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  • Kate 14:22 on 2025-02-18 Permalink | Reply  

    A man was found dead Tuesday morning in a car buried in snow in Park Extension. Carbon monoxide is being blamed – there’s no mention of foul play.

    TVA adds that two people have died from heart attacks while shovelling snow.

     
    • walkerp 14:32 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      Oh that’s brutal. I had heard a warning about this on the CBC the other day and hadn’t thought of it as a risk before when digging out of the snow, but it makes sense. Poor guy.

    • Nicholas 15:47 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      I don’t think they mention it specifically, but my first thought is you get trapped in there, it gets cold, so you turn on the car to stay warm. Electric cars have low battery life in the cold, but at least they don’t do this.

  • Kate 12:02 on 2025-02-18 Permalink | Reply  

    Transport minister Geneviève Guilbault has summoned an emergency meeting Tuesday of the major players about the recent failures of the REM.

     
    • Taylor 12:15 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      If they don’t have Tempos for the REM yet, they will soon.

    • Kate 13:58 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      You know what they say, Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo.

    • SMD 15:20 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      10/10 for the 90s French rap reference, Kate.

    • Nicholas 15:43 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      I took the Exo train today and despite the wind it was on time, but some were decently delayed (15 minutes), and due to that at least one was cancelled. They aren’t crossing such a wide expanse as the REM is, but all the trains do cross a river, and they’re mostly fine. Maybe we shouldn’t have picked such an untested, brittle technology, but I’m sure the finance experts at CDPQ know better than transportation experts who warned about this years ago.

    • MarcG 16:53 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      I had the pleasure of watching an Exo train blast through the snow on the tracks at Vendome, creating a huge white wave.

    • DeWolf 17:57 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      @Nicholas Can you explain exactly what is untested about the REM? It’s not novel technology, it’s a regular steel-wheeled train running on an overhead catenary, just like thousands of railways around the world. Even the computer controls aren’t unusual.

      The recurring problem that keeps shutting the REM down is that switches keep malfunctioning. That’s pretty old school as far as problems go: a piece of mechanical equipment is defective and needs to be fixed.

  • Kate 09:45 on 2025-02-18 Permalink | Reply  

    In the second piece in a series on waste management, the Gazette’s René Bruemmer explains how Quebec’s approach to recycling has changed, and what it means in practice.

     
    • Meezly 11:54 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      Thanks for sharing that. I’m cautiously optimistic. Still always better to try to go low waste whenever possible.

  • Kate 09:28 on 2025-02-18 Permalink | Reply  

    Some schools off-island are still closing for storm effects on Tuesday, but most Montreal schools have reopened. List here.

    The REM is still slowed down Tuesday morning according to TVA, but CBC radio just said it isn’t running.

    Le Devoir has a piece on coping with what it calls l’après‑blizzard and CBC has five things you should know.

    MétéoMédia says the snowfall has broken a very old record.

    24Heures lists several memorable snowstorms since 1800, and La Presse also has a look back at notable storms, but neither includes the late December 2012 storm discussed here recently, which has fallen out of collective memory despite breaking records.

    The city will be testing the new practice of not sounding snow removal horns in some areas.

     
    • Uatu 10:12 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      REM still busted. The most annoying thing is that the shuttle bus stops are on De la gauchetiere in front of Place Bonaventure instead of the old bus depot in 1000 de la gauchetiere where we could wait indoors. I felt like I time travelled back to 1984 when I waited for the strsm buses on the steps of Place Bonaventure. What progress in 40 years! Lol

    • CE 12:15 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      My street is in the area where they haven’t been using the horns to tell people to move their cars. My house is on the ground floor and very close to the street so I’ve been very much appreciating not having a horn blaring directly into my bedroom at 7am when I’m trying to sleep.

    • Nicholas 15:37 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      CE, is this for day shifts as well. The article said overnight, but I seem to remember last year them saying day and night. Being woken up at 7, or 6:30 to alert people to move it by 7, is not fun, especially in a neighbourhood where a third of households don’t own a car (and just outside of the pilot project area).

    • CE 16:45 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      I haven’t heard the horns at all this year. Last year, even with less snow, I heard it a few times. I remember one in particular because I worked late and didn’t get to bed until around 3am and was woken up at around 7am because one person on the street hadn’t moved their car. I wasn’t happy.

  • Kate 19:00 on 2025-02-17 Permalink | Reply  

    There are six villages in France called Montréal. La Presse went to Montréal‑du‑Gers in 2022, and reports Monday on Montréal‑la‑Cluse in the east of France.

