Blue collar workers are to hold a three‑day strike mid‑April. They want more money, their present deal not keeping pace with inflation.
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Kate
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Kate
About a year ago, a woman who held two Second Cup franchises at the Jewish General was recorded making antisemitic threats at a pro‑Palestinian protest. Mai Abdulhadi underwent a re‑education program, so charges have been dropped – but some are not happy with this. In any case, she certainly will not be running any businesses in the Jewish again.
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Kate
Le Devoir strongly implies here that the city paid too much for some land in St‑Michel meant for building social housing, but a lot of things doubled in price between 2020 and 2024.
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Kate
Weekend notes from Le Devoir, CityCrunch, Journal de Montréal, CultMTL.The driving issues to look out for.
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Kate
The bodies of the pilots killed in the LaGuardia crash are being repatriated, with Antoine Forest’s to be arriving at Trudeau as I post. No news yet of any formal funeral arrangements.
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Kate
Rescue services are trying to find a man who fell through the ice in the Back River off Ste‑Geneviève on Thursday afternoon. His friend got out and is being treated for hypothermia, but he’s missing.
…As of midday Friday rescuers have not found the 18‑year‑old.
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Kate
This fall, Valérie Plante will be on her own TV show, Ça brasse en ville, in which she visits cities around the world and investigates how they manage their affairs. It’s not to be a glitzy cultural program, but an attempt to find out how other cities manage the nuts and bolts of urban concerns.
Nicholas
Living her best life, and I’m happy for her.
James
Good for her! Everyone would need a break after 8 years of being constantly criticized.
Ian
I’m sure she’s doing fine, she got $95,984.40 in severance and $214,028.92 in a transition allowance after leaving office. I’d be living my best life too.
Tim S.
Politics is a job (often) with very little job security. Qualified people are often reluctant to run for office because it would disrupt the happy stable existence they have to begin with, and so the people who can run are those who are part of networks that will welcome them back after they’re finally defeated. If we.want candidates from outside those networks, then yeah we have to be willing to pay for it.
Ian
Just saying, 300k golden handshake would go a long way to making up for whatever suffering her fans think she may have nedured. I find it difficult to see how it is a necessary condition of being mayor that they need a thrid of a million bucks on quitting to make anyone want the job but I guess her life is super hard lol
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Kate
Cyclists are also having trouble with potholes, which don’t spare bike paths.
Blork
Cue the social media outrage when someone sees the city filling a pothole on a bike path before filling one on the street. :-/
Ian
As long as we’re making straw man arguments, cue the social media outrage from bike advocates that street potholes get filled in at all /s
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Kate
Two homeless people have died over the last 24 hours in different shelters in town, and the mayor wept at a presser meant to talk about tidying up encampments in Hochelaga‑Maisonneuve.
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Kate
Salim Touaibi has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2021 shooting of Meriem Boundaoui. The friend with him in the car, Aymane Bouadi, has been completely acquitted.
Nicholas
Awful situation, all over parking and emotional men/boys. But an interesting point is the shooter, who was “trying to act as a peacemaker” lol ok, said he didn’t know anyone was in the car because the windows were incredibly tinted. Not that I believe this peacemaking shooter who also injured four other people, but maybe if Quebec enforced the law on window tints, and shut down places that do illegal tint jobs, this girl wouldn’t have died.
jeather
I’ve had friends (with legal tints, in fairly boring adult cars) stopped to check the tint level, so I think there is (was?) enforcement.
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Kate
I’m not trying to virtue-signal here, but am I the only one grossed out that the only problem in the war of the U.S. and Israel against Iran seen here is raising the price of gasoline? This is far from the only piece I’ve read that sees it exclusively from that angle, either.
Nicholas
The reporter is a business/consumer reporter, so it makes sense he’d cover an issue with incredible salience to many people: no other good has as many giant price boards all over the world, of a product often purchased about as often as any other. There’s lots of room for articles covering this war from a variety of angles, and it’s easy to find them if you want to look. I buy gas a few times a year, usually outside Quebec, so higher prices mostly affect me indirectly and in small amounts, but if you want an issue that will turn Americans against the war, and will also get them to buy more fuel efficient vehicles and heating and appliances, you couldn’t pick a better one.
Kate
it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good?
Ephraim
Now, if we can someone can only manage to convince the Americans that well made nuclear (SMR) is a viable green alternative for electrical.
jeather
Please, Trump just paid some French firm a billion dollars to switch from wind to fossil fuels, that’s never going to happen.
