“You want to be a journalist, my son?” said my late father, himself a journalist on the now-defunct Montreal Star, when I announced at a very young age my intentions to follow in his footsteps. By Colin McGregor “To write, he said, “You have to […] See more
Montreal has set up its first two supervised injection sites (SIS) for intravenous drug users. But some people ask, “Why bother?” By Raymond Viger After all, we’re talking junkies here. If they want to kill themselves with drugs and pass their infections on to other […] See more
A Canadian prison is certainly not a concentration camp. But one thing unites all those for whom poverty, sickness, bad luck or their own misadventures have ended them up quarantined from the world. By Colin McGregor In prison there are no women who are our […] See more
“Darkness, la noirceur. It’s the darkness.” We are in prison, in a common room for inmates. A kitchenette, a TV fixed to the wall, a few chairs, some couches. By Colin McGregor He’s spent 40 years behind bars. Only last week did he get permission […] See more
The Oxford English Dictionary defines community service as: “Unpaid work, intended to be of social use, that an offender is required to do instead of going to prison.” At the Café Graffiti, no less than 50 people per year of all ages and trades come […] See more
I awake in a sweat, dazed and disoriented. I turn my pillow over to the dry, cold side underneath, and think: a few seconds ago, I was walking along Sherbrooke Street on a sunny summer’s day, rummaging through second-hand bookstores. Not now. My eyes adjust […] See more
When a bee wants to tell the rest of the hive that he’s found a new source of pollen, he does it with a dance. By Colin McGregor When we want to communicate with each other, we use words. And the words we use have […] See more
Note: Jean-Pierre Bellemare was convicted in 2021 of a crime committed in 2018, and is currently incarcerated. Right now, I have no thoughts of suicide. Having lived a tumultuous life, I’ve often found myself in danger. Sometimes, it’s been police who wanted to shoot at […] See more
On a transfer bus from Cowansville to Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, in the lower Laurentians just north of Laval. It does not matter if it is day or night. I cannot tell. By Colin McGregor | File Prison In the rear, in a cage, manacled and handcuffed, all […] See more
Note: Jean-Pierre Bellemare was convicted in 2021 of a crime committed in 2018, and is currently incarcerated. Sometimes my jailbird past seems too heavy for me to bear. Many of the folks around me see me as a successful example of a rehabilitated criminal, which […] See more
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