     
    • Jonathan 10:56 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      I recently visited a town in Sicily called Monreale and felt some sort of affinity because of the name.

    • azrhey 11:23 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      ha! My aunt and grandmother live in Montréal-la-Cluse (with assorted cousins living in Oyonnax next door , been doing the “I live in the actual Montreal” joke for over 30 years! I will share this article with the family asap, thanks Kate!

    • Nicholas 15:33 on 2025-02-18 Permalink

      I’m at Namur métro station right now and on the walls they have 8 panels on the different Namurs: the city, province and capital, the Wisconsin town where Walloon farmers immigrated to, and the town in Papineau RCM similarly, and the Walloon-Quebrc friendship. Interesting and well done, we should do more of this.

  • Kate 12:11 on 2025-02-17 Permalink | Reply  

    A survey shows that a lot of people are still annoyed with road construction even while the city tries to minimize its impact.

     
    • Kate 11:59 on 2025-02-17 Permalink | Reply  

      The city’s Philippe Sabourin says on Bluesky that pickups (garbage, composting and recycling, presumably all three) will be suspended this week.

       
      • GC 12:25 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

        People in my building put ours out Sunday evening, in anticipation of a Monday morning pickup. I guess it’s just going to sit there all week, now :(.

      • jeather 12:29 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

        They picked up in St Henri this morning.

      • DeWolf 19:02 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

        I guess I got lucky because I put out my recycling and compost last night and they picked it up early this morning before the city cancelled the rest of the rest of the collection. I’m honestly pretty impressed, the amount of snow they’d have to have trudged through is no joke.

      • GC 19:40 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

        Yeah. Ours was actually picked up, too. I can’t see the front of the building from my windows, so I wasn’t sure until I went outside. I suppose it must have happened before the official cancellation.

    • Kate 10:35 on 2025-02-17 Permalink | Reply  

      La Presse reports that 11 suspended teachers from Bedford School are still being paid and will go on being paid.

      I don’t find it shocking or immoral. That’s what belonging to a union can do for you.

       
      • bob 14:29 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

        And how is this a story other than the “principalement maghrébins” angle?

      • Kate 16:34 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

        It’s been a story since it broke that some people with authority in the school were behaving in ways described here (October 2024) as intimidating, refusing to allow special attention to kids with learning disabilities, meting out humiliating punishments, and refraining from teaching science, sex ed, and the official curriculum on religions. They were basically old school – my grandparents might have approved, but this is the 21st century.

    • Kate 09:11 on 2025-02-17 Permalink | Reply  

      We have a blowing snow advisory Monday.

      List of closed schools and other institutions.

      There’s a daycare strike but is anyone going to notice?

      Radio-Canada says nearly 75 cm of snow fell over four days here. For people who use real measurements, that’s 177 picas.

      MétéoMédia says it’s close to breaking a 70‑year record.

      It will take eight days to complete the impending snow clearing operation.

      Later report on planes and trains cancelled by the snowstorm.

       
      • jeather 12:11 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

        They didn’t clear my sidewalks at all, and the Journal de Montreal article says they can’t because there is too much snow. It’s a lot of snow.

      • CE 12:23 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

        Wow, that’s 0.0373 chain of snow!

      • walkerp 13:40 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

        No indistinct grumbling from me this time! Damn, that was a serious dump. My neighbour and I cleared both sets of stairs, two walkways and a beautiful rectangle of the sidewalk in front of our place last night. Woke up this morning and it was all covered up again, including some big drifts. I’m not even sure if it is worth doing anything until the wind stops.

        Stay warm and safe out there and big thanks to the city snow clearing teams. They are going to be busy!

      • steph 14:20 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

        I got plowed in. Literally, a snow plow zipped past me dumping his snow bank onto me, leaving me waist high in snow. I must have been an inch away from being a statistic.

        Is that a complaint to the city, or the police?

      • Kate 22:03 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

        Good question, steph. You could submit a complaint online to the relevant borough but that might feel a bit bland?

    • Kate 09:07 on 2025-02-17 Permalink | Reply  

      The REM is down in both directions for an indefinite period.

      8:45, CBC says the REM is slowed down but running.

       
      • Kate 23:22 on 2025-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

        A swastika was found painted on the side of Temple Emanu‑El‑Beth Sholom in Westmount. Police are looking into it.

         
        • Kate 17:39 on 2025-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

          The 2400 STM maintenance workers have voted in favour of a strike mandate.

           
          • Ian 21:06 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            Fair enough, I guess.