Blork
The article is clearly ABOUT the effect of the war on gas prices; it’s not some general article about the war that only mentions gas prices. You can see this in the headline, and (as Nicholas says), the fact that it’s posted in the “Consumer” section.
Imagine if it were an article about, for example, the effects of the war on immigration processing for people from Iran. Would it be fair to complain that the article sees immigration processing as the only problem of the war? Another example: if a food columnist wrote a piece detailing the effects of the war on the price of saffron, would it be fair to interpret that as saying the price of saffron is the only problem with the war? I don’t think so, on both counts.
Taylor C. Noakes
It’s vile. I just wrote a piece for DeSmog about how a self-described gas expert is using his ample media coverage to use the war on Iran as justification for pipeline construction. The next article is about how anti-regulation lobby groups, like Fraser Inst, are also using the war as justification for more pipelines.
None of these pipelines will have any impact on domestic gas prices, in any way shape or form, because they’re all being proposed either to flow south or to the Pacific. We have the world’s most heavily subsidized oil and gas sector, and it is all for export.
Think about that when you’re filing your taxes. Tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars in just the last decade, all for an industry that employs less than 150,000 people, majority owned by US shareholders.
bob
It doesn’t affect (most of) us directly in any other way. We’re out of range of the violence, so the only ill effects we feel are economic. The rest is a TV show, à la Baudrillard.
maggie rose
Yea, it’s not a “knock-on” effect of the invasion – not a war. Vile article that. Oil groups that contributed to Drumpf’s election stand to profit $63 billion from the bloodshed and destruction. Meanwhile, the Orange Overlord has made unusable $5 B in funding for EV chargers. Climate change on steroids progresses, not to mention degraded habitat and species going forever. While we endure all that, gas prices up the cost of everything we use, buy and rely on in the modern world we are stuck with at this point in time. “I don’t care” said the ghoul at a presser today in his best creepy grandpa voice.
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Kate
A nonprofit organization has been given the keys to Blue Bonnets with the aim of constructing thousands of social housing units.
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Kate
Royalmount is now banning dogs after people allowed their animals to relieve themselves and didn’t pick up after them. Who does that?
azrhey
the same people who go to a food court and leave their trays full of rubbish on the table when there is a station with garbage/recycle/tray deposit not 10m away
or the same people who blow their noses on the street and toss the soiled Kleenex on the ground without a second thought, sometimes literally on the feet the person standing next to them
I am not saying that public corporal punishment for littering is a good thing, but I am saying I understand why some places decided to implement it…
MarcG
I wonder about the turd-leaving dog walkers who travel the same routes every day… are you not disgusted, especially in the spring?
roberto
I wouldn’t even consider it sanitary—even when they clean it up.
jeather
People used to have dogs and just leave them at home sometimes. I don’t mind if SOME cafes and terrasses are dog friendly as long as there are some that aren’t, but your pets do not belong in malls, or grocery stores, or pharmacies, or bakeries, etc. (Freestanding pet stores are fine.)
Ian
And yet when I shit in a mall food court it’s “bad” and “wrong” and “I am never allowed back” whether Ipick up after myself or not. /s
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Kate
A major fire unhoused seven families in Tétreautville overnight.
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Kate
The city has a new plan to strengthen French although the mayor says it can’t be done at the expense of anglos. The official page and documentation are here.
SMF has learned to accept that French is always on the decline.
Tangentially, Michael Rousseau is refusing to resign as CEO of Air Canada. Rousseau admits he remains hopeless in French. They wouldn’t accept this from the humblest baggage sorter, why from the CEO?
24Hres got a French teacher to say that Rousseau does not want to learn, although she never met the man.
jeather
Given that almost 5 years ago he said he was absolutely going to learn and at this point he can say 2 words, I think it’s fair to say he doesn’t want to learn.
Kate
I agree. Rousseau knows his life will putter along till a cushy retirement without having to learn how to conjugate être. How are these top‑level CEOs chosen anyway? Intellectual curiosity and energy don’t seem to be required.
Ian
Well it’s certainly not only their ability to speak French (apparently). As long as Air Canada keeps making money that’s really all any publicly traded company cares about. It’s not like it’s a crown corporation.
Blork 13:48 on 2026-03-27 Permalink
To be precise, THE CITY’S blue collar workers are going on strike.