A lurid crime tale worthy of Coolopolis is alleged to have taken place at Habitat 67, involving a scheming woman and an unsuccessful murder attempt.
Updates from March, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
It’s expected to be a little chillier than usual Sunday – but isn’t it always? – despite which 300,000 people are expected at the city’s 196th annual St Patrick’s parade, taking place over a shortened route from Fort to Metcalfe at midday.
Ian
I’m looking forward to it with the kids as usual but I guess with a shorter route we will need to be there earlier if we want to be anywhere near the curb. Those last few blocks have always been more family-oriented, it will be interesting having the kids down by the drunks.
Ian
That shorter route made the sidewalks INSANELY packed. I go every year and have never seen it as bad as this. I left around 2 as the crowd was starting to get pushy and fighty, and I wasn’t comfortable around it with my kids. At least I got to see the Black Watch pipes & drums.
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Kate
Tracey Lindeman writes about the Nuns’ Island Mies van der Rohe gas station and its transformation to a community centre, for CityLab.
qatzelok
That Nun’s Island’s most significant architectural icon is a gas station is of symbolic importance in understanding why Nun’s Island itself is a prize-winning but failed experiment in high-end suburban forms.
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Kate
News of Friday’s police brutality march was muted compared to reports about the much larger climate strike march, although CTV says two people were arrested in the annual clash between protesters and police and TVA noted some vandalism.
But in turn, news of the international climate protest was largely drowned out by the horrible news from New Zealand.
Saturday, local reaction to the Christchurch shooting was reported, as well as greater police surveillance around the city’s mosques.
Steve Q
It is time to ban the police brutality march. All these people want to do is destroy and create chaos. They passed in front of where I was working on Sherbrooke and you could easily see their clear intention and they were seeking for something to break. I dont know why we tolerate something like that. Its a shame !
Kate
The minor damage to property caused once a year by the police brutality march is a small price to pay to maintain freedom of speech and freedom to gather to express an opinion.
Hamza
For all intents and purposes the march is already banned, as are any other demonstrations that don’t seek prior approval from the police
As if the entire point of this sort of demonstration isn’t to disobey the authorities.
Ian
“I dont know why we tolerate something like that. Its a shame !” Uh, because police brutality, which we should absolutely not tolerate as a society, is still a problem – to the extent that the anti police brutality marches are targeted by the police. If the cops left it alone all the tough guys would stay away, but they are itching for a fight because they know they will get one.
Steve Q
If they want to fight the police brutality they dont need to destroy the property of other citizens and they dont need to disrupt the quiet life of the people. They are not alone in this city. Other people have the right to walk peacefully on Sherbrooke street on any friday night without the fear of being caught up in a violent crash. A grand mother, a mother and her two small children decided to not take a walk on that friday night because these thugs decided to take the street as if it belonged to them. Other people had their car damaged because these trouble makers dont have any respect for anything. These bums are just looking for trouble and their main goal is to provoked the cops and be brutalised by them in front of a camera so that they can cash in an eventual law suit. Kudos to the cops for resisting the provocation of these professional provocators.
Kate
What do you want them to do, Steve Q? Write a letter to the editor?
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Kate
There was praise for the city’s deradicalization centre when it opened in 2015, but it has gone off the rails enough that its director was “removed”, most of the management quit, and it’s being completely rebuilt from scratch.
Faiz Imam
I wonder what extent of their resources are focused towards white supremacist radicals as opposed to Islamic radicals. I doubt it was very much.
But the quotes here suggest this might be part of the shift. That would be a good thing.
I read recently that the FBI pays over 11,000 informants (presumably all people of color) to report on suspicious activity in mosques. Weras they have substantially less resources pointed to wards white supremacists. I really hope that the trends in the past few years is shifting that, but the systemic discrimination in so much law enforcement makes me pessimistic.
Kate
At the time it was established, people were specifically afraid of young people becoming convinced that a logical outcome of their religious beliefs meant going to fight for ISIS.
Things have changed.
david100
Obviously, the white supremists are complete morons, but de-islamicization is an important policy position meant to keep Canada from having the problems of Europe. Nobody immigrating to Canada or their kids should have a hardcore ‘destroy the West’ worldview and hide behind the new freedoms of the country that took them in. It’s a very humanitarian way of getting this point across, these paddy cake de-radicalization centers, but if it works, great
This is an issue quite apart from how we deal with mental types who take a look at all these new Muslims and other non-whites in the streets and then seek out hate literature, and plan to kill. Those guys are functionally equivalent to the guys who kill women or coworkers. They’re just losers.
