CTV asks what the future of McGill College Avenue looks like but provides neither images nor answers. The Gazette is also merely a report on the city’s consultation with little substance. It almost goes without saying that merchants in the area don’t want an endless construction site on the short street. Global asks whether the street could be the location of an urban river, reminding me of the law that says any question asked in a headline can always be answered “No.”
Updates from March, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Some 300,000 participants are expected at the Nuit Blanche Saturday into Sunday: it’s a fairly mild evening for the time of year and, although light snow is mentioned in the forecast, it isn’t snowing yet as I post.
steph
Do tourists come into town for this event?
Kate
I have no facts but I’d be willing to bet the answer is: not many. It’s not an attractive time to come here otherwise.
Ephraim
Not really…. American tourists, except those in the north don’t really travel further north in winter. Some Europeans, but they don’t come for something like Nuit Blanche.
Steve Q
While walking downtown yesterday night, beetwen 7pm and midnight, I was surprised to see, or rather hear, a lot of people coming from elsewhere. 3 frenchmen posing in front of orange cones but asking the photograph to hurry up because it is cold in this country ! Also heard several Americans in their 20’s amazed at hosw many people we’re outside despite the cold weather. And heard some Russian at PDA for Swan Lake as well as spanish speaking people browsing around on Ste-Cath. Also, it is worth finding out about the Hotel’s vacancy to know if there was a lot of tourist or not !
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Kate
The city is promising to save the Craig pumping station under the Jacques-Cartier bridge, and find it a new purpose, although the details are not worked out. Item has some interesting history of the 1887 building. Photos above taken by me in 2006.
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Kate
Work has begun on extensive renovations to St Joseph’s Oratory including the long‑promised lookout at the top of the dome.
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Kate
The CSDM is running out of substitute teachers, so students whose regular teacher goes out on mat leave or gets sick are pretty much chivvied along from week to week by an uninspiring succession of subs. And yet François Legault still wants to launch classes for four-year-olds.
Brett
I don’t entirely understand your objection. Are you suggesting the solution is in hiring more teachers or starting school later rather than earlier I.e. at 6 years old.
jeather
The objection is to adding more classes that need teachers when there already aren’t enough teachers for 5+.
Kate
As jeather says. If they can’t recruit enough qualified people now, what chance is there that they’ll be able to find a whole lot more of them in a year or two?
Ian
News flash: being a CSDM substitute teacher sucks. You can be assigned class for any period of time anywhere on the island, and when you finally accumulate enough hours to qualify for a permanent posting you have to wait for someone to retire to get that job. You can be subbing irregular hours all over the island with no guarantee of a steady job for years and years. It’s no wonder so few people want to do it, there’s not many jobs that require a master’s degree where you have no guarantee of hours and will have to have at least one other line of income for up to a decade to make ends meet, just to get your career well and truly started.
JaneyB
@Ian. Thanks, did not realize just how badly it sucked. It reminds me of other employer complaints about how hard it is to find workers (while paying almost nothing/ offering zero job security or advancement/ requiring expensive training). If CSDM fixed its reasons, they’d have tons of applicants. There is no shortage of capable people willing to work but the good ones are not idiots.
Ian
FWIW the EMSB and other school boards are just as bad.
It’s kind of the same deal even at CEGEP but you at least only have one school to worry about and you can offset the lack of day work with night classes or other continuing education classes a lot of the time. Most CEGEP teachers I know also do consulting work on the side or have some other side work.
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Kate
Flights to the United States have been delayed at Trudeau airport by a problem in the baggage system, and the story’s in every news source Saturday morning so it’s probably pretty big. At the beginning of March break more people than usual would’ve been taking a trip south.
Uatu 11:02 on 2019-03-03 Permalink
I guess they’re just brainstorming ideas, but that urban river reminded me of when someone had the bright idea to drill holes in McTavish in the McGill campus and planted grass to make it a “green space”. Probably the most idiotic idea as everything died and they ended up filling it with pavement again. Although, later on that area did end up being an urban river when that water main broke…