HUNTERS WELCOME
By gun, by snare, by crossbow, even by rifle. Any of these weapons can be used on Montreal Island to hunt for prey. It's time to change the provincial law that permits it before someone gets hurt, opponents tell
Janette Haggar remembers driving to work one Saturday morning in late November when she spotted a man in camouflage holding a crossbow at the edge of L'anse-àl'orme Rd. in Pierrefonds.
Although her phone was broken, she stopped and pretended to film the man out of her car window while announcing to him that she had just called the police. She was close enough to see the crossbow wasn't loaded. The man got into a car by the side of the road and drove off. Haggar followed. The car made a brief stop and a couple of U-turns before shaking her off.
“As I'm following him, he threw something out of the car,” Haggar said as she described the encounter weeks later. “I said, `What the heck is that?' So I stopped my car. He threw a dead rabbit out of the car.”
The incident, near Gouin Blvd. W., occurred a few hundred metres from houses, on a street that's well travelled by cyclists and cars and surrounded by hiking trails.
“It's atrocious that somebody should be wearing a crossbow on a public street,” Haggar said. “To come into the West Island, in residential areas, and pull out a crossbow — it's 2021.”
She reported the event to the police, even providing the licence plate number of the car. But the officers told her there was nothing they could do, Haggar said. Hunting on the island of Montreal is legal, after all.
Welcome to Zone 8 North, a provincial hunting zone that encompasses the entire island.
Many Montrealers won't know it, but Quebec's Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks allows hunting by gun, bow and crossbow anywhere on the island as long as the authorized species of game is in season and the hunter has the appropriate permits. Trapping of fur-bearing animals is also authorized.
Hunters contend they're helping to limit animal overpopulation. Even the wildlife ministry evokes cohabitation issues between humans and predators, like coyotes, in urban areas when it's asked to explain why an island of two million inhabitants is actually a hunting zone.
But Paola Hawa, the mayor of Ste-anne-de-bellevue, the West Island suburb where much of L'anse-à-l'orme nature park is located, says it doesn't make sense for hunting to be legal in an urban centre.
“Someone is going to get hurt.”
Hawa has waged a 10-year battle to convince the province to exclude Montreal Island from the hunting zone. Until now, her lobbying efforts have been met with indifference, even from city of Montreal officials who remind her that a municipal bylaw already prohibits hunting and shooting in parks. The island's nature parks are under the jurisdiction of the islandwide agglomeration council, which is controlled by Montreal.
But a municipal bylaw doesn't have supremacy over a provincial law, said Hawa, who's also a lawyer.
And then there's the question of enforcement, which she contends is completely absent on Montreal Island because no one is taking charge.
It's futile for residents to call Quebec wildlife protection officers at SOS Poaching when they hear shots in the woods because they won't show up, Hawa said.
“Faune Québec will tell you they can't intervene because it's legal,” she said. “They won't do anything if it's hunting season.”
And it isn't a provincial wildlife protection officer's job to enforce Montreal's bylaw against hunting in parks. That's the job of the Montreal police, who don't have the expertise or training to track hunters and poachers in the woods, Hawa said. Even so, the local neighbourhood police station sent patrollers on bikes through the woods last summer in a bid to help, she said.
But even if those officers had found a licensed hunter firing a gun or crossbow in the woods, Hawa added, the most they could have done is issue a ticket for a bylaw infraction.
City officials ought to be more concerned, she said, given increasing sightings of animals in densely built Montreal neighbourhoods. Think of “Butters” the wild turkey who has taken up residence in Notre-dame-de-grâce and Montreal West, the flock of wild turkeys that promenaded on St-denis St. in Plateau Mont-royal in November or the coyotes spotted in Ahuntsic-cartierville in recent years.
“Technically speaking, if I have a hunting licence and I am within the period identified within the zone for hunting small fowl, I could take a rifle on Mount Royal and shoot the sucker because the provincial law will trump the municipal law,” Hawa said.
The provincial hunting regulations list one caveat for Zone 8. It prohibits shooting from a public road, including 10 metres on either side of the shoulder, and shooting toward and across a road.
