Quebec City nears year without one murder
'We are keeping our fingers crossed'
MARIANNE WHITE, CanWest News Service
Published: Saturday, December 29 2007
While Toronto faces a 20-year-high murder rate and other Canadian cities are plagued by homicides and gun violence, Quebec City is poised to turn the calendar on a murder-free year.
It has already actually been more than a year since the city's last homicide was reported on Oct. 31, 2006.
"We are keeping our fingers crossed and hope we can finish the year without a murder," Jean-Sebastien Roy, of the Quebec municipal police, said yesterday. He added the number of attempted murders also has dropped - from 12 in 2006 to eight in 2007.
Always known for its low crime rate, the city has the lowest homicide rate in the country (1.2 per 100,000 people) according to a recent report by Statistics Canada. Still, every year, an average of six or seven people are murdered in Quebec City. The last time the city went a year without a homicide was in 1962.
In Montreal, by comparison, 39 people have been murdered in 2007, slightly below last year's toll.
Overall, murders in the province have dropped significantly since the end of the bikers' war, which killed 160 people across Quebec - some of them innocent bystanders - during the 1990s.
There are still fights for the control of the drug market in Quebec City, Roy noted. But as the city prepares for its coming 400th anniversary celebrations - starting Dec. 31 and lasting for 10 months - officials can brag it's a safe destination.
"It's probably a mix of exceptional circumstances and luck," Roy stressed.
"We can't precisely explain why there has been no murder so far this year. And we are aware of the fact that it can change very quickly."
