I suppose the city’s hungry for a larger tax base, because the mayor’s really keen to see the Hudson’s Bay tower get built in some form.
Updates from July, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Linda Gyulai writes in the Gazette about how airplane noise is up, not just from airport traffic but from smaller craft doing sightseeing loops over parts of town. Living in Villeray, I’m under a flight path and well aware of the return of airport traffic, but not so much subjected to the tourist stuff, which I think mostly circulates over Mount Royal.
The big planes are a pain, sometimes enforcing the suspension of a conversation while they pass over, but in summertime it’s more the power tools that wear me down. Right now someone’s using a grinder nearby, and there’s seldom a day that isn’t marred by somebody running a saw or a grinder or some other noisy device. Some are not even necessary, like the guys who come and use huge leaf blowers on the frontage of the subsidized housing across the street. Leaf blowers, in July. I have to close the window.
Sprocket
I work near the airport. There have been fighter jets leaving. They are VERY loud. I also live on the flight path in Bois Franc, haven’t noticed too much of an uptick in traffic though.
Kate
I wondered if I’d heard something noisier than commercial jets recently, but fighter jets move so fast that they’re gone by the time you take note and look up.
EmilyG
Ugh. Power tool noise is maddening.
MarcG
A neighbour of mine has a tiny patch grass in front of his triplex and likes to weedwhack it on weekend mornings. It takes him about 30 minutes because he stops and examines the fruit of his labour at regular intervals.
EmilyG
And then there are the neighbours out here in the suburbs who use landscaping services, and they have multiple people with loud tools going all at once, throughout the day.
At least it’s not all day, every day, for a year, like when I lived in an apartment in town and the people who bought the place next door had renovators there all the time and we couldn’t do anything about it.Blork
Back in the late 90s I used to go up to the top of the mountain on nice Sundays and string up a hammock between two trees and spend the afternoon in something resembling pastoral bliss. It was nice except that every 45 minutes or so a helicopter would fly right over the mountain, not very high up, loop around, and fly away. All afternoon, every 45 minutes. Low enough that I could see it was the same helicopter every time (a Robinson R44). It was annoying. I assumed it was someone giving helicopter tours.
Fast forward a few years and here I am living in Longueuil, a few km from the St-Hubert airport. My place is perpendicular to with the flightpath, however, so it’s not a problem. Except for those damn helicopters. It turns out it’s a company that does helicopter pilot training AND tours, and my house is right under their flight path between their facility (next to the St-Hubert airport) and downtown Montreal. And now they have two Robinson 44s; a red one and a dark blue one. Those things go over my house at least 15 times every day. By now I’ve gotten used to it so I barely notice.
We’re also right on the flight path for PET, for planes coming in from the west when the wind is blowing towards the east (which is most days). So we have dozens of passenger jets flying directly over our house every day, but at least they’re still pretty high up (probably 2-3000 metres), and they are descending, so they’re not loud at all. Far less noisy than the helicopters.
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Kate
Despite news a few months back that the blue line extension would mean the closure of the Le Boulevard shopping mall at the end of this year, apparently the mall will stay open after all. If anything, the mall will be at a key transit point between the blue line terminus and the SRB Pie‑IX, and will probably flourish.
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Kate
Shots were fired Friday evening against the front door of a mother and daughter with no known criminal ties. Nobody got hurt, and police suggest it was simply a mistake.
Update: TVA has some photos and reactions to the incident.
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Kate
The young man found guilty last week of stabbing a man to death in Villeray in 2019 has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 12 years before he can be paroled. TVA’s headline that suggests Noah Pépin is being locked up “far from rehabilitation” could be misleading: it was the judge who said the fact that Pépin walked around armed with a knife suggests he’s not going to be easy to reform.
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Kate
The brothers of the teenager whose kidnapping set off an Amber Alert this week are staying in jail while a judge makes sense of what’s going on with that family.
walkerp
That poor girl. Where is she supposed to go? Sounds like the family is treating her as an asset.
Ephraim
Too many people think that Children are a possession, when in fact, they are wards. Sometimes the best choice is to remove a child from the situation entirely… and this sounds like one of those cases.
