A mother and her child: Police confirm identities of victims in Old Montreal fire

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Montreal police have confirmed the victims of a fire early Friday morning in Old Montreal are 43-year-old Léonor Geraudie and her 7-year-old daughter Vérane Reynaud-Geraudie. They are both French nationals.

Police do not suspect any additional deaths.

A 2:39 a.m. call Friday morning alerted firefighters to a blaze in a century-old building at Notre-Dame St. and Bonsecours St., which houses a 20-room hostel. Firefighters arrived on the scene at 2:42 a.m. Though the cause of the fire is unknown, police are considering it to be suspicious and have launched a criminal investigation.

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Both the building on Notre-Dame and the building on Place d’Youville are owned by the same man, Émile Benamor. The Place d’Youville fire claimed seven lives and left nine injured in March of 2023.

Police believe 25 people were in the building at the time of the fire, Insp. David Shane told reporters Saturday afternoon. Of those, 23 people are accounted for and the other two are confirmed dead. Shane said two survivors had been injured and one remains in hospital.

Quebec will ask the coroner’s office to combine Friday’s deadly fire with its investigation into the 2023 fire at the building on Place d’Youville, Public Safety Minister François Bonnardel told reporters Saturday afternoon.

By combining both investigations, the process will “be more rapid to have conclusions concerning these two events,” Bonnardel said.

No coroner’s inquest has begun, Shane said, as the criminal investigation into the first fire is not yet complete. “The criminal investigation always comes first,” he said.

Police have not made any findings from the investigation into the 2023 fire public. Shane said a file had been sent to the Crown, but declined to give a timeline on when information would be made public or when the coroner’s inquest might begin.

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“We’ve got to let the process follow its course,” Shane said.

Police began their investigation into the fire Saturday, he said, adding an engineer had begun securing the building.

“People died (in the last fire) and we took that very seriously, and everybody was affected,” Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante told reporters Friday afternoon. “We’re going to get all the answers once the SIM, the firefighters can evaluate every detail.”

Though he declined to confirm whether Montreal police suspected the fire to be the result of arson, City Councillor Alain Vaillancourt, who appeared alongside Bonnardel, said the investigation will aim to “find out those or the person who set fire to the building.” 

Police “will not be releasing any details on the possible causes of the fire for potential suspects at this time,” Shane said.

Security footage obtained by the CBC shows a person dressed all in black breaking into the building shortly after 2:30 a.m. Friday.

At its peak, more than 120 firefighters battled the blaze, while the smoke led Montreal public health to warn citizens about poor air quality in parts of the city. Firefighting operations continued well into the evening Friday.

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Most firefighters had left the area by Saturday morning, though police remain and streets surrounding the site remain closed. While curious onlookers had lined up outside the barricades throughout the day Friday, the area was calm just over a day after the blaze.

There is no access to Notre-Dame St. between Berri and Gosford Sts., or to Bonsecours St. between Champ-de-Mars and St-Paul Sts.

A police officer confirmed to The Gazette residents are being allowed back into the cordoned-off streets with proof of address. Most buildings surrounding the site of the fire are still inaccessible.

The building was the subject of numerous complaints to the fire department, with a 2020 inspection finding a number of code violations. The Montreal fire department says those violations had been corrected at the time of the most recent inspection, in 2023.

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Fire inspection records obtained by The Gazette through access-to-information last year show the building was the subject of a 2020 complaint to the fire department. The complaint noted the two floors of the building had been turned into a rooming house.

The complaint resulted in an inspection Sept. 23 of that year, the records show.

Inspectors noted 12 code violations, including:

• Requirements to have functioning smoke alarms that were compliant with standards.
• Having smoke detectors permanently connected to an electrical circuit “in each sleeping area that is not part of a dwelling unit.”
• Installing “a fire alarm system in accordance with the requirements in effect at the time of the conversion.”
• Installing a sprinkler system.
• Installing portable fire extinguishers in the building.
• Installing sealed fire separations to isolate living suites, common corridors, interior exits and other areas.
• Installing emergency lighting and signs marked “exit.”

The notices were sent to the building’s owner, Benamor, the records state.

A followup inspection was carried out on March 29, 2023, less than two weeks after the fatal fire at Benamor’s Place D’Youville building. The file was closed following an evacuation exercise April 14, 2023.

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Montreal firefighters believe the building was up to fire codes when the blaze broke out, Martin Guilbault, chief of operations of Service de sécurité incendie de Montréal (SIM), told reporters Saturday afternoon alongside Shane.

Guilbault said while much had been made about a lack of windows and sprinkler systems, neither was a concern to the fire department. The building did not have a sprinkler system, he confirmed, but it was not required to. He also said all but one room had windows, but “a window is not considered a means of escape,” and that a lack of one is not considered an issue.

As for the fire alarm system, Guilbault said further investigation is needed. “We are not in a position to confirm that the fire alarm system worked that night.”

Fire inspectors visited every building owned by Émile Benamor on Friday, Guilbault said. He said inspectors only found one minor issue in a building adjacent to the structure that caught fire.

With fatal fires at two buildings owned by Benamor under criminal investigation, Shane declined to say whether police considered Benamor’s other buildings to be at risk. “Police stations know of these buildings and they will pay specific attention to those buildings,” he said.

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The Ville-Marie borough was aware the top two floors of the building were short-term rentals and had given its approval, according to the records that were obtained by The Gazette through an access-to-information request in 2023.

The Gazette has been unable to reach Benamor, with a receptionist at his law office directing a request for comment to his lawyer. The lawyer did not respond to a call from The Gazette on Friday afternoon. Government records list the owners of the company that operates the hostel as Neir Abissidan and Robert Sebbag.

La Presse Canadienne and The Gazette’s Jacob Serebrin, Leora Schertzer and Linda Gyulai contributed to this report

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