1 year later, Quebec City remembers victims of horrific Halloween stabbing attacks
CBC
Quebec City residents are invited to commemorate the victims of the fatal stabbing that happened last Halloween in the city's historic district on Sunday afternoon.
The ceremony, organized by the city, will take place at three different locations where the attacks occurred.
"Together we will remember these people who lost their lives or were injured in this murderous craze," said Quebec's outgoing mayor, Régis Labeaume, in a statement.
François Duchesne, 56, and Suzanne Clermont, 61, were killed on Oct. 31, 2020 when a man dressed in medieval clothing attacked them with a sword. The man wounded five more people that night.
Carl Girouard, 25, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder. His trial is set to start in December.
A temporary memorial honouring the victims will be set up in front of city hall. A permanent one is planned for Place d'Armes, a well-known square in the centre of Old Quebec, in the spring of 2022.
Labeaume will give a speech and hold a minute of silence at city hall at 1 p.m. Sunday, before walking to a space dedicated to Clermont on des Remparts Street with Quebec City's police chief, Denis Turcotte, and the families of the victims.
The group will then head to Place d'Armes to pay tribute to Duchesne.
The victims' favourite songs will be playing at each location.
Clermont's husband, Jacques Fortin, will not be present. He told Radio-Canada that he decided to spend the anniversary of her death in Paris front of the Eiffel Tower, a monument he says she adored.
"We travelled, we laughed, we ate well," Fortin said. "We were an ordinary happy couple and then this tragedy changed everything."
Duchesne's family declined to do interviews with the media, but told Radio-Canada that the commemorative ceremony means a lot to them.
"The world is a lot less beautiful without François, to cherish his memory in the heart of the city he loved so much, gives it back some colours," said his sister Marie-Josée Duchesne in a written statement to Radio-Canada.
"All the gestures and the showings of solidarity, small or big, mean a lot and we are very receptive and grateful for them."
Windsor-Essex, Chatham-Kent and Sarnia can all expect between 20 and 40 millimetres of rainfall this weekend.
More Alberta seniors are now eligible for a provincially funded RSV vaccine.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.