Updates from January, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 21:58 on 2019-01-05 Permalink | Reply  

    I rarely look at MTL Blog, but they’re currently screaming that we’re going to get 35 cm of snow next week, that people are furious about the city “neglecting” snow and ice removal with subhead “It’s dangerous out there” – we’ve never had ice removal – that bus service is so bad everyone is driving a car instead – “Will this ever get better?” subhead – and I could continue, but that site’s weird, whiny, catastrophized view of Montreal persists and, most irritatingly, is circulated on Google’s news page as if it’s a serious news source.

    A Google search for MTL Blog gets you this: “MTL Blog is the leading English publisher in Montreal, Québec…”

    Contrast the Journal’s item about parking meter charges going up in April with MTL Blog’s Street Parking Is About To Get A Lot More Expensive In Montreal For The First Time In Over 10 Years. Be frightened, everybody!

    Another website, Daily Hive, doesn’t catastrophize quite as badly as MTL Blog, but consider the photo shown here to an anodyne piece about snow clearance. That’s bogus, and tells a lie by inference.

    Media abhor a vacuum. There’s no denying we’ve got something of a news void here right now, with government on vacation and the US and UK drowning out most other news with their manufactured crises. Everything is so peaceful in Quebec that this weekend both a Le Devoir opinion writer and Gilles Proulx in the Journal are bemoaning different ways that Quebec ≠ France and Montreal ≠ Paris, while Robert Dutrisac in Le Devoir also works himself up into a nationalist lather, calling English the “langue de l’oppresseur national.”

    Evidently peace, order and prosperity don’t sell newspapers or generate clicks.

     

    • EmilyG 22:59 on 2019-01-05 Permalink

      Ah, MTLBlog. I remember once seeing one of their posts that was supposed to be an 18-item list, but was only 15 items long, and with one repeated. That was far from the worst I’ve seen there, though.
      I don’t want to bother visiting the site, but I wonder if they still have many articles with grammatically incorrect sentences. I assume they still have that new tl;dr feature for their articles, in case you don’t want to waste time reading the article.

    • EmilyG 22:59 on 2019-01-05 Permalink

      Oh, and remember, we shouldn’t hate them, or they’ll rebuttal.

    • Kate 23:28 on 2019-01-05 Permalink

      Yes, I don’t hate them. Personally I think they’re a wonderful ornament to local anglo media.

    • Ant6n 00:47 on 2019-01-06 Permalink

      Hey, no bashing the proud and deep local anglo culture.

    • Hamza 06:07 on 2019-01-06 Permalink

      I can’t agree with a ‘news’ site that posts advertising and press releases as its actual content

  • Kate 18:01 on 2019-01-05 Permalink | Reply  

    A man died in the river Saturday afternoon near the Old Port after falling out of his kayak. He was pulled out of the river near the Clock Tower.

     

    • Kate 14:25 on 2019-01-05 Permalink | Reply  

      The city is scrambling to write a new urban plan, but pure market forces have already left their mark on Montreal’s downtown.

       

      • Kevin 15:43 on 2019-01-05 Permalink

        I am pleased to see Dinu Bumbaru warn of the hazards of pedestrianizing streets and pointing out this city has repeatedly failed to make them succeed.

      • Kate 17:42 on 2019-01-05 Permalink

        Kevin, Bumbaru may be right about Prince Arthur now, but that street actually did pretty well for something like two decades. It used to be listed as a success story, a part of town where you’d bring visitors.

        And it seems to me that the pedestrianized blocks of Lagauchetière in Chinatown are a definite and persistent success. Businesses flourish and there are always people walking around.

        That said, I don’t think Ste-Catherine ought to be pedestrianized, which I’ve said before and stick by. It’s not a mall, it’s a working street.

      • Kevin 00:22 on 2019-01-06 Permalink

        I’m just saying pedestrianizing isn’t a panacea; it takes work and effort and a desire from the public to make it succeed.

        But people shouldn’t be all Field of Dreams for any idea, especially if it is for something they are naturally inclined to want.

