Latest news with #Gaspé
CTV News
04-06-2025
- General
- CTV News
Retired Quebec senator tells parole board daughter's killer should remain behind bars
Hugo Bernier in a police car after he was charged in the death of Julie Boisvenu in 2002. (CTV FILE) Nearly 23 years after his daughter's brutal murder, retired senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu went before the Parole Board of Canada Tuesday to request the killer remain behind bars. He told a hearing that the thought of Hugo Bernier being released 'chills me to the bone' and that for an offender to be released, 'the risk analysis must be zero.' 'I cannot remain silent about how much I fear that he will claim another innocent victim, another Julie Boisvenu, given his history of recidivism and his past disregard for the conditions of his parole,' Boisvenu told the parole hearing in prepared remarks. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu Conservative Sen. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu waits for the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee to begin on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Wednesday Feb. 1, 2012. (Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS) Boisvenu, who served as a Conservative senator for Quebec from 2010 to 2024, said his daughter, Julie, would have been 50 years old today if she were still alive. On the night of June 23, 2002, Bernier raped her and strangled her to death. She was 27. Bernier was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. Julie Boisvenu Julie Boisvenu, 27, was killed in June 2002. (CTV FILE) Bernier is requesting to visit his father in the Gaspé region to mourn the recent death of his brother with a police escort. The parole is still reviewing the decision after finding out his father also has a criminal history. A decision is expected at a later date. The board also rejected his request to visit a minimum-security penitentiary and a resource centre for Indigenous people. Boisvenu is asking the parole board to ensure his daughter's murderer stays in prison since releasing him presents too great a risk to women in Quebec, he said. 'Playing Russian roulette with women's safety, resulting in the murder of a woman by a killer who was released when he should have remained incarcerated, is unacceptable. Taking an unacceptable risk means accepting the risk that innocent victims' lives will be violently taken, that entire families will be torn apart, and that too many collateral victims will suffer for the rest of their lives,' Boisvenu said. 'Quebec women no longer want to accept such a risk, which the Board continues to publicly refuse to take responsibility for.' Hugo Bernier Hugo Bernier. (CTV FILE) Julie was killed while Bernier was out on probation after having kidnapped and raped another young woman in 1999. He had been sentenced to 18 months but was released after a few months — a sentence, Boisvenu said, that 'gave him a licence to reoffend.' In an interview with CTV News, he said Tuesday's hearing reinforces his belief that victims of crime and their families often don't have the same rights as offenders during the parole board process. 'We don't have the right to ask questions to the criminal, to ask questions to the correctional service. We don't have the right to ask questions to the [parole board], so it's a very passive role we have there,' he said. Before his retirement, he tabled a bill in the Senate, Bill S-265, which would establish a framework for implementing the rights of victims of crime. The bill died on the order paper when Parliament was dissolved in March 2025. Had he had the chance to question Bernier, Boisvenu said he would have had some tough questions for him: 'Why you still have the same sexual deviance, sexual problems? Why you cannot explain to us your responsibility in that crime?' he said. 'And that's why I said you cannot make that guy free.' With files from CTV Montreal's Max Harrold
CBC
19-05-2025
- General
- CBC
This orange lobster might not look that rare — but it's 1 in 30 million
Until last week, fishmonger Yvon Jalbert had never seen an orange lobster in his 40-year career. "It's pretty rare. We've had yellow, we've had blue, but never orange," said Jalbert, director of the fish market at Les Pêcheries Gaspésiennes de Rivière-au-Renard in Gaspé, Que. To the untrained eye, the crustacean caught in the trap may not look all that different — resembling the colour of a freshly cooked lobster out of the pot. But it turns out it is one in 30 million — even more rare than blue lobsters — says Mathieu Lemonde-Landry, caretaker of the living collection at the Exploramer museum in Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, on Quebec's Gaspé peninsula. "They are quite lucky," he said of the fishing company. Normal lobsters look more reddish-brown, but a blue and yellow colour is visible closer to their joints, says Lemonde-Landry. That's because the American lobster species have a red and blue pigment, he says. "The red pigment is surrounded by a cage of blue pigment, so the cage might have more or less layers. And the more layers there is, the less we see the red underneath," he says. He says blue lobsters tend to produce way too much blue pigment, also known as crustacyanin. "But in [this] case ... the orange-yellow one, it's because it's just able to make one kind of cage with a certain number of layers," said Lemonde-Landry, adding normal lobsters will have a mix of these pigmented layers. He says normally, a lobster's reddish-brown colour allows it to hide quite easily in its habitat. Although they have few predators in the ocean, Lemonde-Landry says the crustaceans are very aggressive animals. "They are territorial, so they fight a lot," he said. "They can be cannibal, too. So a lobster might be a predator of a smaller lobster." He notes that whether orange or red or blue, once cooked, they will all become red. Housing uniquely coloured lobsters in the Exploramer museum, Lemonde-Landry says he's approached the Gaspé fishery about their latest find. "But often a fish market will keep them as a publicity stunt for a few weeks," he said. "Most of the time, they will give them to [an] aquarium like us or just throw them back in the wild." The fish market says it has the intention of keeping the orange lobster alive and presenting it to clients who pop by for the fishing season. Later on, it might be offered to the Montreal Biodôme, the Aquarium of Quebec or returned to the water.
