Oldgateboatdriver said:
Here in Montreal, where anti-gun/gun grabbers have the most sway and where, I suspect, you probably have the lowest gun ownership rates in the country
I don't think that the ownership rate is significantly different. A lot of Quebeckers love to hunt as much as anywhere else. They don't seem to have been as vocal as owners eslewhere - who are already not vocal enough.
Oldgateboatdriver said:
we have the subway stopped for a few hours for unspecified "technical" reasons (and everybody in Montreal know what those are - jumpers) about twice a week - with all the delays and late arrivals that entails.
And the traumatic effect on crews and those who have to clean up the mess.
Statistically, a head-end crewmember (conductor or engineer), will kill at least one person in a twenty-year career.
We got sent to check a section of the CN mainline near the lakeshore on the western edge of Toronto for a potentially suicidal person sometime after midnight one night when I was flying the Police Helicopter Trial. He had been drinking heavily at a local bar, and announced his intentions to his buddies just before leaving. We searched along the tracks for several kilometres in either direction, well beyond the distance that he could have run, let alone staggered, with no sign of him. One of the coppers on the ground had phoned CN, to see when the next train was due past. Buddy would have lain on the tracks for almost 1.5 hours, in the cold, before getting "lucky". The only humanoids that we saw were fishing along the banks of a small stream that passed under a bridge carring the mainline over it. We were astounded that anybody would be fishing at that time (it was, by then, somewhere around 0200), but passed the location to the ground guys. They found our quarry huddled under the bridge - and also told us that the fisherpeoplekind were all Chinese (I still do not know whether or not that was of any significance, or a particular Chinese fishing custom). Buddy was taken to a hospital for observation and treatment, and we all felt pretty good about things.
We found out later that he'd been successful in the same area a few days after we thought that we'd saved him. He'd seemed in a good mood at the same bar, said a cheery goodnight to his friends and, this time, made no mentioned of his intent.
Oldgateboatdriver said:
At the same time, the Federal government invested millions in a suicide prevention barrier on the Jacques-Cartier bridge pedestrian walkways. it is now impossible to jump from the bridge to your death in the river below. Yet, that's been up for ten years now and the suicide rate in Montreal didn't drop.
Toronto wasted a few million on an anti-suicide net on the Bloor Street Viaduct across the Don Valley several years ago, which was a popular spot for jumpers (somebody, I think a councillor, had referred to it as a "romantic" location for suicides). This, obviously to all non-experts, was a wasted effort, as there is no shortage of other tall structures around. Or railway tracks, or ropes etcetera. The only part that would have made sense would have been the section that crosses the Don Valley Parkway a few hundred feet below: six lanes with an occasionally-attainable 90 km/hr speed limit. To the best of my knowledge, however, nobody had ever been so inconsiderate as to launch his/herself into a car below, but it would not have been an unreasonable safety precaution.
