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  • Kate 18:31 on 2026-05-10 Permalink | Reply  

    Every so often this theme crops up: last year, a man was killed in a parking lot when a driver hit the wrong pedal and knocked him down. His friend, a 98‑year‑old woman, “wants answers” – but what does that even mean? The driver was 80 and the victim was 89. The woman is described as wanting accountability.

    Is it lawyers or journalists who urge people to say these things? An older driver made a fatal error and a man died. The article talks about families wanting to sue, but money is not going to bring the man back, and how would taking money from the 80‑year‑old fix anything now?

     

    • Nicholas 18:58 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

      Did the driver lose their licence? That’s a question I think we’d all want the answer to.

    • Kate 19:39 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

      I looked up this incident on last year’s map but none of the reports from the time mention the driver losing their licence, although now that you mention it, Nicholas, that’s a question the journalist should have asked.

    • su 20:19 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

      The story says the vehicle was a jeep, but the photo appears to show a Toyota sedan with rather huge impact damage. For that kind of damage to occur, the car must have been backing up at very high speed!

    • H. John 20:59 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

      @Kate Do any of the reports from last year that you looked at mention the age of the driver?

      The reason I ask is that this report says the driver was 80, and yet the report that it links to about the original accident quotes the police saying the driver was 60. The Suburban says 80.

      Either way what exactly makes this newsworthy?

      It was an accident, there were no charges, and we’ve had no fault insurance in Quebec since 1978.

      If the driver was 80:

      Starting at 80, and every two years after that, drivers have to undergo medical and vision assessments.

      When there are concerns, the SAAQ can require a road test, impose conditions on the licence, or even suspend or revoke it.

      The legal standard is fitness to drive. The SAAQ itself says that “very few” seniors lose their licence after the assessments.

    • R T 22:10 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

      “Her son James Torosis, who is a physician in California, says that at her age, it’s a miracle she is alive.”

      I’m glad they added that. Without it, as a lay person, I would have had no way of knowing that a 98 year old woman surviving a car crash despite multiple broken bones, multiple surgeries and multiple months of bedrest was remarkable.

  • Kate 18:15 on 2026-05-10 Permalink | Reply  

    Restaurants without TVs don’t get much business during a Canadiens playoff run.

     

    • Kate 09:08 on 2026-05-10 Permalink | Reply  

      woman reading newspaperHabs garb is good for various kinds of laugh as the playoff series continues.

      Godin crosses threads, the Olympic anniversary and the resumption of National Assembly sessions, a sports fan eagerly awaiting the launch of the Quebec digital health platform. The platform was also deftly spoofed by Côté while Chapleau mocks Ontario’s attempt to scare the defense project off Quebec.

      Nobody managed to get any comic leverage on the naming of Louise Arbour as Governor General: Ygreck tried and Chapleau tried but neither scored a point.

      Notably this week, Chloe did a lengthier piece about the repurposing of churches in Quebec.

       

      • Kate 08:45 on 2026-05-10 Permalink | Reply  

        Dragon Flowers has left Bernard Street and moved around onto St‑Laurent.

         

        • Ian 18:16 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

          Right at the corner of Bernard, next to the gas station. Tammy hasn’t gone far.

      • Kate 08:34 on 2026-05-10 Permalink | Reply  

        In 2015, P.K. Subban promised $10 million to the Children’s Hospital. He has now delivered on the promise.

         

        • DeWolf 12:19 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

          TIL The Gazette finally has a website that is actually readable!

        • Kate 13:13 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

          Depending where you click you can sometimes find yourself looking at a full-page condo promotion. But it’s better than before.

        • Ian 18:16 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

          It’s not paywalled anymore, for one.

      • Kate 19:29 on 2026-05-09 Permalink | Reply  

        Two women were shot near closing time in a bar on the Main, Saturday morning. Both were brought to hospital and the attack was not fatal. One of the owners of the bar, Club École Privée, says he was shaken up by the incident: his bar was the target of arson attempts late last year.

        La Presse says the shooting was a gang conflict but the young women were simply bystanders when shots rang out.

