A policeman has been shot and a gunman is at large in Côté-des-Neiges. Posting from fone, more soon.
Recent Updates Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
Flooding remains the biggest story Monday, many householders still coping with the aftermath.
jeather
Really cursed us with that “biggest story”.
-
Kate
I was wondering as I read about the UK Labour prime minister leaving office voluntarily part way through his term to make way for a more popular choice as leader – has something like this ever happened in Canada?
CE
This doesn’t look too much different from Trudeau’s resignation last year.
Kate
Short memory here. You’re right.
Joey
It was a voluntary resignation but the lede makes it clear that his choices were quite limited – “… forced out by his own party after missteps and mistakes…”
Same thing more or less happened to Francois Legault earlier this year (though obviously at different moments in both his career and his mandate, but broadly…).
Tim S.
I would draw the Chretien-Martin analogy, since it seems Starmer’s choice was forced by the election of a rival who would have made internal party politics extremely difficult for him.
CE
I was also thinking of Chrétien but wasn’t he already planning to retire and just wanted to set up the next leader for the upcoming election?
-
Kate
Police chief Fady Dagher is to meet with the mayor and other elected officials Monday, behind closed doors.
CBC reports on a relevant incident from last fall, in which a Black family holding a birthday party in their back yard in Montreal North was allegedly pepper sprayed by police, including the senior parents.
-
Kate
CTV has put together a useful piece on what you need to know if your home has been flooded.
-
Kate
The Middle East was unavoidable this week, with no one quite knowing how things will progress.There was surprisingly little about the World Cup, although Chloé linked it with the FIFA peace award.
Côté and Chapleau both commented wordlessly on the Montreal police scandal.
The intricacies of Quebec politics was the topic de la semaine. The exodus of names from the CAQ in advance of the election was one theme that was widely covered, with various metaphors, and the arrival of a new candidate another. The lurking presence of Dubé and Legault was effectively spoofed by Ygreck, as was Fréchette’s advantage in watching PSPP and Charles Milliard squaring off.
However, Côté on the kangaroo was the single best cartoon of the week.
-
Kate
Ian Lafrenière – who originally came to public notice as a spokesman for the SPVM, let’s not forget – has named an “independent” observer into the SPVM’s investigation into racism at station 39.
And yes, I put scare quotes there on purpose, qatzelok.
jeather
An observer is okay as a start — we need an inquiry too, though they do need a non-cop there watching — and she’s a lot more independent than I would have guessed they would choose (based on looking her up — she’s an academic). I’m not entirely convinced but it’s not the worst choice I can imagine.
-
Kate
The relentless rain through Saturday has caused flooding and power failures in Pierrefonds.
2 pm Sunday, thunder and more heavy rain. Quite a way to celebrate the summer solstice.
EmilyG
It’s about 4 am here in Pierrefonds now, and the power is finally back on here (hoping I don’t jinx it.) And there is some flooding in our house, which won’t be fun to deal with.
qatzelok
I was biking through Pointe-Claire yesterday, and many of its intersections were also flooded, forcing me to take a zigzag route avoiding interestections where water-logged cars stood as warning signs.
Is this because of the fast, ticky-tacky planning of bungalow suburbia?
Kate
It wasn’t so much the kind of construction, as a determination to ignore natural waterways and lowlands, and build on them anyway.
EmilyG
What worries me at the moment is the warning that all of this might happen again today (Sunday.) Arrgh.
Jaye
I’m at the highest point of the West-Island near Fairview. Dollard got flooded too, houses here are 60+ years old. The highest rainfall estimate is 170mm. I think the big floods of the previous summer were closer to 100mm and weren’t preceded by a week of rain. Pointe-Claire got hit again, too, in their 100+ year old neighbourhood, new and original buildings.
It’s not always about the ticky-tacky.
Chris
Apart from housing, we’ve covered almost everything with impermeable asphalt for the benefit of cars. That stops the soil from absorbing so much rain.
Ian
That’s not really the issue in the WI Chris, there is a lot of undeveloped space and wetlands. The issue is that it is low-lying and a lot of it, especially places like Pierrefonds is historicaly floodplain.
su
Pierrefonds was built on wetlands and swamp dredge-and-fill development, and the city kept handing out permits because they were chasing tax revenue. They completely ignored the fact that the drainage infrastructure couldn’t handle it—and they didn’t even factor climate change projections into those decisions. Now residents are paying the price for decades of bad planning.
Chris
Ian I was speaking generally, not about West Island.
steph
If they built 10 story condos, 90% of them wouldn’t be flooded. (yes I’m being goofy with statistics)
-
Kate
The Gazette talks to several arty types who are facing the loss of their affordable studio spaces in a building north of Mile End.
