Author name: Brenda O'Farrell The 1019 Report

Vaudreuil man pleads guilty to two murders

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

FREDERIC SERRE
The 1019 Report

A 44-year-old Vaudreuil-Dorion man who had a 2019 murder conviction overturned on appeal pleaded guilty last week before a new trial could even begin.

Richard Hunt entered the plea at the Salaberry-de-Valleyfield courthouse on Oct. 2, admitting he killed two bikers in a wooded area of Vaudreuil-Dorion in 2016.

In 2019, Hunt was convicted of the premeditated murders of Joseph Fluet and Steven Lamarsh, two Rock Machine bikers.

According to testimony presented at Hunt’s first trial, Fluet and Lamarsh were ambushed by Hunt and his girlfriend, Mélanie Binette, in a field in Vaudreuil-Dorion on Dec. 1, 2016. Hunt, who owed the two men money, had led them to believe that he would be able to pay them back, thanks to an $850,000 fortune buried in the wooded area following the theft of an armored truck.

Fluet and Lamarsh arrived at the scene armed only with shovels. But rather than participating in a treasure hunt, the two victims were shot by Hunt with a .223-caliber rifle. Hunt had been hiding waiting for them. He also shot the girlfriend of one of the victims. Rachel Wickenheiser survived and testified at Hunt’s first trial.

At the conclusion of his trial in 2019, Hunt was sentenced to life imprisonment. Now, under the terms of his plea, Hunt, who has been detained since his arrest in December 2016, will be eligible to apply for release in 2029.

While he will be eligible for parole, it will not be automatic, said Superior Court Judge André Vincent, who reminded Hunt that if he is released, he will be under the supervision of the Parole Board for the rest of his life.

Hunt’s accomplice, Binette, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in October 2020 and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

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Hudson strikes deal with Legion, settles two court cases

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1019 Report

The town of Hudson and the local branch of the Canadian Legion have struck a deal that brings to an end a long-standing dispute and two court cases.

“The agreement sets the path for a long and mutually supportive relationship for both parties, the members of the Legion and the Hudson community – past, present and future,” said Hudson Mayor Chloe Hutchison in response to questions from The 1019 Report.

The deal includes a 100-year lease, approved by Hudson council last week, that will see Legion Branch 115 pay a monthly rent to the town of $761 to occupy the space it currently operates out of – part of the community centre complex on Main Road. The rent will be increased by 2 per cent per year from 2024 to 2026, and be adjusted according to the Consumer Price Index in subsequent years.

“We are happy with it,” Legion branch president Jon Bazar said last week, adding the organization has agreed to also pay three years of back-taxes the town claims it owed.

The agreement also sees the court cases involving the two parties dropped. The litigations stem from a dispute over issues involving the deed of sale agreed to by the town in 1994, when the Legion opted to sell its building to the municipality for $1. The move gave way to the town building its community centre on the Legion site. In 2019, it was discovered that the terms of the sale were “not in accordance” with the provincial Cities and Towns Act, Bazar said.

In March 2022, the Legion sued the town of Hudson for annulling the sale of the property. That same month, according to Hudson assistant director-general Marie-Jacinthe Roberge, the town sued the Legion for unpaid taxes.

The lawsuits have cost the town about $85,000 up until June of this year, Hutchison said.

The new lease agreement approved by council last week was not approved unanimously, however. Councillors Doug Smith and Benoit Blais voted against the motion.

In an interview last week, Blais said his objection did not arise from opposition to the spirit or scope of the lease agreement, but because he felt some clauses needed to be clarified.

Blais explained he had submitted a list of questions to town officials seeking clarification, but did not receive adequate answers, adding that when signing a 100-year agreement, the time should have been taken to clarify the points he raised, including having a complete and detailed list of  the Legion’s assets.

“Finally we were able to put aside the differences between the town and the Legion,” Blais said, adding: “It’s just sad we didn’t take the extra hours to do it properly.”

In response to the criticism, Hutchison said: “I appreciate the great care taken by councillors in their review of the town’s technical documents. The request for added precision to be included in the documents had been carefully reviewed by the town’s legal staff and external lawyer. I was satisfied with the level of assiduity and quality of response by the town. It was time to move forward.

“I trust that we have a strong and clear set of documents in hand that best represent the nature of the relationship between the town and the Legion and that this will serve as a sound tool for both parties moving forward.”

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Storyfest sets stage once again for a literary lightning strike

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1019 Report

Science has debunked the fiction that lightning never strikes twice. But can science and fiction create it? Lightning, that is?

