A car crashed into a restaurant in NDG Monday afternoon. Nobody was seriously hurt.
Updates from August, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Rents surged by 11% here over the last year, while they fell in other major Canadian cities.
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Kate
The CFL has cancelled its season after the federal government ruled out supporting it. It’s the first year the Grey Cup will not have been awarded for more than a century.
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Kate
La Presse notes that, a year from now, we should be embarking on the next municipal election campaign, and ponders whether Projet will be able to leave a positive enough impression on the voting public to be allowed to continue its administration of the city.
It’s clear from this piece that nobody can know this far in advance. Who could’ve predicted in 2017 that Plante and her team would have to steer the city through the biggest crisis the world has seen in years? Could any municipal administration have done a significantly different or better job, given that the major decisions are not in their hands, but in the hands of Quebec City, Ottawa and ineluctable fate?
ant6n
But where’s the pink line?
Kate
The pandemic has to be the worst thing that’s happened to Projet in city hall, but a close second was the election of a CAQ government in 2018. With little chance of raising party support in Montreal, the Legault government has no motivation to do things for the city.
JaneyB
The CAQ still has to pay attention to Montreal because it contains half the population of the province and is responsible for nearly all of the province’s economy. It would be nice to have some seats in govt but economic power is also good. Even in our pandemic-beaten needy state, Montreal is still the engine (along with Hydro-Quebec of course).
david293
The pink line studies should be completely finished, so that it’s shovel ready. It has been three years. Obviously, the thing will only get build with support of higher levels of government, but they should be ready to jump when that support is forthcoming. It just hasn’t been a priority, at all. Now that a mega spree of infrastructure spending is about to come down from the feds, Montreal isn’t ready. And Trudeau’s crew can’t do better than, say, funding the studies that should already have been completed.
Huge missed opportunity, all down to PM’s priorities.
Kate
Curious to know: what priorities would people give here to these proposed projects:
– the pink line
– extending the blue line to Anjou
– extending the western side of the orange line to Bois-Francdavid∞, Montreal is certainly ready to work on extending the blue line, and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to do what Alan DeSousa has suggested, and use the subterranean construction of the metro garage at Côte-Vertu as the basis for an extension of the tunnel to Poirier and Bois-Franc.
Ant6n
Theres a Factor of 3-5 between each of these three in terms of cost as well as effect as well as complexity. Is „priorities“ the best basis of discussion?
But then also, given that the prep work for a large infrastructure project represents a smallish fraction of cost but a significant fraction of the time of a project, is „priorities“ a good enough argument to not start the prep work.
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Kate
Both the Quebec and Ontario governments are putting pressure on Ottawa to force an end to the strike at the Port of Montreal. A Le Devoir op-ed examines the poor organization of work schedules at the port, one of the grievances that has led to the strike.
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Kate
Details here on how the old Royal Vic will continue to be pressed into service to help the itinerant population, particularly with an eye to moving them into permanent living quarters.
How long are we going to hear about getting people permanent places to live? I’ve been doing his blog for nearly two decades, during which endless articles have been published about how studies have shown that the main thing that gets a person off the street is having a long-term place to live, along with whatever medical and social support they need for their mental health and addiction problems. And every so often a project comes along that is supposed to provide this, and then it doesn’t happen, or it’s temporary.
Yes, it’s an expensive venture. Getting a homeless person an apartment, fixing them up with the support they need – and this pretty much forever, because, as a social worker quoted in the piece says, these are people unlikely to return to the labour market – costs money, and there’s a strong social undertow against spending money to support unproductive members of society (although the people who have the biggest problem with this tend not to have the same concerns about prisons or about the idle rich).
Another problem is mentioned here: people who’ve tended to live outside often find some kind of community there, whereas if you place them, one by one, into individual apartments, and tell them they’ve got to live quietly and stay sober, they get bored and lonely. These are people who probably weren’t overly resourceful to begin with. I don’t know that we have a handy social fix for that.
All that said, it’s good that the old Vic is being put to social benefit, since that’s what it was originally intended for by its founders – and not turned into upscale condos.
Andrew
Expensive in the short term but I think those same studies show health care costs go way down and the social support becomes way more effective when you don’t have to waste resources finding the people. Overall housing-first programs can be very cost effective.
Kate
Agreed! The itinerant population can be kept out of jail and helped not to get any sicker, but that means taking the longer view.
Michael Black
But there’s a consistency to the argument. It’s not about cost but “people shouldn’t get what they don’t work for”. It’s there about welfare, it’s there in talk about guaranteed income, it’s may be there in talk about minimum wage. There’s a guy in Quebec sitting having a sit-in because he’s in an institution and wants to live on his own. People can accept institutional help, but it’s “privilege” for someone to live on their own with the help of an attendent.
There are programs to help the elderly stay in their homes as long as possible, because it’s better for them, and I assume cheaper than moving them to an institution.
But life isn’t just about staying alive as long as possible. Earning money isn’t an end either.
Chris
>but that means taking the longer view
And we humans are bad at long term thinking. Our political system doubly so, where they only really look/plan as far as the next couple of elections at best. See also climate change.
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Kate
The priest who used to run the Grand Séminaire and has overseen the move of priest training from that grandiose building in a magisterial parklike setting to a poky little building on a corner in Petite-Patrie tries to put a good face on it with talk here about being closer to the community.
dwgs 10:13 on 2020-08-18 Permalink
“A car reportedly drove into La Louisiane restaurant …” Uh, no a car definitely drove into La Louisiane restaurant as is evidenced by the damage in the attached photo. The woman was confused by a westbound bus as she came from Draper?? Draper is across the street and a little bit over from the resto. It was rush hour so the westbound bus would have been in the lane immediately adjacent to the nose of her car as she arrived at Sherbrooke so she would have had to cross two other lanes of traffic, a lane of parked cars, the sidewalk, and drive through a large wood and earth planter AFTER she encountered the bus. And she was still going fast enough to do major damage when she hit the building. My guess is that she saw the oncoming bus in the express lane and put the gas pedal to the floor in an attempt to get into the eastbound lane without waiting for it to pass. Then she panicked. Good thing it wasn’t later in the week or the terrasse in front of La Lou would have been full and we would likely have fatalities. Take away her license.
Blork 12:52 on 2020-08-18 Permalink
I agree with @dwgs’ analysis; that this was more than a little “Oops! Bonked into your restaurant!” FFS, it’s a miracle a bunch of pedestrians weren’t mowed down. The article says the woman says she “got distracted.” By what? Texting?
Also, I dispute the claim that “No other injuries were caused during the crash.” I’ll bet the owner of the restaurant is feeling pretty injured right now! As if things weren’t bad enough for restaurants… (OK, that’s not a physical injury…)
DeWolf 18:44 on 2020-08-18 Permalink
Between the anti-bike vitriol and drivers randomly crashing into buildings, Montreal is starting to feel a lot like Toronto.