CDPQ-Infra, which I hadn’t realized was involved in the repurposing of the old Royal Vic site, has sent the plans back to the drawing board: the cost of bringing the old buildings up to modern standards are astronomical.
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Kate
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Kate
La Presse delves into the caprices of the pothole‑plugging Python 5000 with a preview of the impending pothole campaign.
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Kate
A man was stabbed Saturday evening at Place‑des‑Arts metro station, although neither piece specifies where in or near the station the incident happened. The victim is not expected to die.
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Kate
Starting with potholes, cartoons this week were a mixed bag again.The choice of a new leader for the CAQ inspired Chapleau, Côté and Godin, who doesn’t hesitate to suggest which way he leans.
The CAQ cutting loose all the applicants for the PEQ program was also drawn by Godin.
The excesses of a weekend including the Super Bowl and the Olympics is a natural scene for Ygreck to draw, as is Trump getting all the medals.
The aftershocks of the Rizqy-Hinse fracas inspired both Ygreck and Côté.
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Kate
A protest was held Saturday in several Quebec cities including Montreal, against the Quebec government’s cutoff of the PEQ program.
Some mayors of small towns are also fighting the end of the program, saying they need immigration to keep their communities viable.
There’s a National Assembly petition you can sign to support grandfathering in the people to whom promises were already made.
Ian
Thanks for the petition link. I had intended to go to the manif but couldn’t for reasons, so im glad i can at least do this much.
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Kate
This isn’t much of a story – a teenager stabbed in a minor brawl in a restaurant Friday evening. It’s the phrasing “un restaurant du boulevard Saint-Laurent, près de la rue De Castelnau” that’s key. There is only one restaurant in that location, and it’s a McDonald’s. Why be coy?
Ian
I wonder if it’s a liability thing, like some business sued a newspaper once for bad publicity
Kate
It must be, or a series of court cases that penetrated through the journalistic world like a cold hand.
But as someone who doggedly reads all the local news, I find it completely blunts the impact of a story.
It’s also inconsistent. A fire was set overnight in Petite‑Patrie and while Radio‑Canada is direct in reporting it was at the Saint-Zo bar, the Gazette and TVA tiptoe, telling us the corner but not the name.
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Kate
Steve’s Music, which moved uptown from St‑Antoine nine years ago and marked its 60th anniversary last year, has been forced into restructuring and is closing some locations.
Not mentioned, so I don’t know whether it’s a factor, is that Quebec’s latest language law makes it illegal for music stores to sell equipment labelled only in English, as reported here as a concern in May 2025.
(Shoe drop moment: could the law be afflicting camera stores as well?)
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Kate
Haven’t seen Heated Rivalry yet, although it’s all over media. Latest is that a character who wore a Saint‑Viateur Bagel t‑shirt for a brief scene has caused a surge in orders for the business – more shirts than bagels, so far.
MarcG
I really wanted to like it but, well, it’s a dramatic TV show that feels and sounds and looks like a TV show, and I guess that’s not a format I enjoy. (Also tried other ones that people say are good, Stranger Things, Black Mirror, Breaking Bad, etc, with the same disappointment)
H. John
If Louise Penny has watched the series, she must be overwhelmed with jealousy for Heated Rivalry’s author Rachel Reid’s luck in having Jacob Tierney as the producer of the series. I don’t think Penny has been very lucky in her multiple tries to find someone to bring her character Inspector Armand Gamache and the eastern townships village of Three Pines to life.
Tierney, on the other hand, has done an amazing job of faithfully reproducing on the screen the world and characters that Reid created.
jeather
I liked the show a lot, though I am definitely a Fairmount bagel person and commented about that when I saw the episode.
I think the difference is that Tierney approached Reid because he read the books and wanted to adapt them, vs trying to find someone who might be interested. (I have read both Reid’s books and many of Penny’s, though I eventually stopped the latter because I just could no longer deal with her characters’ only imperfections being that they are too wonderful.)
