Food bank Moisson Montréal is facing a record demand for its help.
Updates from March, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Quebec’s to become an orange zone on March 8 except for Montreal and adjacent regions.
Fifteen percent of Covid cases in town are coronavirus variants and these are found mostly in schools. Authorities are keeping a close eye on the intersection of spring break and covid variants.
Ephraim
Which now has me wondering how low a level we will need in Montreal to exit being a red zone… and if it’s just a way to punish the city.
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Kate
The S.W. Welch move may be the final straw: Mile End is getting organized: there will be a demo on March 13 at 2 p.m., and pressure is growing for control of commercial rents.
Meezly
On Mile End Ensemble, someone took the trouble to map out all the buildings that SL owns on St-Viateur (8 total, 14 storefronts). It’s hearsay but apparently the latest round of public shaming made them consider getting “out of the small building game” and into the “big office building game” because you can charge so much by the square foot. I don’t want to get too hopeful, but this community grassroots organizing may work!
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Kate
It’s just a formality because she’s been retired since 2015, but Agent 728 has been dismissed by the police ethics committee. She’s not opposing the dismissal.
Ant6n
That’s some swift Justice
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Kate
The Fulford Residence, a pre-Confederation seniors’ home on Guy Street below Ste-Catherine, is going to close by September after ten of its 31 residents died from Covid. CTV quotes a resident as saying it’s like a “nitrogen bomb.”
It’s a nice building, but I expect the lot will soon be occupied by another cookie-cutter condo building.
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Kate
One third of Montrealers aged 80 and over have now received a Covid vaccination.
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Kate
Tenants looking at lease renewals for July by the end of March should stay put if they can, according to advice from the city. I should imagine few renters are flitting restlessly from apartment to apartment in this rental market, but there you go.
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Kate
Here’s a surprise: the Olympic stadium will not get a retractable roof. No, this is not old news, the date on this story is March 3, 2021.
Faiz Imam
The big reason this is news is as a result of Québec pulling out of he 2026 world cup.
Those games need to be in an open air stadium, so they added a requirement to the bid.
Now that the games are gone, there’s really no reason.
A lot of complexity and cost, plus a higher chance of failure. so it’s a good thing.
Can I hope that the project will not blow its budget “as much” due to this change?
Francesco
I know I may not be in the minority on *this* blog, but I sure am one of the sole voice in my circles that has *hated* the idea of such a ludicrous endeavour as hosting three WC matches at a cost of close to a billion or more. Thank FSM logic prevailed. Now if we could only stop spending on that damn stadium.
Kate
The stadium was always meant to have a retractable roof, but evidently nobody looked into whether such a thing had ever been done, or what firms had experience with similar technologies. (The answer on that seems to be zero – it was going to have to be invented from scratch, and it still hasn’t been.)
Or nobody, at the time, cared.
I still can’t quite believe Jean Drapeau selected Roger Taillibert, all of whose work had been done in France and hot dry places like Qatar and Abu Dhabi, to design a stadium in a place where winters with a few meters of snow accumulation are routine.
Kevin
Kate,
If it’s not from France it doesn’t exist 🙂
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Kate
A petition was launched to rename Trudeau airport for René Lévesque, and it collected 20,000 signatures and some support by the Journal, but the federal transport minister says it isn’t going to happen.
qatzelok
Kondioronk International Airport or Jeanne Mance International Airport?
Kate
I think we were perfectly fine calling it Dorval Airport all that time, and now that we’re in an era of sudden reversals of opinion on public figures, it’s probably best not to apply people’s names to things.
I mean, what happens if we discover Jeanne Mance had a slave? I’m not saying she did, but people did, back then, it wasn’t unusual. And so on.
dmdiem
My vote is for Airporty McAirportface.
steph
@Kate, didn’t Mr. Dorval also possibly do horrible things too?
Kate
According to Wikipedia, “Dorval was originally named Gentilly. It was later renamed La Présentation-de-la-Vierge-Marie. In 1691, the domain of La Présentation, originally owned by Pierre Le Gardeur de Repentigny, was acquired by Jean-Baptiste Bouchard d’Orval.”
I think there’s a distinction between a place being named after an owner, vs being named to honour a person.
EmilyG
Seems to me that on the island of Montreal, most people just call it “the airport.”
CE
I didn’t live here before it was named for Trudeau, I might not have even been alive when the name was changed but I usually call it “Dorval.”
Francesco
Agree with @EmilyG. I work there, and while we are *supposed* to call it “Trudeau” on the VHF radio when talking to Apron or Ground Control while driving planes, few do. In normal conversation, it’s just “the Airport.”
Blork
Back when Mirabel was still flying passengers, “Dorval” and “Mirabel” were useful names because they were also geographic locations instead of abstractions. Now that Mirabel is just the ghost of a white elephant, I usually just call the Dorval one “the airport.” Sometimes I call it “pet,” typically followed by a fart sound.
Kate
I think you were alive, CE: Wikipedia says it changed names on January 1, 2004.
CE
That’s much more recent than I thought. I guess that’s why Dorval as a name is relevant to me, people would have still been calling it by it’s original name when I arrived in Montreal. Sometimes it takes a generation for an old name to die. I still call the Rogers Centre the Skydome and have no intention of ever calling Metropolis by its new name.
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Kate
A lawyer with an anglo name is throwing his hat in the ring for the mayoral election by trying to become chief of the Vrai changement party originally headed by Mélanie Joly, which has no seats currently.
Note that La Presse is taking it as a given that Denis Coderre is running again, although I’ve seen no official candidacy announced.
Jack
He was a place kicker for the Universite de Montreal football team, he is obviously trying to emulate George Springate.
dwgs
We already have one too many Hilliers in politics in Canada.
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