Denis Coderre admits that his defeat in the 2017 election probably saved his life. Text and audio from Radio-Canada.
Updates from September, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
World War II started 80 years ago (the president of Germany has just apologized to Poland) and Radio-Canada looks at earlier commemorations including a Téléjournal from 1989 and René Lévesque, in his days as a journalist, explaining the war in 1959 (starting around 2:33 in that clip). Interesting footage.
The Gazette’s history series has a notably tragic incident this weekend: the 1972 Blue Bird arson, which killed 37 people out on the eve of Labour Day weekend at two bars, one upstairs of the other, on Phillips Square. The space has been a parking lot since then, and a small memorial plaque was placed at the square in 2012.
The Gazette also looked at the last streetcar run, in Rosemont in 1959, while the Journal this weekend shows us the open golden tram that was conceived for tourism purposes in the 1930s. (I think the design was later adapted to a bus, because I have a faint memory of seeing an open-topped bus in that style when I was small, but I may be confabulating that.)
Michael Black
This weekend in 1972 was also when the Museum of Fine Arts was robbed, some paintings stolen and never seen since.
The reason I always remember it is a few years earlier I got a copy of “Montreal Adventure” by Clarke Wallace, from about 1967. I don’t think it sold well, there was a pile of them being cleared out. Two kids ride their bikes all over town, it mentions specific locations, and build shortwave radios. They hear secret code, and stumble on a robbery, at the Museum.
All of it actually happened, just not connected in the same way as the book.
Michael
Kate
The art heist happened on September 4, 1972.
Looking at my historical calendar, another incident that happened around this time of year was on September 3, 1984: a bomb hidden in a locker at Central Station killed several travellers. The station has never had lockers since that time.
Uatu
I remember that because they found the key to the locker, but some idiot cop ruined it as evidence because he picked it up with his bare hands so it had no fingerprints except his.
Michael Black
Wasn’t the Central Station bombing by someone found incompetent? I know he had some conspiracy theory about the Pope, and the bombing happened shorly before the pope visited Montreal.
Yes, Wikipedia has an entry 1984 Montreal bombing. He got 25 years at the Pinel Institute, but died in 1993. A new trial was pending, so apparently he technically was found not guilty because he died before the retrial. He was American.
Michael
Kate
Michael, I’m not prone to conspiracy theories, but I always found the accusation and conviction of Thomas Brigham sounded shaky. But the SQ had to lock somebody up and Brigham had enough weirdness on record that he would do.
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Kate
Evictions are on the rise in Park Extension and another saga of a neglectful landlord there is being told this weekend.
Those first two links are to the same CP story in French; the Gazette has it in English as does Global.
david100
No surprise that evictions are on the rise in Parc Ex as the artificial land shortage on the Plateau and elsewhere pushes up prices across the city, and landlords look to capitalize by booting the old tenants and bringing in those who couldn’t get in elsewhere.
It’s darkly comical that, aside from trying to get rental laws enforced, the most certain responses to these moves is to stoke even further anti-growth activism, with the view of growth as gentrification, when in reality anti-growth activism in the current environment of booming demand for housing in the inner neighborhoods is possibly the single greatest contributing factor to the affordability crisis.
If PM holds the line with their 30% affordable requirement and successfully tanks development in Ville Marie, it will get even worse, of course.
Kate
david100, you’re getting close to idée-fixe territory with your “build bigger and higher” stuff.
Ian
david100, you’ve never heard the realtor adage, “location, location, location”?
Let’s not forget that there are no shortages of housing in Parc Ex. There are lots of vacancies for poor working class types in those vertical slums lining the east side of Acadie all the way to the 40, for instance. Down by Beaumont though, landlords figure all those rich UdeM students will be willing to pay a lot more for a lot less than, say, working class families, and they are eager to cash in. This is rather typical gentrification through renoviction that has nothing to do with anything more than simple avarice as the perceived cachet of a neighbourhood increases. The entire Plateau could be flattened for highrises from Iberville to Parc and this would still be happening, it’s the new campus driving the renovictions, not a lack of places to live in other parts of town.
SMD
@Ian, even in the Acadie towers there are illegal evictions and renovictions as the landlords await the UdeM students with open arms. The price for those units has almost doubled in the last 5 years, although the quality remains the same.
david100 02:30 on 2019-09-02 Permalink
Wow, he looks unrecognizably thinner. I wonder is it was gastric bypass surgery, a series of prolonged fasts, or something else. He probably had some sort of test come back very bad.
Kate 03:33 on 2019-09-02 Permalink
He has time now to work out, and is no longer under the kind of stress that can make people eat too much bad food too fast.
Douglas 18:58 on 2019-09-02 Permalink
Lost 100 pounds…. My God well done.