Parents of school kids are to get vaccinated quickly and out of age group order in two west-end neighbourhoods to try to stop the spread of Covid variants. (Is Plamondon a neighbourhood? Do they mean the environs of the metro station?)
Thursday morning it’s clarified to Snowdon.
Downtown cameras at 8:30 on the first late curfew night show empty streets – as I’m looking, there are a few cars on Ste-Catherine at Peel, but no pedestrians in sight. As Louis T tweeted earlier: C’est aujourd’hui qu’on se rend compte qu’on a nulle part où aller passé 20h.
I’m told on Facebook that this nascent park in Rosemont – that news item is from October last year – will be named after Annie Montgomery, who came to Canada from Ireland and became the city’s first public health nurse. Christine Gosselin said she was announcing it Wednesday because of St Patrick’s Day and because it’s a timely nod to the importance of public health. The park will be laid out on the lot once occupied by the smallpox hospital that later became the Squat Préfontaine, on Rachel facing the Angus yards.
Bixi is considering opening early this year, and is already putting out some docking stations.
A report by PwC, not by the city nor by Projet, recommends more pedestrianized streets and bike paths to help revive downtown.
A report recommendation from the private sector? Gasp!
I’ve never seen a consultant recommend something that the person who hired them didn’t want them to recommend.
That said — if the city wants to revive the downtown core, pedestrian streets won’t be enough. It’s got to create loads of three and four and five bedroom apartments/condos in the core. Do it by transforming office space into residential, and by looking at all those dinky condos currently being built and changing them into places where a family will want to live.
It also has to acknowledge that when you have multiple people in a family, the odds are that at least one of them will not be living near their workplace and so will need to use a vehicle (whether public or private).
Projet can at least say their ideas are backed up by a major business firm. Projet is pushing back against some perceptions that it’s a sort of pie-in-the-sky idealist outfit, anti-car and anti-business. No matter what’s gone wrong on their watch – most of which is outside their remit as a municipal government – they are accused of not having created enough parking or made the city more welcoming to business. Facebook is full of people fulminating against Valérie Plante (many of whom, I suspect, don’t even live in the city).
I don’t blame them for wanting to get a PwC report on their side.
@Kate I think you’re really missing the point Kevin is making. It’s standard practice in business and government to hire an “independent” external consultancy to validate/rubber stamp whatever idea you have and need to build a case for.
Your response is exactly the desired effect, get people’s buy-in because you can point towards a reputable firm producing a supporting document.
Anyone that’s hired a major consulting firm knows how much sway they have in shaping whatever the findings are going to be since you’re the one paying them.
I don’t understand this idea that downtown needs to be “revived” by injecting a bunch of kids and the infrastructure perceived to be needed to entertain them. Especially since the knee jerk assumption is that they will require the comforts and amenities that suburban kids have.
A downtown that is desirable for kids and large families will put the area in opposition to what already makes it desirable for many people (nightlife, the fast pace, loudness, etc.). For me personally, a downtown full of families and kids is neither desirable nor attractive (it sounds pretty boring!)
Spi, I’m not. I realize Projet is playing with perceptions. Obviously the PwC report changes nothing, but it does mean the party can point to it when making a case.
CE, I tend to agree with you, but how else do you counter the pervasive idea that you live downtown in your crazy youth, but to reproduce you must swim back upstream to the suburbs?
I feel like we need a reality check: there are already tons of people living downtown with a lot more on the way. That even includes many families. Walk around the western part of downtown around 4pm and you’ll see lots of parents walking their kids home from school right into any number of apartment buildings, including a lot of those new condo towers that have gone up recently. In the 2016 census, 7% of the population in Peter-McGill (ie Shaughnessy Village) was under the age of 16. That’s lower than average for Montreal, but it still represents many thousands of people.
Downtown will undergo a period of post-Covid adjustment as tourism slowly ramps back up and businesses adjust to having more people working from home. There certainly needs to be more improvement to downtown streetscapes, many of which are not particularly welcoming or attractive. But the idea that it is somehow in decline is absurd. Ten years ago, there were massive parking lots on every side street between Ste-Catherine and René Lévesque, not to mention around the Bell Centre. Now those parking lots are home to thousands of people, with thousands more on the way. That’s not a neighbourhood in decline.
I also tend to agree with CE about downtown being a place (the one place, really) where noisy festivals and loud nightlife can be accommodated. There’s a balance that needs to be stuck between being a residential area and being a cultural destination.
