So the Canadiens blanked the Flyers 5-0 on Friday afternoon. I’ve gotta start putting long bets on these guys.
Updates from August, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Kahnawake Grand Chief Joe Norton has died at 69.
Articles from Global, the Gazette, Radio-Canada. Christopher Curtis tweets: Joe Norton fought for peace during the Oka Crisis and he sought to lead his community down a path that would preserve their language and way of life. He faced off against the army, Ottawa, QC and surrounding cities to make sure his ppl would keep a foothold in their homeland. RIP.
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Kate
Daily Hive suggests six of the best used bookstores in town – I didn’t think Argo was a used book place, didn’t used to be, but I haven’t been there in awhile. While looking at this I found they also have an item on the best ice cream places. Either or both of these may be useful for your weekend.
Michael Black
Usually when they have a list of “local independent bookstores”, it’s used bookstores, plus Argo.
So what changed this time is the title.
I’ve actually only been in Argo once, about 45 years ago. My impressiin was they had some used books, but it was just a snall selection. But in recent years, the store has changed hands a few times so who knows what changed.
Sim
No Kem Coba?
jeather
Kem Coba is so overrated I am delighted to see a list without it. Though La Diperie is not better.
I was in Argo not long before the lockdown but I do not remember if there are used books or not.
Ian
As long as Biueboy and Ripples are on that list I’m good with it 😀 Second on Kem Coba being overrated. They are also not great on the COVID-19 hygiene.
Ephraim
Blueboy? They were a bad rip-off of Menchie’s last time I went and the girl didn’t understand why she violated the (tare) law when she tried to measure two cups at the same time. Has it changed?
Ian
Mileage may vary. I like Welch’s better but these lists always put the Word first, what can I tell you.
Alex
For ice cream, there are two on Laurier Street between the park and Papineau, one is way better than the other, the Patio on Mt Royal is also great
jeather
I agree, Patio is amazing, as is Ripples. I had a free sample at Blueboy last summer and found it disappointing.
DeWolf
Ice cream is one of those surprisingly controversial topics. I love Havre aux Glaces, as does my wife and a couple of friends, but there are other friends who really don’t like it.
I like ice cream that has clear flavours but isn’t too sweet. That means I usually lean towards gelato rather than American-style ice cream. But what I really love is a good soft serve. And while I don’t really like the regular ice cream at Kem Coba and Les Givrés, both have really interesting rotating soft serve flavours.
My ultimate go-to spot is Noble Café on Laurier, which isn’t usually considered an ice cream parlour. They only have two flavours of soft serve, vanilla and coffee, but they use Chagnon milk and the texture and sweetness is just perfect for me. It’s also not expensive and they make a killer “flotteur cold brew” which is a contemporary take on an affogato.
Has anyone been to Iconoglace, a new spot on Bélanger just east of Christophe-Colomb? It has had huge lineups since it opened in May.
Ephraim
Haven’t been there this year, but we always liked Meu-Meu on St-Denis, near Mont-Royal. And there is the place on St-Denis near Roy, Unicone which has interesting flavours from time to time. Last summer they had mastic (tears of Chios) flavoured ice cream. It’s soft serve, but they change the flavours out weekly. I’m a bit different, in that I’m perfectly happy with a good vanilla, but not artificial vanilla. And I’m not a great fan of chocolate, so if they don’t have enough non-chocolate flavours, I often just walk out with vanilla.
PatrickC
Whether it qualifies among the “best” bookstores I don’t know, but Iet me add a plug for Les Bons Débarras on Wellington. It’s been a while since I was there, but I found their English selection to be good for popular and mystery fiction–and who doesn’t need more escapist reading these days?–but there were good literary finds on the French shelves. Prices seemed reasonable.They had a lot of vinyl records too, but that’s not my interest so I can’t judge.
Michael Black
That’s a point, these lists generally have the same handful of stores. There are always others, sometimes presenting a different slant (forty years ago a lot of used book stores were crammed with paperback bestsellers, now the ones on the list are about “quality” books at a higher price) or just simply nearby. I’vegone to St Anne’s a few times in recent years, a trio, I can get some ice cream, and Nova has a bookstore. It’s not a great selection, so not worth the trip for most, but for people closer it becomes more appealing than going downtown.
There’s a book store in St Henri that got publicity when it opened a few years ago, I gather people near it like it . There’s a bookstore in NDG a bit further west than Encore, they moved across the street in July, and changed their name to Phoenix Books. That bookstore has sort of existed since at least 1977 when I first went. It moved around, changed it’s name, then changed ownership. I was always aware it was there, but stopped going in at one point. I was even beginning to doubt there was contunuity, but with the move last month the current owners admitted they’d taken it over. So it’s almost as old as The Word.
Kate
Masson Street used to have Le Puits du Livre, but it closed last year; it still has the Librairie du Vieux Bouc, a good, well organized used books place which I’d visit more often if I read more in French. Ditto for the Librairie Henri-Julien on Villeneuve. But lists like this are not meant to be completist.