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Kate
When I first read that the winter Olympics would take place in Milan-Cortina I wondered why I felt the name Cortina evoked tinkly music and sparkling lights. But it wasn’t random. Here’s a postcard image I’ve found of the Cortina Bob amusement park ride. It’s Coney Island in the picture, which I never saw, but Belmont Park had one too.
It was an odd ride that went up and down mostly inside the structure. I don’t remember what, if anything, was projected on the inside, but it must have referred to skiing or sledding on snowy hills, given the art on the exterior.
Watch out for those madeleines, folks. You never know when one will bite you.
Nick D
This is funny. For British people the name “Cortina” conjures the most popular car of the 1970s — the Ford Cortina. Which I learn from Wikipedia was named after the same ski resort, because the winter Olympics were held there in 1956 (the Cortina was first produced in the early 60s).
Kate
Well, it’s catcher than Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
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Kate
The new city pound Proanima is being criticized by rescue groups for euthanizing too many animals too quickly.
jeather
Disappointing, but very unsurprising.
Kate
I know. But it was horror of Berger Blanc’s practices that impelled the city to create this facility in the first place, so reading that it’s no better is depressing.
Ian
Putting the control freak in anmal control.
Ephraim
Are those rescue groups paying the costs? If they are willing to take over, let them take over. But it’s easy to criticize when you don’t have bills to pay.
Kate
I suspect the new facility is not nearly big enough to hold all the abandoned and stray animals it receives, but – unlike the SPCA – it hasn’t been in existence long enough to develop other options like foster homes.
But you can’t put the burden on rescue groups. Their aims aren’t the same – they’re founded as volunteer initiatives by concerned citizens and their intention is usually to save as many animals’ lives as they can. Whereas Proanima presumably has a different remit – to get unwanted animals off the streets.
I don’t think most rescuers would debate that some stray animals are so sick or injured that they need euthanasia. But if Proanima is already triaging its intake based on very scanty space for temporary shelter, something’s got to be done.
Ian
Well I gues therein lies the rub, at least from the article it sounded like the goal of the trappers was to rescue cats and get them adopted when possible, whereas Proanima is taking a stricter animal control approach with the end goal of eliminating or at least drastically reducing the feral cat population through breeding control. It must be hard on the “rescuers” to know that the kitties are being used at moving parts in a scientific animal control strategy.
jeather
Having feral cat colonies is definitely a strategy; I do not know how good or not good it is in general, but it’s not an unusual one. Unhealed cats post surgery and releasing cats before a winter storm seems like an odd choice, but saying a cat’s health status is “confidential” to the trapper who brought it in is insane — cats don’t get medical privacy. Also curious why they keep the traps, though limited dropoff hours doesn’t feel like the worst way to reduce costs.
“But the cat rescue community believes Proanima is delusional for thinking there’s a network of money-hungry trappers looking to save a few bucks on sterilization and vaccination fees to then turn a profit on adoptable cats.”
Yeah this seems insane.
steph
Domestication is cruelty. It all needs to end.
dwgs
Please tell me how domestication is cruelty.
Ephraim
@Kate – Some of those volunteers have good intentions, but there just is never enough money in the pot to hold on to all of the cats until adopted. Even PITA is realistic about it. https://www.peta.org/issues/animal-companion-issues/overpopulation/euthanasia/
But the journalists aren’t doing their job if they aren’t asking them how they will fund it. We need to be realistic about many things that we just aren’t. That’s how so much of our streets became parking lots.
Kate
steph, domestication of dogs and cats was mutual, it’s well understood. It was mutually beneficial for them to live with or near us, and it still is.
Ephraim, it’s a problem if they’re putting down lost pets too quickly. Of course people should not be letting their animals wander around, but animals can become separated from their owners for all kinds of reasons and no one should find their cat has been euthanized 24 hours after it got outside by mistake.
jeather
As a note, microchips can move around in the body so you could have a microchipped cat where they can’t find the chip.