         

        • Nicholas 13:37 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

          Innocent bystanders getting harmed, and especially killed, is the kind of thing that sets off the public for a crackdown, as it mostly did for the 90s biker wars. It certainly sounds like there has been a rise of events in public the last few years, and if they don’t tamp down this will boil over.

          Also they call this place a bar but it looks very much like a club.

        • Kate 14:58 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

          Is there a legal distinction between bar and club? I always took it to be that a club is pretending to be more upmarket, and possibly has a dance floor, whereas any corner dive with a drink licence is a bar, but the licence is the same.

        • Nicholas 02:24 on 2026-05-11 Permalink

          As we learned with Champs, if you’re a bar that has dancing you need a dancing licence from both the city and the RACJ. But I just mean this colloquially as the vibe: a club is a venue that exists to do a certain kind of dancing (e.g. to house music/EDM, not line dancing), and often has a DJ, coat check, bottle service, more expensive prices, a bouncer who doesn’t let people in first come, first served, but checks your clothes and vibe, etc. So yes more up-market, but there are lots of fancy bars without dancing, from some Irish pubs to French places to lounges. And there are bars with dancing that aren’t clubs, especially on the dive-y end (Copacabana on the Main RIP). There are definitely places that straddle the fence, but, to use two more examples from recent Plateau shootings, Fitzroy is a club and Mr. 250 is a bar.

      • Kate 09:33 on 2026-05-09 Permalink | Reply  

        Heliomass has a nice visit to Glen LeMesurier’s sculpture garden on his blog currently, with plenty of photos.

         

        • Kate 09:04 on 2026-05-09 Permalink | Reply  

          The competition to land the NATO defence bank is percolating in the media, Quebec’s politicians saying Montreal is the logical choice and accusing Toronto of a fear campaign over a possible independence referendum should the PQ win in October.

           

          • bob 09:11 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

            I was under the impression that it was going to Gatineau, but I can’t remember why.

          • Darth Canuck 10:22 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

            The fear is well-founded. Consequences follow from actions. If separatists do not like this looming outcome, they might want to reconsider their words and deeds.

          • Tim S. 12:54 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

            Unless an independent Quebec stays in NATO, in which case it doesn’t matter.

          • H. John 13:09 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

            The Defence, Security and Resilience Bank is a proposed multilateral defence bank for NATO countries and allied states.

            I think the press is lazy and misleading calling it the NATO bank. It’s not formed by NATO. It’s not controlled by NATO. NATO members Germany and the UK have both at various times distanced themselves from it.

          • Kate 13:47 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

            Thank you, H. John.

            in which case it doesn’t matter.

            I think it would matter, Tim S., because breaking up a country introduces unknown instabilities which are a thing you would not want in the place where you’re putting a big security headquarters.

          • Tim S. 15:03 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

            H. John’s precision aside, I’ll point out that both NATO and the EU have their headquarters in Belgium. I’m not especially up-to-date on Belgian politics, but isn’t Flemish independence also a thing?

          • Nicholas 16:06 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

            Tim, Brussels isn’t part of Flanders, though it is surrounded by it. There were many concerns about putting the UN in NYC, the largest city of a great power: would it block access to certain countries, would it be the site of bombing, etc. These things are like 30+-year commitments, you don’t want instability. It’s probably not a big concern, but it is a concern.

        • Kate 08:35 on 2026-05-09 Permalink | Reply  

          Some metro stations win and some lose in the latest data from the STM. It’s not surprising to find that more passengers pass through Édouard‑Montpetit since the REM station opened below, or that De la Savane – typically one of the least travelled stations for years – is busier since the opening of Royalmount with its footbridge over Decarie offering metro access.

          Usage of some downtown stations has fallen slightly, this piece suggesting avoidance of the homeless who frequent them.

           

          • DeWolf 14:00 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

            If we had tap-in and tap-out we’d have even more precise data that shows both origin and destination (something the TTC benefits from in Toronto), which would help with transit planning. Unfortunately, scanning your card twice seems like a step too far for most people here.

          • Nicholas 16:10 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

            DeWolf, lots of countries don’t have that and yet still get pretty good data. Germany mostly has no taps at all, and they do surveys, just like we do. Also in the vast majority of cases people do return trips, so you can mostly fill that data in, and then also augment it with the surveys.

