Various items talk about two new players for the Canadiens before the trade deadline: Cole Caufield – who looks about 12 years old in that photo – and centre Eric Staal, who at 36 must be among the oldest of the pack.
Update: I’m told “Caulfield was a signing of a player they drafted so not a trade.”
Sylvain Ouellet, Projet councillor for St-Michel, takes his turn at dissecting Denis Coderre’s book. It’s worth persisting with any annoyances from Facebook to read this piece, because Ouellet notes some odd signs of group writing or careless editing: sections of text repeated in several places, but also outright contradictions, such as praising the René-Lévesque REM in one section, then suggesting elsewhere that the elevated train should run along de la Commune.
Read that again: Coderre wants the REM to run right through Old Montreal, while talking up heritage on other pages!
Ouellet also notices in Coderre a lack of interest in the texture of daily life in Montreal – we knew that, but Coderre doesn’t even think he has to pretend any interest in nature parks or libraries. He really does just want to boost the city to a level where he can hobnob with celebrities. He always has and he always will.
Coderre’s expected to announce his candidacy Sunday evening, which probably means on TLMEP. The show was supposed to also have Geneviève Guilbault on, but she’s now in preventive isolation after her husband tested positive with Covid.
Update: Global simply says Coderre has already announced.
The National Geographic has a current culinary guide to Montreal which, as we all know, is “wedged between the St Lawrence and the Prairies Rivers” – but it was clearly written up before the pandemic.
Funny how Back River is common, and people also say rivière des Prairies when speaking English, but Prairies River sounds ridiculous.
There’s an informal way of saying Montreal place names in English that has a real learning curve for any freshly arrived anglophone. A couple of years ago when an American friend visited he was amused to learn about the spectrum of names: there are those that are commonly translated (eg Park Avenue, Pine Avenue, Mountain Street), those that are usually said in an anglicized way (”Saint Catherine’, ‘Saint Urban’, ‘Saint Henry,’ ‘Gaai”) and some that are always said in the proper French way (Saint-Denis, Notre-Dame, Côte-des-Neiges, etc.). When it comes down to it, it all seems kind of arbitrary.
Well, some of those names actually used to be on the street signs. And there are a few that are sometimes used, though no longer on the signs, like Craig. And the Bank of Montreal head office is on St-James street. And there will always be a fight over Mountain/de la Montagne over if it was named after Jacob Mountain or Mount-Royal itself.
In the case of Guy, well, we really should pronounce it in French, since it is named after Étienne Guy (1774-1820).
Have you ever heard the francophone pronunciation of Maguire? (It’s in Mile-End)
Saint-Denis isn’t named after a saint, it’s named after Denis Viger, who Square Viger is also named, but Viger st. is named after Denis-Benjamin Viger, his son.
Yeah, how to pronounce English place names in French is a whole other thing. I live on Waverly and I’ve noticed that people who live in the neighbourhood tend to pronounce it the English way when speaking French (albeit with a French intonation), whereas people from outside the area (eg taxi drivers) say it as if it’s a French word.
If I’m speaking French, I will say the French names in a French way–or at least as best as I can manage. In English, however, it is a real mixed bag. I will always say “Saint Laurent” for the street, but generally “Saint Lawrence” for the river…which is rather arbitrary. “Saint Denis” exclusively the French way–unless I’m giving directions to American tourists–but “Saint Catherine” almost always the English way…
When I was a young’un in the anglophone farm regions outside Montreal I’d hear the tv news talk about Pie-IX and it was a bit of a revelation find out what the words were and how it was actually spelled when I moved to Montreal and became bilingual. It still cracks me up, tbh..
Le Devoir’s Zacharie Goudreault talks to various observers of the situation in the Mile End, with empty storefronts multiplying on its commercial streets. Among other threads, he touches on the Arts Café situation, saying that the owners told the newspaper this weekend that the café operator had not been able to pay rent for some time and so was told to clear out.
Goudreault also speaks to Danny Lavy, who pleads increased taxes as his reason for the brutal rent hikes that have emptied so many locations. But he also talks to Richard Ryan, who reminds him that city hall froze commercial taxes in the last budget. Lavy’s argument doesn’t hold.
It’s surprising that neither the Arts Cafe owners or the landlord considered the federal rent subsidy until now; the impression from the Eater story is that the real problem is a lack of communication between tenant and landlord that escalated past a point of no return.
As far as commercial taxes go, both sides may be right. It’s certainly possible that taxes have gone up a lot in recent years before being frozen/reduced in 2020. I’m not totally surprised the stories I’ve read about Welch haven’t bothered to check. If taxes went up say 30% in four years before they were frozen, both Lavy and Ryan would be “accurate.”
Municipal taxes for building properties in the past 10 years are accessible to the public here: https://montreal.ca/en/how-to/consult-property-assessment-roll. It was proven that Lavy lied about the SW Welch building and Lavy probably didn’t realize those records are easy to look up. Same for the Arts Cafe – the taxes haven’t increased at all in the last decade. In fact, it has actually decreased.
Meezly! Thank you!
What? The roll says taxes for the Welch building were 21K in 2016 and 49K in 2020!
Taxes for the Arts Cafe building were flat (IOW a decline vs. inflation).
