The Gazette’s René Bruemmer has a long, thoughtful piece about the disappearance of bird species around Montreal, although there are some that are on the increase. He offers a lot of useful links, although either doesn’t know or doesn’t care to mention the Flickr group Montreal faune/wildlife which I started and manage, although rarely have time to add to it: it reached 10,000 photos recently and most of them are of birds.
Updates from November, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
An office is to be set up in Longueuil to oversee the promised extension of the yellow line.
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Kate
Sunday’s referendum results are in, and Hampstead voted against the condo development. I suspect the fight may not be at an end, but I hope those tenants at least get a few more years in their homes.
Update: Maybe not, maybe it’s really over. TVA says Monday morning the project has been abandoned – but why do they bring up William Steinberg’s history with Bill 21 in the lede, when it has nothing to do with this story?
Jack
Because it is TVA. Quebecor is making support for Law 21 its litmus test for every politician.
Their journalists ask it constantly, especially in the Provincial Liberal leadership race.
I think this leadership is going to be sadly telling of where we are in Quebec. The way Quebecor columnists write and speak about Anglade is telling and let’s face it Law 21 is a perfect wedge issue to separate us and them.
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2019/11/24/plq-et-loi-21–frilosite-ou-lachete
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Kate
The Centre d’histoire this weekend looks back at Snowdon in 1961 – Decarie at Queen Mary before the street was sliced in half by a sunken trench highway.
Radio-Canada has a potted history of the Grey Cup with video clips from earlier matches. R-C has a serious archive page where you can lose hours. Anglo CBC also has an archive page but it’s not as focused on the local scene, obviously.
The Gazette’s history pieces this week were a mix, as usual, but the election of Claire Kirkland-Casgrain in 1961 as the first female member of the Quebec Legislative Assembly (not renamed the National Assembly till 1968) is a good one. They also have debutantes and the lambada.
denpanosekai
aka The Depressway
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Kate
The STM presented its new slow-charge electric bus, the New Flyer, Saturday at the open house at the Legendre garage. “Garage” doesn’t really do the place justice – it’s a sprawling facility that stretches for blocks, with specialized bays for anything you might need to do to keep a bus operational, and they’re constructing more buildings where the new electric vehicles will be maintained.
I don’t live far from the place so I dropped by during Saturday’s centenary open house. They had a bay of buses with the oldest being a restored New Look (which felt weirdly familiar, once I was aboard and sitting in my favourite seat, the last single, and realizing I probably had sat right in that spot, on that very bus, some time in the past) up to the New Flyer, a serious beast of a bus, 100% electric with slabs of battery pack on the roof. The interior of the new bus feels a little stark, with those hard plastic seats that are becoming universal, and far more room to stand than to sit. But it was nice to get a preview.
Update: Tweets point out (not to me, but generally) the bus manufacturer is New Flyer, but the model is the Xcelsior XE40.
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Kate
The group that operates the Grande Roue in the Old Port is in default of its lease after charges against one of the principals as well as one of his suppliers. The lease was supposed to run till 2022.
Faiz Imam
Wonder if this means they’ll lower the price.
or are they even more financially strapped than before and have to raise them?
Kate
Hard to know, since I’ve seen nothing about its financial success or otherwise. I suppose the feds could simply order the thing taken down, too.
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Kate
Andrée Lachapelle, one of the grandes dames of Quebec stage and screen, died this week at 88.
ProposMontreal
Thanks for covering this for our english friends.
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Kate
La Presse looks at the referendum being held Sunday in Hampstead over the demolition of those two apartment buildings on Côte St-Luc for the construction of a much bigger condo complex. While anglo media have soft-pedalled the story to some extent, even reporting this week that the developer is kindly suggesting the tenants move back into the new building, La Presse points out that, while the proposed development would bring in more tax revenue, Hampstead is sitting on a $6M surplus and hardly needs the bump. CBC did, fairly, point out this week that one of the partners is a cousin of the mayor of Hampstead, too.
jeather
Voted down, apartments are staying.
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Kate
The SPCA is experimenting with a trap, neuter and release program for stray cats in Sud‑Ouest. Item mentions how this has been done in the Yukon and in some American cities, but I’ve never 100% believed that you can expect feral cats to do OK outdoors through our winters (let alone the Yukon’s). I first heard of this system being used in Italy, where people traditionally feed large colonies of cats living outdoors, but where the climate is fairly mild all year. Wikipedia has an article about TNR in various places.
mare
You’d be surprised how many people (at least in our alleyway) feed stray cats in the winter, and provide some shelter under their porches, or even take them in during cold snaps. At least if they’re neutered/spayed they won’t produce more cats in the warmer months.