The answer to that question could be discovered Sunday in Hudson as the ever-impressive literary festival known as Storyfest sets to light up our imaginations with the launch of its 22nd edition by welcoming New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs.

Reichs, earlier this year, published her 22nd mystery thriller featuring her recurring central character, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. The series, based loosely on Reichs’s own career as one of about a dozen forensic anthropologists in North America, catapulted to broad-based recognition 26 years ago with her first novel Déja Dead. It hit bestsellers lists across North America and the United Kingdom, a trend that has continued with each subsequent instalment. It also spun off the television series Bones in 2005, which ran for 12 seasons, becoming the longest running drama produced by the Fox network in the United States.

Reflecting on her career as a writer, Reichs is hard-pressed to explain her success.

“It took off so quickly and so hard,” she said in an interview with The 1019 Report recently, adding that her first book was so successful, “it certainly changed my career trajectory.”

Reichs’ latest book, The Bone Hacker, published by Simon & Schuster, is a “ripped from the headlines” story based on the islands of Turks and Caicos. But it opens with a scene of the main character heading out on a boat in the St. Lawrence River to watch one of the Montreal’s international fireworks shows when the skies open up and a meteorological microburst throws the small watercraft crashing about in the dark waves.

The scene is one of many in Reichs’s books over the years that are set in Montreal, a city she has a fond attachment to. And one of the reasons she is looking forward to her visit to Hudson.

“I always love coming to Canada,” she said.

For many years, Reichs commuted to Montreal, where she kept an apartment. After completing her PhD at Northwestern University in Illinois, she began to teach at the University of North Carolina. From there, she took part in a faculty exchange program, that launched here relationship with Montreal, where she taught at Concordia and McGill universities and began to consult on cases with the Quebec Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecines légales.

She has also worked around the world, consulting on cases from genocide in Rwanda, to the World Trade Centre site in New York City, to cases in the Canadian north.

She has used many of the cases she has worked on as the starting points for her fiction.

Reichs has retired from teaching and consulting, spending most of her time now writing. She has another book in the works set to be released next year.

Kathy Reichs will be at Storyfest on Sunday, Oct. 15, at 2 p.m. at the Stephen F. Shaar Community Centre, 394 Main Rd., Hudson. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased online at greenwoodstoryfest.com, and as cash purchases only at Que de Bonnes Choses, 484-B, Main Rd. in Hudson. 

Other Storyfest events to watch for:

  • Montreal’s Anita Anand will discuss her novel, A Convergence of Solitudes, which looks at  the lives of two families across Partition-era India, Vietnam’s Operation Babylift and two Quebec referendums. She will be at the Hudson Creative Hub on Oct. 19 at 7:30 p.m. 
  • Former CBC journalist Waubgeshig Rice will discuss his second novel Moon of the Turning Leaves, the continues the story a tight-knit Anishinaabe community more than a decade after a major blackout compels them to return to their ancestral ways. He will be at the Hudson Creative Hub on Oct. 25 at 7:30 p.m. 
  • Montreal food writer and former Montreal Gazette restaurant critic Lesley Chesterman will share her insights from her recently published book Make Every Day Delicious at the Stephen F. Shaar Community Centre on Oct. 29 at 2 p.m.
  • Former Hudson High student and McGill University alumna, Dr. Maureen Mayhew will talk about her memoir Hand on My Heart that draws focuses on her experience working Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan at the Hudson Creative Hub on Nov. 7 at 7:30 p.m. 
  • Canadian actor R.H. Thomson will share his thoughts on his new memoir, By the Ghost Light, that looks at how the stories of our past shape our future at the Hudson Village Theatre on Nov. 27 at 7:30 p.m.

Cutlines:

New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs opens another edition of Storyfest in Hudson on Sunday.

Her latest novel launched earlier this year is her 22nd in a series of works featuring her loosely autobiographical character, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. It opening scene is set in Montreal.

Credit:

Courtesy of Simon & Schuster

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St. Lazare beefs up its pesticide law, adds to list of restricted products

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

JOSHUA ALLAN
The 1019 Report

The town of St. Lazare is updating its pesticide bylaw, banning a wider range of products and extending the regulations limiting their use to private companies involved in landscaping and ground maintenance.

The aim of the move is to protect the health of residents and safeguard against contaminating the town’s water supply, according to St. Lazare Mayor Geneviève Lachance.

“The presence of pesticides and fertilizers in water sources can lead to potential health risks for residents in your municipality,” Lachance said, explaining that St. Lazare relies on ground sources for its water supply.

St. Lazare council last month unveiled the proposed updates to its original pesticide bylaw, which was adopted 23 years ago. It was scheduled to vote to approve the latest updates at yesterday evening’s council meeting.

