September 13, 2006: The Day Montreal Will Never Forget

As I was eating my lunch, I heard a lot of sirens outside on Boul. de Maisonneuve (I work at de Maisonneuve and McGill-College, almost two kilometres from Dawson). Sirens are not unusual at that busy address, but this seemed different. For five solid minutes it was one siren after another. I finished eating and decided to go out and see what was going on.

I went down to the street and a police car immediately zoomed past heading west on de Maisonneuve, so that's the direction I walked. A couple of minutes later an ambulance went by, then another, then a fire truck. I could see they were going farther than rue Guy, but because of the bend in the street I couldn't see just how far.

A few minutes later I was getting close to rue Guy, and by then I noticed there were a lot of people going the other way - coming towards me - and almost every one of them was talking on their mobile phone. I caught bits of talk; "Oh my God!" "What?" and the most chilling, "At least you're alive."

A couple of blocks later, near rue St. Marc, I saw three cars stopped on de Maisonneuve. One was just stalled in the middle of the road, another had been rear-ended, and a third had a crumpled front and had been pushed half way onto the sidewalk with it's rear flank bent against a parking meter. Broken headlight lenses were all over the street. But there were no people there, and no police. An abandonned traffic accident. Everyone was walking east, away from the scene, a few of them running, almost all talking on the phone.

I got closer. At Lambert-Closse (a block from Atwater), de Maisonneuve was blocked by cop cars and police tape.