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A portrait and a note on the memorial for Constable Mohamed Lamine Benredouane who was killed after a man from Lethbridge, Alta., opened fire in the Côtes-des-Neiges neighbourhood on Monday.Andrej Ivanov/The Globe and Mail
The Montreal neighbourhood of Côtes-des-Neiges is resilient – sometimes “too resilient,” borough Mayor Stéphanie Valenzuela said this week. “We see things happen time and again.”
Persevering through hardship is familiar to the immigrant-heavy district northwest of downtown, where incomes are among the city’s lowest, and the crime rate is among the highest.
But those challenges couldn’t prepare Côtes-des-Neiges for the horror of Monday’s shooting, in which three people including the suspect were killed. It all started in the morning after a 25-year-old man from Alberta opened fire in a hotel-and-office complex along Décarie Blvd., one of the borough’s main arteries.
The crime has horrified a diverse community, while also highlighting its tight-knit character in the face of trauma. Côtes-des-Neiges is one of the city’s most multicultural areas, a place where Vietnamese restaurants share city blocks with shawarma stands, kosher bakeries and halal butchers.
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By chance, the two local victims of Monday‘s attack were pillars of the community, one Jewish, one Muslim, both known for their extensive records of service in the area.
Residents come from all over the world, with 75 per cent of the population claiming an immigrant background, Ms. Valenzuela said, but amidst that diversity it is an “area where everyone knows each other, where we come together.”
“We’re a proud, united neighbourhood. The strength of our borough resides in our resilience – in the face of this terrible act of violence, we will support each other, we will heal together, and we will continue to lean on each other like we always have.”
The police officer who was killed, Constable Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, grew up in Côtes-des-Neiges and went to school not far from the shooting, said the borough mayor, who wept as she discussed his death. The cop was only two years younger than her and they had mutual friends; her social media was flooded with tributes to Const. Benredouane this week.
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A family walks through the neighbourhood around the area where a shooting occurred in Montreal on Monday.Andrej Ivanov/The Globe and Mail
He “knew the people of Côtes-des-Neiges,” she said, and “proudly served our borough.”
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His funeral on Wednesday evening, in the nearby neighbourhood of Ville St-Laurent, drew hundreds of mourners who prayed for him outside the Centre Islamique du Québec. The mass display of religiosity seems to have been widely accepted as a fitting farewell to a hero, despite the new provincial law against public prayer.
The place of newcomers in the neighbourhood, with their diversity of lifestyles and beliefs, has not always been without tension. The province’s secularism crackdown was partly inspired by a scandal involving the alleged influence of Islam on the teaching at a public school in Côtes-des-Neiges, which prompted a public inquiry and cast a harsh light on the integration of immigrants in Quebec society.
Tensions have also flared between Muslims and Jews in the neighbourhood over the war in Gaza, with a judge imposing an injunction against pro-Palestinian protests outside of a local synagogue in March, 2024.
But the faith of Monday’s victims was no barrier to collective mourning. At Wednesday‘s funeral for Michel Mizrahi, the 68-year-old civilian who was killed, the rabbi leading the service took time to speak of Const. Benredouane, and said he died a hero, like Mr. Mizrahi.
“Celebrate the good deeds of the entire city of Montreal – not just the Jewish community,” he told the hundreds gathered at a funeral home not far from the site of the shooting.
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A woman leaves flowers at the memorial for Constable Mohamed Lamine Benredouane beside where the shooting occurred.Andrej Ivanov/The Globe and Mail
After the service, Reverend Hazan Daniel Benlolo of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal echoed that message in speaking of the police officer.
“It wasn’t only a Jewish life that was extinguished, it was also a person that was from Islam,” he told reporters. “One human life is so important, no matter if it’s a Jewish life or a non-Jewish life.”
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It was yet another rabbi, Chaim Shlomo Cohen of the non-profit MADA Community Centre, who played a key role in managing the crisis as it was unfolding. As dozens of guests fled the Hilton hotel during the shooting, they were ushered into the neighbouring MADA food bank and cafeteria, which delivers some 6,000 meals a week to needy people in the area.
That afternoon, the people in need were mostly visitors, terrified at the violence erupting around them. They included a couple in their 90s who were Holocaust survivors, said Rabbi Cohen, “and you can imagine what it triggered in them.”
For hours that day, the community centre fed and clothed people who had in some cases run away without putting on shoes, while volunteers offered candy and games to frightened children.
“It was a platform of love,” Rabbi Cohen said on Tuesday. “One little light drives away a lot of darkness. One little love drives away a lot of hatred. I think that’s what we are doing here – we showed it yesterday. Hopefully the community are going to show bigger flames of kindness and love.”
With a report from Maura Forrest