            On the subject of the maintenance workers union, have we heard anything more about the “toxic” (racist) “vibe” (people gettting mad at others for speaking Kreyol) at the Legendre shed?

          • Kate 22:20 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            That crossed my mind too. There hasn’t been any recent news about that situation.

        • Kate 14:42 on 2025-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

          We’re having the second big snow within a week, with wind kicking it up into whiteout conditions. Environment Canada says this is a more severe storm than Thursday’s.

          The city is asking people to stay home if possible through Sunday and Monday.

          The chenillette’s been past twice, yet the sidewalk’s now only a little groove in the snow. I could clear the steps now and they could be buried again by this evening.

          Later: CTV has a lengthy list of the schools closed Monday.

           
          • DeWolf 18:07 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            I went to the Jean-Talon market which is normally a seven minute walk but it took me closer to 15 with the sidewalks completely inundated by snow. Before I left I shovelled off the front walk and sure enough, by the time I got home there was already a good 10cm of fresh snow…

            It’s been a long time since we’ve had a storm like this!

          • Blork 19:07 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            On the plus side, I got to try out “X Mode” in my Subaru (for driving in deep snow or mud). That Provigo parking lot was a mess!

          • Mark Côté 19:51 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            EMSB (and presumably other) school closed again tomorrow!

          • steph 20:06 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            I didn’t see too much hype about this storm. This one was worthy of a little drama.

          • Ian 20:34 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            It’s true that this wallop seemed under-hyped. It’s cettainly harder to even walk around in, and the drifting is impressive already.

          • Ian 21:01 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            Also FYI for school closures etc.
            LBPSB and EMSB are closed, amongst others.

            https://www.cjad800.com/features/cjad-800-stormwatch.html

          • CE 21:06 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            Normally the majority of cars I see on the streets are SUVs but for some reason, most of the cars I’ve seen out driving today were small compact cars and they were all getting stuck. One was in the middle of my street digging out for a good 20 minutes. Luckily it’s a pretty small street so no cars got caught behind it but it’s also one of the last to be plowed.

          • Ian 21:11 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            Foolishly I decided to drive today, thinking it was only 15 minutes or so, how bad could it be. I do drive an SUV and I almost got stuck driving up the middle of Normanville, a perfectly flat street in Rosemont. I was spinning despite AWD and ABS. I can’t imagine anyone in a compact going for it, but well, bless their heart & godspeed. Visibility was about 15m around 1 pm. On my way, I did see one guy out on his bike along the Bellechasse bike path, struggling mightlily.

          • Kate 21:41 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            CE, Ian, I saw a claim on reddit that a lot of those small cars are doing food delivery – or trying to. Those guys don’t own SUVs.

          • Blork 00:29 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

            My little Subaru isn’t an SUV (technically it’s a “crossover”) and I had no trouble at all. But I cut my winter driving teeth by driving through blizzards in rural Nova Scotia in a rear-wheel drive Datsun with bald tires, so this just seems like a walk in the park.

          • Ian 10:28 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

            OK mine’s a crossover too, but still. My point is that since I was almost getting stuck I don’t envy anyone driving small cars in that. Kate, that sounds very plausible. They probably can’t affford a snow day, and lots of people are probably calling for deliveries. That aid, I only saw one grocery store van, which is super rare for a Sunday on my street.

          • jeather 12:47 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

            I have an old subcompact, and I went nowhere yesterday, but, once I dug it out of a giant pile of snow, driving today was very easy.

          • Meezly 13:50 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

            We drove home from Mont Tremblant yesterday during the blizzard and lived to tell the tale.

          • Ian 19:23 on 2025-02-17 Permalink

            I often find the highway easier than the city as the roads are clearer but visibility couldn’t have been great. Were you actually out on the slopes?

        • Kate 10:14 on 2025-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

          La Presse has a dossier this weekend on whether Quebec’s social and political model will be sustainable in a world that’s turning harsh. We are relatively happy but currently dissatisfied, and our social safety net isn’t what it once was, with cuts in health and education.

          And we know that all parties will make promises they can’t keep.

           
          • bob 12:14 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            More like promises they *won’t* keep.

          • Ian 21:12 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            *didn’t intend to keep

        • Kate 10:07 on 2025-02-16 Permalink | Reply  

          MainLine Theatre will close permanently after this summer’s Fringe Festival, May 26 to June 15.

           
          • EmilyG 14:43 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            They are looking for a new space. I hope they find something good.
            I’ve enjoyed many performances at MainLine.

          • JP 19:50 on 2025-02-16 Permalink

            I think I saw “Hair” there a number of years ago. I loved it! Hope they find an adequate new space.

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