            Germans don’t like being tracked, while the Dutch and English have no problem at all. No gates are more efficient, but you need more controllers, and some people really don’t want that. It’s a tradeoff.

        • Kate 08:26 on 2026-05-09 Permalink | Reply  

          The city has four expensive pothole repair machines but can’t give a clear explanation why they’re not in use.

           

          • Kate 08:24 on 2026-05-09 Permalink | Reply  

            CTV interviews Leisa Lee, a PR and production figure behind many big shows here on the anglo side.

             

            • Kate 18:38 on 2026-05-08 Permalink | Reply  

              Urbania with five easy ways to get killed on a bicycle.

               

              • mare 10:46 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

                I’ve encountered them all, but managed to survive.

                Missing: going over the handlebars and landing on your head because your front wheel disappears into a pothole. Potholes are often at the side of the road where water in the gutter damaged the surface, and where snow scrapers hit the kerbs. And potholes or big cracks on the bike paths don’t get much attention even though they can cause major damage to *people*, not just to tyres and shock absorbers.

                On top of that is the fact that it happens quite often that drivers suddenly move sideways into your path to avoid potholes. Drivers aren’t looking at traffic or in their mirrors anymore, they’re just preoccupied by the state of the road surface. So far I managed to avoid being body checked, but it scares the hell out of me.

              • Meezly 12:37 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

                Yup me too. With 20+ years of cycling in Montreal, I’ve been doored twice and had innumerable close calls with terrible drivers.

                Drivers don’t like to use turn signals here either. They’ll use it at busy intersections to signal to other cars, but they don’t use it on side streets, or when there are no cars around. They don’t consider how a turn signal would be helpful for pedestrians and cyclists. If I’m approaching a moving car at an intersection and they’re not using a turn signal, I usually assume there’s a 50/50 chance they’re going straight and I look at their wheels. More often than not, they’re about to make a turn without bothering to signal.

                Also, cars will pass me, then turn right without signalling thus forcing me to slow down or stop. They can’t be bothered to wait 3 seconds for me to cross the intersection before making their turn. I’m only alive and in one piece because I’ve been fairly lucky, careful and don’t trust the drivers here!

              • DeWolf 14:13 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

                One thing I’ve noticed happening more often these days is very aggressive drivers on narrow side streets.

                For example, I’ll be on the Plateau, cycling up St-Dominique when a car zooms up behind me and starts tailgating Sometimes the driver even revs their engine. The thing is, St-Dominque only has one narrow lane, with parked cars on both sides, so there’s absolutely no room to pass. This has happened a few times on St-Dominique specifically but also on some other narrow streets around the Plateau. One I turned around and gave the driver a “what are you doing” kind of look — she was in an Audi SUV — and she made an exasperated gesture with her hand that implied I was wasting her time.

                Sometimes it feels like you can’t win. If you’re on a major street like St-Laurent, you’re dealing with speeding drivers who aren’t paying attention, which forces you too close to parked cars, where you risk getting doored. But if you take a side street, which should be more relaxed, you’ll get drivers who want to do 50 in a 30 zone.

                All of this is why we need extensive traffic calming on side streets — to get rid of the impatient rat runners — and REV-style bike paths on all major streets.

              • DeWolf 14:18 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

                Oh and another thing to get off my chest — drivers who absolutely need to zoom past cyclists on little streets like St-Viateur or St-Zotique, where there is a stop sign at every corner. They’ll often pass too close, or veer dangerously into oncoming traffic, but the cyclist will inevitably catch up with them at the stop sign because on these types of streets, everything moves slowly.

                On these minor neighbourhood streets we need signs like they have on small streets in the Netherlands: “auto te gast” — cars are guests.

                We also need better driver education.

              • Joey 10:32 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

                I’ll keep posting this article every chance I get – it’s been a year and a half since Maxime Bergeron reported in La Press that the SPVM basically doesn’t enforce driving offences: https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/chroniques/2024-09-16/tickets-en-chute-libre-des-policiers-du-spvm-inquiets.php. All the things documented in this thread happen all the time; somehow after two PM terms the behaviour of Montreal drivers has just gotten worse.

