A May Day march was held in St‑Michel Wednesday, emphasizing the stress of the rising cost of living.
Recent Updates Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
The REM lost nearly an hour Wednesday morning; the system for recharging Opus by app was down part of the day; the green line was down between Atwater and Honoré‑Beaugrand for an hour at the evening rush.
-
Kate
An encampment has been set up at Victoria Square by advocates for the homeless.
-
Kate
The family of Candida Macarine, who was found dead on the floor of the Lakeshore General ER in 2021, is suing the West Island CIUSSS. They want a million dollars.
-
Kate
A Superior Court judge has refused to issue an injunction requested by two students to shut down the Gaza protest encampment.
CTV focuses more on the students who asked for the injunction.
This was separate from any plans McGill itself may have about the encampment.
-
Kate
This item waved me down when I was reading X just now: the Alberta government has just told Calgary that public transit is a municipal responsibility. Sound familiar? These right‑leaning governments are always copying each other’s playbooks, even if Quebec would never admit to it.
Josh
Mike Harris cut all Ontario gov support for public transit in that province when I was a teenager. I remember prior to the cuts, every bus in Ottawa had two stickers at the front acknowledging the contributions of the provincial and municipal levels of government. When the cuts occurred, OCTranspo removed all of the Ontario stickers from the buses.
DeWolf
I never thought I’d be singing the praises of Doug Ford but, compared to any other province, Ontario is investing a lot in public transit. The Ontario Line and GO RER projects will be transformative, and there are light rail projects in Mississauga and suburban Toronto that will do a lot of good too.
Of course, the devil is in the details and Ontario is also the province that produced the disastrous O-Train and the Eglinton line in Toronto, which has been under construction for 14 years with still no fixed opening date… But at least the money is flowing. Ontario is spending $70 billion on transit projects over the next decade.
Ramsay
On a related transit note, this article lists several ways the STM has been kneecapped by politics over the years Commençons par libérer la STM de l’ingérence politique: https://lp.ca/vHwxRJ?sharing=true
Kate
Good piece, Ramsay – thank you.
-
Kate
Public health has brought out its first ever report on cyclists getting doored – when it happens and why. Not surprisingly, it turns out that a separated bike path like the REV gives cyclists the most protection.
DeWolf
This is one reason I avoid St-Urbain above Pine, because the entire bike lane is in the dooring zone, with cars speeding by at 50 km/h right next to you.
Another issue is that, if you avoid the dooring zone on narrow streets like Beaubien and St-Zotique in Little Italy, you risk the wrath of drivers behind you who want to pass but don’t have enough space. Luckily most drivers realize passing is useless when there’s a stop sign every 100 metres, but it’s not the rational ones who get road rage.
Blork
No surprises there. For a glimpse of what cycling in Montreal was like in the 90s, before cycling infrastructure, check this video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Sv4KsRoI66E?si=VOmxYNjWZARci9bG
Meezly
The two times I’ve been doored I had dented the car, but the person was more concerned whether I was ok. I can’t imagine how shitty it must be to get doored and quite injured as a result, and then to have the driver yell at and blame you for damaging their property (from an interviewee in the article).
The government should spend money on PSAs to drill into people the Dutch Reach. Both my dooring incidents were the result of a driver and passenger flinging open their door without bothering to look out the window.
Also the punishment for dooring a cyclist in QC is quite minimal – only $200. In ON, the fine is almost double that amount plus 3 demerit points.
CE
I’ve thankfully never been doored but have had a few close calls over the years. As the cycling infrastructure improves, my dangerous interactions with cars has gone down to the point where it now almost never happens (as opposed to at least weekly back when cycling in the city looked like the video posted above).
What DeWolf said regarding Beaubien is a.good example of how critics of Projet Montreal’s interventions miss the mark. Big flashy changes don’t always make as big a difference as something as simple as putting stop signs where they were thought of as being unnecessary before. Walking and cycling in the city is just so much more pleasant now because drivers are forced to slow down and stop for other users instead of having free reign over the streets.
DeWolf
@Meezly The SAAQ now includes the Dutch reach in its driver education material, so hopefully things improve in the future, but you’re absolutely right it needs to be publicized for everyone who learned to drive in the bad old days.
@CE That’s a good point. Although there are still a lot of frustrations, my experience in the central/east/north part of the city is so much better than even five years ago. There has been a lot of positive changes in a relatively short period of time.
-
Kate
A woman was murdered Tuesday in Pointe‑aux‑Trembles, her body found when firefighters came to put out a fire in the house.
Update: A woman has been arrested. TVA tells us something about the victim and the suspect.