@CE
Ironically, your argument has a lot of urban/suburban-divide assumptions built in, a perspective built on truths that are not actually universal.
I’ve lived in Montreal in downtown areas for a long time, and although I’m not a suburban child. It wasn’t the nightlife or the unnecessary noise and pollution or lack of green spaces that attracted me there.
Recently I’ve been staying in downtown Berlin for a while, only 200m away from some of the more interesting night life (Sage, KitKat, Tresor). They’re a mild nuisance to me, but overall its relatively quiet. My two-year old was totally unaware of the nightlife, although I’m sure he really appreciated the various playgrounds in the area, other kids that live around, or being able to walk to daycare.
Right now the kid moved with the in-laws to Brossard for a while, and the boringness and lack of stimulation is hell.
@CE
The issue is that right now, the pendulum in Montreal has swung too far one way: downtown Montreal is office towers and not much else. The pandemic showed us that without the nightclubs and restaurants, nothing distinguishes our city’s core from Ottawa.
That’s not sustainable.
It’s also unworkable to have people commuting from the burbs into the downtown core* to a pedestrianized zone. Without the best public transit in the world that’s unlikely to happen.
So the city needs to have more people living in the core — and that means families.
But it doesn’t mean it has to be dull.
I lived in Manhattan for several years, along with 1.5 million other people. There are tonnes of families in that borough and oodles of hidden parks and other amenities that you would never notice if you were concentrating on the nightlife and restaurants and shopping.
*I think a lot of people don’t realize how much downtown Montreal living has changed. In the 90s almost a quarter of a million people lived and worked in downtown Montreal. In 2016 that number had dropped by half.
I wear my cynic medal with pride as I say 12 months of WFH has demonstrated we’re never going to have 350,000 commuters heading from the ‘burbs to downtown ever again.
“Downtown Montreal is office towers and not much else.”
This boggles my mind. Your definition of downtown must be incredibly narrow. How can you stand at the corner of Guy/Ste-Catherine, or St-Laurent/de Maisonneuve, or in front of the Bell Centre, and not notice the thousands of apartments within plain sight?
I mean, not to belabour my point, but there are 100,000 people who live within a 20-minute walk of Ste-Catherine and Peel. That’s 1.5 times more people than in the whole of NDG.
Also, Manhattan is 87 square kilometres, which is roughly equivalent to the whole of central Montreal, not just downtown.
@DeWolf
It helps if I don’t bugger up the link in my previous post.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/commuter-changes-statscan-montreal-1.5381514
We can argue about exact amounts and definitions — I think Manhattan is smaller, and Ville-Marie has fewer people — but I think my overall point that downtown does not have enough space for families, and is too reliant on commuters – holds.
>So the city needs to have more people living in the core — and that means families.
Why must it mean “families”? Why can’t it mean single people for example?
A transient mono culture doesn’t make for a robust or vibrant neighborhood.
Agricultural metaphors apply.
As Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa puts it, “The children are a sort of indicator. If we build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people.”
Chris, I am a non-parent myself. But single people don’t always stay single. Once people pair up – especially in an era where working from home is likely to remain more widespread than it was before the pandemic – they may find they can no longer co-work comfortably in a one-bedroom apartment. Does that mean they should exile themselves to Brossard?
It’s already been practically a given that if you want to have kids, you have to leave the city. I don’t think that’s good for the city, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t great for the kids either. Some shift is going to have to occur.
Very good piece on Le Devoir by two experts in urban environment on how hard Montreal has worked to give value to its natural setting and make it accessible to all residents, and how the REM is blowing that ideal sky high.
Over the lifetime of this blog I’ve occasionally noticed how, while deploring mistakes made in the past, we’re oblivious to mistakes we’re making now that the future will deplore in its turn. Ramming an elevated train system through downtown Montreal is one of those mistakes, and people from 2030 to 2100 will be clutching their heads and asking how we could have let that happen.
I am quite frankly shocked at the NIMBYism and pearl-clutching regarding the electric rail project, so shocked I felt I had to register to post a comment for the first time in more than a decade of readership.
It’s not 1960 and the CDPQ is not Robert Moses trying to plow a giant highway through urban neighborhoods.