Kate
Most families want their kids to carry on their beliefs and their way of life. And there’s often trouble when they don’t.
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Kate
A man was shot near the Bell Centre on Friday afternoon. He’s not expected to die, and no one has yet been arrested.
Update: An arrest was reported Saturday, but the shooter is still at large.
TVA reports on a July marked by shooting, although only two fatalities by gun.
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Kate
Since we’ve discussed this before, I’ve got to post this story on how Longueuil has even more deer in Michel-Chartrand park than it did when this was first a story, and is still not decided what to do about it. The park can support 15 of them, but a rough count finds 70 deer now nibbling at the greenery there. That’s a lot of deer.
Blork
But they’s so adorbs! 🙂
What few people mention is that there’s an authorized hunting area in the Boisé du Tremblay, literally 2.5km from Parc Michel Chartrand. (And yes, that’s a whole other discussion about how it’s legit to shoot high powered rifles just a few hundred metres from people’s houses, but I digress.) Maybe they oughta just Pied-Piper a few dozen over to the Boisé come hunting season.
Spi
That’s fine, let nature run its course. The same people that were against culling them will be the first to complain when little Timothy finds the body of doe that died of starvation or they run one over with their car because they’ve left the confines of the parc to look for more food.
Blork
The problem with letting nature run its course is that it’s very hard on the whole ecosystem. After the Asian ash beetle and then this year’s unprecedented swarm of caterpillars, the park is looking grim. Dead trees everywhere. There are sections where it seems like there are more dead trees than living ones (although fortunately there are also parts where there are not many dead trees). All those Bambis chewing up new growth does not help. As much as I love having a doe sniff my fingers every day when I’m out for a walk, it’s a real problem.
CE
That’s a lot of meat.
Kate
Maybe Longueuil needs to start a tradition of transhumance where they have a festival: clear the streets between Michel-Chartrand park and the Boisé du Tremblay, and lure the deer to relocate to the Boisé, where happy hunters can deal with the surplus, and then everyone can have venison kebabs.
Blork
The Annual Longueuil Venison Kebab Festival works for me!
qatzelok
I like the Transhumance idea a lot.
I would go a step further and demolish all the housing between parc Michel-Chartrand and Boisé du Tremblay, as well as the suburban cul-de-sac subdivisions between PMC and the river.
The waterside highway 30 could also be removed in this section, and drivers would have to “portage it” for a few km so that the deer can access fresh water without stress.
MarcG
I just want to say that I love the mental image of people portaging their automobiles.
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Kate
A study has found that English has not contaminated Quebec’s French-language universities as much as was feared. However, the general dominance of English as a common language in many fields is still to be lamented.
“The study concludes that offering English-language training at French-language universities in Quebec is a phenomenon that needs constant observation.” And, I hope, firm suppression. You can’t go letting university students learn a second language.
Meezly
God forbid that francophone graduates will find jobs outside of Quebec, like in Ontario, Europe or the U.S., if they learn some English. Or attend international conferences where English is the common language.
“The authors of the CSLF study point out there is a trend in many western countries where English is not the national language to offer bilingual training, resulting in its dominance in the economic, social and cultural worlds.”
Like no shit, it’s common sense and the current reality. Are Quebec universities so anti-English that they can’t or won’t offer this? Are other non-English universities in the world complaining about the English language? Or is this an unique Quebec phenomenon?
It’s fine if they “lament” the lack of French support and recognition, but the reality is that there had to be one language, and it sucks that it ain’t gonna be French, so deal with it. Would they have preferred Mandarin?
JP
Do people also forget that bilingualism/multilingualism is also simply good for the brain in terms of aging and all that?
And, yeah, I think many places accept that English is, for instance, the language of science. It doesn’t mean other languages have no value, no worthy literature, songs, books…whatever. It has just worked out that way. As global citizens, it makes sense to be able to efficiently communicate science using a universally(?) understood language.
vasi
I wonder if the study counts keywords like “if” and “else” in programming languages as English content? Thankfully, it shouldn’t be much work to migrate all computer science courses to a new, linguistically pure programming language used only in Quebec.
Uatu
That would be a great example of le Leadership! 😛
jeather
The government did actually considering writing a new programming language and something for CSS/html/whatever the tech of the day was so that the tech people could work in French. But apparently no one was willing to do that.
