A seal, species unclear, has been seen in the river hundreds of km from the usual habitats of seal species. In one coda an official naturalist says it will probably make its way back downriver, yet gives a number to call if you spot it.
Updates from July, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
There’s a fair bit of unsubstantiated rumour here, but what’s news is that Tony Elian has closed up the Peel Street men’s clothing store where several shady things have happened, and apparently police have advised him to lie low because he’s in debt and the mob is after him. Allegedly.
-
Kate
The SAAQ has to keep on top of urban and internet slang to exclude lewd and hateful expressions from vanity license plates. Someone there must have Urban Dictionary open on a screen all the time. I had no idea what GTKRWN* stood for. But wouldn’t posting a permanent hate message on your car tend to invite retaliatory vandalism?
* Don’t bother. It’s just hate-filled racism.
Ephraim
Plenty get by them… Omalaka and Igamisu are out there.
qatzelok
It was refreshing to read a Devoir article that contained: LUVTITS, HANJOB and CORNHOLE.
You can never be too low-brow.
dwgs
A couple of years ago I saw a plate from the US deep south, Arkansas or some such, which read “TABRNAC”. I admit I laughed.
dwgs
Sorry, haven’t had a coffee yet, the plate was on Sherbrooke St. parked outside a hotel.
-
Kate
The SQ is warning that it will have patrol boats out keeping an eye on pleasure craft gathering on the river for the final fireworks show Saturday evening. They will board and inspect for safety devices and intoxication.
-
Kate
Someone in Rosemont borough thinks cute signs are a way to focus peer pressure. Last year it was signs meant to focus public disgust on carelessly disposed garbage – a reader even sent in a picture from the same campaign; this year it’s a flower sign meant to get mess makers to feel bad.
EmilyG
I currently live in Rosemont. One trash item I wish I’d see less of in my neighbourhood are bags of dog poo.
dwgs
EmilyG I have two dogs and it drives me spare when I see the bags of poo that people have picked up, entombed in plastic, then left behind as though that makes it ok. If they left it in its’ natural state at least it would be better. And yes, I bag mine (in biodegradable plastic) and dispose of it properly.
mare
@dwgs and @EmilyG I my park people toss bagged dog poop in spots where there used to be waste bins in the past five years, but where they have been suddenly removed. No bins at any entrance of the park anymore, which are traditional dog poop areas. They probably consider it an act of defiance. Fortunately the biodegradable poo bags don’t fall apart very fast (or at all) because apparently *someone* picks them up, when there’s a small pile of them.
The borough either removed the bins to promote recycling, since there are a couple double bins near the skatepark, or the garbage crew decided to make their life easier. (My personal annoyance is that they drive their very wide trucks over the narrow paths with one wheel on the asphalt and the other in the mud where there used to grow grass. )
One of my dogs doesn’t poop and pee on sidewalks, and almost all the carrees d’arbre have been converted into flower beds. So when we reach the park she really has to go. I carry my bags to the bins near the baseball stands, that have somehow survived the culling.
dwgs
mare, is that the Fletcher’s Field park by chance? It used to be my park 20 odd years ago and at one point the city removed a couple of crucial garbage cans so people started hanging the bags on the fence for the tennis courts. I was there when one of the park employees approached one of the dog people to ask What the Hell? When we explained why he laughed and had the cans replaced the next day, it was actually a good moment.
mare
@dws No it’s parc Père Marquette in Petite – Patrie
Isn
Hanging a bag of dog shit on a fence because you can’t hold on to it for another couple of blocks is the height of uncivil laziness.
dwgs
No Ian, they were all hung on the fence right beside where the garbage cans used to be. It was a planned action because people knew it would get attention and it did. The garbage can was replaced within a few days of it’s removal and everyone went back to being good citizens.
-
Kate
A Le Devoir op-ed pleads for the preservation of the remaining wild areas on the island of Montreal.
-
Kate
An electric car, a Hyundai Kona, exploded and caught fire in a garage in Île Bizard on Friday, blowing out the garage door and roof. Nobody got hurt.
Ephraim
Had the car not been electric, not a word would have been printed… 17 cars per hour go on fire in the US. I think the stats that Tesla quotes are that gasoline cars are 11x more likely to catch fire than a battery car (per km/mile travelled.)
The main differences…. battery fires can take a long time to start… most gasoline fires are pretty quick to ignite or spark. The second is that gasoline fires are faster to extinguish… it can take hours to get a battery down in temperature…. which is why they continue to douse the battery with water… to cool it.
But basically since electric cars are new… it’s newsworthy… gasoline fires are old news.
EmilyG
A friend of mine said that batteries in general are more likely to explode or malfunction when in a hot environment such as a car in a hot garage.
I don’t know much about batteries or electric-car technology, but just throwing it out there.dwgs
Meh, it happens to the best of us, http://www.iheartradio.ca/energie/energie-montreal/nouvelles/insolite-la-batmobile-prend-feu-sur-l-autoroute-640-1.9535160
Ian
There’s actually been a rash of exploding Hyundai stories lately. The Santa Fe seems particularly prone to randomly blowing up.
-
Kate
If you walk around Parc Frédéric-Back (aka the old Miron quarry) you’ll see the lower
inaccessiblepart is dotted with space-age bubble structures. They were designed by architects Lemay and Morelli and are there to capture biogas from the days when this was a massive garbage dump.The item doesn’t make clear that they’re all in an area still inaccessible to the public, though.(If people from elsewhere insist on writing “Montréal” when they’re writing in English it’s because they’re a certain kind of lefty. It annoys me disproportionately.)
Patrick
They’re accessible to the public, you can reach them easily via the Cirque du Soleil entrance :
https://maps.app.goo.gl/jtoGdwmvdzYm8TTo8Kate
Oh cool. They didn’t used to be, I think.
Kevin
Yeah, my kids were climbing on them at the Kite Festival last month.
And I’m with you on the Montreal with an é thing. It’s like writing Pins Avenue. Pick one language and write in it.
Reply