Valérie Plante spoke up for Benoît Dorais on Monday in the affair of Dorais’ speeding ticket. Plante pointed out that Dorais admitted his fault and didn’t pull a Denis Coderre by trying to leverage his clout to get out of the jam.
Updates from August, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The administration of the four major farmers’ markets quit their posts at the end of last week, and the wording of this brief piece suggests there’s more of a story here. Note the citing of Lionel Perez insisting the markets are failing, even though commenters here have observed that they seem to be doing fine; I’ve been to both the Jean-Talon and Maisonneuve markets recently and they were as busy and lively as they always are on weekend afternoons in summertime.
Something is going on, but the full story is not in this article. Clearly there’s more to this thing than the abolition of a few parking spaces around Jean-Talon, at least.
Update, sort of: CBC picked up the story but with no more information than TVA had.
Jack
Wow that is big. The city signed a 30 year lease with them during Coderre’s tenure, maybe its about pulling the plug on that, just guessing.
Jack
Radio Canada just said a police probe has been asked for and the board resigned because many feared for their physical safety. I think the story is going to develop further with a lot of fingers pointing not to farmers but the long standing families who are ” grossistes ” at the Jean Talon market. Having run into them frequently during the 5 years it took to get the weekends car free for a few hours. I am not surprised. But we will see, early days.
Jack
Kate
Thank you, Jack. It doesn’t sound good, but what if it’s a double bluff, and management wants to make the grossistes look like the bad guys so’s to get them out of the way for something more slick?
Maybe not.
Jack
I think with the city leaking the auditors report says that they have had enough of intimidation and violence that have allowed the grossistes ( the middle aisle banana sellers) to decide who rents what and pays what in the central market. I got into the campaign to pedestrianize the market when a U de M student was manhandled on a public street for asking people to sign a petition limiting car traffic in the market. We organized some tables to have people sign the same petition the weekend after. We were greeted by guys who looked like they worked as roadies for Motörhead. Since we were too many they were nice enough not to beat us up. One guy gave me a piece of paper and pen and asked me to write down my address, seriously. So I recognized pretty early on what a healthy work environment it must be in that market. I think the city has had enough.
Kate
Metro says police are now investigating, which suggests credible threats have been made.
Blork
I find it a bit odd that all four of the main markets are administered by the same board. While I recognize that there might be “strength in numbers” or “economies of scale” advantages, the big disadvantage is that it means all four are essentially the same, and any corruption in one will be seen in all. If they were run independently then maybe there would be a better chance of them being more distinctive.
walkerp
Man, the rot in this city just never ends. Is this just these grossistes or are there bigger players behind them?
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Kate
La Presse’s Isabelle Hachey writes a passionate piece on how newspapers safeguard democracy.
Raymond Lutz
Elle cite une devise du Washington Post … Beuark! Les media mainstream sont les gardiens de la démocratie? Ils peuvent aussi l’empoisonner…voir “How Washington Post Led Us Into Iraq War https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=30&v=XTRIEMoHwto
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Kate
Two stories about roadwork malaise today. A man who opened a restaurant on Bishop Street just before the lengthy STM dig began is suing the city, claiming he was advised everything would be tickety-boo on the street for the foreseeable, but says he was misled.
A dépanneur owner in Little Italy has had his store blocked by sidewalk repairs all summer and says he’s often had to close up early because he felt it was dangerous for his customers to get across to his front door.
TVA notes that although the city is planning to hold public consultations on what to do about all the empty storefronts, lowering property tax for commercial spaces is not on the cards.
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Kate
Developers who had their eye on some of the remaining wetlands in the West Island now plan to sue the city for claiming the land for the big new west-end park.
(Interface note: Le Devoir has switched to posting massive photos as the link to every story. I see why they might: the web is a visual medium, and they’ve got good photographers. But it’s a paper that has always led with the word, so I think on the whole they’ve gone too far.
While on web design: La Presse recently changed its typography, using the strident Verlag Black for headlines, above the relatively wispy Calluna serif font for text. Not a marriage made in heaven – I predict it won’t last. They need to find a better balance. Somebody call Lucie Lacava.)
