Metro is reporting on Twitter that the turnout in the RDP-PAT byelection was about 10% and in St-Michel, less than 8%. St-Michel has stayed with Ensemble while there’s a new Projet mayor in RDP-PAT.
Updates from December, 2018 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Rue Coursol and its history in the Journal’s Centre d’histoire piece.
Ian
Interesting. I lived on that street in the late 90s and it was kind of skanky but was obviously pretty fancy at one time. From what I can see it’s getting pretty fancy again. My old favourite bar is now an antique shop.
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Kate
Molson is the case in point, but André Dubuc says here that industry is generally shunning Montreal for off-island locations when building new installations. Dubuc says too much of the available land in town is already contaminated by industry, which means high expense even before construction can begin.
Blork
This should come as a surprise to no one. Pretty much all of the “successful” top-tier cities of North America have lost their industrial zones. Who ever heard of someone building a new factory in Manhattan or Chicago? Land away from the city center is always less expensive, and in Montreal we have the added problem of living on an island, so there’s a built-in bottleneck problem getting goods in and out of the city.
The article makes an interesting note about densification too, saying that with increased densification (particularly among the middle classes — my note) there is more demand for parks and other shared public spaces. I’m not convinced that’s a valid argument though, as the density is mostly in the very inner areas like the Plateau, Mile End, Griffintown, etc., and nobody will every build factories there. The bits of available space on the island tend to be on the edges, as far as I can tell, closer to areas that are less dense and where the demand for public spaces is inherently lower.
CE
I work in the industry and it’s a little distressing how few production breweries there are on-island (production breweries as in breweries that make beer to be sold off-site). Go to any dep and most of the Quebec beers you’ll find are made outside of Montreal. There are lots of brewpubs but from the perspective of jobs, this is very different as it’s much more specialized and fewer employees are needed. A big mistake we made was converting almost all out industrial buildings to offices and condos. As someone who doesn’t want to work in an office, it gets a bit harder to think of a life in Montreal if all our industrial jobs move to industrial parks off-island to make room for tech companies and condos.
DeWolf
Brewing is one example of why it’s so important to preserve industrial areas in the centre of town. Vancouver has a number of light industrial areas in the heart of the city and over the past five or six years they have become a haven for a wave of small breweries that have really invigorated the city’s beer scene. The same thing is finally starting to happen in Montreal, but the scale is more modest, and as CE noted the Quebec brewing scene is really spread out through various small towns in the regions.
Kevin
But even Vancouver wasn’t big enough and cheap enough for the grandaddy of craft brewing: Granville Island Brewery.
They started in Vancouver in the ’80s and just over a decade later had moved their production to Kelowna- which would be like Molson moving to Granby.DeWolf
That’s only because Granville Island stopped being a craft brewer. Their production was moved to Kelowna after they were bought by Molson. In fact, their “craft” line of experimental/specialty beers continues to be brewed on the island.
Dense cities are no longer equipped for giant, modern industrial operations, but they are perfectly suited for more grassroots, artisanal industries, which (as craft beer shows) can collectively provide just as much employment and economic benefits as a single huge operation. And they have the benefit of being locally-rooted so profits aren’t being sent offshore.
Kevin
They stopped being a microbrewer when the Kelowna expansion happened, and that occurred because Andrew Peller bought a chunk of the business in 1990 or so. Molson (under the Creemore Springs brand) only acquired Granville 20 years later.
My first job in Vancouver in 1997 was on Granville Island and I went to the brewery very often.
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Kate
During the October 2015 federal election campaign the city took down several hundred placards showing a dead Palestinian child and promoting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Now the city has to pay the movement $12,500, far short of the amount they asked for, but justified given that Elections Canada had given permission for the placard.
Shlomo
BDS is not about legitimate criticism of Israeli domestic or foreign policy; it’s a dog whistle for anti-Semites and their useful idiots.
EB
BDS is a civil society movement which seeks to end Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights and international law through non-violent means. It is 100% legitimate.
Furthermore, BDS has proven effective, even in the face of widespread efforts at suppression by Israel and it’s apologists.
Equating BDS to antisemitism is a baseless smear, the same empty accusation that has been leveled for decades at anyone who speaks out in favor of Palestinian rights.
Ephraim
Israelis aren’t unified, just as Canadians aren’t unified. Not to mention that 21% of the population is Arab (including Druze, but not Circassians, who are Muslim, but not Arabs.) It also focuses attention on a problem while doing nothing about even worse problems, like Syria and Yemen. It doesn’t hold everyone to the same standard… for example, besides Northern Ireland, Polynesia, the Falklands and even the Marianas, there is Western Sahara, Ukraine, Crimea and many many more. If it’s not about antisemitism, what are these people doing for these other occupied territories? Many of which are in much worse position… children are needlessly dying in Yemen and Syria and yet the amount of money spend on UNRWA would pay to resettle almost every Syrian refugee in about 2 years. The Palestinian problem is a problem that isn’t looking for a solution… because we manage worldwide to solve most refugee problems within a few years… not drag on for 70 years…. I’m the child of child refugees who resettled in Canada after WWII. Are you also not buying British products, until the Northern Irish problem is solved? Spanish products until Ceuta is returned?
