The strike by the city’s engineers will end Sunday, but not with a deal yet. They’ve agreed to negotiate intensively for two weeks to see if they can arrive at an acceptable contract.
Basically, after the Charbonneau commission report, it was found that the city relied too heavily on external expertise, allowing corruption to creep in. The union wants the city to value its own experts more highly.
The Tampa Bay Lightning will be the team challenging the Canadiens when the series begins Monday. The team’s interim coach will be out of Covid quarantine for the third match in the series.
Police are already making plans for handling crowds throughout that series, and in the event the Canadiens win, while public health is concerned about crowd exhilaration spreading Covid, and the possible damage that can be caused by letting off powerful fireworks in close quarters is also worrisome.
Le Devoir ponders an entire generation that has never seen the team so close to the Cup.
Typically, a Globe & Mail writer sees the Canadiens’ success as further humiliation for the Leafs. You know, things can happen in Canada that are not about Toronto.
Quebec has experienced its driest spring in 60 years, resulting in low river and lake levels.
Have to appreciate the genius of “Officials say the dryness is due to lower than normal precipitation levels.” You think maybe?
The dryness, yes, but the river and lake levels are more tied to snowfall and spring melting in Ontario and beyond (Great Lakes) than to local precipitation.
I was cycling along the Chamby canal last weekend (Richelieu River/Lake Champlain waterway) and at least by eye, the water didn’t seem low at all, at least as compared with the St. Larry.
You’re right about snowfall, which is essential for keeping the reservoirs full at the source of the Ottawa river and the Great Lakes, but record low precipitation has led some private wells to go dry. The Ottawa River at Ste Anne de Bellevue is noticeably very low
For the first time, games in the Stanley Cup final series will be played in July, with home matches on July 2 and July 5, and a possible match on July 9. The other matches will be played away, the result of the Islanders/Lightning semifinal series not yet settled.
Urbania considers how the Canadiens have always attracted ethnocultural issues.
The Gazette’s Allison Hanes tells us why the Royalmount project is a bad idea. I’m not clear why she writes in one paragraph that the project will include more condos, while later in the item she states that Carbonleo “slashed the number of condos slated to be built from 6,000 to 4,500 to 3,250.”
We need more apartments and condos in the city and more green space. If we have to give up things, we should give them up. But I can’t imagine that draw to living there, especially with TMR property taxes, in a noisy corner of the world. The population of the city is growing, if we don’t want people taking over the green belt and we want businesses in the city to survive, we need more density. Are these the right place? NO! Is this the right project? NO! But requiring more condos, not less is good for the city’s growing population. I’m sure someone wants to live there. No me, but someone.
Maybe we should densify tmr. They will soon have a metro with a 5 minute ride to downtown every 3 min
Easier said than done, Ant6n. That whole town was laid out for single-family housing except for a few apartment buildings in the “commercial” core in the centre of the spiderweb. Even if people were willing to sell their houses, zoning would probably make it difficult to tear them down and replace them with condo blocks. People are very resistant to changes affecting the value of their houses.
Some of the larger homes could be turned into rooming houses – they’re big enough.
The tower of the Olympic stadium is to close at least till 2023 for a major refit.
Aww. I didn’t know it hadn’t opened with he rest of the facilities. Pity, pplanned tto ttake some guests in the near future.
Looking forward to the end product. I have not gone since I was a kid, but I recall hearing it’s very dated inside.
I took a visitor up there once. It has a major flaw that can’t be helped: you mostly get a view of the east end of town – lots of house roofs in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve…
The article mentions that the renovations will give access to the rooftop with some kind of rooftop observatory. That would help with giving a 360 degree view of the city, at least once you get to the top.
A police car was flipped and tear gas has been deployed. Update: there were also 15 arrests and 60 tickets given out, but no reports of anyone smashing things up.
TMZ has a report with pictures.