              • DeWolf 12:27 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

                @Joey All due to a change in administrative policy in 2019, according to Bergeron. Pretty astonishing.

                The other week I was surprised to see two police officers in a car parked the wrong way on St-Laurent just below Duluth. I wondered what they were doing and my best guess is they were watching the crosswalk at Bagg, where drivers almost never stop for pedestrians. That said, maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part and they were doing something else entirely.

              • Tim S. 15:39 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

                Not quite a cycling thing, but over the past year or two, when driving I’ve noticed an increasing number of people honking at me for doing legal things – waiting for an opening to do a left hand turn, for example. This morning it was a guy annoyed at me for going straight in a lane in which it was possible, but not obligatory, to turn right.

            • Kate 17:25 on 2026-05-08 Permalink | Reply  

              The long-awaited city pound was finally inaugurated on Friday, although it has been in operation since January. A veterinarian on staff is quoted as saying they will keep animals while trying either to return them to their owners, or euthanizing them. There isn’t anything about animal adoptions.

              CTV’s report mentions pet adoption in passing, so that’s good.

               

              • Kate 09:52 on 2026-05-08 Permalink | Reply  

                Carney’s Liberals are pondering privatizing airports. What would that do for us? Notice the slickness of Finance Minister François‑Philippe Champagne saying “it’s about modernizing how Canada views its public assets.” If private ownership is viewed through a neoliberal eye as modernizing, maybe. That’s not a given.

                Champagne and Carney talk persuasively about “making sure that Canadians get the full value of these federal assets” but it’s smoke and mirrors because once something is sold, it’s sold. Some money goes into a few pockets and the asset no longer belongs to Canadians. It can be sold to forces outside our borders and controlled for corporate profit, not for the benefit of its users.

                How is this equivalent to modernization?

                 

                • Nicholas 13:17 on 2026-05-08 Permalink

                  The argument is that private owners are more likely to invest in upgrades, which is empirically true worldwide, as governments tend to skimp, as who wants to invest money in airports when it could go to health care? And it’s also empirically true that private ownership leads to more flights and more passengers. In particular, upgrades that increase revenue: things that bring in more flights, more passengers, more restaurants, more lounges, better transfers. Sometimes this is more utilitarian infrastructure like more gates, sometimes it is things that make the experience nicer so people spend more money or prefer connecting here. But they tend to be more ruthlessly focused on ROI than governments, who might care more about a golf course. That’s all modernization.

                  The trade-off is fees tend to go up a fair bit, as the extra revenue from the sources above is often not enough, and they aren’t constrained. You could also argue that flights are bad, and we should be building a fast train to Montreal, but we may not even end up doing that, building it to Laval instead.

                  As for finances, the pockets that the money goes into is the Treasury, which can help bring down the debt, which is high. I’ve also seen people suggesting Canadian pension funds could buy the airports, as they already own some airports overseas, which alleviates the private concern for some, though I think that’s too cute by half, just look at the REM. And if you’re worried about a future sale, you can ban foreign ownership, something Canada loves doing, including in aviation. You would get less money for it though. You can also regulate fees if you want, among other things.

                  I don’t have many opinions on whether this is a good idea or not; I’m just answering the question on how it leads to modernization.

                • PatrickC 13:52 on 2026-05-08 Permalink

                  Changi airport, considered the best in the world, is owned by the government of Singapore. It’s a question of political will.

                • Tim S. 14:15 on 2026-05-08 Permalink

                  “The argument is that private owners are more likely to invest in upgrades, which is empirically true worldwide,”

                  A few years ago I asked a colleague in the UK for his thoughts on the railway privatizations there. He said “Well, the trains don’t run on time anymore, but you can get a nice cappuccino.”

                  Upgrades that bring in revenue are not necessarily upgrades that fulfill the actual purpose of the thing in question.

                • bob 14:26 on 2026-05-08 Permalink

                  Privatization is a mechanism for people close to the government to suck the juice out of a public asset, and leave us with the skins. A pure form of legislated corruption. Fees go up, service erodes, because they are only interested in profit.