Two parallel elevated tracks is not Autoroute 40, which is a six lane highway with on and off ramps and 4 additional parallel lanes and parking via frontage roads on either side. That’s a lot of traffic that is pedestrian-hostile and absolutely destroys a neighborhood. The REM de l’est is not that.
There is an affordable housing crisis in the city, and a housing market crisis, and we’ve pissed away the west third of the island on suburban sprawl. We haven’t built any new metro that’s helped lower income neighbourhoods since 1986. The orange line extension takes you to a shopping mall for god’s sake.
With the remaining area on the island and close environs we need to think smarter and build up for urban density and mixed use. Having a transit link of 25 minutes to downtown from the east end and off island will change the lives of tens of thousands who won’t have to sit on a shitty bus for 45 minutes or drive a single occupant vehicle. Shit– maybe I will actually be able to afford a condo someday and still have rapid public transit access to centre-ville.
That last point is the thing that really bugs me; I cannot reconcile how fervent supporters of green initiatives, smart housing development, and sustainable development dislike the REM. Public transit that people actually want to use and solves a problem keeps single occupant vehicles off the road. We are so shortsighted with NIMBYism that we can’t see past some concrete posts that we’d prefer road traffic.
More on the lack of consultation and the wilful ignoring of expert advice by CDPQ-Infra.
DisgruntledGoat said: “I had to register to post a comment for the first time in more than a decade of readership.”
100% bullshit. Obviously from a cut-and-paste spammer, as you don’t have to register to comment here. I suspect the exact same comment can be found on a whole lot of Facebook groups, Reddits, etc.
Blork, that slid right past me. Good catch.
I’ve been reading Kate’s blog since the 2000s along with Fagstein and Spacing Montréal before it became whatever husk it is these days. Heck I read the Montréal LiveJournal group back in the day. I don’t particular care if you think my post is some kind of PR campaign, Blork.
Maybe you’d like to fill us in on where or how you “registered” in order to comment here.
The rem is actually going to make my commute longer and I might even start driving to work. I’m not against it I just think that it should be better planned. I’ll be the one taking a shitty bus ride to and from the new train station instead of taking one bus downtown like I do now. And I am just waiting for the eventual shitshow that will happen when the system crashes during a snowstorm and the entire South Shore that needs to cross the bridge will be jammed into the trains and then jammed into the train stations waiting for the connecting buses home
I provided my email address as it’s required when commenting, Blork. For me that’s registering, however I guess I need to provide a website to have a clickable name? Anyway.
Also I share the dislike of political overreach that ordained the REM on us, but frankly I will enjoy the results anyway. How long has this city been trying to establish one single rapid bus corridor on Pie-IX and can’t get it done?
Kate, thanks for the link and how is your commute being lengthened (without going into detail obviously) by the new transit option? I’m genuinely curious.
Sorry was asking that question to Uatu, rather
All the South Shore commuters from candiac to Longueuil and from st. Jean and environs will be bussed to the 2 Brossard train stations to cross the bridge because of the REM s non-compete clause. It’s just another step and more time instead of the 1 bus I can now take directly downtown. I’m not opposed to the train I just don’t like my transit options reduced. I can take multiple rush hour buses home when traffic crap happens (and it happens. I’ve waited in snaking lines for buses with tired and angry and frustrated commuters) but now I’m funnelled into a traffic solution I didn’t ask for and I’m not all that crazy about it. But we’ll see what happens
Ah cheers I appreciate the explanation. I’m part of the on-island demographic watching themselves being priced out of owning housing or renting affordable so I always am interested in hearing opinions of commuters from off-island.
Sure the REM may help some people in the East, but really its 10 Billion for a relatively small impact. Lets compare it to the that suburban Orange Line extension, that “takes you to a shopping mall for god’s sake”.
Orange Line extension: 0,7B$, 60K riders
REM2: 10B$, 130K riders
So 15x times the money, for 2x the ridership – when compared to a suburban metro extension. The REM aptly bypasses most Eastern population concentrations of Montreal, and manages to duplicate a lot of the green line. Where the new development areas of the REM2 could be opened up, there´s also a lot of very lightly used land next to corresponding Green line stations. Why cant we just develop those areas without building a second transit line, but then use the resources to build something with a high impact, like the Pink Line?
The Pink Line would be more expensive than the REM, but capture much more ridership, and improve mobility for a lot more people in the East (and West).
Even if we build something like the REM2, its fair to ask that the downtown section should be a high capacity, underground trunk line fitting a 4Mio people metropolis, not a medium capacity elevated train line thats copy-pasted from some medium sized Dutch city.