PO
It’s a perennial argument. Some people see it as a bunch of anarchopunks that just want to break things. Some see it as legitimate protest. Some people think it’s misguided and criminal, some people see it just as business as usual. It’s a tedious argument to have, because I see both sides of the story.
I’d pay money to broker a deal between the protestors and the cops, where in exchange for bodycams and an independent oversight board, the protestors agree not to crawl out from under their overpasses and hold the event.
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Kate
Housewares boutique Arthur Quentin is closing after 43 years on St-Denis, and the owner deplores the lack of support from the city but the brief text here doesn’t clarify what kind of help the owner wanted. Arthur Quentin had an upscale ambiance, but you could get quality kitchen tools there at a good price. I still have a few things I bought there when I lived around the corner. Link has text and an audio interview.
Steve Q
A tax break is surely what the owner meant. Businesses are heavily taxed in this city, as a matter of fact, Montreal has the biggest business tax in North America. Very counter productive.
Its a miracle she has managed to hold on for so long but as she is saying, she hasnt made any profit for a long time, thus explaining why no one wants to buy her store. So we are likely to see another empty local on Saint-Denis for a long time. In the mean time, expect mayors and councillors to crticized the Royalmount project. Much easier to do than to fix problems like Saint-Denis street per example.
Kate
We simply don’t have laws allowing the city to shape neighbourhoods as some of us would like. I don’t think within the current framework we can write tax laws allowing independent stores to pay less tax than chains or franchises, for example, although that kind of arrangement would benefit the city. (And chains and franchises would find loopholes pretty fast, I imagine.)
Uatu
Royalmount needs a review. the DIX30 is carbon Leo’s success story in the south shore and it’s a traffic cluster fuck even with the space of the suburbs and it will get even worse because a small city of condos will be surrounding the new REM station in the area which means more traffic. Carbon Leo’s idea of planning is to point a finger at a map while blindfolded.
I don’t know how st. Denis can be revived all I know is that the combo of royalmount and Amazon means no one with cash is going to drag themselves downtown to st. Denis from TMR.
Bill Binns
The idea that so called “independent” businesses somehow benefit the city or it’s residents more than franchise or corporate stores is a myth. I have never read an explanation of how this is supposed to work. Franchise stores are almost always owned by locals and of course employ locals, pay local taxes etc. A franchised store is simply a locally owned business that is renting a proven business model and participating in a national marketing campaign. It’s a shortcut to taking 20-30 years to establish your own reputation.
Kate
Bill Binns, fill St-Denis with predictable franchise outlets and there won’t be anything quirky, individual or independent to attract people away from the convenience and parking at the malls.
St-Denis used to have so many independent places – just off the top of my head, from living around the corner: Arthur Quentin, Bleu Nuit, La Cache, Giraffe, Kaliyana, Sarah Clothes, Louise Decarie’s incomparable candy store, Sena – the good shoe store at Rachel – that are now gone. Despite living nearby I didn’t shop along there very much because it tended to be expensive, but it sure was nice to bring visitors along there and it was great for the occasional purchase for a treat or a gift.
Before Amazon, before Etsy, these shops used to attract a wide range of shoppers from all over town. Arthur Quentin was always full of people on weekends, buying beautiful kitchenwares.
If you don’t remember the vibe, the closest we have now is Laurier from Outremont through to the Main, but it’s not the same.
Bill Binns
@Kate, It doesn’t have to be one or the other. There is plenty of vacancy on St Denis and either national franchises or local shops would be a great improvement. A mix is ideal. National chains generate massive amounts of traffic that benefits all of the businesses in a given area. The presence of national chains in a commercial area telegraphs a certain amount of safety, the availability of bathrooms etc.
I have probably posted this before but see this article talking about how independent coffee shops located near Starbucks actually do better than those that have a neighborhood to themselves.
https://consumerist.com/2007/12/29/want-a-thriving-coffee-shop-open-next-to-a-starbucks/
Chris
“Despite living nearby I didn’t shop along there very much”, well that about sums it up. If even locals don’t shop there, who’s going to travel across the city to some quirky store, when the internet has plenty of quirks that can ship it to you the next day.
