A tough-talking Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay seemed to lay down the law yesterday to local activists critical of urban development – saying his administration will work with developers to see their projects realized “as quickly as possible.”
The comments came nearly 18 months after Tremblay virtually pleaded with Montrealers not to let the $1-billion Griffintown development project slip by.
The mayor’s speech yesterday began with a defence of plans to redevelop the red light district along St. Laurent Blvd. – a plan that has drawn the ire of some groups who say it will change the face of one of the city’s most storied neighbourhoods.
“I respect St. Laurent Blvd. But I drive through it every day, and when people try and defend some things I see there that are indefensible, things have to be done,” Tremblay told an audience of about 250 during a nomination meeting for his party’s candidates in Rosemont-Petite Patrie.

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Judge away, but reality TV is my poison. Nothing is more delightfully numbing than watching my teenage heroes grapple for what’s left of their 15 minutes of fame. If I was interested in intellectualizing the pastime, I would say it makes the untouchables seem human and in today’s celebrity-worshiping culture, that means something. Or, I could just admit I like smut.
All that aside, fresh from a television hiatus, I flopped on the couch and got ready for my version of tuning in and dropping out when I came upon some reality programming that made my stomach lurch. No, it wasn’t the sight of D-list stars praying in the jungle, or pimping out their kids as a way to make them look more family friendly and bankable — it was a 34-second ad proclaiming that Michael Ignatieff has a disinterest in Canada. In fact, he’s “just visiting.”

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… View larger image SDA – the company which developed the Angus Yards, is proposing to put up two buildings at the corner of St. Laurent and Ste-Catherine.
Public hearings on Entertainment district
Updated: Tue Jun. 09 2009 11:04:59 PM ctvmontreal.ca
The Main was home to wave after wave of immigrants as they arrived in Montreal.
But the city says the area around St. Laurent and Ste. Catherine has become neglected and decrepit.
Now a developer wants to put up two buildings that will wipe out the final traces of Montreal’s once famous red light district.
S.D.A., the company which developed the Angus Yards, is proposing new construction at the corner of St. Laurent and Ste. Catherine street.
Public hearings into the project took place on Tuesday night.
Some of those who remember the neighbourhood in its more colourful days came to the hearings to object to the plan.

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oronto’s brilliant collective, Rock Plaza Central, are the greatest literary Canadian band touring right now (there are more than you think). With Chris Eaton’s Jeff Magnum-esque voice backed by a palpable wall of kitchen-sink folk sound and a sublimely ebullient/stoic album to pimp this could be great. The last time I saw them, they were dusting off a long break and, admittedly a bit rusty, but I’m not writing them off just yet. They’ve got a fresh batch of songs — possibly not about horses — and a shiny new record to pimp, so expect an earnest show. The band is at Green Room tonight, Saturday May 30. -S.T.

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The pair, who had been in a tempestuous relationship for four years, were obviously tied by sex and mutual love, Daniel Zappelli, the prosecutor, said. “But it is not love that killed him. It was hate and money,” he said.
Ms Brossard’s mental state at the instant she pulled the trigger is the crux of the case, which has riveted the French and Swiss media and appalled members of the Continent’s old-money upper class.
She is charged with unpremeditated murder, which carries a maximum 20-year sentence. She and her lawyers are arguing that the act should be qualified as a crime of passion, which carries a minimum sentence of one year and maximum of ten.
Ms Brossard, a former shop assistant and escort girl, has told the court of her undying love for Mr Stern, explaining that he had goaded her into despairing rage by calling her a whore over $1 million that he had given her but threatened to take back.

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Presented in court, the e-mails and text messages of Edouard Stern, head of a French banking family, to Cécile Brossard, his lover, suggested a deep-rooted obsession that ended when she shot him one February evening four years ago. Police found him tied to a chair and dressed in a latex suit.
“You are a sh** and I vomit on you,” writes Stern on one occasion, and on another: “I love you madly, for ever. Your little devil.” He says how “sad” he is that they “scolded” each other. Later he writes: “You’re just a whore. You would have worked for the Gestapo during the war. You would have turned me in as a Jew.” The defence has tried to present the killing as a “crime of passion” in which Brossard, a 40-year-old former escort girl and shop assistant, exploded in anger when Stern, alluding to a gift of $1m (£608,000) that he was taking back from her, said: “A million is a lot to pay for a whore.”

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The mistress of one of the richest bankers in France asked a court yesterday to pardon what she called an abominable crime of passion as she stood trial for killing him during a bout of sadomasochistic sex.
Cécile Brossard, 40, addressed the family of Edouard Stern, the head of one of the richest banking families in France, who was 50 when she pumped four bullets into him in February 2005.
Mr Stern’s body was found in a latex suit and mask tied to a chair in his flat in Geneva, the city where the trial opened amid intense publicity yesterday.
“I would like to ask for forgiveness, but we cannot seek forgiveness for something so abominable,” Ms Brossard, a former escort girl and shop assistant, said. “The only thing that I can do is to try and explain the truth.

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CÉCILE BROSSARD’S guilt was never in doubt. The Frenchwoman confessed to shooting her lover dead during a sado-masochistic tryst on February 28th, 2005. The only outstanding question was how the court would classify the killing: cold-blooded murder or a crime of passion? A Swiss jury yesterday handed down a verdict of homicide. Brossard’s prison sentence, of up to 20 years, will be announced this evening.
Had the defence convinced the jury that the murder was a crime of passion, Brossard might have got off with as little as one year.
Edouard Stern, a scion of continental banking aristocracy, was 50 years old when Brossard, then 36, pumped four bullets into him. His personal fortune was estimated at €1 billion, making him the 38th richest man in France. Wire agencies noted that Stern was a friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy and the former prime minister Laurent Fabius.
The charge of premeditated murder was dropped in what was interpreted as an attempt to limit the scandal, for Brossard, a sort of modern-day courtesan, knows much about the sexual peccadillos of the rich and powerful in France.

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A FORMER call girl is facing 20 years in prison after being found guilty yesterday of murdering her billionaire lover in cold blood.

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A Swiss jury convicted the former mistress of one of France’s richest men of murder Wednesday after she admitted killing him during an argument over $1 million as he was dressed in a latex suit and tied up in a chair during their sex game.

Cecile Brossard testified that she had loved Edouard Stern and thought the banker would help her become financially independent and marry her, but that she became enraged during their final night together when he suggested she was a $1 million prostitute.

That prompted her to shoot her 50-year-old lover in the head, then three more times after he managed to get out of the chair and fell to the floor of his penthouse apartment in Geneva, according to prosecutor Daniel Zappelli.

“I am not a thief. I am not poisonous,” Brossard, 40, told the court. “I am just desperately in love with a man and I will be forever.”

The Frenchwoman turned to Stern’s former wife, Beatrice David-Weill, and his children and asked their forgiv …

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