Kate
A vet told me he has found as many as 3 chips in the same cat.
jeather
In the neck or just floating around? My cats are microchipped but they have zero interest in the outdoors anyways, which is a really underrated quality in a cat.
Kate
He didn’t specify where he found them in the cat.
My cat has no interest now in going beyond her back yard, so I know how you feel.
That’s in summer. Right now, she’s not very interested in leaving my bed. Now and then she puts her nose outside and sniffs at the air, and comes in with a mild air of disappointment that I haven’t made summer come back yet.
jeather
In the summer my cats really want the door to the back balcony to be open all day so they can sit inside but really see the outside properly. If there is exactly zero snow they occasionally spend a bit of time outside in the winter. They don’t really mind the rain, though they immediately run to my bed to dry off.
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Kate
Canadian Tire has been fined for false advertising in its Montreal stores. Short version: they offered discounts from fictional high prices they had never charged. Since this is a standard procedure on the web, they may have thought it was fine in a physical store. Not so much, apparently.
Ian
Nice. I know grocery stores do this often too.
MtlWeb
One of the late 70s memories of shopping advice given to teenager me by my Dad was: “never….ever buy anything that is regular price at the Bay, Sears, Eaton’s, and Canadian Tire……those are inflated prices to make their sale x % off prices look more appealing”. I have never forgotten those words.
dwgs
Crappy Tire is one of the very few remaining stores that has real sales. Every week there are sales, especially on tools, at prices that no one else will come close to.
Ian
I wish they would bring back paper Canadian Tire money. I know, I know – they still offer a loyalty program and the card is free – but I liked the idea of a loyalty program that wasn’t digitally tracking me.
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Kate
Isabelle Hachey has a six‑part series Saturday on Pierre Ny St‑Amand, who drove his bus into a daycare two years ago, seeking to understand what he had experienced that could result in such an act.
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Kate
Some homeless people have been using the airport as a refuge.
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Kate
La Presse examines the condition of the city’s colmateuses, bought in 2018 to automte pothole repair, but not as useful as the city had hoped.
The machines were supposed to replace an entire team of blue collar workers, but the city has a lot more such teams working now, and not so much of the nifty machinery.
There’s also a short slideshow demonstrating how the machine works – on a clean dry street in summertime, with no traffic.
TVA has a lot of pieces on potholes: new emergency contracts with private firms; claims against the city rising and how to apply.
As readers will know, I don’t drive. But I rode around in a medium‑sized car with a friend last week for a few hours. The potholes were real!
Every so often, the city gets a bright idea to buy machinery, hoping it will circumvent the union by getting work done without workers. Remember the croque‑glace machines a couple of winters ago? Often these engineering marvels turn out to require too narrowly defined a set of conditions to work properly. They tend to be expensive and hard to maintain, too.
Maybe AI will eventually be able to judge the state of ice and snow vs. the weather conditions and apply the correct treatment, but right now, we still need human beings.
Later, TVA reports that although the city has no current contracts for pothole repair, those emergency contracts have been cancelled.
MarcG
I drove on the Decarie yesterday and was surprised as how well-maintained the road was. The potholes that were filled were done properly with the full rectangle patch. I wonder what makes it special.
patatrio
the pothole press is unrelenting this year. there is no escape from the asphalt holes, even if we spend an extra 500 million a year. Maybe they will be more palatable if we changed their name to say inverted speed bumps or random suspension checkpoints we columnists could worry about the big picture instead – eg. consolidating the road network, changing standards or expectations on what vehicles are expected to drive over, or how to mitigate the lifecycle of a pothole by other means. But ultimately, when the snow is piled high, when the winter turns to spring, you realize how silly and ineffective it is to imagine this system of transportation makes any sense really.
