Take-offs tick off suburbanites

Like most civilized people, Thomasine Mawhood objects to the idea of rising with the roosters. “I don’t need to get up at six in the morning. And if I did, I’d just set my alarm clock,” she says. Nonetheless, the Pointe-Claire resident reports that “a really terrifying roar” regularly shortens her slumber at that ungodly hour. The sound is that of early morning planes landing at Dorval airport in violation of their own rules and federal guidelines that forbid planes landing between 1–7 a.m. “We complained to the ADM (Aéroports de Montreal) and they said it’s only temporary. Two years is a pretty long ‘temporary,’” says Mawhood, who reports that pleading to all levels of politicians also failed to help.

Now Mawhood and her five-year-old, 400-member Citizens for Quality of Life qualified for funding for a class action suit, and with the kind assistance of barrister Louis Beauregard, the suburbanites are suing ADM, Air Canada and the feds $183-mil for the disturbance. “We want $1,000 per year for each of the 100,000 people affected by this noise. The aim is to have ADM respect its very own laws,” says Mawhood. She says that when many West Islanders settled the area they didn’t know of the bedlam that awaited them. “Most people I speak to have lived here since the mid-’70s. There were a lot fewer planes and less noise when we moved here.” :

—Kristian Gravenor