Joey
From the Gazette:
“The lawyer’s letter notes that in June 2015, Projet Montréal, then under the interim leadership of Luc Ferrandez, published on its website a statement claiming the project’s promoters were ‘linked to the Mafia’.”
Faiz Imam
This was always going to be the next step once the city announced their parc, in fact the developers have been threatening a lawsuit for years.
We have to hope the city has their arguments in line, and/or has the money to solve this.
By going out and making a big splash about the parc, the city has burned the retreat strategy for any future administration. Going back and developing that land now would be a huge political poison.
Like Formula E, its the right thing to do, but it might also come with high cost.
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Kate
A young man from France started the city’s first electric bike delivery system a year ago, and it’s going well, even in advance of the city’s own plans to create an electric delivery hub at the old bus terminal. But I have doubts about putting an electric bike with 150 pounds of trailer onto the bike paths. Isn’t this a vehicle with more momentum than bike paths were conceived for?
Blork
Probably, although hopefully he rides it slowly (under 20) to compensate.
And as you well know, the bike paths are full of larger vehicles; non-electric delivery bikes (those ones with the huge box in the front), electric cargo bikes piled up with three or four kids being taken to school, mobility scooters of all sizes. I guess we just have to adapt to it. I suppose it’s not much different from city streets — designed primarily for cars — being full of delivery vans and cube trucks.
CE
Just saw one near the Jean-Talon market. The box is pretty big and a bit unwieldy looking. I can’t imagine riding a bike, even an electric one, very quickly with that thing hitched to the back.
I ride my bike (non-electric) with a sort of trailer on the back about 3 times a week for work. I’m much more careful on my bike when that thing is attached than when it isn’t.
Faiz Imam
Yeah, cargo bikes are in many ways the indicator species of good urbanism. They only make sense when there are good paths, when density and urban fabric are of high quality.
I’ve read some studies of how UPS, fedex,etc are using cargo ebikes in European city centers, and overall they are pretty compatible with normal bikers.
Blork
A few years ago those front-loading cargo bikes started showing up, particularly downtown. I used to see many every day but lately it seems like I see fewer (not sure why). I’m talking about ones like you see here:
https://bikepacking.com/news/larry-vs-harry-bulitt-short-film/
I suspect those aren’t a big problem because the cargo capacity probably isn’t that high. But the cargo trailer in the story Kate linked to is much bigger, and can carry up to 400 pounds, plus the weight of the trailer (another 150 pounds). That’s big, and I wonder how quickly he can stop or deke around obstacles.
Blork
Side note: I’ve been seeing a number of these “long tail” cargo ebikes around. These are the ones where you can fit 2, 3, even four kids on the “long tail.” These bikes are pretty big, and they can go fast, so it’s a bit scary when you see some dork on a bike like this motoring his kids down the de Maisonneuve bike path at 28 kph.
There are pictures in this article. The ones I’ve seen tend to have child carrier type seats bolted on, unlike in the pictures in the article. I’m pretty sure I saw one fitted with four carrier seats, in two rows of two (back to back).
https://www.vpr.org/post/e-bikes-are-catching-hilly-vermont#stream/0
JaneyB
They could really help with beer delivery. I lived on Marianne in the Plateau for a while and soon realized that all the deps needed to be replenished with a separate truck that carried every brand they sell – incredibly noisy with the normal massive trucks. Sales are not that huge in deps so small delivery by bike could really help.
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Kate
TVA tells this story with the headline Le REM ne sera pas recouvert à Mont-Royal while the CBC sees a glass half full with the headline TMR gets a park to cover part of the REM line.
ant6n
They gonna cover 40m of track. I mean good for them, but lul.
david100
I approve of anything that displeases the dwellers of TMR.
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Kate
Le Groupe Capitales Médias, which owns some of Quebec’s dwindling stock of daily papers, is getting a $5M handout from the province to tide it over to the end of this year as it seeks bankruptcy protection. Among others, Quebec’s Le Soleil, which dates from 1896, and Ottawa’s Le Droit, 1913, are threatened. Quebecor is interested in the properties, but everyone knows this would concentrate almost all of Quebec’s media in one set of hands.
