The Chateauguay girl who was injured in a snow tunnel collapse a few days ago has died of her injuries.
I had a snow tunnel fall on me as a kid, and while it wasn’t that big a deal, there were a few panicky moments till I fought my way out of it. What a way to go.
Report Friday morning says about one third of the snow has been dealt with. Gazette says the city’s 311 line is flooded with complaints.
The reddit post that described snow removal as seen by a worker was read by a lot of people, as he notes in a followup. It’s important for residents to understand that the city is not screwing up and the workers are not loafing.
Even the Journal explains how residents – especially those with cars – are slowing the process down.
Her political opponents – and the Journal – are trying to make political hay out of Mayor Plante’s trip to Colombia while the city copes with record snowfall.
Is the woman not allowed to have a vacation?
A homeless Indigenous man was found dead at Alexis Nihon shopping mall on Wednesday.
I’ve spent 5 minutes now staring at the screen try to think of a useful comment to write, because this deserves one, and I just don’t have it. It’s so just weird that for no obvious reason, we’ve decided to give up as a civilization.
Weekend notes from CultMTL, CityCrunch, La Presse.
The tunnel and a bridge will be closed.
The REM is still in trouble on Friday morning.
The owner of two buildings in Old Montreal which were firebombed, resulting in the deaths of nine people in total, is suing the city on a trumped‑up claim that the city’s police and fire department didn’t do enough to deter the firebugs.
A young man was shot dead Wednesday evening outside his home in Cartierville. TVA says his name was Mouaade Fakhoury and he was not known to police.
Homicide #4 of 2025.
Friday, TVA says police know that the 20-year-old was involved in a gang.
Latest from Radio-Canada is that one quarter of the snow removal process is complete.
New condos downtown are not selling well because they’re too expensive and too small. Some promoters are turning to renting them out, but at more than $2000 for 600 sq.ft. they’re not exactly competitive either.
More places are being built as rentals on purpose, but they’re not stellar deals either.
WFH and the fear of another pandemic has killed the 3 and and half.
And developers/fire codes/building codes make it too expensive to build multiple-bedroom units in high rises.
Can you unpack why those factors have killed the 3½, Kevin?
People who WFH need more space. For the same reason it’s healthier to keep your bedroom uniquely as a ‘sleeping space’, closing the door to your workspace helps compartmentalize it away.
I’ll do my best not to write an essay 😉
For office workers having a regular place for a home setup has become a new essential because even if only 20% are working most of their days at home (according to Stats Can), a lot more are at home 1 or 2 days a week.
Building codes require two exits in buildings over two storeys, and all bedrooms need a window.
So in Montreal that usually means a long hallway with apartments on each side, which means putting in more than one bedroom in a single unit ends up as a very large unit with some extra rooms that cannot be bedrooms.
Why it sounds almost like the codes were written around the concept of the plex, not apartment buildings. Which makes me kind of wonder why nobody builds walkups … is the concept just not sufficiently profitable?
I know it’s easier to sell out a new condo building full of 1 bed apartments becasuse of price point as starter homes, but if the city and or privince is serious in any way about preventing sprawl when those “new families” start having kids, there needs to be some kind of incentive in place for family units to be built. That said as long as our Minister of Housing is a real estate speculator, that’s not going to happen, lol.
Considering the current public transit “solution” seems to be encouraging sprawl (looking at you , REM-north-of-the-40) and new development for housing seems to be more about profiteering than providing homes (looking at you , 1-bed condo plexes all through Montreal’s former light industrial areas) I don’t think we’re going to see any solutions.
I know a 25 year old with a good job and decent credit who is looking for an apartment downtown and pretty much every one is roach-infested 1 bed condo building with units going for around 2k/m each that want a full credit check, a cash deposit, and to know if you ever opened a case with the TAL. Landlords don’t give AF about the toothless laws. You don’t like it? Apply somewhere else … and they’re all the same.
There are some relatively new walkups here and there, mostly built as fill‑ins on residential streets that had a single lot or two for development, but obviously it’s not a major construction style in our time.
Ian, the Quebec government is simply not interested in fixing the housing crisis, and the reason is that they’re profiting from it, and meanwhile holding back the cash that was supposed to help the homeless. They really are bastards.
Le Devoir asks a HEC expert and some business people whether we need a TGV between Toronto and Quebec City. But this piece is all about economics and doesn’t take into account the environmental benefit of reducing the large number of flights between Toronto and Montreal.
The question I would ask is this: does the route really have to go beyond Montreal to Quebec City? I realize it probably has to do so politically but is there enough demand in reality?
I would also like to know whether studies show that the kind of people who fly between Toronto and Montreal would stoop to taking a train, even a faster one, between the cities. Especially since it’s pretty clear that the Montreal end of the route can’t be downtown, and will probably mean shuttling people to and from downtown in a bus or in the REM.
24Hres talked to a different expert on the same question, and at least raised the question of environmental benefits.
Updating to add: Some on Reddit think the logical move would be to have the TGV terminate at the airport, and have passengers switch to the REM there.
A-t-on vraiment besoin d’un TGV entre Toronto et Québec?
Oui
Article over
I don’t understand how this will fly if they can’t bring it into downtown Montreal. That’s the whole point of HSR; speed and convenience. Downtown Montreal to Downtown Toronto in one shot, three hours. Boom! Sold! You could literally go to Toronto for lunch and be back home for dinner.
