Parents rally to demand safety measures for Montreal West intersection after multiple students struck by cars

Thirteen-year-old Sofia Milbrandt says she was lucky.

The Royal West Academy student was walking back from a nearby train station with a friend on the morning of Feb. 16 when a car travelling south stopped at the intersection of Westminster and Ainslie streets.

Milbrandt said the driver must not have seen the two, because the next thing she knew, the car had suddenly accelerated.

“It advances really quickly and it hits me on the side and I, like, bodycheck my friend,” she said.

Milbrandt was sent to the hospital that day and now has trouble walking up stairs after her right leg was injured. Thankfully, she emerged from the collision without any fractures or broken bones.

Her injuries were considered minor, according to police.

“I was very lucky that my injury wasn’t anything serious, but the next one could be fatal,” Milbrandt said.

On Tuesday morning, Milbrandt stood alongside dozens of parents and residents at the corner of Westminster and Ainslie, calling for stronger safety measures at what they describe as a dangerous and heavily used intersection.

“It’s very, very dangerous. There’s no visibility that you need to stop fully and wait for people to cross,” she said.

Her mother, Edna Milbrandt de Paz, said the fear hasn’t gone away since the collision.

“It’s scary for me to put her on the train and send her crossing my fingers that she doesn’t get hit again,” she said. “The car could have been coming faster, it could have ended up worse.”

Families say the incident is the latest in a series of close calls at the busy intersection, which becomes congested during rush hour as drivers head toward Highway 20.

Parents have counted that 491 pedestrians cross Ainslie and Westminster during peak school hours. The two roads are also a stone’s throw away from a railroad crossing.

Royal West parents are now demanding a permanent crossing guard be assigned to the intersection.

“What are we waiting for, until somebody dies on this street for them to actually do it?” Milbrandt de Paz said.

After a previous incident in October 2024, the school’s parent participation organization submitted a 10-point safety petition to the Town and the Montreal police (SPVM).

A request for a crossing guard was denied.

Under the province’s current rules, crossing guards aren’t assigned near high schools because secondary students are considered adult pedestrians, according to Paola Samuel, EMSB school commissioner for Ward 3.

With support from local MNA Désirée McGraw, a petition to Quebec’s National Assembly calling for a province-wide change to crossing guards rules at high schools gathered 3,535 signatures.

It was tabled Feb. 24, the same day as Tuesday’s rally.

“Rules and laws are important, but there has to be exceptions,” Samuel said. “You need to look at every situation individually and realize, OK, in this particular case, we need to figure out how to have an exception.”

Samuel said that students are being hit not because they don’t know how to cross safely, but because drivers cannot see them clearly amid traffic.

She acknowledged a crossing guard would be a temporary measure, but says it could be implemented quickly.

“(It’s) quick and it’s immediate and a person can show up and be a cross guard,” Samuel said. “That doesn’t mean that the door is closed to any other solution.”

Montreal West Mayor Jonathan Cha said the town acted within 48 hours of the Feb. 16 collision.

“We had two new stop signs (installed) right in the middle of the street on the central line to make sure that there’s more visibility,” he said.

Flashing stop signs were installed in December 2024, and lighting was improved in the summer of 2025.

Cha said further design changes are planned, including new street markings, raised crosswalks and possibly overhead lights. The town hopes to complete the work by the summer, before the next school year.

However, Cha said that crossing guards fall under provincial criteria.

“When we’re talking about crossing guards or other kind of safety measures, this belongs more to the government of Quebec and SPVM,” he said. “So that’s why parents and residents and even the town are asking them to revise their criteria.”

But in a written statement, Quebec’s Transport Ministry said the decision to place a crossing guard was up to the city as long as it complies with provincial standards.

“The Ministry is responsible for road signage standards and revising the guide on school crossing guards,” the statement reads. “In this situation, the intersection and the section of road in question are under municipal management, namely the City of Montreal. The decision to use a school crossing guard is therefore its responsibility, as it is responsible for enforcing ministerial standards on the sections of road it manages.”

Quebec’s Transport Ministry refused to comment on whether they’d be willing to change the rules regarding crossing guards at high schools.

“We want to make sure that what happened to my daughter doesn’t happen to someone else,” Milbrandt de Paz said.