A cosmetic chain from France with several stores in Quebec has been fined $3000 for having its receipts in English.
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Kate
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Kate
SMF says her husband is Black and was stopped by police least year at least five or six times for nothing.
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Kate
Weekend notes from Le Devoir, CityCrunch, Journal de Montréal, CultMTL, the Gazette.The Samuel-de-Champlain bridge will not be closed all weekend. However, here are the actual road closures for the weekend.
Advance notice: the Jacques-Cartier bridge will be closed on certain evenings for fireworks from July 2 to August 6.
MarcG
The Champlain bridge article has been updated to say the work is pushed to August.
Kate
Great, we can all flee the island now!
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Kate
Ted Rutland, who’s been studying and critiquing the relationship between police, public and politicians for a long time, writes about the recent action by Fady Dagher in Le Devoir.
Excellent piece by Christopher Curtis describing the protest at Station 39 on Monday. No other journalist has even attempted to explain how things went down that night.
jeather
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but what we’ve heard so far does feel like it would normally lead to an emergency 10 pm press conference, and I believe there is more, and worse, yet to come out.
CBC This is Montreal podcast covered this, interviewing Rutland and a number of Black activists, this week.
Kate
I think this is the podcast jeather mentions.
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Kate
Some Black officers of the SPVM have written a letter saying they fear reprisals if they are blamed for blowing the whistle on racist and hateful actions by some of their white colleagues, causing a team at Station 39 to be disbanded, and bringing about criticism and possibly an inquiry into institutional racism in the force.
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Kate
Ismaël Koné, Quebec’s biggest star on the Canada soccer team, has suffered a broken leg after a tackle by Qatar’s Assim Madibo. Canada got its first World Cup win ever, but at the expense of losing one of its top players.
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Kate
A worker was impaled by a steel rod at a Kirkland construction site on Thursday morning. TVA has photos of the man being lifted from the depths of the site on a stretcher with the help of rescue workers from the fire department.
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Kate
The city is investing in a project of 350 housing units in the Îlot Angus, currently projected to be “affordable” at $1100 to $1400 per month, but by the time the project is completed, probably more.
Chris
Are those sneering quotes? 🙂 How low would it have to be to not add quotes? What would a reasonable/fair “affordable” rent be in this city? Would it have to be “affordable” to an unemployed person? Minimum wage earner?
Kate
I am not sneering, I’m just according the word a certain distance, because it’s always reported as if it has a clear well-defined meaning, but it’s always going to be relative and subject to change.
Ian
@Chris the rule of thumb for a reasonable rent is 25% of the household take-home income, so 1100/m for a 1 bedroom apartment would “reasonably” require a 75k salary (about 53k net). The average salary in Montreal was $50,120 in 2025… I doubt it’s gone up 24k in 2 years. I think we can “reasonably” say that a rent that requires a person to earn 150% of the average is not “reasonable”.
I know you weren’t being serious but for comparison, a full-time minimum wage earner makes about 31k per year.
Chris
I was being serious in that I was curious where Kate’s lines were.
It’s an interesting thought exercise I think.
Your 50k and 75k numbers are individual, not household, right?
Is it “reasonable” that maybe people that need subsidized housing maybe need a roommate too? Two 31k salaries per year is 62k per year. 1.1k a month is 13.2k a year. 13.2k / 62k is 21% of household income. But yeah you’d have to split a bedroom. All very back of envelope, but it’s not horribly far from “affordable” perhaps.
Ian
The article said 1100 dollars is for a one bedroom apartment.
Basically the only way any of these units are “affordable” or “reasonable” is for a childless couple.MarcG
Anyone who suggests that sharing a bedroom with a roommate is reasonable should be forced to live that way and see if they continue to hold that opinion.
Kate
An adult having to share a bedroom with an unrelated adult who is not a romantic partner reduces the place to a dormitory, not an apartment.
Ian
Also I would like to note, Chris, that your “back of envelope” calculation is predicated on an error, which is that your rent should reasonably be 25% of your net, not your gross. A person making 31k in QC would have about 26k take-home according to 2025 rates, so with 2 people that is only $52k, not $62k.
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Kate
The OQLF has received a record number of complaints over the last year. Are some of you blokes still dreaming in English?
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Kate
There’s little local news Thursday morning except for the rain and thunderstorm watch.
Ian
Hey now weather can be a big news. Why, that brief thunderstorm we had yesterday knocked out the REM for four hours.
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Kate
The Resilience Centre has moved down Atwater into 780, a newly renovated building which will offer space and services to the homeless.
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Kate
The Quebec Liberals will be running Antoine Dionne Charest in Verdun this fall – the son of Jean Charest.
Hamza
This election is going to suck so bad
Kate
We really seem to have run out of people with true leadership quality.
MarcG
The Parti communiste du Québec candidate seems pretty dope “Avocat engagé, Manuel Johnson consacre sa pratique juridique à la défense des travailleuses et travailleurs, des locataires et des prestataires de régimes publics d’indemnisation, notamment à la SAAQ, à l’IVAC et à la CNESST.”
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Kate
Many residents of the agglomeration are still failing to sort their household trash to keep recyclable and compostable material out of landfill.
Taylor C. Noakes
This merits inspectors and severe fines. There’s no excuse for this in 2026.
Ian
This city can’t even figure out how to fine openly illegal AirBnBs, and all our funding for extra inspectors of anything is probably sunk into our grossly inflated cop budget anyhow.
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Kate
The South Shore has been a dangerous place this week. A man was killed by a security guard who suspected him of shoplifting in an IGA store in Longueuil; a man on a mobility scooter was killed by a bus in Greenfield Park on Tuesday; a teenage cyclist was hit and killed by a truck in St‑Hyacinthe.
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Kate
Montrealers tip better than any city in Canada, according to point‑of‑sale folks Lightspeed.
DeWolf
Maybe it’s because the default tip suggestion at most places here is still 15%? When I’m in Toronto and Vancouver, most places have 18% as their minimum suggested option and many places start at 20%. I think that pisses a lot of people off.
DeWolf
Also, this is amusing:
“Overall, the survey finds that Canada ranks #1 globally when it comes to “doing nothing when service is poor.”
Of course. We’re the most passive aggressive nation on earth.
Taylor C. Noakes
I wonder if it’s a consequence of knowing so many people working in the hospitality sector?
Meezly
I’m noticing more and more 18% as the default, or listed as the first tip option (with 15% being last). Perhaps it may also be due to the fact that Montreal is relatively affordable compared to Toronto and Vancouver.
PatrickC
There’s also the question of whether to tip on the pre-tax or post-tax amount (the article doesn’t distinguish between them). Some people I know are sensitive on this point, especially in Quebec, with its tax-on-the-tax policy (which may be a reason for suggesting “only” 15%, which of course is of the total charge.
thomas
Restaurant prices in Montreal are 10% to 15% lower than in Toronto and Vancouver, so the actual tip amounts are roughly comparable.
Joey
@Patrick I thought the new QC law as tips had to be on the pre-tax amount, which is why the amount you see on the tip screen + the tip is lower than the amount you see on the next/final screen in many cases
jeather
I’ve done a number of back of the envelope checks and by now most places have correctly fixed their terminals to be on pre tax. I thought they had to start at no higher than 15% but they don’t, however they aren’t allowed to have other words suggesting one is preferred.
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