students benefit from his four decades of political experience as well as his views on future political developments in Quebec and Canada.
“You can be sure that the 40 years of experience I have in government will allow me to inspire them to get involved publicly to make sure that workers’ pensions are protected and the environment is protected for future generations,” he said. “These are all things that I believe in passionately and that won’t change when I leave politics.”
Feb 9 – Laval police are asking for the public’s help in locating 47-year-old Mario Mousseau, who is suspected of at least 8 offences of the same nature. Authorities have connected Mousseau with a string of break-ins that occurred in Laval, and suspect he is still in the area.
He is described as a white male, about 5’8″ tall and 160 pounds.
Laval police are asking for the public’s help in locating 47-year-old Mario Mousseau.
Anyone with information about Mousseau’s whereabouts is asked to contact Laval police via the info-line at 450-662-INFO (4636).
A 69-year-old man was injured after a tractor trailer ran over a car on Highway 440 in Laval Tuesday February 13, morning.
The incident happened around 11 a.m. and ended with the jackknifed trailer on top of a small car, with both vehicles on the median near Curé Labelle Ave.
The driver had to be extricated from the tangled mess and was then rushed to hospital. While his injuries were considered very serious at first, his condition has since improved.
The truck driver was treated for shock.
Police closed all lanes on the westbound highway, and the delays led to two other crashes near Chomedey Blvd. and Highway 15 as drivers tried to exit the highway and avoid a traffic jam.
The cause of the collision is under investigation.
Feb 17 – What began as an argument in the parking lot between an exotic dancer and a 26-year-old patron of the Salon Bleu strip club could have turned deadly as the man ended up being dragged beneath the woman’s car nearly half a kilometre down Boul. Curé-Labelle.
The verbal altercation was reported to have started at about 3:30 a.m. Whether she hit him with the car first, and how he became entangled up beneath the car, is still a mystery to investigators.
The victim was dragged 400 m before passing motorists noticed the heinous situation and managed to immobilise the woman’s car by blocking it with their own.
According to police, the man was lucky to have suffered only minor injuries, cuts, and burns. He was transported to hospital for treatment and is expected to recover.
The 27-year-old dancer was arrested and questioned. She faces charges of criminal negligence and dangerous driving, as well as possible armed assault charges if the investigation points to deliberate malicious intent on her part.
Police confirmed the dancer was not intoxicated at the time. Investigators will be reviewing video surveillance footage to determine the cause of the incident.
Demers says Ottawa won’t forget cities in 2018 budget
After participating last week in a meeting of the Mayors’ Caucus of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in Ottawa, Laval mayor Marc Demers said he feels confident the federal government will be paying attention in its 2018 budget to municipalities’ needs, including social housing, infrastructure, mass transit and the local impact of legalizing marijuana.
Asked about marijuana revenues, Demers said he was confident the provincial government would take its responsibility seriously in seeing that sums which are supposed to be reaching municipal governments will be doing so. At the same time, he noted that the FCM’s next board of directors meeting will be taking place in Laval from March 6 – 9.
Laval mayor Marc Demers said he feels confident the federal government will be paying attention in its 2018 budget to municipalities’ needs.Mayors’ Caucus of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in Ottawa