Compare that to flying, where you have to get to and from an airport in thick traffic, arrive hours in advance, wait in lines, etc.
But if you build it as a “Mirabel” with a long and (undoubtedly) complicated and probably unreliable last mile? FAIL. Total fail.
How close is the Longueuil metro station to a train line? Laval’s de la Concorde station is directly on a train line – could that be repurposed?
After all, most people don’t stay directly nearby Central Station either. They expect to arrive then take the metro or a taxi to their eventual destination. That wouldn’t be so different if they were able to access the orange line at de la Concorde.
We tend to forget the labyrinth of twisty passages that faces passengers at Central Station, especially confusing for people who’ve never navigated them before. It might actually be a simpler and more straightforward transfer in Laval.
If they were smart, the Toronto-Montreal ticket would include an AB day pass so passengers could get directly into the metro in Laval without fussing over local transit fares.
I don’t drive. I love weekends in Quebec City. That I don’t do nearly as I often as I could because the last couple of times I took the train the less than two hours supposed ride turned into a 4h+ because we had to stop cargo trains or whatever they’re called several times.
Is there is a need for a high-speed train MTL to Quebec City? I don’t know, but, anecdotally, there is a demand for a train from MTL to Quebec City that doesn’t stop for 2 hours in the middle of a field because cargo has priority. Right now you know when your train departs, but you don’t know when it arrives…. so MEH.
I used to do day trips for work to Quebec City all the time pre pandemic and I always wanted to do the train, but I never once could because the hours are not set up for a single work day. (I took the bus, which was great.)
“If they were smart, the Toronto-Montreal ticket would include an AB day pass so passengers could get directly into the metro in Laval without fussing over local transit fares.”
That is a great idea.
A TGV between Ottawa and Montreal is going to be a game changer. The cities are 200km apart, which would make it a 40-50 minute ride, effectively making them “suburbs” of each other.
I would also like to know whether studies show that the kind of people who fly between Toronto and Montreal would stoop to taking a train, even a faster one, between the cities.
In France (and maybe some other parts of Europe), people are not given a choice. If you’re in Paris and want to travel to Bordeaux, you have to take the train or other land transportation. The only people allowed to fly between the two cities are those who have flown into Paris from elsewhere and have a connecting flight.
IIRC, the rule is if there is under-five-hour train service between two cities, you’re not allowed to fly between them unless you’ve flown into one of them.
A similar rule could be imposed here: no originating air travel between Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. Adding tolls to the 401 and 20 would also drive traffic to the train.
The lack of a useable tunnel from Central Station up to Jean Talon Station or wherever the HSR line will pass is a disgrace. That said, there’s a half-decent workaround until such a tunnel can be built.
It’s a safe bet that some trains will run between Toronto and Ottawa without continuing to Montreal and others between Toronto and Montreal without continuing to Quebec City. Trains to and from Quebec City would, for the foreseeable future, have to take the northern route through the greater Montreal area (say, Cartier Station, Jean Talon Station and Dorval Station) but trains whose end of the line was Montreal could use Central Station or Lucien-L’Allier.
Maybe I’m being transit-utopian, but with downtown-to-downtown (MTLTO) in three hours, people could do things like go to the other city for a game or a concert and come back the same day, avoiding the need for a hotel or Airbnb. (Assuming the schedule included night trains, which it should.) But if the station is in Laval? Who wants to arrive in Laval at midnight after a three hour train ride?
Imagine going to Toronto for a Raptors game and the train deposits you in Scarborough or Whitby. WTF?
Imagine taking the train to Quebec City for the weekend and it drops you in Levis or St-Foy. Ewww.
(Those two examples are for your imagination; I know the TO and VdQ stops won’t be in Whitby or St-Foy. Just image if they were, and how that would take the bloom off the rose. Well that’s what it would be like for anyone coming to Montreal and being dropped in Laval, or to a lesser extent, Jean-Talon.)
That’s right, Blork. It must be downtown to downtown or forget it. The ideal would be a new tunnel into Centre-ville, but could Windsor Station be considered as well as Central?
La Presse looks at the homeless crisis in Bonaventure metro, also pinning down an instance of a chronic problem: after governments promised a total of $100 million late last year for homeless services, projects totalling $92 million were presented by relevant groups – but only $24 million has been paid out since then, even though we’re experiencing a fiercer winter than we’ve known for years. Government likes to appear like it’s doing something, but they find it very hard to come across with the actual cash for ventures like putting a roof over the heads of human units who don’t generate profit.
As a sidebar, there’s also a piece saying the tourism industry is concerned about the bad impression made on visitors by the presence of so many itinerants at Bonaventure. Maybe their concerns will actually be heard.
My experience, working with tourists, has been that homelessness is so high elsewhere that it doesn’t seem so bad here.
CBC’s Benjamin Shingler recounts the history of the snowblower, a local invention.
The REM has hit another bad patch Thursday morning, but at least there are more replacement buses in service.
Maxime Bergeron clarifies: these buses will run all the time, despite the REM’s presumed monopoly on transit over the bridge, whether or not the REM is running, till further notice.
Later Thursday: Brossard wants the buses back crossing the river, permanently.
It was reassuring that this morning I wouldn’t have to worry about getting docked for being late.
The people leading the consortium to build high speed rail!
A lot of buses are to be put into service as of Thursday morning to replace the REM.
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