Ian
And once again Shiller-Lavy’s legacy through Mondev continues to destroy everything fun about this general area.
-
Kate
I’m aware that the blog’s server has been rocky these last few days, and am posting partly to apologize and partly to test whether making a post is going to cause another dogpile on the server (which is what’s been happening – a lot).
Thanks everyone for hanging in through the 503 errors and general mess.
Jonathan
It’s actually been about a year or so that I have experienced a lot of bugs loading posts from the blog.
-
Kate
The city will be gradually backing off garbage pickups to every two weeks. Quebec’s plan is to make this obligatory by the end of 2027. The theory is that this will make more of us use the composting and recycling pickups.
I predict that they’ll have to keep garbage pickup weekly in the summer, but we’ll see.
Nicholas
Funny that EM probably won MHM based on this garbage every two weeks requirement and they’re going to have to do it anyway.
Kevin
I have already made a note to change my lease so that my future tenants will be responsible for fines from incorrectly sorted garbage.
Ian
I am sure than in 2029 there will be lots of hand-wringing articles about how many rats and raccoons there suddenly are that were never around before.
@Kevin is that legal? This isn’t the first time you’ve posted here bragging about writing clauses into leases making your tenants responsible for things that should be the responsibility of the owner and/or property manager…
R T
@Ian
It is not the owner or property manager’s job to cut open tenants’ garbage bags or sort through tenants’ bins to make sure they’re probably sorted.
Ian
Having worked for a property manager, you are incorrect. If there are common garbage areas, it is the responsibility of the property manager, not the tenants. If the tenants put out garbage curbside themselves, then it is the tenants’ responsibility.
Kevin
Hmm my post seems to have been swallowed.
As far as I can tell under the civil code dealing with leases, under the section for sanitation and cleanliness, it’s the tenant’s responsibility to comply with laws.
Since my tenant and I share the garbage cans and recycling bins, and I want to prevent problems before they occur, I’d rather make it clear in the lease that Montreal legally requires people to sort their garbage or face a fine.
If the law requires me to label the bins separately then I’ll do that.
Sorry that the tone of my posts came across as bragging. I’m not in this to make bank—I just had the chance a few years ago to buy upstairs, and now I get to try and make sure my neighbours aren’t going to be noisy.
Ian
Oh yeah if it’s just a duplex or triplex that’s a whole other story. Fair enough.
R T
@Ian
“If the tenants put out garbage curbside themselves, then it is the tenants’ responsibility.”
I did say it was the tenants’ bins and bags, though I guess “bags” may not have been clear since I meant in the context of boroughs that don’t use bins for some collections.
-
Kate
After a couple of police chase stories this month, La Presse’s Isabelle Hachey looked into how they turn out – and it’s not great news for passengers or innocent bystanders.
In addition, often the reason for the chase is some banal traffic infraction – hardly a reason to put lives at risk.
Sunday, La Presse added a third Hachey piece about how people injured in police chases are left hanging, sometimes badly injured, with no information about why it happened or who’s to blame.
Nicholas
Once you have the licence plate you should just stake out their home and get them there, once they’ve left the vehicle, at least for these less serious violations. (And, of course, once they flee they should get more serious penalties; impoundment or forfeiture if you don’t know who the driver was, or jail if you do.) Some of these are serious, though, like stolen vehicles and shots fired, so I don’t think a full ban is justified. Obviously the cops who kept chasing even after their supervisors ordered them to disengage should be fired for insubordination, and criminal charges for not following orders and policy leading to a serious injury. 25 days suspension without pay and TBD for 5 others eight years after the incident is not good enough.
Chris
The smarter crooks steal and swap license plates.
-
Kate
It feels a bit low-key to read the headline City of Montreal approves Cavendish extension after decades of discussion and delay. The story is merely that the city has acquired some land.
Nicholas
Not sure I trust anything in this article. First sentence it says it acquired the properties, then later it says the “expropriation process will allow it to obtain the properties”. Also I didn’t realize the city of Montreal can acquire land in another city (TMR), but who knows what the truth is.
Ian
That big building the city acquired at Hutchison and Ogilvy in Park Ex is still an abandoned building, not the promised social housing. Don’t hold your breath.
-
Kate
Sacré-Cœur Hospital was robbed of $40,000 in material intended for bariatric surgeries last month. Theory is that either it’s been shipped offshore, or sold to a private clinic here.
-
Kate
La Presse went and talked to owners of small businesses in Montreal North about their responses to Fady Dagher’s presser of a week ago, and the ensuing fallout.
Reply