This really shows that the idea is not to protect French but to protect the ability to be successful in any field, unilingually. And there are jobs here where that is possible, but it’s never going to be true for every job.
Raymond Lutz
@jeather I don’t remember (and can’t find) any ‘in house’ effort for developing any new programming language. The nearest I can imagine is the PQ government asking Logo Computer System Inc to translate and port their LOGO interpreter to the MATRA MAX 20e from Bytech-Comterm-Matra circa 1983 (http://www.ti99.com/exelvision/website/index.php?page=axel)
JoeNotCharles
LISP for everything!
Raymond Lutz
(LOGO
(is
(LISP
(without
(parenthesis!))))).Forth reversed is LOGO and ref
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Kate
Another piece Friday on how restaurants are coping with staff shortages, in some cases reducing hours, or even closing.
I’ve been doing a job* that involves a lot of walking around central neighbourhoods – Villeray and Petite-Patrie mostly so far. And this much I can tell you: on nice days, Little Italy is bustling, every terrasse packed with people evidently enjoying themselves. Equally, Villeray, wherever there’s a terrasse, is jumping. So some restaurants are doing just fine. Maybe these places with problems should look at other restaurants and what they’re doing, because there are places efficiently serving a populace ready to go out and get Lucullan.
Added later: It’s not just restaurants that can’t fill job vacancies.
*I’ll talk about it later.
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Kate
Here’s La Presse’s driving notes for the weekend. And there’s always Mobilité Montreal to consult.
On reddit, the sign above was posted warning of closures on René-Lévesque for a film shoot. Robert-B to Guy is quite a slab of road to shut down – they must be planning a car chase at least.
JP
I wonder what movie it is. I know a couple of weeks ago the Transformers film shoot was taking place all over the city it seemed. Not sure if they’re done.
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Kate
The city’s consultation bureau says the tower proposed to be built on top of the Bay building downtown is too tall and too dominant and should be scaled back.
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Kate
Superior Court has lifted Sue Montgomery’s suspension as borough mayor, while a judge looks into her appeal against the municipal commission.
Montgomery’s tenure as borough mayor seems to have produced nothing but legal wrangling, although I doubt she went into the political fray with such an intention. But after her well publicized troubles with a certain unnamed harasser, which date back to her time as a Gazette journalist, is it not possible that someone identified her weaknesses and set out to bring her down legalistically? (“Just keep throwing complaints at her and you’ll keep her so busy defending herself that she won’t have time or credibility to make any changes in the borough”?)
Ideally someone would eventually tell the whole tale objectively, although even trying to interview people and get the real story would probably founder on more “he said, she said” accounts that would shed no more light on the matter.
Dominic
What drama. I dont think we will ever find out.
walkerp
Would be nice to see a list of actual things completed in the borough while she has been in power.
I do feel like there is a failure of local journalism here. Not critiquing any individual as maybe the background to a story like this requires too much speculation and it’s not big enough to merit that kind of gossip. If blogs were still around, we might have got some real dirt.
ant6n
“Montgomery’s tenure as borough mayor seems to have produced nothing but legal wrangling (…)”
What’s Plante’s tenure produced? I guess there’s the REV. St-Denis is indeed much nicer now, too bad I don’t live in the area anymore. Oh they also did buy a bunch of diesel buses right at the start. Oh they are doing a study now on the pink line, which I guess is now a tram to Lachine. Did I forget something?
dhomas
Plante and her team also accomplished:
-Getting us out of the ridiculous Formula E dealAllowed car sharing services downtown
Transit fare cuts for the young and the elderly
Made the city more livable for people actually living here (not people driving in from the suburbs)
Did quite a bit to advance social housingI’m sure there’s more. But I can say I much prefer what she’s accomplished, given the fact that she also had to contend with a pandemic. Coderre had a ton of money to play with for the 375th anniversary of Montreal and basically just used it to try to make himself look like a big shot.
walkerp
I’ve got issues with PM but they have done more to improve Montreal from my perspective than any other previous mayor in the 17 years we’ve been here. It’s easier to get around, looks nicer and several minor services have improved.