From the TMZ link:
The Montreal Canadiens punched their ticket to the Stanley Cup Finals on Thursday night … and the fans went absolutely insane!!!
Leaving aside the casual slagging of mental disease, I think TMZ needs to adjust their expectations of what a riot actually is, last night’s rioting does not appear to have been a three-exclamation-point event. I predict much worse when the team either wins or loses – especially if they win.
Also funny was “At one point, a group of Habs fans — still wearing Habs gear — smashed up a police car and flipped it upside down!!” Sill wearing Habs gear!!! Were they supposed to don Golden Knights uniforms and then smash the cop car and blame it on the Vegas fans lol.
TMZ is basically a content farm designed to get as many people clicking on as many articles as possible. If it’s not AI writing for them at this point, their writers are scanning news articles and pumping out content in a certain style without much regard for quality or accuracy.
The Canadiens have reached the Stanley Cup finals now for the first time since 1993. Things are getting a little overexcited downtown.
It’s annoying that the thugs will loot stores, but it’s very, very exciting that the Habs have a shot at another Cup.
Waited so long for this.
It’s pretty wild. Coming out of a global pandemic (at least this phase of it), St-Jean, full moon, Habs win. Went for a crowd-watching walk last night and it really was an incredibly jubilant feeling. I’m very happy for the young people of this city who are at the age to truly love this sort of thing. They’ve earned it.
A lot of these people are in the 18-35 crowd who never stopped partying and aren’t getting vaccinated. I’m not sure those ones have earned anything.
MarcG, that’s a deeply unfair comment. I know many people in that age group who did everything they were asked and lost an important year+ of their lives. In a big population there were will always be a few outliers, but I don’t think it’s at all fair to point a finger at that entire generation. As for vaccinations, they’re at 65% (18-29), which is still impressive, especially compared to say, the US. Oh, and they’re also the ones working in essential (and non-essential) retail jobs. You know, supplying us with food and stuff.
Old man yells at cloud. The 18-35 year olds that I know definitely stopped partying for a good year and it was rough for them. These are people who are at the age where going out and socializing is the main phase of your life. They had it cut off from them and they handled it a lot better than the boomers and my own lame generation full of selfish individualists whining about vaccines. Not to mention their tough career and real estate economy we left for them. Such a weak comment.
We’ve clearly had different experiences over the past 15 months.
Anecdote fight! 🙂
Earlier this year I broke up a birthday party. Ten young adults who showed up minutes before curfew on a Monday night to a home where none of them lived, but one of them had a spare key. When I let myself in a couple hours later and gave the very loud unclothed people hell, they had a litany of excuses as to why their multiple health violations were ok just this once.
The parents who were out of town had told me it was going to be a few people getting together for a quiet night playing board games. When I told them what was actually happening they were furious they had been lied to.
Lucien Bouchard was made a citizen of honour of the city of Montreal Thursday.
I’m drunk, tired, and very happy right now, so maybe this is a product of that, but Bouchard . . . he’s been sort of rehabilitated from his 1990s villain status, hasn’t he?
We know that he’s pretty much always lived in Montreal, and we know that he has suffered some fairly horrific personal reversals. We know too that he did a lot of good when he was the prime minister, even if he wasn’t exactly a friend of the anglophone community (and that I personally was raised to consider him something equivalent to how drug addicts in the Philippines think of their president Duterte).
But I’ve met Bouchard and people around him quite a few times over the past couple decades and, as villainous as he seemed, guy is a decent chap in the end.
Lucien Bouchard était un promoteur de la privatisation des services d’aqueduc (lors de son mandant) et plus récemment un défenseur de l’industrie pétrolière durant l’épisode du “fracking” québécois. Un vrai gentleman en effet.
Is it just me, or did Plante make this gesture at least partly to placate the language nationalists snapping at her heels?
@Kate, that’s exactly what I thought. If Hadrien Parizeau had not sided with Coderre, PM would not have felt the need to dig up Bouchard.
