A look at the day’s events in and around Montreal:

City grants money to two organizations helping asylum seekers in Montreal North

The city of Montreal announced contributions Monday to two organizations helping asylum seekers who have settled in the borough of Montreal North.

The contributions, totalling $125,141, were approved during the last council meeting of 2017.

One of the recipients, Impulsion-Travail, will use the grant to offer asylum seekers an intensive, five-week job placement program.

The other, Coup de pouce jeunesse Montréal-Nord, will put the money toward a program it established eight years ago that helps newcomer students integrate into their classrooms and schools. The grant will help the program grow from 30 students to 200, the city said.

“Welcoming and integrating newcomers is a major challenge for the city of Montreal, but above all an opportunity to enrich and diversify the city’s fabric,” said Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante in a statement released Monday.

In a statement, Montreal North borough mayor Christine Black said she is proud of the way the community has come together since last August to help newly-arrived asylum seekers. The grant, she said, will help improve the services already available in the borough.

Fourth-quarter real-estate sales up 9% in Montreal

The number of residential real-estate sales in the Montreal region during the fourth quarter was up nine per cent when compared with the equivalent period in 2016, according to the Quebec Federation of Real Estate Boards.

But it wasn’t the fastest-growing market in the province.

Trois-Rivières saw sales rise by 20 per cent during the same period.

In both markets, median prices rose by five per cent.

The number of active listings in the Montreal region was down 12 per cent from the fourth quarter of 2016.

Across the province, fourth-quarter sales rose by eight per cent, while median prices for single-family homes rose by an average of three per cent.

In the Montreal region, the island of Montreal saw the biggest increase in sales. Fourth-quarter sales were up 12 per cent from the equivalent period the year before. It was followed by the South Shore, where sales were up 11 per cent.

Man linked to Hells Angels affiliate gang gets two-year prison term

A man who was arrested as part of a police crackdown on a Hells Angels puppet gang while it was based in the West Island was sentenced to a two-year prison term on Monday after admitting he was in possession of the bulk of the drugs seized in the operation.

Dean Madden, 54, of Wentworth Nord, appeared before Quebec Court Judge Joëlle Roy at the Montreal courthouse where he pleaded guilty to being in possession of two prohibited firearms, including a semi-automatic pistol, as well as 50 kilograms of hashish. The hashish was seized from Madden’s home in the Laurentians in March 2015 as part of an investigation that targeted members of the Devil’s Ghosts, a Hells Angels affiliate gang that had a clubhouse based in Pointe-Claire in 2015.

Prosecutor Éric De Champlain told Roy that Madden was not a target of the investigation but that during surveillance on two men who were — David Castelli, 47, of St-Lazare, and David Manneh, 38, of Beaconsfield — police noticed that Madden took possession of a large box of what investigators assumed was hashish. When Madden and six other people were arrested in the investigation, the police announced they had seized 70 kilograms of hashish in all.

Based on a joint recommendation from De Champlain and Madden’s lawyer, Roy agreed to sentence Madden to a prison term of two years less one day to be followed by three years of probation.