But that still leaves plenty of places to shoot game legally, to say nothing of the poachers who shoot outside of permitted hours and seasons, Hawa said. She doesn't understand the province's reticence to remove Montreal from Zone 8 given that a few territories are excluded in some of the other 29 provincial hunting zones.
Faune Québec will tell you they can't intervene because it's legal. They won't do anything if it's hunting season.
The West Island is home to the largest tracts of forest and wetlands left on the island. Even so, the area has suburban housing developments, bike paths and schools backing onto the woods.
The new Ste-anne-de-bellevue REM station is under construction on Ste-marie Rd., in front of the L'anse-à-l'orme forest and a spot where deer like to spend the winter.
And with the pandemic, more people are frequenting West Island nature parks, Hawa said.
The forests and wetlands are an old stomping ground for David Fletcher, a founding member of the Green Coalition who used to give walking tours through the Bois-franc sector of the Bois-de-liesse nature park. He has worked for decades to save endangered green space across the island.
“There's unquestionably hunting going on in the L'anse-àl'orme corridor,” Fletcher said. He's come across cartridge shotgun shells, parts of carcasses and clear evidence of baiting, such as salt licks, which hunters use to draw out deer, and hay bales, which hunters use as cover — all close to houses.
“So it's quite time for the provincial government to change the law to prevent it on Montreal Island because the danger to people is only going to grow.”
Two years ago, he came across a dead fox that had been caught in a wire snare in Cap St-jacques nature park, just north of L'anseà-l'orme. “And it was a really ugly death,” he said.
The L'anse-à-l'orme corridor has always attracted members of the hunting community, he said, and it's worrying to see that hunting has continued even though the entire area is now part of the Grand Parc de l'ouest. The 3,000-hectare municipal park announced by Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante in 2019 includes all five nature parks in the West Island and is supposed to draw even more people to walk, ski, bird watch and bike in nature.
“There are people now wandering through those areas, even where there's no housing,” Fletcher said.
“There's enough activity in the fields of what is going to be the Grand Parc de l'ouest that you could potentially be putting people in serious danger, shooting at any movement, and mistaking the movement of a person for the movement of an animal.”
The Quebec federation of anglers and hunters responds to the concern by saying that no one other than a hunter has ever been hit by a stray projectile in a hunting accident in Quebec.
“On the other hand, there are, for example, around 7,000 collisions with deer each year in Quebec, several of which are quite serious, but we don't talk about that much,” Michel Baril, a biologist with the Fédération québécoise des chasseurs et pêcheurs, wrote in an email.
Poachers have caused some fatal shooting accidents involving citizens, he said. But poaching isn't hunting, Baril said, and so it isn't hunting accidents that legislation needs to protect citizens from.
That said, the spokesperson for the hunters' federation questions the use of rifles in an urban area.
“We must not be fooled and I do not believe that the use of rifles in an urban area is justified,” Baril said. “But bows and crossbows, which are usually used from an elevated point, would be safe for hunting in some places.”
However, the hunters' federation and the provincial wildlife ministry hold the same position that municipalities can already adequately regulate hunting on their territories using nuisance bylaws. They also agree that hunting is a method of controlling the wildlife population.
“The absence of hunting and natural predators in the context of milder winters favours the survival of deer beyond the support capacity of the ecosystems that are grazed,” ministry spokesperson Dominique David said in an email.
Baril, of the hunters' federation, said “municipalities should take the lead in these situations and look for strategies that would allow citizens to be safe (and) hunters to take some deer.” Hunting helps to limit the movement of deer outside woodlands and the damage they cause by grazing on hedges and gardens, he said. And hunting helps in “avoiding the expensive costs associated with controlling wildlife by means other than hunting,” he said, referring to culling.
But Hawa said she's outraged by the suggestion that “every Tom, Dick and Harry amateur hunter can run around shooting a gun in a park” as a method of culling.
She also called the distinction between hunting and poaching semantics.
“And I'm tired of semantics,” Hawa said. “Does it matter whether it is poaching or hunting, whether it is hunting season or non-hunting season? The fact of the matter is there are people running around with rifles and crossbows in a forest in a populated area . ... The true question is should we be authorizing an activity that is unsafe and that poses a risk to the safety of our citizens?”