Generally space in buildings is rented Net, Net Net or Net Net Net. Net means the renter pays property tax. Net Net means the renter pays property tax and property insurance. Net Net Net means the renter pays property tax, property insurance and in Net Net Net, basically property tax, insurance and maintenance/repairs. Most commercial leases are Net Net, with the landlord responsible for the building. So even if the taxes for the Welch building increased, it wouldn’t really be a concern for the landlord.
Joining streets that were pedestrianized last summer, like Mont-Royal, Wellington and segments of Ste‑Catherine Street, will be even more streets – parts of St‑Laurent Boulevard and Masson Street are mentioned, although Masson may depend on what can be done to stabilize the steeple of St‑Esprit church. How much of the Main will close, and for how long, is not clear. And there’s some division over how much of Ontario Street will be closed to traffic for the summer, too.
I’m not sure if merchants are aware of all the “potential-customers” that are being repelled by the car traffic they fight to preserve.
For example, I avoid Masson Street because the car traffic makes it unpleasant and constrained. The merchants only see *the drivers they could lose*, and not *the non-drivers they could win over*.
But how much can you sell to the same few local customers over and over? Attracting more customers from further away helps businesses survive and grow.
It depends what you sell, Phil M. You can always sell food (groceries or prepared), domestic cleaning and maintenance supplies, coffee, magazines and books, wine and beer. People need those every week.
I need to find a reference to the study that showed that most people shopping along Mont-Royal live nearby and simply walk over to shop. When I was thinking about what to list, things people buy repeatedly and all the time, I only had to visualize the two commercial streets I go to most often: Jarry around the metro, and St-Laurent through Little Italy. While there are one or two clothing stores on both stretches, almost everything else is stuff people buy repeatedly and every week – in the case of bakeries and fruiteries, even more often.
Of course if you sell specialist items of any kind, yes, you’re going to be interested in attracting people from further afield because it’s a different slice of the demographic you’re after. But not all merchants have to think that way.
We’re talking about commercial streets in the densest parts of the city. There are 85,000 people who live within 2km of St-Denis/Mont-Royal – easy walking distance. If you expand that to 5km (about 20 minutes by bike or bus/metro) you’re capturing just under 500,000 people. That’s equivalent to the population of Laval and more than twice the population of the West Island.
There’s a reason that, even before the pandemic, less than 10% of Mont-Royal’s customers came by car, according to a survey by the SDC. And it’s a street filled with shoe stores, supermarkets, clothing boutiques, bookstores and other destination businesses. It also has the highest occupancy rate of any commercial strip in Montreal.
I don’t understand this double standard where people are happy to drive to a shopping mall and walk a few hundred metres to the shops they want to visit, but somehow when they go to Ontario Street or St-Laurent they must absolutely park right in front of the shop they’re visiting. As if that’s even possible given the limited number of parking spots on commercial streets and the fact that they’re usually full.
It’s the ability to find parking and then to park the vehicle without complication, not the walk.
When I go to anywhere with a large lot I know I’ll be able to find a place with relative ease, even if I am hundreds of metres away from the building.
It’s a different matter when trying to go to St. Denis or Mont Royal or whatever. On my motorcycle I can zip around and get into a spot on those streets or (95% of the time) on a side street. (I only need a metre-long space). In a car, if I don’t find a space on the street I’m doing to, I then start going around the block and then spiral further away while hoping not to run into a) a spot that is just not quite big enough, b) a spot that requires a parking permit, c) a road that I didn’t realize was under construction until I turned onto it, or d) a one-way driving trap that prevents me from getting back to where I wanted to be.
That’s why there are certain areas of town I just never go to unless I know that a store in the area carries something specific that I need/want, and I’ll try to hit multiple stores in one visit. If more of those destination stores close it gives me less reason to go there.
And by the same token, there are loads of stores in my neighbourhood that I frequently visit on foot. My wife and I walk to her favourite coffee shop every day. I pop into the local bookstores/music stores/ knick knackeries on a regular basis. But if I’m going to spend $300 on groceries or a crate of wine, or I need tools/materials, or winter coats/children’s clothes and the places in my hood don’t have what I like, I’m going to the place with easy parking instead of to a similar neighbourhood across town.
I *had* to drive up St-Hubert the other day, and, notwithstanding the fact that I think the upgrades are a visual and sensory failure, I was downright shocked by how unpleasant it is made by all the parked (and double-parked) cars and trucks. You couldn’t pay me to shop there.
La Presse looks at how a third municipal party very nearly came together then fell apart before the four principals could achieve any unity of action.
Criticism has been made of Plante and Projet for trying to enforce some kind of overall party discipline, but this story is a counterexample of how parties are not made. Parties at the federal and provincial level literally have an official called a whip who ensures that elected members toe the party line. Municipally, I don’t believe the same role exists, and it’s only peer pressure and the strength of character of the leader that binds people of varying opinions into something called a party – which is one reason municipal parties don’t last long, and often crumble once the initial, charismatic leadership is gone.
Despite recent high-profile concern about stabbings and shootings, I’m struck how the only police blotter incident I find overnight on the weekend is an unspecified nonfatal attack on a guy in Hochelaga.
Reply