Updates from July, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 22:46 on 2019-07-09 Permalink | Reply  

    Valery Fabrikant, still behind bars in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, has been declared a vexatious litigant again, this time by the federal appeals court. Fabrikant has been condemned for starting frivolous court cases at least twice before.

     
    • Blork 11:17 on 2019-07-10 Permalink

      He’s a creep and he deserves that declaration. The only down side is that “vexatious litigant” is such a cool sounding title. I’d love to get that on a t-shirt.

    • Ian 13:37 on 2019-07-11 Permalink

      “vexatious litigant” sounds like an early NYC no-wave band. Not too late to start one up.

    • Michael Black 13:58 on 2019-07-11 Permalink

      It’s nice to know the killer is himself making sure he stays in prison.

      Next month, he will have been locked up for 27 years, and no sign of release.

      I once did the math, and he was going to be an old and lonely.man after 25 years, so he will be less and less danger each year.

      There is the annual Concordia Memorial golf tournament in August, unless tbere’s been a change. Most years since 1992 it’s been run to raise money for scholarships, though they don’t promote it as being related to the killigs. They seem to have fun.

      Michael

  • Kate 22:37 on 2019-07-09 Permalink | Reply  

    I don’t eat much bread but I’m feeling like I should go eat some bagels now and pay close attention to their taste and texture because wood-burning ovens are in the sights of the public health authority, which would like to see the bagel bakeries shut down.

    Afterthought: What happened to that news story about how one of the air quality stations turned out to be close to a woodstove pizza place, which distorted the average readings for the whole island of Montreal?

    Shoe drop: That Metro piece says resto and bakery smoke is responsible for a mere 3% of the particulates in the city’s air. That’s nothing! Surely we can make other sacrifices to keep bagels, wood-fired pizza and other delicacies on the menu?

     
    • Douglas 23:26 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      Leave these businesses alone. They are a part of Montreal’s identity and some pseudo scientists want to go after completely irrelevant pollution.

    • Douglas 23:27 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      Take the air quality next to a city bus exhaust while they are at it and ban all trucks and buses too.

    • Uatu 17:13 on 2019-07-10 Permalink

      Save air quality by banning wood ovens for bagels in Montreal, but then increase car exhaust when people drive across the bridge to Brossard to buy wood oven baked bagels. Good one. :p

  • Kate 17:43 on 2019-07-09 Permalink | Reply  

    Mirabile dictu, the crucifix has been taken down in the National Assembly.

     
    • jeather 21:26 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      I guess it’s more important to stop teachers wearing hijabs than to keep the crucifix.

    • david100 00:54 on 2019-07-10 Permalink

      Fantastic. Now take the one down off the mount. In my fantasy world, the cross there is replaced by an observatory with a super powered telescope. And since I’m fantasizing, the funicular is rebuilt too.

    • Blork 11:21 on 2019-07-10 Permalink

      Now re-write the various Quebec laws and statutes. For example, look how much weight is given to the church in the Quebec Burial Act: http://legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/ShowDoc/cs/I-11

    • Ephraim 11:51 on 2019-07-10 Permalink

      Blork… the banns, the cross on the flag, and the cross on the mountain, to name just a few…

    • Kate 12:53 on 2019-07-10 Permalink

      School names bug me. Only in Quebec can you be told to remove your hijab or kippa to teach at the strictly nondenominational École Christ-Roi or one of the many named after a saint (see the lengthy list here).

      But symbolism aside, I continue to be outraged in a quiet sort of way that in the ethics-and-religion classes the students never get to hear about living a moral and upstanding life with no religion. Yes, as part of a well-rounded education you need to learn something about the beliefs of religious people as part of their cultures, but you also need to understand that many people get by nicely without any.

    • CE 13:12 on 2019-07-10 Permalink

      From your list, I’d like to know the story behind the name of École Saints-Martyrs-Canadiens

    • Kate 13:58 on 2019-07-10 Permalink

    • Ephraim 16:13 on 2019-07-10 Permalink

      The banns really bug me because we are missing out on the whole elopement business… and it’s a lucrative business for many.

    • Kate 21:07 on 2019-07-10 Permalink

      Ephraim, I finally understand your objection to the banns, which I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone else express.