PatrickC
I like the Vieux Bouc too, though the installation of their coffee bar made them reduce the book selection quite a bit. On Mont-Royal, the Librairie du Plateau often rivals L’Échange a couple of blocks away for good finds. They have an English section, as well as a good selection of the Folio bilingue series, which prints classic stories by writers like Joyce, Conrad, Fitzgerald, even Stephen King, side-by-side with French translations. They’re designed for French students learning English, and so may not be widely known among Anglo readers, but I’ve found them very useful for working in the opposite direction.
jeather
I liked the one in St-Henri for their children’s books selection, which was interesting and unusual, but I wasn’t as keen on their genre selection.
A bilingual series! I did that for some novels in sec v, though in a DIY way, and I felt like it was cheating then for some reason.
Chris
Ripples is great, very yummy ice cream.
Daisy
Does anyone know of a secondhand bookstore that carries books in languages other than French and English? (other than dictionaries and language textbooks) At the moment I would be interested in German books specifically.
Michael Black
The Goethe Institute has had an annual book sale in the fall over the past few years, I suspect it won’t happen this year.
There’s a German language school, I forget the name, and they’ve had a book sale, thiugh I’m not sure if it’s every year or I miss the notice sometimes.
Maybe some of the used book stores might have a German language section (one time Encore books in NDG landed a selection of Hebrew language books), but I suspect the best bet is places like these that are about German language that might incidentally have some bokks.
There are often groups associated with a language and culture which may be the hub, and they might have pointers. If this was about Danish, I’d point to St. Ansgar Church in NDG, and there is a Finnish church, I think downtown (they have a rummage sale). There’s the Japanese Cultural centre, and so on.
For native languages, there’s tye Native Friendship Centre.
I don’t know if he kept it updated, but Blork has a list of used book stores
walkerp
Argo is not a used bookstore, but it is an excellent little bookstore. I only started buying new books during the lockdown and they delivered them to our home directly. Excellent service, really nice people, nice curation of books in their small store and you can order anything through their website. I recommend them.
The Word is one of those pretentious used bookstores that doesn’t stock any genre fiction (begrudgingly some Raymond Chandler or other names that academics consider “literary”). Useless.
Ian
They actually have a pretty decent albeit smallish selection of detective/mystery but no, not a lot of genre fiction – but they are also one of the few used bookstores that stocks an extensive collection of foreign language books and poetry. Most places that have a lot of science fiction (for instance) tend not to carry a lot of German books.
I don’t see that as pretentious, it’s specialization – I wouldn’t think a sushi restaurant was pretentious for not having hot dogs.
For new books I like D&Q. Last time I went to Argo the guy at the cash apropos of nothing informed me that the author of the book I was buying was overrated. Now THAT is pretentious. I haven’t been back since.
Daisy
Thanks for the ideas, Michael!
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Kate
A QMI journalist set up his tent at one of the camps in Hochelaga and found an organized and hospitable group. CTV reports on one reason we’re seeing this trend right now: homeless shelters can’t accept as many people as usual because of distancing, and people are cautious about going indoors for the same reason. There’s a certain restraint from the authorities because they know the encampments can’t last into winter.
Update: 24 Heures has a photo essay on the camp visited by their journalist.
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Kate
TVA says 65,000 containers are held up by the port strike; La Presse tells us that shipments have been rerouted to other ports. Several people have been arrested after alleged violence. A La Presse writer observes that strikes are supposed to hurt.
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Kate
An STM bus was in a violent crash with another vehicle at St-Rémi and St-Jacques Friday morning. Doesn’t sound like anyone was killed. The bus looks so helpless with “9-1-1” on its readout.
Update: Not much more in this report from Global but there’s a clearer photograph and the statement that it was a head-on collision – although no clarification which of the vehicles was in the wrong place.
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Kate
The city has distributed only one third of the money it put aside to help small businesses get through the pandemic, because many have not even applied. Businesses seem to be weathering the downturn more effectively than had been feared.
mare
A little birdie told me business don’t like this kind of support (in his case support for the closure of St-Hubert) because they basically have to hand their complete books over to the city. Even if their books a squeaky clean, they often don’t want to give the city all that information because they think it’s private and also fear it will bite them in the ass later. Often it’s also part in the form of loans, and they don’t want to add more debt.
But maybe the federal programs to support businesses during the pandemic are enough, and they don’t need it to survive?
Ian
That’s definitely true of bars & restaurants. Bars weren’t allowed to apply for relief from the feds, though which seemed weird to me. Are they eligible from the city?
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Kate
The World Press Photo exhibit which has been held here annually for years won’t be happening this year, although a selection of photos from a Belgian photographer working in Benin is on display along de la Commune.
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Kate
Notes on where not to drive this weekend.
steph
“La route 136 Est sera fermée de vendredi 22 h à lundi 5 h entre l’échangeur Turcot et le tunnel Ville-Marie.” What’s the 136???? Wouldn’t that just be the 720??
Blork
@steph, from the Wikipedia page on the 720:
“The Turcot Interchange, which is the western terminus of A-720, is currently undergoing a reconstruction project. Once completed, the A-720 will be downgraded from an autoroute to a national highway and renumbered Route 136.”
jeather
The Decarie south to 720E has been shut every evening this week, too.
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Kate
Michel Dumont, who directed the Compagnie Jean Duceppe for many years, and performed many roles on stage and TV, has died. He was 79.
Update: The STM posted this vintage commercial which Dumont stars in.
Jack
A giant.
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