                  Canada does not ban foreign ownership at all. They sold the wheat board to Saudis and Americans. The Canadian Pacific is merged with a US company and run out of Kansas. The largest shareholder in the Canadian National is Bill Gates. Air Canada’s largest shareholder is Black Rock. And even when a company is partly, even mostly, owned by nominally “Canadian” entities, it is effectively owned by some collection of equity funds, asset management funds, trusts, etc. run by global neoliberals who are as loyal to Canada as the Westons and Irvings.

                • jeather 15:48 on 2026-05-08 Permalink

                  Elbows up!

                • Tim 16:15 on 2026-05-08 Permalink

                  @bob, you hit the nail on the head. The entire country has been sold right out from underneath us. The only national beer left is Moosehead. You bought a Molson, Labatt or Sleeman product: that money is going to the US, Belgium/Brazil or Japan respectively.

                • R T 17:03 on 2026-05-08 Permalink

                  I’m extremely ambivalent about airport privatizion, but UK railway privatisation was very successful in increasing ridership, especially during off-peak periods through cheaper tickets; the train operating companies did not control the tracks or the major stations, and the attempt to privatise the tracks was undone quickly, so most concerns about investment level are due to the government. (The trains themselves got a lot nicer!)

                  “Canada does not ban foreign ownership at all.” is simply a false statement as a matter of fact. Foreigners aren’t even allowed to acquire controlling stakes in bookshops. (When it was still considered a bookshop, Amazon had no physical presence Canada, hiring Canada Post to do all their logistics as a workaround.) Foreigners can’t control Canadian airlines. Canada does allow foreign ownership of coffee shops, but required that Tim Hortons maintain a separate, Canadian-controlled board, lest cruellers be unduly Brazilian influenced. BlackRock does not have any of its own money invested in Air Canada; the BlackRock funds that have shares in Air Canada are owned by the fund holders, many if not most of whom are Canadian. (Moreover, the largest shareholder in Air Canada is RBC, again on behalf of its fund holders, almost all of whom are Canadian.) Oh, and CPKC? Headquartered in and run out of Calgary, not Kansas.

                • Joey 17:28 on 2026-05-08 Permalink

                  There’s a reason the Liberal Party of Canada grabbed a bunch of erstwhile Conservative Party voters the instant Carney replaced Trudeau as party leader.

                • Kate 13:52 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

                  Nicholas, on rereading you, this stood out: “Private ownership leads to more flights and more passengers. In particular, upgrades that increase revenue: things that bring in more flights, more passengers, more restaurants, more lounges, better transfers.”

                  I hate to be the party pooper for tourism and its attending commerce, but we really need to be reducing flights. Isn’t a major reason for spending billions on Alto, the fast train, to cut down the number of flights between Toronto and Montreal?

                  Yes, the prospect of persuading people to travel less has the concomitant risk of reducing the open‑mindedness that comes from experiencing other cultures directly, but we can find ways of replacing that kind of pragmatic education if we need to. We don’t need to be making air travel nicer and more popular.

              • Kate 08:47 on 2026-05-08 Permalink | Reply  

                The Guardian has a strong piece on Angine de Poitrine.

                 

                • EmilyG 12:35 on 2026-05-08 Permalink

                  I enjoyed that article. Thank you!

                • Kate 13:10 on 2026-05-08 Permalink

                  Do you like the music, Emily? I queued some up on Youtube but it hits me the same as very cerebral jazz does, i.e. I can admire the intellect but it doesn’t grab me.

                • EmilyG 16:29 on 2026-05-08 Permalink

                  I love the music and can appreciate some of the way it’s constructed, the harmonies and rhythms and such. I like their use of microtones and unusual time signatures, and the masterful use of the looper pedal. Though I’ve studied music and I’m a musician myself. But I think a lot of people like the overall sound.

                • MarcG 16:45 on 2026-05-08 Permalink

                  Their sound reminds me of Okara from Ottawa.

                • EmilyG 09:48 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

                  According to a fan club on Facebook, their music is getting played at hockey games: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2650026258716737/posts/2707507382968624

                • CE 10:20 on 2026-05-09 Permalink

                  I heard it on TV during a stoppage in play at the Bell Centre the other day.

                • Chris 10:54 on 2026-05-10 Permalink

                  I heard it on CBC 6 when play paused, maybe 4 seconds worth.

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