Updates from May, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 21:28 on 2021-05-22 Permalink | Reply  

    The ten remaining cloistered Carmelite nuns in the northern Plateau nunnery got their second vaccinations on Friday. The health services are visiting every remaining convent, because the inhabitants are all so elderly. Same CP story in English.

    The Carmelites are quoted as saying they were getting vaccinated in solidarity, but although they’ve been protected by the cloister and by luck, it could’ve taken only one slip for Covid to tear through their little community like a wildfire. Better for everyone to be vaccinated.

     

    • Kate 21:16 on 2021-05-22 Permalink | Reply  

      With international travel still doubtful, Quebec is offering various deals for its provincial parks and the like, as it did last summer. Nonetheless, Quebec intends to maintain its state of health emergency at least till the end of August.

       

      • Kate 16:56 on 2021-05-22 Permalink | Reply  

        Seeing what looks like a demo downtown Saturday on the Peel and Ste-Catherine traffic cam. The STM tweets that several bus routes are detoured because of manifestations en cours.

        I see tweets about a public sector union protest but the Palestine demo might also be included.

        Update: people marched from the Israeli consulate in Westmount Square to the U.S. consulate at Ste-Catherine and Peel and then down to Dorchester Square. The demo was declared illegal and dispersed.

         

        • Nick D. 09:23 on 2021-05-23 Permalink

          The US Consulate is in that modern tower on St Alexander, a little above René Levesque. Or it used to be.

        • Kate 09:51 on 2021-05-23 Permalink

          U.S. consulate is listed at 1134 Ste-Catherine St West.

        • DeWolf 10:15 on 2021-05-23 Permalink

          Yes, the consulate is now in the Royal Bank building at Ste-Catherine/Stanley, which is why all the parking on that corner has been replaced by heavy concrete planters (to prevent a camion-bélier attack).

        • Kate 10:20 on 2021-05-23 Permalink

          DeWolf, and yet you never see anyone kvetching about losing those parking spaces!

          On the most recent Streetview shot, November 2020, there’s also a police van.

          I seem to recall the frontage of that building, including the bank machine, was renovated a couple of years ago and it seemed to take an awfully long time. Maybe it’s been reinforced also in some way.

      • Kate 15:05 on 2021-05-22 Permalink | Reply  

        Rather than draw an editorial cartoon for the weekend, Serge Chapleau composits how the REM might look going down René-Lévesque – click to see 2/2.

        Contrary to what some commentators have said, I don’t think he’s exaggerated the effect.

        Milo Vermeulen, one of my Dutch friends, posted a photo this week of an elevated train in the middle of a street in Den Haag. This may be a more recent, high-tech type of structure than the image Chapleau used, but no matter what you do with this kind of thing, you inevitably put in a visual barrier that casts a shadow – even if you put a pot of tulips under it.

         

        • mare 16:02 on 2021-05-22 Permalink

          That’s actually a tram in The Hague, that travels at lower speed on narrower track than the REM. The reason it’s elevated is that it’s ascending to the tram- and bus station which is located *on top* of the railway station with its tracks at ground level. (Below the tracks is a parking garage, and on top of it all is a tall office tower. The Dutch sure like stacking.)

        • GC 16:03 on 2021-05-22 Permalink

          I had hoped I would click through to that and think “Oh, it’s not so bad but I’m still pessimistic the real thing will look worse.” And yet…his imagining is pretty much as bad as it could be. At least the Dutch one lets some light through.

        • Kate 17:26 on 2021-05-22 Permalink

          mare, far be it from me to contradict a Dutchman, but I’ve seen other photos of this elevated track going on for blocks, so I don’t think it’s necessarily a ramp rising to a station.

        • Kevin 19:46 on 2021-05-22 Permalink

          CTV did something similar the day or the day after the REM de l’est was announced.
          The Powers That Be don’t care since no real Quebecois live in Montreal anyway.

        • mare 20:08 on 2021-05-22 Permalink

          @Kate, oops, this is a very different piece of track. Milo’s photo (yes, coincidentally I know him, even worked with him on a project) looked like it was in another area of The Hague. This is more a light rail train akin the REM. I was wrong.

          I kind of like this one, but not straight from below, but very unlikely the REM East will look anything like that. Money is the main factor in every decision CDPQInfra makes. And Quebec doesn’t even have steel mills and we do have a concrete industry…

          (Even the amount on art they spent on REM 1 is much lower than the usual 1% in Quebec.)

        • ant6n 19:01 on 2021-05-23 Permalink

          The graffiti is a nice touch

        • JaneyB 19:19 on 2021-05-23 Permalink

          I was hoping it might not look too bad…and I was wrong. That concrete obstruction with its certain graffiti is a fright. There’s no way that’s going ahead. I guess the REM has another plan and this is the ‘unreasonable pre-option’ to soak up our fury. I wonder where they really want the elevated track will be. Above the Ville Marie Expressway?

        • ant6n 20:03 on 2021-05-24 Permalink

          Yeah like with the REM one: the project is full of problems, but the biggest one of the original proposal was the lack of McGill and Edouard-Montpetit stations. Once they added those in, it was hard to move the goal post to the next list of problems.

          Even if REM 2.0 fixed the downtown access, it will still be a very expensive, relatively low-ridership solution, which is redundant with an existing metro lone along a lot of its length, its new areas are on branches that are either low population and only exist for political reasons (East End), or it’s a branch (Norther branch) that is sort of okay, but is too far East to capture most of the population that needs rapid transit going downtown, and the REM will make it nearly impossible to get those more dense areas served by rapid transit later.

          The next line of problems is the expense and financing, and the lack of integrated long term planning (for example, will the REM 2.0 ever to West, how does it interact with commuter rail lines, how does it interact with the Blue line extension, the pink line, or various tram proposals?).

      • Kate 14:54 on 2021-05-22 Permalink | Reply  

        A demonstration for Palestine is being held in front of the Israeli consulate Saturday afternoon. The video on this page is very loud, be warned, if your browser’s set to autoplay.

         

        • Kate 14:51 on 2021-05-22 Permalink | Reply  

          The Gazette’s Marian Scott looks into the history of Chinatown and its prospects as greedy developers move in.

           

          • Meezly 13:56 on 2021-05-23 Permalink

            Good article with lots of interesting historical info.

        • Kate 09:27 on 2021-05-22 Permalink | Reply  

          The Journal’s “retour sur l’image” feature looks at a fancy hotel and theatre that used to be on Guy Street where Concordia’s buildings are now.

           

          • Kate 09:25 on 2021-05-22 Permalink | Reply  

            Is the Journal trying to stoke a regional scrap here with a piece on how Quebec City is getting a tunnel (the multi-billion-dollar 3ième lien, by no means universally popular up in Quebec – see video) but the province is not willing to pay for a tunnel to replace the Île-aux-Tourtes bridge?

            I wasn’t even aware the idea of a tunnel to Vaudreuil was in play. I’m sure commuters in that area would be happier with a reliable bridge than waiting several years for a vastly expensive tunnel to materialize.

            Update, of a sort: I was struck by this commentary from a Journal de Québec writer who says bluntly that the CAQ are prepared to spend $10 billion on the Lévis tunnel to clinch their position in ten ridings in the Quebec City area.

             

            • Kate 08:26 on 2021-05-22 Permalink | Reply  

              CBC says pollen levels are the highest we’ve seen in five years because of the early summer weather. We’ve just had one of the earliest heat waves on record.

               

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