Ian
You say this, and I can sense your greenwhistle seeping in, but let us look at other cities even here in Canada and speculate – just for a moment – why it might be that our fair burg has more potholes than most, despite similar weather, technology, and usage. Hmm. How perplexing. The answer is clearly not just “this system of transportation”.
dwgs
@MarcG if you mean the Decarie Expressway it’s different because it’s maintained by Transport Qc, not the city.
Ephraim
Python is known for speed… not for doing a great job long term, from what I understand. For longevity, you are better off using other methods. The JCB unit is best for preparation, it cuts and cleans, so that it’s read for long-term repair with hot mix or infrared. Heck, for cold patching, there are regular level cold patch and better mixes, like Perma-Patch/Aquaphalt. But they are designed for SMALL patching. Not the giant patching we need in Montreal. But I don’t know if they have any 1 man machines for infrared. It’s usually used with a team. Anyone know if Montreal uses infrared at all?
Mozai
“Every so often, the city gets a bright idea to buy machinery, hoping it will circumvent the union by getting work done without workers … maybe AI will –” I’d like to interrupt so I can name for you the colours of this pot and this kettle.
Kate
Mozai, you have a beef?
Mozai
How is AI not “machinery, [hoped to] circumvent the union by getting work done without workers” and not “engineering marvels turn out to require too narrowly defined a set of conditions to work properly.” I want to call it “[tending] to be expensive and hard to maintain, too” but that’s just my experience and not a certainty.
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Kate
Valérie Plante will receive a golden handshake of $310,000 and others who lost their positions or left politics as of last November will also benefit from lesser amounts.
Jonathan
It’s the first time i hear the term Golden Handshake used in this context. My understanding is it is usually used for those who are fired or forced to resign.
Kate
It was perhaps careless usage.
Anton
In Germany, elected officials get pretty high pensions relative to the number of years they serve. I guess it’s to compensate for the fact, that often politicians spend many years campaigning beige getting a job? O wonder whether there’s something similar happening here — how do these payments relate to retirement plans?
Anton
(iOS auto correct is the dumbest piece of tech)
CE
@Anton, obviously you haven’t typed a message on Slack using a phone!
Ian
Finding out pensions for municipal is not as easy as MNAs. Does anyone have any idea what Plante’s pension will be?
Also, i know municipal pensions used to kick in at age 60. Is that still the case?
Jonathan
there are no pensions for elected officials
Ian
Even Jean Drapeau had a pension of $52 403.79
H. John
@Jonathan
As Wiki mentions: “A golden handshake is a clause in an executive employment contract that provides the executive with a significant severance package in the case that the executive loses their job through firing, restructuring, or even scheduled retirement.” It’s been used since the 60’s and has often been used to refer to the packages elected officials or government appointees receive when leaving office.
And yes, there are pensions for elected officials as Ian pointed out:
R-9.3 – Act respecting the Pension Plan of Elected Municipal Officers
https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/fr/document/lc/R-9.3?langCont=en&cible=
Like other Quebec municipal elected officials, the mayor participates in the provincial pension plan for municipal elected officials, and the amount depends mainly on:
• years in office
• pensionable salary while serving
• age at retirementUnder Quebec’s plan for municipal elected officials:
• Pension accrues at roughly 2% of pensionable salary per year of service (since 1992).
• Earlier service (pre-1992) accrued at 3.5% per year.
• Eligibility generally begins at age 60 with at least 2 years of service (earlier with reductions).Estimated Plante pension:
8 years × 2% = ≈16% of final salary
So roughly:
• 16% × $221,000 ≈ $35,000/year
• ≈ $2,900/month (starting at eligible retirement age)Ian
Thank you, H. John – that’s pretty decent, but less than I expected.
bob 16:57 on 2026-02-08 Permalink
Yes, and we all trust CDPQ-Infra to make such estimates because they are not connected grifters who look on such projects like vampires eying a young maiden’s slender neck.
If student residences don’t justify that price tag, what project does, I wonder?
This has nothing to do with the Qebec government’s twin policy of eliminating international students while destroying English higher education, does it?