Weekly Anglo Quebec News Aug 1- Aug 7

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Every Saturday read a short, subjective weekly review of Quebec news with a Anglophone perspective.

This isn't Kansas anymore, Toto. Tornados are generally not big news unless there's good video or someone is killed, but when one lands in Quebec and causes damage the story goes right to page one. The town of Mont-Laurier, population 14,000 (a two and a half hour drive north of Montreal) got hit with a Catagory 2 tornado last Tuesday afternoon and caused plenty of damage, including forty homes and knocking out power to half the town. MORE
Here's a video of the twister and a look at some of the damage
Adding to the disaster, a helicopter filming the ruins crashed and killed a popular local businessman and a cameraman from a CTV affiliate in Montreal.

Father in hot water after letting his seven year-old son drive down a deserted country road with the family encouraging him on. The incident came to light when the idiot father posted a video of the adventure on YouTube. As you can imagine the authorities are not amused and are considering charges. The Father is under extreme media pressure and has told friends his life is has been hell since the video surfaced.
In contrast, another incident of underage driving has gone virtually unnoticed despite the fact that there was a fatality. I guess YouTube is the difference. A five-year-old boy was crushed to death in Abitibi, Sunday by a farm tractor driven by aseven year old boy, in Quebec's Abitibi region, provincial police say. No charges are contemplated as there is no legal minimum age for operating a tractor on private property. Can you believe that!

Montreal gets a new area code -'579' is the new code entering service in August as the 450 area code is full.

Montreal 19th best city the world to live in according Monocle Magazine from England. The only other Canadian city to make the list was Vancouver (14th). Take that Toront0. Check out the complete list.

Themis Papadopoulos the alleged fraudster in the Triglobal Financial swindle is reported to be living in Greece. You might think that now that his whereabouts are known, prosecutors would seek his extradition in relation to the $86 million that disappeared in a black hole in the Cayman Islands. You'd be wrong, they haven't even filed charges two years after the fraud. Aaargh....

Quebec loses jobs. Of the 44,000 jobs lost in Canada in July, 37,000 of them were lost in Quebec. That'a a pretty dismal statistic. Ontario actually gained 13,000 jobs in the same period. The unemployment rate in Quebec hit 9% with the Canadian rate at 8.5%.

Stanley Cup makes the tour of Quebec, as several Quebec members of the cup winning Pittsburgh Penguins show of their trophy. Think it's lame? Thousand upon thousands turned up in places like Sorel, Brossard, St. Julie, Shawinigan. There was even a Stanley Cup party at trendy resto-bar Buonanotte in Montreal. The prevailing sentiment of fans was that living vicariously throught the Penguins was better than waitng for the Canadiens to win.

Gasoline rises to $1.09 a litre in Montreal on Friday. The average price of a litre of gas in the USA on the same day is 68.4¢. Ouch!

CRIME & PUNISHMENT
(Weekly review of interesting crime stories and court room antics)

Paedophile gets the book thrown at him. Ex Montreal school teacher Richard Doucet collected a whopping 14 year sentence for various creepy crimes that included making arrangement online to meet a young boy. Problem was that the 'boy' was really a undercover cop and Doucet was busted when he went to the meet. How he get such a heavy sentence? Well I forgot to mention that he got caught in Virginia and faces US style justice. Ha Ha!! Because he's a foreigner he'll have to serve almost the whole sentence. Ouch!!!!
When will Canadian criminals learn to stay home and commit their illegal acts here where sentences are decidely agreeable? Mr. Doucet would likely serve less six months for the same crime here.

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