    • Ian 13:40 on 2019-07-11 Permalink

      It would actually make a lot of sense to get rid of them considering the traditional obsession with Elvis here. Why go all the way to Vegas when you could get an Elvis wedding in Montreal?

    • Ephraim 19:21 on 2019-07-11 Permalink

      Why Vegas, you can go to Lancaster, Ottawa or Burlington and get married right away. (NY has a 24 hour waiting period)

      Imagine you live in Boston and want to do a destination wedding in Montreal… so you have to be here 21 days in advance? Get someone to plan to register you 21 days in advance? It’s stupid. You can marry anywhere else in North America faster. And in some places, the waiting period only applies to locals. I think the longest wait time other than Quebec is 5 or 7 days.

    • Kate 22:24 on 2019-07-11 Permalink

      Ephraim, I can see why, as an innkeeper, you’d like this to change, but do you really think it’s a great idea for people to marry without thinking about it for at least 21 days?

    • Ephraim 12:44 on 2019-07-12 Permalink

      Kate… but you can drive 30 minutes and do it NOW. What difference does it make? None. But even so… I object to the fact that it’s based on religion in any case… I’m not Catholic, why should I have to live by a Catholic norm. If we are secular, then any law based entirely on religion should die. Which is one of the reasons that I object to anti-abortion laws… all the reasoning is religious. No… we are supposedly “secular” well… then the banns have to go. Make the wait nothing, make it 24 hours, make it 36 hours, make it 100 hours and 3 lottery tickets… but have a real reason behind it and a way to enforce it… but we can’t enforce it, you can buy a bus ticket to Ottawa and have it done the same day. It’s a stupid unenforceable hurdle and it’s based on nothing but religion.

      There are so many things that maybe we should have people think twice about… performing in porn movies, getting a tattoo, getting pierced, voting Conservative, having unprotected sex, getting pregnant, buying a lottery tickets… and yet they are all things that you can do within a minute of walking in the door. Why should we decide to be the moral conscious of people for this matter and not others. Shall we require people to wait 21 days before they can have sex? Can you imagine Grindr or Tinder with a 21 day waiting period?

  • Kate 16:08 on 2019-07-09 Permalink | Reply  

    We have a smog warning till Wednesday morning, and I have to say that the sky looks like a piece of gray paper from where I’m sitting.

    Update: As of 6:30 Wednesday morning the alert message has disappeared.

     
    • EmilyG 17:25 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      I was wondering why it seemed cloudy today even when there wasn’t a chance of rain.

  • Kate 07:36 on 2019-07-09 Permalink | Reply  

    Unless some hidden tragedy is revealed, we haven’t had a homicide on the island of Montreal since March 29. I’m wondering if there’s some record for “days without a homicide” that we’re reaching here.

    Much later update here: I was wrong, and a woman was killed on June 28, as Kevin notes below.

    On the other hand, we haven’t had any updates on the bones found in a St‑Henri building in May nor the skeletal remains found outdoors at the end of last month.

    Montreal – a town where mobbed-up guys die of natural causes.

     
    • Kevin 11:43 on 2019-07-13 Permalink

      A 32-year-old woman was killed in Montreal on June 28.

    • Kate 12:58 on 2019-07-21 Permalink

      Right. I was coming back here to note that. I hadn’t seen a thing about it – the media didn’t report it widely.

  • Kate 07:21 on 2019-07-09 Permalink | Reply  

    Since the REM will soon have exclusive use of the Mount Royal tunnel, the Train de l’est is going to be blocked from getting downtown by that route. Now a new idea has been floated to loop the route past Du Collège metro and approach Central Station from the west. A previous suggestion had been to link it to Sauvé metro on the orange line’s eastern branch, but that’s already maxed out at rush hour. It seems so long as passengers can get downtown, this may work out, even if their train trip is necessarily longer.

    Either way, passengers will have a block and a half to walk between the train and the metro stations, which were not built for this intermodal use. And while there is a station at Sauvé, there’s never been one where the train line passes over Decarie near Du Collège. The walk wouldn’t be so bad this time of year, rough in winter, but bound to be always difficult for people with mobility problems.