      • DeWolf 15:01 on 2019-01-06 Permalink

        I think the recent approach to pedestrianization is great. They’re seasonal, flexible and implemented on a trial basis to see how they can be improved.

    • Kate 12:12 on 2019-01-05 Permalink | Reply  

      La Presse looks at several east-end industries and how they’re uncomfortable neighbours with the growing population in that end of town.

       

      • Kate 12:01 on 2019-01-05 Permalink | Reply  

        Apparently illegal Airbnb operators in the Plateau have been leaving key access boxes attached to urban furniture, and the borough has had enough. They’re going to be snipped off.

         

        • Ian 12:59 on 2019-01-05 Permalink

          Ryan’s been posting pics of those to the Book of Faces for a few weeks, kind of weird TVA only pickes up the story now.

        • Ephraim 15:28 on 2019-01-05 Permalink

          Yeah, they don’t want them attached to their property because they are evading the taxes and don’t want RQ to see where they are. The city shouldn’t have had a minutes worth of thought about this and removed them the first time they saw them.

          In fact, AirBnB is still telling people that they won’t report their income, even while collecting lodging tax, so they can continue to avoid declaring it and having a legal licence. They are pond scum.

        • Blork 10:47 on 2019-01-06 Permalink

          For Pete’s sake. We’ve discussed Airbnb here before, at length, and I totally get the concerns expressed by Ephraim and others, but I’ve also happily used Airbnb a number of times. But this thing where the owners keep the key in a lockbox locked to public “furniture” shows the extent to which short-term rentals has been commodified, and is a perfect illustration of why we can’t have nice things. (Or to use an older idiom, you give them an inch and they take a mile.)

          Every Airbnb I’ve stayed at involved direct communication with the owner, and meeting them F2F on arrival, where the owner conducted a walkabout in the apartment, explained this or that, and made sure we had their contact info and knew what’s what in the neighbourhood. It always felt like we were staying in the apartment of a friend of a friend, or a relative.

          This lockbox thing shows that at least some of these Airbnb owners are just self-entitled unlicensed hotel keepers. :-/

        • Tee Owe 13:24 on 2019-01-06 Permalink

          This is my second attempt, something’s not great with the system – anyway –
          My only airbnb experience was in old Montreal. The key was in a lockbox in the hallway, never met the owner, far as we could tell the whole buildings was airbnb’s. It put me off, I would far rather a hotel or bed-and-breakfast. Pity not to have had Blork’s experience.

        • Ephraim 16:34 on 2019-01-06 Permalink

          I deal with AirBnB rescues all summer (and usually I’m booked) and the begging for help is real. Many doesn’t do Face2Face, but instead use lock boxes. Some of them do bait and switch and say that the property you rented isn’t available (again, I get the phone calls) and I’ve even had two or three couples show up at my door claiming they had a reservation with me… who definitely didn’t… even had one English couple have to get on the phone to the place and eventually had to take them to a hole-in-the-wall (after picking up the key from a 3rd party).

          Oh and I’ve been in a few Montreal AirBnBs… so far, not one that I would stay in. But my problem is simply doing it legally, declare the income and do it as it should be done…. There are a few in Montreal who do. But there are a bunch that are Fly-By-Night and disappear quickly. But the fact that AirBnB actually assures people that they don’t report their income or give their details to Revenu Quebec is why I call them pond scum. I’m sorry, but when you are clearly helping people avoid taxes, you aren’t a company, you are a crime.

        • Ephraim 10:46 on 2019-01-07 Permalink

          Thinking about it, the city should call Revenu Quebec when they find these keys and when they lop them off, have the inspectors walk around a bit and try them on a few doors in the area. They could even ask the neighbours, who would likely know who’s key it is. At $2500 a day for the fine, this could be profitable. (And RQ does not need a warrant to enter for suspected tax evasion.)

      • Kate 11:38 on 2019-01-05 Permalink | Reply  

        A kitchen fire did a lot of damage at Ma Poule Mouillée on Friday night. It’s not thought to have been arson.

         

        • Kate 11:35 on 2019-01-05 Permalink | Reply  

          The city has already started collecting Christmas trees: schedules on the city’s website.

           

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