“It’s high time that we update this bylaw,” Lachance said during the Sept. 12 town council meeting.

The bylaw update comes following recommendations to ban the use of neonicotinoids, glyphosate and other pesticides. Neonicotinoids are insecticides that are absorbed by plants that leave residues in pollen and nectar, making them toxic to bees, while glyphosates are herbicides commonly used on lawns and gardens.

These recommendations were made by the town’s environmental committee and environmental protection groups MARE – Mouvement d’action regional en environnement – and Mères au Front. The two organizations had produced a study on pesticide usage in the town of Ormstown, southwest of Valleyfield, leading to that municipality adopting a bylaw in 2022 banning the use of these substances, Lachance said.

This led Lachance to invite the groups to study the use of pesticides in St. Lazare, she explained.

Lyne Mousseau, who heads St. Lazare’s environmental department, said the study was used as the basis to update the town’s old pesticide bylaw “considering that many companies are involved in grounds maintenance in St. Lazare and apply products without authorization.”

Extending the restrictions of pesticide and herbicide products is a step in the right direction to better protect the environment, said Catherine Décarie, president of the Société d’horticulture et d’environnement de Saint-Lazare.

“I applaud the city for wanting to be more restrictive in applying these pesticides,” Décarie said. “Because at the end of the day, these pesticides trickle down into our water table.

“Bottom line, people need to wake up and understand that if they keep putting chemicals on their property, at the end, they might be drinking it,” she added.

Décarie, who is a volunteer with the David Suzuki Foundation’s Butterflyway Project, also pointed to the importance of protecting pollinators by eliminating the use of harmful pesticides.

“We all know today that pollinators are essential for our food,” Décarie said. “There’s been a decline of roughly 75 per cent in the past decade of pollinators. And a big part of the problem is herbicides and pesticides.”

Lachance said the municipality will provide information to residents, as some have been misled when it comes to the use of certain insecticide and herbicide brands that market their products as “natural,” which gives a false impression about how these chemicals impact the environment.

“They say it’s natural and safe. But it’s a poison, it’s killing insects,” including pollinators, she said.

The town will launch an awareness campaign aimed at educating residents regarding the use of pesticides and fertilizers over the next few months, Lachance added.

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Planned $20-million composting plant draws critics

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

JOHN JANTAK
The 1019 Report

The plan to open a $20-million composting facility in St. Télesphore – a project described by regional officials as “the biggest environmental project” in the MRC of Vaudreuil-Soulanges – is not complete but continues to draw criticism from residents concerned about the impact it will have on the environment and the residents who live closest to it.

But MRC officials says the plant – which will be similar to a composting facility opened in Cowansville – will follow all provincial environmental standards. And they refute concerns the facility will be nothing more than a landfill.

“We understand there are some concerns and we really want to give the right information about this project and what’s going to happen in the next few months and years,” said MRC spokesperson Catherine St-Amour.

Last week, in an often fiery question period at the MRC meeting, about 50 people peppered the mayors of the region about the project. From wanting to know what other sites were considered before selecting the site in St. Télesphore for the facility, to how many trucks will travel to the site, to the impact on ground water in the region, residents outlined their concerns.

The confrontation was just a few days after a group of about 30 staged a short protest at the site of the planned facility, two lots near a sand quarry on St. Antoine Road, which the MRC is finalizing the purchase of for the project.

Residents will be kept informed throughout the entire development process, said MRC prefect Patrick Bousez, adding that each phase of the project will have to be approved by the provincial Environment Ministry.

The plan would see all of the region’s organic waste, which is now trucked to Lachute, to be processed in St. Télesphore.

One of the advantages of having a dedicated compost processing centre in the region, St-Amour said, is the high-quality compost that will be produced will be available exclusively for Vaudreuil-Soulanges residents.

“The organic material that will be going to the facility will be only from our region and the compost that is made will be redistributed in the region,” she said.

Only green waste, autumn leaves and food waste from Vaudreuil-Soulanges will be processed at the regional composting platform.

St-Amour dismissed rumours that the proposed centre would be a landfill site, saying landfills are prohibited on Vaudreuil-Soulanges territory.

Residents of St. Télesphore were invited to an information session about the planned facility last week. Future sessions will be open to all residents of Vaudreuil-Soulanges, but no dates have been set for these meetings.

According to the MRC, the cost of building the $20-million facility will be offset by a $5.4-million subsidy from the province. It will have an annual operating budget of $1.4 million, and the estimated cost of treating organic waste at the facility will be about $100 per tonne.

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