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Kate
Mayor Plante held a presser Monday announcing consultations to come on solving the blight of empty storefronts on our commercial streets.
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Kate
The 311 service is in disarray, according to the Journal de Montréal, particularly since parts of it were brought back to the central city from the boroughs last year.
Update: The Journal went on to say that the centralization of the 311 service will continue, while La Presse reports that the city is hiring more people to answer the phones.
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Kate
After last week’s unhappy news about Cabot Square, there’s a better storyline about mobile clinics bringing healthcare services to denizens of the area.
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Kate
It’s not really news that it’s been a bad summer for traffic: the news items, blocked streets, orange cones and detouring buses make even non‑drivers aware of the situation. The Journal, however, needs somebody to blame, so is pinning it on city hall’s lack of coordination, while telling the tale of the excavations on St‑Urbain, a project being done by Hydro-Quebec, not by city contractors.
Jack
I was walking with my kid in NDG, she has just moved there. I realized I used to walk these same streets 30 years ago, but there was one thing that had changed dramatically: the density of car traffic.
It was crazy.
There are twice as many cars using the same layout and transit grid.
There are 100% more cars using the same infrastructure as 30 years ago.
Our city cannot support this exponential growth.
By most models it will double again in 10-15 years.
So when we think about traffic let’s start here first.
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Kate
A young woman was injured Sunday when a vehicle rammed into a bus shelter in Lasalle after a chain reaction of collisions.
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Kate
Just as the REM was wished on Montreal without any proper studies, nobody knows what the effect of its operations will have on the metro, but it isn’t likely to relieve orange line overcrowding at rush hours.
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Kate
I have to admit this view of Ste-Catherine and St-Urbain looks livelier in 1964 than it does today, although the street paving element is weirdly familiar.
Ian
The old version looks like a city where you might be able to have some fun.
The contemporary version looks like a colony on a planet where you can’t breathe the air and the only thing to eat is parsnips, with a vast supporting bureaucracy around their growth..
Patrick
Always startling to see all the English on the signs. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a reference to the Red Feather–and I didn’t realize it was a specifically Protestant. I wonder how many of those old-school men-only taverns still exist in the city. Nothing on the tables except a salt shaker foaming up the beer. Of course, that would only make you more thirsty… Crazy, but any crazier than adding sea salt to chocolate?
Kate
Patrick, there are no men-only taverns now – haven’t been since the mid-1980s.
MarcG
You still see some relic “bienvenue aux dames” signs around but the one at de L’Eglise and de la Verendrye in Cote-Saint-Paul was recently turned into a vape shop or something.
DeWolf
Ian, are you really dissing Place des Arts, where kids run through the wading pool and people sit around eating ice cream and listening to music? Seriously?
Chris
DeWolf, but at what cost? In the old picture, motorists are able to use the street, and in the new picture they are being “punished” by having that space taken away from them! And clearly the air is less breathable without the wonderful automobile fragrance! Sarcasm off. 🙂
Ian
DeWolf, I was speaking (ok, writing) tongue in cheek, but since you take offense, yes, indeed I am dissing PdesA as urban design. It is an architectural wasteland.Yes, there are many humans there, making the best of an inhuman space, but it doesn’t make the space any less ugly and visually unwelcoming. As Kate points out, the 1964 version looks a lot livelier. Also, good luck funding any shade anywhere, but that’s another story.
Chris – never a wasted opportunity to trot out your favourite unrelated topics. I’m surprised you didn’t somehow shoehorn in that you’re an atheist.
Michael Black
Place des arts used to be a great space. There was grass and lots of people went there during lunch hour. Then they added the museum, and the grass was gone. Worse, there was a !ot more concrete. I remember seeing O Vertigo perform outside about 1992, and in the sun, that concrete was harsh on the eyes.
I haven’t gone near there in years, ever since they made the area into a permanent festival space.
Michael
CE
I don’t think PdA is too bad, it’s evolved into a pretty good public space. Complex Desjardins is another matter but even that has improved over the years as they’ve tried to put some street life on the street-facing parts (which apparently horrified the architect who believed the building should be inward facing and leave the street dead).
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