I see news items about smoke over Toronto, not here, but the sky looks smoky and the sun is a red circle right now.
Update: Added photo from Monday around 7:30 pm.
Updates from July, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
La Presse’s Mario Girard gives us a preview of the Esplanade Tranquille, which he calls the “missing piece” of the Quartier des spectacles. This all‑season square at Clark and Ste‑Catherine is intended to be a festival venue in summer, a skating rink in winter.
David74
My opinion remains that this is a dumb use of this land, which should instead be sold to a housing developer to max out the residential units on site, then use the money from that to build something like this on the Hydro Quebec tower parking lot that they had planned to turn into a park.
DeWolf
Wouldn’t the Hydro parking lot be a better place for residential, David? I think the location of this new square makes a lot of sense, given that it’s right on Ste-Catherine street and next to the Parterre. A square on the Hydro land would be isolated and not nearly as well used.
I’m impressed by the size of the trees that have been installed on the esplanade. They’re already quite big.
David74
It comes down to three things. The back side of the cop shop, the state and uses of Clark Street, and the sustainable development park that’s already there. Basically, you have Clark already nicely activated down on the south side of Sainte Cath, and a beautiful park as the entryway to your esplanade. On the current side, you have a bunch of grit and grimness that, if it’s ever replaced, will most likely become parking ingresses.
DeWolf
I don’t think that will be case. The old Screaming Eagle warehouse has already been demolished and will be replaced by a hotel with a café facing Clark Street. The retail opportunity is too much to pass up, and you can’t redevelop the old buildings at Ste-Cath/St-Laurent with anything tall enough to require an underground garage – there’s a 23-metre height limit.
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Kate
I see on Facebook that the MSC Melissa, the largest container vessel ever to berth at the Port of Montreal, arrived here early Monday.
David644
This is a post-Panamax ship, which is big and the biggest class we can berth, but not near the biggest out there.
Since I’m on the subject, if people are curious, there’s an excellent Trade Talks installment that explains the birth of container shipping: https://www.tradetalkspodcast.com/podcast/133-how-one-man-and-some-metal-boxes-revolutionized-global-trade/
I don’t think that episode explains how we get vessel classes though. Essentially, until very recently, it was all down to the capacity of the Panama Canal. This is how you get the first super container ship, the Panamax, which was built to the exact width and depth (ship draft) of the Panama Canal – anything larger couldn’t get through, and anything smaller left money on the table. The Canal and the ship classes grow together – showing the creativity typical of the shipping industry, the next were the Post-Panamax, and the Neo-Panamax. There’s another class too that navigates only the open ocean and the Suez Canal, imaginatively called the Ultra Large.
Arecibo’s collapse last year taught me a valuable lesson. All my life I had wanted to visit Arecibo and now I can’t. There are a few other iconic destinations on that list, including Biosphere 2, which I just returned from. But aside from Arecibo, the number 1 is the Panama Canal. Pre-Covid, I had this plan to fly down to Argentina and then book passage on a container ship from Buenos Aires through the Canal to Panama City. Late March 2022, you’ll me there.
And since this is a completely random and highly self-indulgent post, I’ll also add that even if you’re not a lover of South American maritime history, the place you didn’t know you wanted to visit is Valparaiso, Chile.
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Kate
La Presse’s Suzanne Colpron seems impressed by this renovated social housing project in St‑Michel.
I’m of mixed feelings. Do we still need to have outdoor stairs in this climate? I realize it increases the indoor volume if you don’t have to allow space for a staircase, but it seems like an unnecessary gesture toward tradition to create stairs that have to be shovelled and salted for part of the year.
MarcG
Just glanced at the photos and it seems to me like they’re combo balcony/fire-escapes, not main entries.
Kate
I didn’t see any views of anything looking like front doors, though.
Blork
In the second photo you can clearly see glass doors with handles that are typical of communal entrances, not private entrances.
Kevin
Those entrances look like they’ve been explicitly designed to not be used by wheelchairs, which makes no sense considering how many residents of the OMHM near me need mobility devices.
GC
It does look like there are maybe two choices for getting in but, yes, neither one looks wheelchair-accessible. What’s the point of those three steps to get to the glass doors? Why not make that level, or at least a ramp?
Spi
Because once you’re inside you’re probably confronted with having to take stairs to reach any of the upper floors units anyways. Putting in elevators is a significant undertaking and financially questionable for a 3 story building.
GC
That’s a good point, Spi, but wouldn’t the ground floor at least be accessible?
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Kate
The biggest local stories over the weekend were about possible hockey trades, as Jack Todd encapsulates here. It’s huge news that Carey Price (who may be nursing a serious injury), Shea Weber and Phillip Danault are not protected from getting traded. Anyway, people who are deeply into this will no doubt have more sources than I can link here. There’s as much discussion online in every format that anyone could want.
Matthew Surridge
To be needlessly precise, it’s not so much “trades” as “player movement” — there’s a new team (the Seattle Kraken) coming into the NHL next season, and they get to fill out their roster by selecting one player from each other team in the League (except Las Vegas, who themselves were only created four years ago). Teams get to protect some of their players from being selected, and the protection lists became public Sunday; due to injury concerns and contract, Price and Weber weren’t protected. Danault wasn’t protected either, but that has more to do with the fact that he’s going to be an unrestricted free agent — his contract’s up, he and the Canadiens couldn’t agree on an extension, and so because he’s played a certain length of time in the NHL he gets to sign with any team. If he can agree on a contract with them. (Apologies for the pedantry.)
Kate
No, it’s very welcome. Even as I wrote that post I was having a feeling that I wasn’t quite getting it right, hence my suggestion that people might look elsewhere for the details.
Uatu
Ugh. Just waiting for Todd and every other sportscaster/writer to say “release the Kraken” once hockey season gets closer
Kate
Or The Kraken Wakes?
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Kate
Shots were fired in a parking lot in Pointe Claire Sunday night, but no victims have turned up.
Kevin 20:00 on 2021-07-19 Permalink
We do have a smog warning
Myles 21:25 on 2021-07-19 Permalink
The sunlight outside my office window today definitely had that sickly yellow tinge I’ve seen more often in the past few years.
CE 09:18 on 2021-07-20 Permalink
The moon was very orange last night too.