That we´re not having the conversation about what we need as a region and how we can get there is probably the root of the problem.
Anyone who’s ever commuted from the South Shore knows that Uatu is completely correct. Those direct to downtown buses were a real life-saver for me in CEGEP and University, as they were usually just uncrowded enough to get a seat and you could actually get some homework done. Or catch up on sleep. And the flexibility to take different buses when one was late or some other snafu was a real strength of the system. All soon to be gone.
We’re not there yet. The EMSB has been forced to close an elementary school over an outbreak of a suspected Covid variant.
Can’t quite ignore these off-island stories: jobs were posted in a St-Eustache hospital for white women only; an Atikamekw woman’s poor treatment at a Joliette CLSC has led to the sacking of two nurses there. But we have no systemic racism in Quebec, that’s official.
And Mireille Ndjomouo, a Cameroonian woman who died at Charles-Le Moyne Hospital after hospital staff injected her with penicillin, even though she told them she was allergic to it. She filmed herself because no one was listening to her and she was in a lot of pain before she died.
The incidents just pile up.
On Sunday, not long after the protest against pandemic measures, a bunch of guys started horsing around in the Lafontaine tunnel. They were dressed in matching t-shirts that said “Fuck Legault” (or “F***” in the CTV version) and carried hammers which they used on random stopped cars. Now one of them is taking credit for making François Legault change the curfew hour to 9:30 p.m.
The CTV report seems confused about what happened. Watching the video, it seems clear that the man with the hammer was smashing the windows of the conspiracy theorists. The Journal article alludes to this fact in its opening paragraph – “Ce n’est pas parce qu’on est à bout des conspirationnistes qu’on peut s’en prendre physiquement à eux.”
You’re right, DeWolf. The hammer was in the hand of the person protesting the protesters.
JaneyB 00:22 on 2021-03-18 Permalink
This actually sounds like a prudent plan. Not ideal, of course, but smart. It is essential to contain the variants and that neighbourhood is full of multi-generational families and health-care workers.
Joey 07:56 on 2021-03-18 Permalink
This very much sounds like a work-in-progress… not sure why they would vaccinate parents but not teachers or staff. These kind of ‘targeted’ approaches to vaccination make a lot of sense to me, but it’s extra important for public health officials to consider all potential spreaders, not just parents of school kids. I wonder if the province will shift to trying to get first doses as quickly as possible to everyone in hot spots/red zones rather than proceed with broad age-based criteria across the province. Vaccinating twentysomethings in red zones makes more sense than 50+ in yellow zones if the aim is to stop the spread of variants and avoid a major third wave.
Still, excluding school personnel makes no sense.
Joey 07:59 on 2021-03-18 Permalink
Also – private school principals should know better than to announce stuff like this before public health officials.
jeather 10:09 on 2021-03-18 Permalink
It’s all still unclear — is it based on where the parents live, or where the school is? One school suggested staff are also to be vaccinated (as they should be! before the parents, even).
j2 10:28 on 2021-03-18 Permalink
School staff should be vaccinated as a priority if your objective is to keep the schools open so that parents can work. So… since it is, based on the CAQs sometimes questionable choices, why is this even a question?
(I’m not questioning the commentariat but the government, to be clear)
dhomas 11:17 on 2021-03-19 Permalink
According to previous guidance from the government, ALL teachers (not just those in these 2 hoods) were supposed to get vaccinated ahead of other groups. Maybe that’s why they were seemingly excluded?
https://www.journaldequebec.com/2021/01/08/covid-19-les-profs-et-les-educatrices-en-garderie-vaccines-en-priorite
My wife is a teacher (not in one of those 2 areas), but she’s heard nothing yet about getting vaccinated, even though the previously mentioned “March-April” timeframe is upon us.
YUL514 14:05 on 2021-03-19 Permalink
It’s for parents of kids that go to school or daycare in these 3 FSAs: H3S, H3W, H4W.
We live nearby but not in one of those three areas but our kids are in daycare in one of those postal codes. We’re waiting to hear from our daycare director to make sure we qualify.
Dr Drouin has now decided that the staff will also be vaccinated. Good.
https://www.lapresse.ca/covid-19/2021-03-19/cote-saint-luc/le-personnel-des-ecoles-et-garderies-sera-vaccine.php