Shlomo
+1 What Ephraim said.
If Israel is so bad, why is 1 of every 5 Israelis an Arab Israeli (most of whom are Muslim) with full citizenship?
People need to stop buying into the Pallywood narrative and being Hamas’s dupes.
Hamza
How about history and money as a reason. ‘if Israel is so bad why is 1 of every 5 Israelis an Arab’ … So the second-class citizen law is imaginary? Why should a people who have had a continuous presence in the region since the dawn of recorded history give it up?
This is the same racist rhetoric that’s been coming out of Zionist circles for decades – ‘the Palestinians are not real, and if they were, they’re all terrorists and oh yah you’re anti-Semitic too.’
Ephraim
Hamza, there are Jews who have been there since the dawn of recorded history (and beyond) as well, continuously. As I said, it’s a problem that isn’t really looking for a solution… if it was, it would have been solved. If you need proof of that, nothing proves it faster than the fact that so many were resettled and then remade into refugees by the other Arab countries.
Let’s solve the worse problems that want a solution…. Syria, Yemen, Crimea, Kurds. Places where our money will actually do something, help people. (And frankly, let’s use UNRWA’s money to help people, rather than create an entire welfare state.)
Chris
Lot of fallacious arguments here.
“BDS is not about legitimate criticism of Israeli domestic or foreign policy; it’s a dog whistle for anti-Semites and their useful idiots” -> Some BDS supports are certainly bigots, it does not follow that all are.
“focuses attention on a problem while doing nothing about even worse problems” -> multiple problems can be tackled at once. Many speak out against Saudi Arabia for example.
“If it’s not about antisemitism, what are these people doing for these other occupied territories” -> People are free to chose which of the world’s many problems to tackle. If someone mostly works on environmental issues, it doesn’t make them pro-Saudi for example.
“If Israel is so bad, why is 1 of every 5 Israelis an Arab Israeli (most of whom are Muslim) with full citizenship?” -> Doing one good thing does not mean they (Israel) do no bad things.
“a problem that isn’t really looking for a solution… if it was, it would have been solved” textbook non-sequitur.There is lots of blame to go around in that part of the world, on all sides.
Religion of course plays a major role (there are other factors of course). The sooner people realize Islam and Judaism are but ancient faerie tales, and look to the future instead, the better off we’ll be.
Michael Black
Except you can’t erase identity when that identity is/was used to exclude people.
Israel exists because Jewish people have long been treated badly by others, and of course, immediately before Israel became a country, the Holocaust happened. Others tried to erase them, so that reinforced their identity.
You can’t now turn around and tell them “it doesn’t matter”. There are probably lots of people who didn’t think it mattered much, excapt when those outside forces decided being Jewish was bad, decided they needed to stand with other Jewish people. You don’t have to be religious to be Jewish.
The history of Israel is much more complicated than a religious conflict, so giving up religion would not stop what’s going on.
Michael
Chris
Michael, as I said, there are other factors besides religion. I claim only that religion is a big *part* of the problem, and should be tackled as *part* of the solution.
Hamas is an an acronym of Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah Islamic Resistance Movement. The I in ISIL/ISIS stands for Islam. It’s not me saying they are religiously motivated, they say so themselves. It’s foremost in their very name. Sure, it’s not their sole motivation (human behaviour is always complex), but many (not saying you) pretend that religion is not a major factor, when it very much is!
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Kate
Two municipal byelections are taking place Sunday in St‑Michel and RDP‑PAT to elect replacements for councillors that won provincial elections and quit their city jobs. Only a few people voted in the advance polls last weekend so turnout is likely to be low.
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Kate
A 16-year-old described as trying to jump onto a
commutertrain was seriously injured in Dorval early this morning. Moral of this story is one we’ve seen before on the blog: don’t horse around with trains, even if it’s a maneuver you’ve seen in a movie.LJ
I am guessing it was a freight and not a commuter train, because at that time there are no commuter trains on the line that runs through Dorval.
Kate
I think you’re right.
js
Makes you wonder how many “On the Road”-related injuries of this type there’ve been over the past six decades.
Michael Black
It was fairly common in the thirties, people having no money and needing to be elsewhere.
I suspect even people doing “hobby hoboing” is a tiny segment of the population, so deaths will be a small number.
But people keep getting killed for other reasons. The kids painting graffiti near a train line. People not waiting for a train to move, so they try to climb over and the train moves. Not just Sarah Stott, but there was an incident at the Old Port. There was a recent story of someone being hit because there was no barrier.
I can’t recall any local examples, but I’ve read that it’s not uncommon for people to sit on rail tracks for a photo, and being hurt when a train comes along.
Michael
Blork
Yes, the “killed while doing train track photos” thing is real. The Online Photographer made a post about that back in 2013: https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2013/10/union-pacific.html
Blork
Chris 11:13 on 2018-12-17 Permalink
Wow. Pathetic. 🙁
Mark Côté 12:36 on 2018-12-17 Permalink
Interesting that RDP went CAQ in the provincial election but then PM in this municipal one. But I guess with that turnout only the really motivated voters went.