-
Kate
Some architecture links: another piece about Eaton’s ninth floor has a few nice photos; Dezeen looks at a new residential building in the Technopôle Angus (which it describes as “outside Montreal” and “northeast of Montreal proper”); that building received one of the Prix d’excellence en architecture awards that were given out this month for projects in Quebec, several others of which are in Montreal, including the project at Rosemont metro and a wee shoebox house refit.
DeWolf
The comments on Dezeen are always entertaining. If you ever want to know the many ways in which someone can hate a building, check it out.
Also, this comment from someone purporting to live in Montreal is a real head-scratcher: “Very hard [in Montreal] to find a restaurant or a cafe where you can sit outside even if the weather is good.”
I can’t think of many restaurants or cafés that *don’t* have outdoor seating.
Kevin
There are already summer terrasses out in some neighbourhoods…
Kate
Yep. Nobody’s sitting outside today, but several places near me in Villeray have their terrasses out.
JaneyB
@DeWolf – those Dezeen comments are hilarious!! That magazine is going into my regular reads now. Thanks.
-
Kate
McGill has requested police assistance over the pro‑Palestinian camp.
A reader has pointed out to me that the Mohawk council has given the students permission to occupy that piece of land.
-
Kate
La Presse lays out the details of the public transit fare hikes coming in July. Similar from CTV.
The Journal emphasizes how Longueuil and Laval passengers will pay more for the metro.
-
Kate
Montreal is looking at trimming down the east‑end deer herd to fewer than 20 from more than 100 animals.
CTV specifies that the city will be hiring marksmen to do the job this fall.
-
Kate
A city commission is recommending the creation of a night authority to look after matters to do with nocturnal noise and unhappy residents.
Ephraim
Can we just ship them some of these https://www.amazon.ca/Quality-Foam-Earplugs-200-Pair/dp/B08273T5XC and just be done with it?
Kate
I’m thinking more about the people who moved in upstairs of Divan Orange then had it shut down, the landlord who somehow got the building next to La Tulipe zoned as residential and has been fighting with it over noise, and the noise warnings issued to Turbo Haüs in the Quartier Latin. If we want music and show venues to flourish, there has to be some negotiation about noise, and a night mayor’s bureau might be the ones to do it.
-
Kate
Christian Dubé has handed the management of health care in Quebec to a champion of private medicine.
Uatu
She says that she’s going to meet with the teams at the hospitals and consult with them. I say she should head straight to the ER as a patient and experience it first hand.
carswell
Businessperson who narcissisticly wants to run the health care system more like a business appoints narcissistic businessperson to take over his failing efforts to do so.
In a CBC interview, Ms. Biron said she wants to bring new ideas to the table, which is businessperson code for more privatization. And there’s absolutely no way her family’s business, a provider of private medical services, would benefit from that.
When my family doctor went private last September, she sent out a fee schedule ($300 per consultation, $100 per phone call/email, $75 per prescription refill, etc.). What she didn’t bother mentioning is that any services she orders must also be private: the patient also pays for blood tests, MRIs, surgery, post-surgery physiotherapy and so on) while the government pays nothing. No surprise rugged-individualist neoliberal politicians keen to curb government spending love it.
With Biron, Dubé and Legault in charge, we can expect nothing to be done to slow the shift to a two-tier health care system and, especially if the provincial rights Cons win the next federal election, it’s a pretty safe bet the shift is going to accelerate.
steph
I’ve been hearing all the chatter about the new federal capital gains tax being focused on health professionals (doctors) – it actually applies to ALL small businesses despite the field. I predict that our healthcare failings will be blamed wholly on the federal government, despite the fact that it’s been our provincial government who’s been paving the way to privatization for profits by gouging at the public system. I’m calling it, and as usual it’s gross.
jeather
But she pinky swears that the family company, which is currently run by her sister, will have no effect on her thinking, and they won’t talk about it.
-
Kate
A five-alarm fire broke out Monday morning at a shelter for homeless women in Petite‑Patrie, putting 37 people who were staying there back out on the street. Neither piece says exactly where the building is, but the fire department Twitter feed makes it de Lanaudière and Bellechasse, across from Père‑Marquette park. The cause of the fire has not been mentioned.
CBC says a firefighter had an arm injury, but TVA makes it an ankle. Tsk tsk, the two solitudes.
Spi
SIDM’s twitter account places the fire at de Lanaudière and bellechase.
Kate
I just spotted that before you posted, but thanks!
mare
It’s at a stone’s throw near me. It was on Lanaudiere and the ruelle near Bellechasse. That building had extensive roof work done for the past weeks, I don’t know if the work was finished and if the fire was related.
Reply