     
    • Ephraim 11:42 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      Wouldn’t it be easier to do at Parc? It’s maybe a block? They could likely dig a tunnel and connect the two right there.

    • ant6n 12:26 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      So basically, rather than bringing the St-Jerome line through the Mont Royal tunnel along with the Mascouche line to reduce travel times by 20 minutes, the Mascouche line would instead be brought around the mountain like the St-Jerome line and increase travel times by 20 minutes.

      Who actually believes this will be a temporary solution during construction only.

      (btw, the idea to extend both the Deux-Montagnes and Mascouche lines about 1.5km to du College during the construction had been around, at least it was mentioned in my BAPE memoir 2 years ago…)

    • Faiz Imam 14:05 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      Small aside, but the Railway Gazette reports that the Via rail Toronto to Quebec city high speed rail project announced a couple weeks back will indeed include sharing of the Mount Royal tunnel.

      https://www.railwaygazette.com/news/news/n-america/single-view/view/quebec-toronto-high-frequency-rail-study-awarded-funding.html

    • Ant6n 15:30 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      “The government’s $16·1m contribution will support VIA Rail’s activities as part of the joint project team, and fund technical studies to ensure interoperability with local services in Montréal and Toronto. This would include sharing the Mont Royal Tunnel in Montréal with future Réseau Express Métropolitain automated light metro services.”

      It’s a study…

    • Tim F 19:26 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      Can I ask a stupid question?

      Why didn’t we* drill a parallel tunnel above the existing one for the REM? The elevators would have had to go less deep and we could have sent the trains onto the CP line toward Parc?

      *costs aside

    • Ant6n 20:42 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      It would’ve been way easier to just design a shared system, including that tunnel connection towards the line that connects at gare parc. I guess we’ll never know why cdpqinfra wants a monopoly on the tunnel. Cuz the rem with it’s short trains is using it at less than half it’s possible capacity.

    • Faiz Imam 04:42 on 2019-07-10 Permalink

      Its not “a” study… its “the” study.

      It’s the key preliminary report required to advance the project, and includes all key factors involved.

      But of course your view is all government documents are lies, so i guess there is nothing further to say.

    • ant6n 12:46 on 2019-07-10 Permalink

      Advance which project, the REM? Cuz that’s done and done, no matter whether via will be able to use the tunnel

    • Faiz Imam 19:06 on 2019-07-12 Permalink

      The new Via rail High frequency route that will use the new North Shore route to Quebec city…

  • Kate 07:12 on 2019-07-09 Permalink | Reply  

    TVA is claiming that a decrepit duplex on Drolet is the same kind of problem as that building on Esplanade that’s been left to ruin and nearly collapsed, but you can see in the pictures that it’s not the same thing at all – this one is tiny and isn’t the same kind of hazard to adjoining buildings. That said, owners shouldn’t be allowed to let any building deteriorate to this condition.

     
    • TDH 09:05 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      Overly strict rent controls and a rental board that makes it difficult to evict delinquent tenants are to blame for this, in part.

      Many potentially good landlords would never invest their money in rental housing stock.

      I know rents have gone up lately but the starting point was so low to begin with.

      Montreal is one of the cheapest biggest cities to live in and decrepit housing stock is one of the consequences.

    • Kate 09:37 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      TDH, you’re basing thus comment on a case you know nothing about.

    • SMD 09:56 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      For a balanced history of rent control and market forces in Montreal, this recent thread by the director of monloyer.quebec is excellent: https://twitter.com/AdamMongrain/status/1148369651459477504.

    • Ian 10:02 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      Considering 6 and a halfs are going for $2400/month in this area I think that your argument that rents are too low is a bit comical.

    • Ephraim 11:02 on 2019-07-09 Permalink

      Ian – Depends…. a lot of the cheap stock never reaches the advertisement stage. Some of it never gets emptied… as they put it up on AirBnB when they move out. Or they get a friend to take over the lease because it’s so cheap. There is a lot of variance.

      Back to the subject at hand. All of this can be taken care of with taxation and laws. TVA is really into click-bait lately. Did they merge with that famous click-bait blog? Hire people from there?

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