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An alleged Montreal mob boss was found dead in the Assomption river north-east of the city on Thursday morning.

Salvatore Montagna was suspected as being the head of New York's Bonanno crime family. After being deported to Canada in 2009, he was considered a contender to lead Montreal's Rizzuto family Mafia.

Police speculate that the killing was related to Montagna's efforts to switch Mafia groups. 

His death is part of a surge in Mafia related killings and disappearances over the past couple years.

Montagne leaves behind a wife and three children.

A member of the European Parliament is in Montreal today to calm Canada’s fears about the European Union’s new fuel legislation. The legislation would rate fuels based on how energy intensive their extraction is.

With tar sands oil rated as almost 20 percent more energy intensive than conventional oil, it has made Canada nervous. While Canada does not currently sell to the EU, the Keystone XL pipeline project could provide a route by which Canada could sell to the EU in the future.

Canada says that the new legislation discriminates against Canadian oil and questions its scientific validity.  Both the government and the Canadian oil industry have been keeping busy the past two years by lobbying against the new legislation.

The EU hopes to drastically reduce carbon emissions by 2020 and says that the legislation has been put in place in order to achieve that goal. The EU representative said that if a Canadian company could come up with reliable data, the EU would be willing to change the tar sands oil rating.  The EU’s member states will begin to debate the legislation’s approval on December 2.

A fixture of Montreal’s Torn Curtain scene, Airick Woodhead has spent the last few years forming his own sound after Spiral Beach disbanded and left a big hole in my high school heart. Each of the members have gone on to some pretty great things in the last few years, and Woodhead’s Friday night set proved his Doldrums project is well worth the hype. He plays frequently in the city and has been featured in a number of M for Montreal showcases at other festivals, including SXSW, but was given the chance to shine in an exclusive two-part set at Casa Del Popolo during one of the busier nights of the festival. Performing without the usual acid trip of video projections behind him, Woodhead was no less engaging and seemed humbled to be there as he immediately launched into a Ford & Lopatin tribute and peppered the breaks between songs with samples and looped clips from his impressive VHS tape collection.

Those tapes were what inspired Doldrums (the name is a literary shout-out to The Phantom Tollbooth) in the first place, when he designed his songs for YouTube and released them in sporadic mixtape segments. It didn’t take long for these tracks to get picked up by radio stations and soon he was fielding requests to perform them at festivals around the world in addition to the odd show in a Van Horne loft. His single "I'm Homesick Sittin' Up Here In My Satellite" was the big crowd pleaser of the night, showcasing his signature scream against an infectious drum corps beat, like he was part of the first cool marching band.

The vibe did suffer at the hands of a weird intermission in which the crowd was told by festival organizers to head across the street to Sala Rossa… and then come back 35 minutes later to watch Doldrums again. I did as I was told and came back expecting things to go in another direction, maybe a covers set or something, but didn’t even mind listening to the same songs a second time before everyone headed out into the cold and on to the next show. However, there was a completely insane Bjork tribute thrown in there, so at least that was a rewarding, or at least perplexing, treat for anyone who stuck around.

Watching Doldrums live almost makes you feel like you showed up by accident, like he would be putting on the same show alone in his basement and is oblivious to you as he flips switches and shuffles through mid-century recordings. He’s extremely methodical, almost entranced by his piles of effects pedals and mixing boards and yet snaps out of it occasionally as though he just remembered there’s an audience. The setting may have been a little stiff compared to past shows but the organized clutter of every song and the meticulous weaving of Woodhead’s falsetto into songs and film clips you remember from somewhere in your past still managed to give us all a feeling that something nuts was about to happen. Usually, that something nuts was the next song. I’m hesitant to get too attached, knowing the members of Spiral Beach have always been ready to jump to the next project, but given his early success and his refreshing take on the found-sound aesthetic, Doldrums just might be here to stay.

-Kayleigh