Kate
PM has calmed streets a good deal. There’s more to do, boroughs vary, but it’s been something good but non-showy that they’ve focused on.
MarcG
It’s hard to know who’s responsible for what but in my neighbourhood there have been a lot of new speed bumps, stop signs, whatever those bump-outs with a little garden in them at street corners are called, and bike paths over the last few years and I like it.
Mark Côté
my neighbourhood there have been a lot of new speed bumps, stop signs, whatever those bump-outs with a little garden in them at street corners are called
FWIW it’s the same in NDG, so apparently the city council here has been able to accomplish some things. They even tried to put in bike lanes on Terrebonne but that was a step too far for car lovers.
Tim S.
I can say that in NDG, my PM councillor has been able to respond to many of the requests or suggestions I’ve made – better signage, adding pedestrian measures and so on. Sure, they’ve been small-scale,but it’s proof that at least part of the borough government is still functioning and able to deliver for residents.
H. John
Here’s Justice Phillips preliminary ruling:
Kate
Thank you, H. John.
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Kate
The story told here by La Presse about Joe Ortona – currently one of Denis Coderre’s star candidates – is a little vague around the edges because of a confidentiality agreement at the heart of it. But Ortona “stepped down” as city prosecutor in 2016 after some sort of deal was made, although it’s alleged here that it was actually a dismissal, after Ortona tried to fight parking tickets.
Nothing yet about Coderre dismissing Ortona from his team, though.
Ephraim
The same Joe Ortona from the EMSB school board, right? Do we need to say more?
Kate
That’s the guy.
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Kate
A man displaced from his apartment by his landlords has had a hell of a time finding a new place to live.
denpanosekai 14:16 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
OCPM is NIMBYing the shit out of this project……… it’s downtown for fuck’s sake. Build them tall and often!
Kate 14:26 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
Taller than Mount Royal?
Ephraim 17:43 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
If we don’t build more places for people to live in the city… they will live in the greenbelt. We need higher density… higher, but with some greenery around it or in it. People complain about rent… well, we need more apartments, houses and condos if you want rents to be affordable. It’s economics 101… supply and demand. And if we curtail supply while demand is increasing… we get higher rents and higher prices for condos and houses. Open up the supply… build higher, smarter, more sustainable with more green space.
ant6nd 18:42 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
There are diminishing returns for height. Skyscrapers in parks don’t compete well on density with more urban/human-scale forms.
Kate 18:55 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
Ephraim, you would be astounded to know how many flats and apartments are standing empty in this town right now. If they were rented out, we would have no housing crisis.
ant6n 21:08 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
Germany has the Zweckentfremdungverbotsverordnung, declaring leaving residential units empty an illegal use for them. Isn’t there something similar here?
Ephraim 21:25 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
@Kate – There are likely many reasons, including the fact that with the standard lease, it can take from 6 months to a year to regain possession, but if you rent short-term, you can take possession at the end of a month. And of course we don’t tax unoccupied apartments. Which is one reason that we should have a registry of addresses and occupancy for tax purposes. But then… that’s a silly idea, following the money.
Perhaps a modification of the tax roles so that you have to register the occupant to pay residential rates, and if it isn’t occupied, a tax rate that is commercial, for example… so there is an incentive to have it occupied. I don’t know enough to figure out how to do this, but we do need to do this. Just as we need to build more to lower the supply and demand curve.
Ephraim 21:27 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
RQ requires you to list the SIN of someone that you pay as an independent contractor. I had to list the payments to my handyman for RQ. I don’t see why we can trace SIN to occupancy.
Philip M 00:46 on 2021-08-01 Permalink
Just pointing out that the Bay tower would be for offices, not housing.
Kate 09:16 on 2021-08-01 Permalink
Is there growing demand for office space, though?
Uatu 10:09 on 2021-08-01 Permalink
Office space? I thought that there was enough downtown. I just don’t want even more of de maisonneuve covered in shadows
Kevin 17:09 on 2021-08-01 Permalink
There is demand for smaller offices, tiny spaces for a couple people to work, and that’s why contractors are carving up large offices into small places.
Another big office tower downtown is a pre-pandemic business model that should have been rethought before it was submitted.