‘So appalling’
Convicted pedophile Ernest Fenwick MacIntosh appears to be living next to playground.
HALIFAX — Convicted pedophile Ernest Fenwick MacIntosh appears to be living next to a children’s playground in Montreal.
According to a promise to appear document filed with the Quebec Court and signed by MacIntosh on April 18, the 76-year-old is living at Providence St. Dominique, a non-profit home for seniors without significant mobility issues in the Plateau area of Montreal.
There is a children’s playground on Laurier Avenue, behind the Providence St. Dominique home that fronts on Saint-Joseph Boulevard.
The playground includes swings, slides, a water park and play equipment, along with benches for observing children at play. ResidencesQuebec.ca, a website advertising seniors homes, lists amongst Providence St. Dominique’s leisure activities its proximity to a playground.
“We do not do any background check on future residents,” said a manager at Providence St. Dominique who refused to give her name.
“Nor do we do a financial check. When people come in they present themselves and say, ‘This is what I’d like’ and we lease them an apartment.”
The manager also refused to confirm or deny whether MacIntosh is one of their residents, citing privacy reasons.
According to both the public prosecution services of Nova Scotia and Quebec there are no prohibitions on where the former Strait of Canso businessman is allowed to live.
MacIntosh was convicted of multiple counts of abusing four boys in the Port Hawkesbury area in the 1970s, but those convictions were overturned by a higher court that ruled it took too long to bring the former businessman to trial.
Barry Alexander Sutherland, who was one of MacIntosh’s alleged victims, said MacIntosh shouldn’t be living near a playground. “That is so appalling,” Sutherland said. “To hear he is living beside a playground just adds so much of a sick, gut-wrenching feeling to this whole story. He just got out of prison for abusing a nine-year-old boy in Nepal for crying out loud.”
MacIntosh was arrested in Nepal for sexually abusing a boy in 2015 and sentenced to seven years in jail. That prompted Canadian Jesuits International to hire a private investigator to look into allegations of misconduct by MacIntosh against boys at various facilities it funds.
“There were allegations against MacIntosh involving a number of schools in India and Nepal,” William Blakeney, a Toronto lawyer for Canadian Jesuits International, said in a 2015 interview. “One of the things we are trying to find out is where he was and when.”
MacIntosh was released last year from a Nepalese prison on good behaviour and after paying a fine.
He returned to Canada and was charged for not reporting to authorities here his convictions in Nepal.
His next scheduled appearance on that charge is in Montreal court on Sept. 18.
But Sutherland warns that the man’s history as a repeat sexual offender should raise alarm bells for parents in the area of the Plateau.
“That doesn’t turn off,” said Sutherland. “I fear there is or will be another victim and who the hell is responsible for that then?”