Kate
Chris: I was talking about not shopping there much in the late 1980s and 1990s, before online shopping, and before the Plateau became so expensive. I was able to afford to live nearby then, but I’ve never been a big shopper anywhere at any time. I did buy things along there occasionally.
Several intersecting problems are plaguing that street: high rents, high taxes, the competition of malls with parking and internet retail. I have no solutions.
Ian
Laurier West has also lost some of its funk as prices have gone up. Not much left but precious boutiques. Between St Urbain and Parc the toy store moved up to Bernard, the jewellery store moved to St. Larry, the shoe repair store closed down, so did the nice Chinese florist. Not quite as bad as Lululemon and David’s Tea invading Saint Viateur but Shiller-Lavy seems to own all the empty storefronts from Parc to Saint Larry so it’s only a matter of time before it turns into another Yorkville.
Saint Larry took decades to come back after the roadwork but I’m sure Saint Denis will come back, too. It will take a while, but you can’t deny the cachet of a main street.Jo Walton
Bill, I think I can explain this in a way you that may help you get it.
Everyone buys the things the franchise stores sell. But only some people want the things in the quirky stores. But people will buy their boring things in the franchise stores next to particular quirky stores because they’re there to go to the quirky store so they pick up the boring thing while they’re there. The quirky stores have things that everywhere doesn’t have, so it’s worth going out for, and going there from where they live. You can think of them like “loss leaders”. I’ve read that it’s worth supermarkets having exotic fruit in their fruit section even if they throw 100% of it away, because people like to see it sufficiently that they’ll chose a store that has it over one that doesn’t. Similarly, a comic store or a stained glass store will keep a neighbourhood vibrant even while losing money themselves. Therefore it would be worth cities giving them a break.
I saw the downtown of Cardiff, Wales,become revitalised by a policy of not charging property taxes for the first year an indie business is in a location. Hardly any of the shops made it — bonsai shop, sheet music shop — but suddenly I wanted to go shopping there rather than where I lived because even if I was only buying the same franchise things I liked looking at the bonsai shop, and in fact the excellent new second-hand bookshop where I did spend money is still there twenty years later.
Nobody is going to cross town to go to Starbucks, but I cross town all the time to go to Camellia Sinensis.
Ian
Excellent points. I go all the way to NDG for Encore Books even though I live a block away form the excellent S.W. Welch bookstore as they have different stuff – but I have a Starbucks 5 minutes from me, Starbucks isn’t going to draw me to another neighbourhood.
Kevin
Indeed. Arthur Quentin and Valet de Coeur were two stores I visited every time I went to St Denis because they had items that were difficult to find anywhere else.
In my neighbourhood I used to have 3 different places to get tea. Now those shops are all gone, and they have been replaced by Davids Tea.
But I think the idea Ephraim has espoused several times could work: penalize owners who leave storefronts vacant ( because they are just using them to declare a loss for some other aspect of their business, so screw ’em: they are deliberately making a neighbourhood undesireable).
Steve Q
Bill, the main reason why independant businesses benefit a city is simply because it gives a city or a neighborhood character. Why would you go to a street when all you see is chain like any other malls or streets like NY or Vegas or Miami or Chicago etc…? But if most of the businesses are owned and managed locally, then it brings a lot more flavour and it makes it a lot more interesting.
Secondly, even if a chain is a franchised, it still sends money somewhere else. A small portion maybe, but still. And I just hate to go to a restaurant knowing 2 or 3 or 5% of my bill will be sent somewhere in London, NY or elsewhere.
Ephraim
Exactly Kevin, it breaks the fabric of the city. There is a building on the corner of Amherst and St-Catherine that used to be a bank. The owner holds on to it, as the value of the building increases, but often it’s empty because it’s not really a great rentable location or the rent is set too high. Punish those places that are unrented, that break the fabric of the neighbourhood, so that landlords lower rent and/or rent to pop-up shops.
How many Shiler-Lavy signs do we need to see in windows?
Kate
Jo Walton: thank you for writing that, it’s a first-rate explanation.
Ian: I was struck walking along there Saturday how the loss of the Patisserie de Gascogne has deadened Laurier east of Park.
Ian
Yeah it’s a shame we lost Gascogne, I especially miss the bostoks and abricotines – but that lurid tale of interfamilial deceit isn’t because of gentrification. That it still stands empty, however, along with the imported furniture store that used to be beside it…. There used to be Shiller-Lavy signs up but they have been taken down as people had started to write anti-gentrification graffiti on them.
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