Latest news with #Rimouski
CTV News
10-07-2025
- Sport
- CTV News
Knights' head coach to lead Canada at World Junior Hockey Championship
London Knights head coach Dale Hunter participates in press conference following London Knights' 3-1 win over Rimouski Oceanic, in Memorial Cup hockey action, in Rimouski, Que., on Sunday, May 25, 2025. (Source: Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press) According to TSN, the Hunter brothers will be called up to lead Canada at the World Junior Hockey Championship in 2026. TSN Hockey Insider Darren Dreger reports Hockey Canada is set to name Dale Hunter, head coach of the London Knights, as head coach for Team Canada, and his brother Mark Hunter will have a role in management. More to come. — With files from TSN's Darren Dreger
CTV News
03-07-2025
- Science
- CTV News
Chances of alien abduction highest in these Canadian cities, says gambling odds website
A donut-shaped UFO was spotted in Rimouski, Que., on Oct. 23, 2017 and photographed by witnesses. (Source: 2017 Canadian UFO Survey) Just in time for World UFO Day, a lighthearted list based on historical data figures that Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver are the Canadian cities with the highest odds of being abducted by aliens. It was complied by Canada Sports Betting, which crunched the numbers of unearthly sightings from the National UFO Reporting Centre. 'For me, I think maybe the aliens are fans of skiing,' joked Ben Mendelowitz, digital PR manager and analyst with Canada Sports Betting. 'I've got a friend in Vancouver who says there are a lot of weird, wonderful, colourful folks living there. Maybe that's what draws them in,' he said. There are hundreds of sightings reported in Canada every year, many more around the world, and most can be explained. Even so, many remain unsolved and admittedly stump the U.S. Pentagon and NASA, which now investigates what it calls 'unidentified anomalous phenomena.' 'Any interest anybody has in looking at the sky, I want to talk about it,' said Jesse Rogerson, an astronomer and assistant professor in York University's Department of Science, Technology and Society. He points out that most UFO or UAP sightings are not planned, and that makes studying them tough, because science needs more than anecdotal evidence. 'All the observations we ever see are by chance. Science cannot be done with chance observation, you need to have a dedicated study,' he said. World UFO Day is designed to raise awareness, and is celebrated on June 24 or July 2.
Yahoo
22-06-2025
- Yahoo
Accused in deadly Amqui, Que., truck crash found guilty of murder
Steeve Gagnon has been found guilty of first-degree murder after running down and killing three people with his pickup truck in Amqui, Que., in March 2023. The 12 jurors, who began their deliberations behind closed doors on Friday morning, delivered their verdict at the courthouse in Rimouski, Que., on Saturday evening. Gagnon faced three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder using a motor vehicle. He was found guilty on all five charges. Quebec Superior Court Justice Louis Dionne immediately sentenced Gagnon to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years on the murder charges and 10 years for each of the attempted murder charges, to be served concurrently. Gérald Charest, 65, Jean Lafrenière, 73, and 41-year-old Simon-Guillaume Bourget were killed after being struck by Gagnon's vehicle. It was an emotional scene when families and community members exited the courtroom after the verdict. Some were tearful, while others seemed relieved. Amqui Mayor Sylvie Blanchette told Radio-Canada that people can now turn the page. "It doesn't erase anything," she said in French, "Gérald, Jean and Simon-Guillaume will not be coming back, but at least for the families, it's like a balm on a wound." "The verdict that they were waiting for is the one that came out," she said of the victims' loved ones. Gagnon admitted he was driving the vehicle that struck and killed three people and seriously injured three others, but during his jury trial, the defence argued it was an accident. His lawyer, Hugo Caissy, said Gagnon was driving when he dropped something on the floor of his vehicle, reached down to pick it up, and then lost control of the vehicle and struck the pedestrians. The Crown, however, had argued that Gagnon's actions were premeditated and intentional. The prosecutor pointed to a series of videos Gagnon recorded just two days before the crash, where he described running down children in a schoolyard with his truck. On March 13, 2023, the day of the crash, Gagnon stopped at a schoolyard, but there were no students there because it was a pedagogical day. Six minutes later, the first pedestrian was hit. In order to find Gagnon guilty of first-degree murder, jurors had to conclude that he intentionally ran down those people, and that he planned the crime in advance. "We always believed that that it was first-murder and we were confident in our evidence," Crown prosecutor Simon Blanchette said on Saturday. Meanwhile, the defence has 30 days to appeal the verdict. Caissy wouldn't comment on whether or not it's a path Gagnon will pursue.
