91-year-old back on her rocker after fine dropped

MONTREAL • A 91-year-old Quebec woman was looking forward to her first good sleep in weeks Friday after her hometown cancelled a $148 ticket she had received for making too much noise with her reclining rocking chair.

“I am very happy. I wanted this to end,” Yvette Vachon said from the Saguenay, Que., apartment she shares with her son.

“I was very worried. Now I’ll be able to sleep peacefully and get some rest.”

Vachon had turned in for the night April 17 when two police officers rang the doorbell. Her downstairs neighbour had complained about a racket being made by Vachon, either from her chair or her footsteps, said Charles Cantin, a lawyer who took up her case pro bono.

Cantin said it could not have been her footsteps: “She only weighs 95 pounds.”

He said Vachon had no “previous record” as a troublemaker.

“She’s everything you could hope for in a grandmother … It was the first time the police visited the apartment, and they gave a ticket,” he said. “It’s pretty extraordinary.”

City lawyers advised him Friday that the ticket had been withdrawn, the day after he went to the media with the story.

Vachon said it was the first time she has ever been fined, and she was astounded to hear it was because she was making noise.

“My goodness, a little person like me walking, that doesn’t make a lot of noise,” she said.

She loves her rocking chair and she plans to keep using it, but she will be more careful when she opens and closes the footrest. She thinks that is what made the offending noise.

“In life, we have to get along with others,” she said. “I’m not someone to make trouble for others.”