In a show of force, Mayor Mitchell Brownstein, Mount Royal Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, Riding Office Senior Advisor Sonny Moroz, Councillor Dida Berku and our City Manager Jonathan Shecter met with four senior officials from Canadian Pacific Railway by video conference today. Thanks to the Mayor for
CP was represented by their Stacy Patenaude, Manager, Government Affairs and Communications and Nathan Cato, Director, Government Affairs and two key Operation Managers, Ben Serena and Guy Seguin.
During my 16 years on council, and well before that, meetings between the city and CP over train news have been quite common. But this meeting was a bit different. Residents of Merrimac, Baily Road and parts of Hampstead have been repeatedly woken up at the ungodly hours near 3 am in recent weeks. This has impacted constituents of myself, Councillor Berku and MP Housefather – our former mayor. Rather than approach CP on a piecemeal basis, we included the mayor and the city’s senior director to make the case.
We reminded them that the last time the noise was this bad in 2017 CP put a stop to it. Resident Charles Guerin has been collecting written complaints from people and we presented these to them.
“Shunting and banging at 3 am is unacceptable,” stated Housefather.
We believe the message was delivered loud and clear. They agreed to review the list of complaints and demands which were presented and to investigate the sources of noise and disruption and get back to the city within the next few weeks. So a full investigation has now begun.
Citizens upset by the noise who have yet to write to Guerin can do so at cguerin@icloud.com
Please provide the following:
1) Name
2) Home address
3) What you are hearing (Train idling, banging, bells, horns, etc…)
4) What time of night you are hearing it.
We also ask you to go online at CP's Community Connect. The link is here.