CBC
21-06-2025
- CBC
Accused in deadly Amqui, Que., truck crash found guilty of murder
Steeve Gagnon has been found guilty of first-degree murder after running down and killing three people with his pickup truck in Amqui, Que., in March 2023. The 12 jurors, who began their deliberations behind closed doors on Friday morning, delivered their verdict at the courthouse in Rimouski, Que., on Saturday evening. Gagnon faced three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder using a motor vehicle. He was found guilty on all five charges. He admitted he was driving the vehicle that struck and killed three people and seriously injured three others, but during his jury trial, the defence argued it was an accident. In order to find Gagnon guilty of first-degree murder, jurors had to conclude that he intentionally ran down those people, and that he planned the crime in advance.
CBC
17-06-2025
- General
- CBC
Search for century-old artifact from Canadian shipwreck solved with a call from the U.S.
David Saint-Pierre says he had little information to go on in his effort to hunt down the keeper of a 111-year-old artifact from the shipwrecked Empress of Ireland. He had a photo of a man in a diving suit, an address from 1975 and a name: Ronald Stopani. Saint-Pierre — a maritime historian who has studied artifacts recovered from the site of the 1914 shipwreck off the coast of Rimouski, Que. — treated it like a modern-day scavenger hunt. He was looking for the Marconi wireless apparatus, the communication system used to receive and send wireless telegraphs on the ship before it sank, claiming the lives of more than 1,000 people. The system included a tuner, work table and keys to send messages. Saint-Pierre and staff at the Empress of Ireland Museum in Rimouski discovered it was found and recovered during an expedition to the site 51 years ago by a diving crew from Rochester, N.Y. With Saint-Pierre's help, the museum found Stopani — a member of the diving crew who first pulled it up from the water in the 70s — and in the spring, the apparatus was sent back to Quebec. 'I didn't even know if that man was still alive' The process of finding Stopani involved dozens of emails, Facebook messages, a handful of phone calls and physical letters, says Saint-Pierre. "I didn't even know if that man was still alive," said Saint-Pierre. "It was a shot in the dark." He says he wrote to "probably anyone" with the last name Stopani on Facebook for a few weeks. "If your name is Stopani, you probably have one of my messages in your junk box," joked Saint-Pierre. One day in January, he got a call back. In an interview with CBC News, Stopani said he still had the apparatus stored in a clear storage box in his home in Las Vegas — and he was eager to donate it. "As soon as I opened up the letter, it even had a picture of me in there so I knew exactly what it was," said Stopani, reached in Las Vegas. "I wanted to donate them for a while, but I had no way of contacting anybody." The 81-year-old, who splits his time between his homes in Florida and Nevada, says he half expected to be contacted. Years earlier, the family of his best friend, Fred Zeller — who had led diving expeditions to the shipwreck and who recently passed away — told Stopani that they travelled to the Rimouski museum to donate artifacts Zeller found and documents from over the years. Included in the donation was the photo of Stopani with the Marconi and correspondence between him and Zeller from the mid-1970s — when the pair met up to dive the shipwreck together. It was that photo and letter which first inspired Saint-Pierre and museum staff to find Stopani — and the pictured artifacts. Five decades later, Stopani still remembers the day he pulled the items up from the floor of the St. Lawrence River — decades before it was prohibited to recover artifacts. "Believe me, it was cold," he said, adding that during the dive in July, he could see small pieces of ice floating in the river. He recalled inflating his dry suit to float up to the surface with a bag that he says weighed about 30 kilograms. For the next 51 years, the artifact was well-travelled as he brought it with him on his moves from Rochester to Brampton, Ont., to Florida and finally Las Vegas. Having shipped the Marconi out a few months ago, he says sending it back to Quebec made him feel "elated." Artifact to be sent for restoration work Roxane Julien-Friolet, a museologist, says the Marconi arrived at the museum in mid-March and in great condition. "We're just amazed and really honoured to have this really important object part of our collection now," said Julien-Friolet. She says it will be sent for restoration work and then displayed. Operated by telegraphist Ronald Ferguson, this device was a very useful tool, she says, and part of the reason some were saved from the wreck in 1914 after an SOS message was sent. Saint-Pierre says laying eyes on the device gives historians even more information as to what happened on board. In a photo, Saint-Pierre's friend noticed the switch on the tuner was turned off. "It means that … [Ferguson] had to abandon his post [but] he took the time to turn the machine off," said Saint-Pierre. "Which was standard protocol. So really a professional man." Ferguson was one of the 465 survivors of the wreck and lived until the 1980s, he says. Saint-Pierre has since connected with Ferguson's son, who lives in the U.K., and informed him that his father's instrument was finally found. "That was also a great moment for me to be able to tell [him]," said Saint-Pierre.