She’s done quite a few things in this vein, all the french language this and that and, of course, the Landry station thing.
This Canada Day will be no celebration. If anything, we need to hold a silent march in black.
Some people are planning to wear orange, to honour victims and survivors of residential schools.
Orange seems oddly festive, unless you have Irish Catholic antecedents…
well you know, Orange is the new Black.
Moving Day, I think you mean.
Canada Day isn’t Moving Day the way it used to be. Back when rent was a lot cheaper relative to incomes, people moved house more often. If you weren’t moving yourself, usually you knew someone who was, who would reward you with pizza and beer for pitching in. But it hasn’t been like that in awhile. Now when you have an affordable apartment that suits your needs you’re not going to leave it lightly, even if it’s not perfect.
There are some ideas on how to observe Canada Day in solidarity with Indigenous people, here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CQg9nGVHBVf/
Thanks for that link, EmilyG.
You’re welcome.
And for those wondering why the colour orange was chosen: https://www.orangeshirtday.org/phyllis-story.html
Céline Dion has tweeted that she was never photographed in Golden Knights kit – it was, as suggested here and elsewhere, photoshopped.
A waterside resident who saw a seaplane crash in the Back River on Wednesday afternoon jumped aboard her personal watercraft and went to the pilot’s rescue. He wasn’t even hurt.
Police are bracing for a hot night in the old town in case the Canadiens win the series on Saint-Jean, and during a full moon too. The mayor is asking us not to riot.
CTV has published a letter from a consortium of bosses plus the head of the city’s chamber of commerce, ordering everyone back to the office.
Banks and insurance companies. I can see the regulatory challenges being harder for them or parts of them and it makes sense, but a lot of the tech workers will get to choose what they want. Many have moved out of Montreal, 2 out of 5 in my team went from NDG and downtown to south shore, another is looking for an hour plus away.
More of a plea since hardly anyone want to go back full time.
“Fifty-five per cent of workers downtown would like to go back to the office two or three days a week, and over 20 per cent would like to go back for four or five days.”
That’s the reality buried past the point most people stop reading: the vast majority would like to work from home most of the week.
It’s interesting you titled the thread that way, Kate, as it almost implies we haven’t been working all this time we’ve been doing it from home. (Thought that is likely not your personal belief…) Isn’t there evidence that many have actually been more productive without the office distractions? I do wonder, however, if many have also been working more hours.
It says a lot about the lack of imagination in our society’s leadership that people have to do something that makes them miserable because, with over a year to think about it, they can’t conceive of downtown differently than as a collection of service-sectors businesses catering to commuting workers. We must all do our part to save Tiki-Ming!
I’m in no hurry to get back to the office, but primarily because I don’t relish the idea of getting back on buses and the Metro. But I do miss seeing people around the office and the casual chats and whatnot. I also miss the downtown lunches (there were a handful of places I went to frequently and I sooo miss them!) I also miss the after-work 5 à 7s that just don’t happen when you work from home and home isn’t anywhere near most of your friends’ homes.
Incidentally, I read an article last week (The New Yorker maybe?) in which some apparent experts claimed the ideal number of days per week to work from home is two. As in, work from home two days a week, work at office three days a week. (I forget what exactly their criteria was, but I think it was along the lines of “what will make you happy.”)
I’m lucky in that my current employer is very flexible and I can do basically whatever I want, so I think I might opt for 3:2 (home:office) with the occasional 4:1 or even 5:0 if I goddamn well feel like it. And yes, I’m aware that not everyone has this privilege.
Interesting to see the names of the signatories…mostly male and francophone sounding.
Mostly members of the Conseil du patronat, but that isn’t surprising.
Facing dwindling enrolment, Lindsay Place High School in Pointe-Claire is closing with this school year, and the building will be taken over by a different anglophone school.
(I mostly remember the name because my high school team beat theirs, when I was on the team.)
But it’s the French language that’s threatened…
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