Kate
That’s nice to know, mare. My neighbourhood, which is not so different from yours, apparently doesn’t have many strays. It still surprises me. If I look out and see a cat, I almost always know which house it’s from, because almost everyone has a cat around here.
Or maybe I’m kidding myself and my own cat is simply too good at keeping strange cats out of the yard?
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Kate
A young man was seriously hurt when hit by a car driven by an older driver, Saturday afternoon near Assomption metro. Item doesn’t get into the rights and wrongs.
Two guys were hurt in a fight in St-Léonard in which one was stabbed, but he is not expected to die.
Plateau cops were busy overnight. A man was stabbed at Mont-Royal and Papineau after bar-closing time, but is not expected to die either.
A little later, a shot was fired on the Main, although no victim is mentioned and no arrests have been made.
Makes you wonder how many folks are walking around tooled up for a fight.
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Kate
Radio-Canada has some notes on Sunday driving difficulties. So does the Gazette.
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Kate
Ogilvy’s mechanical Christmas window was a familiar seasonal feature for generations of Montrealers. There were actually two dioramas, which were put up in alternate years. Now both are on display at the McCord museum, one outside, and one inside viewable for free.
ProposMontreal
Ogilvy’s stopped the Christmas window and the bagpipes at noon almost in the same year. I thought that traditions would be more important than that for the brand. At least they kept the English only staff.
Kate
Ogilvy’s was bought by Holt Renfrew around that time, and the “brand” had been crumbling for years. When I was a kid they were still serving afternoon tea, British style – I was taken there once by my godmother. There used to be a book department that sold titles you couldn’t get anywhere else (yes, all in English, and mostly from England) and a candy counter to dream of, with British and European treats you also couldn’t get anywhere else. I never bought anything but books and candy there myself, but was aware of very posh sort of tweedy clothes and accessories also being sold there, the whole thing very late British empire but definitely with its clientele in Westmount and around. Not so much any more.
I’d be very surprised if the owners of Holt’s and Ogilvy’s now would hire anyone who couldn’t speak French.
Uatu
My friends from the UK loved the tea room and the marks and Sparks in the basement. Those days of destination department stores with a restaurant etc are long a thing of the past
mare
I liked the bears. Apparently the German plush animal company that made it, sold many more to other stores.
Speaking of Ogilviy, how would you pronounce it? I pronounce it a oGILvy, but my wife puts the emphasis on the Y.
(An ex girlfriend worked as a receptionist for Ogilvy & Mather, a famous advertising agency in Europe, and that’s how she pronounced it when picking up the phone a few hundred times a day.)
Kate
The emphasis is on the first syllable, mare. I would hardly recognize it if someone said oGILvy.
Imagine someone saying ogle-be, and put in a V instead.
Uatu, was Marks and Spencer in the Ogilvy basement? I only remember it being a standalone in the mall at Mansfield, I think it was where Zara is now.
Uatu
Yes. It wasn’t a standalone store but a marked off section with rows of their merch of cookies, puddings, teas, cakes etc. The store in place mtl. Trust came later in the 90s and had the space for clothes etc.
Max
Dumb-ass Ogilvy’s story from about a decade back. When they had the papeterie in the basement in the back-left corner. I was Christmas shopping one year, decided on a 6-inch aluminum ruler with the triangular cross-section and the various scales for my brother. $10 or whatever. I take it to the cash where the (gay AF) cashier dude rings it up and asks if I’d like a bag. The idea of a bag for such a tiny purchase stuck in my craw a bit, so I stared him right in the eye and asked if I could see his bag first. About two seconds later we both broke into unconstrained hysterical laughter you could hear throughout the whole floor.
My brother’s gone now. I wish I could find that cashier and give him a great big hug.
Raymond Lutz
Les deux solitudes? Non.
Moi aussi, j’ai de bons souvenir de ce magasin et me souviens à quel point le joueur de cornemuse me paraissait ‘cool’. Adolescent, j’allais quelques fois rejoindre ma mère au restaurant où elle mangeait sur son heure de dîner (she was a lab technician at the federal Minister of Agriculture nearby)
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