Some of the glass panels at Champ-de-Mars station have been shattered by vandals. The daughter of the late artist, Marcelle Ferron, had already pointed out that putting an area of landscaping rocks around the station was an invitation to trouble. Turns out she was right.
Updates from July, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
This story goes back. Summer 2012, two SPVM police were accused of picking up Alain Poirier, drunk and disorderly, driving him over to Jean-Drapeau and leaving him there at night. But they claimed to have given Poirier a ticket and let him go in town, at Berri and Viger. They stuck to this story even after the SQ had to pick Poirier up because he was walking down the middle of the bridge, but GPS evidence from their patrol car has betrayed them.
The two men have been given unpaid suspensions of 12 and 22 days. Back to work as usual after that?
Ephraim
Unpaid vacation. No real punishment. Here’s the problem… these are officers of the court who are sworn to tell the truth and report the truth. By lying on their report and the lies validated by GPS data, they have put in question each and every report they have ever written and each and every arrest that they have made. They aren’t trustworthy as policemen nor as officers of the court. They should be entirely unemployable as officers of the court. The only thing they are suitable for is desk duty.
Ian
Yeah tell it to the Brotherhood, citizen – you’re on the wrong side of the Thin Blue Line /s
Blork
Or worse; they could be wearing a hijab!
Chris
No, they couldn’t be wearing a hijab, because they are men.
-
Kate
A study shows that Montrealers are more likely to drive drunk or stoned than people in the rest of Quebec, even though we have more options for getting around without driving.
-
Kate
The arrival of Jump bikes hasn’t dented the growing popularity of Bixi.
Blork
That’s nice to hear. I’m a bigger fan of Bixi than Jump. Side note: I’ve been seeing plenty of people riding Jump bikes and I still have not seen a single one wearing a helmet.
Chris
I’m happy to see Jump riders ignoring the helmet requirement. Helmets discourage cycling and shouldn’t be required.
Kate
On the other hand, it’s another example of Uber getting around the law, which does not make me happy.
Chris
hmm, but the law doesn’t require Uber to provide the helmet, so they aren’t really getting around anything. (With regards to their car service breaking laws, I agree.)
-
Kate
It’s going to be a hot weekend.
-
Kate
A Montreal woman is going after the city for $20,000 after a pothole on Rosemont Boulevard ate her front bike wheel and flung her onto the ground, breaking her teeth and nose.
If you get hurt on city property you only have 15 days to file, but sometimes there’s restitution. A woman I know was running along the sidewalk on St‑Hubert in the evening a couple of years ago. City workers had put in metal studs to install some street furniture, but they’d left the job unfinished, with no cones or barriers marking off the area. My friend snagged her foot on one of them and fell sprawling on the ground. She was injured – hands, face, knees, general shock – and some of her clothes were ruined. She needed medical attention, lost work days. She made a claim and did get something, I think around $1,200, because despite being shaken up she had kept her head and made photos of the area to support the claim she fully intended to make.
Some notes on recourse from the city from Radio-Canada, in text and audio.
Chris
Report potholes to 311 by phone, web, or app. They do fill them quickly in fact!
Blork
A couple of months ago I was on the corner of Beaubien and St. Dominique and I saw a hole in the road. It was more like a crack a few feet long with a small portion that was about six inches wide. There was water coming out of it (more of an ooze than a gush) and it looked like it might be hollow under the asphalt, but it was hard to tell. (Sinkhole!)
I decided to report it via the web on my phone. It took at least ten minutes for me to find the right page, and after I submitted the report the impression was that someone might come by in a few days time. The antithesis of “urgent.” In the meantime, dozens of people just walked right by the oozing potential sinkhole without even noticing it. (Maybe 20% of people looked and kept walking; the rest didn’t even see it.)
Then I remembered 311, so I called them and reported a hole in the road with water coming out and a potential sinkhole. They said they’d send someone. I returned about 40 minutes later and there was one small cone over the hole. At least there was that. I guess they didn’t see it as a potential sinkhole.
Takeaways:
(1) People are oblivious. I think it could have been a fizzling bundle of dynamite and people still would have just walked past without noticing.
(2) Use 311.
Kate
I also called 311 when I saw clean water bubbling up out of a hole in the road, but didn’t happen to pass by later. The 311 people pass you to the voirie, and while the voirie guy sounded a little surprised to get a report from a random woman, it may have helped.
Ian
I’ve had great luck with 311 over potholes as long as hey are more than 6 inches across, the big problem always seems to be that they are at intersections which makes it unclear what borough they are in sometimes. There was a huge, deep one right at Querbes and Jean Talon that got me passed around in circles over the winter.
-
Kate
Montreal’s homicide rate is low this year, with Laval almost equalling us at seven homicides to our eight. Daniel Renaud goes on to analyze possible reasons why.
Ian 19:38 on 2019-07-26 Permalink
If you really want to break a window in a city there’s always something around. I think this might have more to do with the part of town it’s in, and how it has gone downhill over the years. This used to be a huge foot traffic corridor popular with tourists but it’s been an industrial wasteland maze for years… with some pretty glass.
qatzelok 21:22 on 2019-07-26 Permalink
Marcelle Ferron was an Automatiste. This group of artists concluded, after WW2, that humans couldn’t create beauty intentionally, only by pure luck. This is why they often conceived of their work by throwing paint at a canvas, or applying paint while blindfolded, etc.
I’m not sure how this act of vandalism fits into her genre.
Kate 10:46 on 2019-07-27 Permalink
Only a nutbar would welcome the random destruction of a major piece like that. It’s Ferron’s best known piece and a real gem in the metro network.
Ian, I agree you can find things to throw, but a bed of handy-sized rocks right next to a feature like that is begging nasty people to throw them.
david100 12:02 on 2019-07-27 Permalink
Rock beds and tan bark beds should be barred from landscaping more generally. Just super ugly and messy.
Mr.Chinaski 17:51 on 2019-07-28 Permalink
The current place is temporary and was done by the MTQ (that’s why it is full of gravel) and will be replaced in a couple of years by the real Place des Montréalaises.