Updates from November, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 21:51 on 2019-11-10 Permalink | Reply  

    Been reading back through 2019’s posts and comments for the text callouts on next year’s weblog calendar (there may be a few new incidental followups from me on older comments as a result) and it suddenly struck me that if you’re going to name a station in Griffintown after any politician, the best candidate would be Frank Hanley.

     
    • ant6n 01:10 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

      I thought the consensus was that politicians shouldn’t be allowed to name anything after other politicians, anyway…

    • Kate 08:35 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

      They shouldn’t, but if they must…

  • Kate 11:21 on 2019-11-10 Permalink | Reply  

    The Centre d’histoire piece this weekend shows the transformation of the Olympic Velodrome into the Biodome between 1989 and 1992 – a change that, as they note, was deeply unpopular with cycling groups at the time. It was a Pierre Bourque idea, when he was head of the botanical garden. Radio-Canada looks back 25 years to Bourque’s election as mayor in 1994 on his ideal of making the whole city into a garden. Text and archive video clips on the Bourque story.

    The Journal – have they started rummaging through their photo archive like the Gazette? – also uses photos to illustrate the arrest of union leader Michel Chartrand 50 years ago for seditious speeches.

    Radio-Canada tells how the Canadiens’ Jacques Plante introduced the goalie mask to the NHL 60 years ago after a string of injuries to his face.

    The Gazette has a good photo of the construction of Place des Arts in 1961, but in the text the interesting fact is that two streets disappeared in the project – Plateau and Winning. Plateau had a school that moved north to its current location inside Lafontaine Park, and later gave its name to the entire district.

     
    • ant6n 21:23 on 2019-11-10 Permalink

      meta: did the header image change?

    • Chris 21:37 on 2019-11-10 Permalink

      Yes, the number incremented to 18 years and some colour changed: https://web.archive.org/web/20190601195442/http://mtlcityweblog.com/

    • Kate 21:46 on 2019-11-10 Permalink

      I did the switcheroo today (Sunday). I was also going to change the font, but then I saw a McDonald’s ad on a bus with the exact font I had in mind, so I kept the old one. Might do a proper redesign sometime next year.

    • ant6n 21:58 on 2019-11-10 Permalink

      I think the image itself hadn’t changed since the design change in March 2010 or so.

    • Kate 22:25 on 2019-11-10 Permalink

      ant6n, you’re correct on that. I do graphic design for a living but when I’m doing the blog it’s a different thing where I focus on the content and the words, not the packaging.

      That said, the blog needs a newer look, with a theme that adapts properly to different screen sizes.

    • ant6n 00:17 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

      I think some futzing around with the CSS could probably do the trick, some combination of ‘max-width: Npx’ and ‘width: K%’ could perhaps allow the use of full width on small screens and not the full width on larger screens, although the sidebar may make things more complicated.

    • Kate 08:36 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

      No doubt, but this theme has not been updated for a couple of years, so it would probably be a good idea for me to find a whole new theme. But I don’t want anything that looks or behaves much differently.

    • Chris 10:29 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

      BTW Kate, have you thought about enabling https?

    • Kate 11:04 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

      No, Chris. Why do you think I should?

    • MarcG 13:01 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

      There’s already a valid SSL certificate installed on the server so you might at well use it, at least for the WP login and admin area where it will help keep your private stuff private.

    • Kate 20:44 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

      MarcG: how do you know that?

    • MarcG 23:55 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

      If you visit https://mtlcityweblog.com your browser will show you something like a green-lock icon, indicating that the ceritificate is valid. Your server has cPanel installed, which uses AutoSSL to install them for free. More here https://blog.cpanel.com/autossl/.

  • Kate 10:39 on 2019-11-10 Permalink | Reply  

    Giuseppe Valiante, writing for CP, cites a retired police detective complaining that police don’t release enough information about gang shootings. The Journal recently counted 16 killings related to gangs in the urban area this year; this piece says 17 killings, but only 3 were on the island of Montreal, crime having moved to the suburbs. Some of the journalists following this world try to tell us what the killings “mean” in terms of gang warfare, but it’s only a guess: their information, like that of the police, may well be from a biased source or be out of date.

    Also cited here is crime writer André Cédilot, who brings up another theme: with no strong godfather in place, the situation’s fluid. Nobody has a big picture. For all that we tried to destroy the mafia, there was some stability in its structure, something we could sort of understand via the movies and myths. Now there isn’t.

    The cops may not be talking because they don’t have a coherent story to tell. Or if they do know stuff, they don’t want the crooks to know what it is they know. It might not make sense for them to put all their cards on the table in the name of transparency.

     
    • Kate 10:25 on 2019-11-10 Permalink | Reply  

      The snow’s getting an early start here, with an actual snowstorm expected Monday night.

       
      • Kate 10:10 on 2019-11-10 Permalink | Reply  

        The fire in Lachine on Friday that killed two people and left a little girl in critical condition is being blamed on an unattended cigarette. Later, the Gazette talked to neighbours who helped extricate two of the kids.

         
        • Kate 10:08 on 2019-11-10 Permalink | Reply  

          Shots were heard in D.D.O. near midnight, but nobody turned up wounded. Later, in the Plateau, a man was seen shooting in the air at Maguire and Casgrain, once again no victims.

          Saturday midday in NDG, a man trimming tree branches in a yard fell off his ladder and died of head injuries. We’re assured there was no criminal element in his death.

           
          • Kate 09:33 on 2019-11-10 Permalink | Reply  

            La Presse shows us the many empty spaces inside Jean-Talon market now that longtime tenant François Chenail and his sister have been thrown out, emptying 17 stalls between them. Chenail “illegally” sublet some of the spaces, yes – he should never have been allowed to acquire control over so many of them – but what use is imposing the rules if it doesn’t serve the buyers and sellers?

             
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