Montreal police report rise in assaults, decline in vehicle theft in 2024

Joy Fiddler sat outside a hotel smoking a cigarette, as her daughter, Saffron, registered their family of nine with the Canadian Red Cross. Fleeing from an out-of-control wildfire near her Northern Ontario home in Sandy Lake First Nation, she had slept for less than an hour after arriving more than 1,500 kilometres away in Cornwall.“All I saw was orange,” Ms. Fiddler, 51, said Monday afternoon, recalling her 11-hour wait at the Sandy Lake airport, where military aircraft and helicopters have been landing since Saturday, struggling to airlift nearly 3,000 people amid heavy smoke.