Only the province can stop hunting on the island, Montreal constitutional lawyer Julius Grey said, echoing Hawa's position. “The city cannot pass a law that prohibits an otherwise lawful activity.”
A municipal bylaw can only regulate an activity, he said. For example, it can restrict hunting within a certain distance of houses and schools. But a municipality also can't regulate a lawful activity to the point that it makes it impossible to practise it, he added.
“I don't think there should be hunting in Montreal,” Grey said. “It's a stupid idea. There are too many people. But if it's a hunting zone by provincial law, then you can't pass a (bylaw) that makes it absolutely impossible to do.”
Ste-anne-de-bellevue, which is a demerged municipality, used its nuisance bylaw to prohibit shooting within 2,000 metres of a residence in its limits in 2015. It was the most the town could do to restrict hunting, Hawa said. And still, it's regularly flouted, she said.
The borough of Pierrefonds-roxboro passed a local nuisance bylaw in 2007 that prohibits “throwing stones, snow, ice or other projectiles, using bows and arrows, slings, catapults or pea throwers or of carrying or discharging a weapon or an air rifle” on its territory.
However, that's a blanket ban, and Hawa said she doubts it would stand up in court if a licensed hunter contested a fine received for violating it.
And as testimony to the futility of municipal bylaws to control hunting, she said, hunters often park in the lot of a Ste-anne-debellevue elementary school that's across the street from one of the entrances to L'anse-à-l'orme nature park. They walk past the pictograms posted by the city of Montreal showing that guns and crossbows are forbidden, and go into the forest and shoot, she said. The same pictograms are posted at other entrances to the nature park.
Provincial hunting data also shows that hunters are defying Montreal's bylaw and pictograms — with the wildlife ministry's blessing.
Licensed hunters must declare their kills to the ministry. In 2019, they reported killing 14 whitetailed deer in L'anse-à-l'orme park and on Heron Island, which is in the Lachine Rapids next to Lasalle borough but belongs to the municipality of Ste-catherine. The wildlife ministry didn't offer a breakdown between the two locations. So despite the Montreal bylaw, hunters are killing game in L'anse-à-l'orme park.
“Putting up a sign isn't going to cut it,” Hawa said. “We need action. We need somebody to put their foot down, start throwing people in jail, start fining people so the message goes out loud and clear: there is no hunting on the island of Montreal.”
Hawa has found a political ally in Michel Gibson, the mayor of Kirkland, another suburb that offers an entrance to L'anse-à-l'orme nature park and has a bike path through it.
“I'm supporting Paola completely,” he said. “We feel there's no place for hunting, especially in a nature park where you have people bicycling, hiking and doing all sorts of activities. And some of these activities in the park are close to residential areas. So my concern is any form of hunting — bow and arrow or gun — shouldn't be allowed.”
Gibson said he'll speak to the Association of Suburban Municipalities, representing the 15 demerged island suburbs, about presenting a motion to the agglomeration council.
“There's no way the ministry of wildlife should authorize or permit this. But also Montreal. Montreal has to wear their pants and do something about it.”
Robert Beaudry, the Montreal city executive committee member responsible for large parks, “is concerned about the situation,” a spokesperson for the Plante administration said in an email when asked to comment. “He supports the grievances of the mayor of Ste-anne-de-bellevue and he will also make representations to the ministry to fight against poaching.”
The Montreal police department responded to questions about hunting with an unsigned email saying the department would “prefer not to comment.”
Meanwhile, Haggar said that since her encounter with the hunter with the crossbow on L'anse-à-l'orme Rd. she's started warning other residents to be on the lookout. The more police reports, the more pressure to stop hunting in the West Island, she said. The officers who took down her report said the police have gotten numerous calls about gunshots, dead animals and trespassers going after animals on their property, she said.
Haggar emphasized that she's not against hunting, but she's against it in an urban area near residences and people. Hunting as a means of wildlife control makes sense in the north, she said, but not in Montreal. Not anymore.
“A lot of things were legal in this part of the island when I moved here 40 years ago,” she said. “There was nobody around. You have to start realizing that things change. Areas develop. We're not like we were back in the 1950s when there was no one living here and there were tons of deer.”
There's no way the ministry of wildlife should authorize or permit this. But also Montreal. Montreal has to wear their pants and do something about it.