A man was found with a bullet wound in St-Laurent on Thursday evening. The usual routine: known to police, not saying much.
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Kate
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Kate
This murder in St‑Hyacinthe is an odd one. A woman who stepped into a mall jewelry store to get a watch battery was killed by a man who had just stolen a knife in a smash-and-grab in a store in the same mall. No connection is known between the attacker and his victim; he was arrested and has been charged with first degree murder. The SQ say he’s known to police.
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Kate
I’ve been thinking I should get out and do some photos for the 2022 weblog calendar but can’t decide what to do. These have been the themes so far:
2018: Historical images
2019: Brutalism
2020: Columns
2021: StairsI would love suggestions.
Also, this November is the blog’s 20th anniversary. I can’t think of anything suitable except maybe a redesign, but do we need new features?
Update: Here’s a quick history of the blog to explain my reasons for not having updated the look or the mobile version. This blog started in November 2001 on Blogger, with no commenting, and went on like that for some time. After a point, Google bought Blogger and discontinued the system I was using where Blogger kept the posts in its database and transferred them to the website via FTP. This was when the blog was on montreal.com.
I moved the site to WordPress, but WordPress simply could not import all the posts from the Blogger database – there were a lot. So I started fresh, with commenting this time, still on montreal.com – but then that server had a bad disk crash and I lost a lot of posts and comments (which still makes me sad – there was a lot of good stuff on there, from many participants). I got the domain mtlcityweblog.com and restarted again with a new WordPress install but no history.
Anyway, this is why a) the contents of the current blog only go back to 2017 and b) why I’m nervous about trying to move the whole thing to the latest WP and a new template. Yes, I can back it up and I do, but it may not be possible to keep the whole thing online if it goes blooey during an upgrade. There are more than 10,000 posts on here now, and nearly 33,000 comments.
Ephraim
How about faded signs of yesteryear. Though, a lot of them would be banks of yesteryear… The Molson Bank on 288 St-James. There’s an old Bank of Toronto sign somewhere in town. SAQ at Rachel and St-Denis was a City & District with the bee hive clock and a “Banque d’Epargne” sign.
Blork
How about views of famous Montreal landmarks marred by dirty disposable face masks all over the ground?
Regarding features, I sometimes wish there was a FB-like “Like” button for people’s comments, but that’s a (gasp!) slippery slope.
Meezly
I feel like the alleys of Montreal are pretty unique. I know it’s been done before (what hasn’t?) but there are so many alleys to explore and it’s a nice organic change from hard edged architectural images.
Tim S.
Defunct signs would be cool. Or maybe street furniture, flower boxes, that kind of thing?
dhomas
I don’t know about themes for the calendar; I’m usually pretty happy to be surprised by whatever Kate decides on.
With respect to site features, though, I can add my wishlist items:
A proper mobile site (it sorta worked at some point, but hasn’t in a long time)
An “edit” feature for comments, so I can fix my silly typos.ant6n
suggestion: make the website more mobile friendly (I think it works well on ios, not so well on android). Enable https.
has archive of the older version been recovered and integrated here? Maybe there could be a button like “on this day 1/2/5/10/20 years ago”, going into the archive.
MarcG
The simplicity of the website is one of its strengths. I like the idea of an ‘edit’ feature as well but that would require accounts which sounds like a bother and it might deter some people from commenting.
mb
Definitely old street signage, Montréal has plenty of it!
Kate
Meezly, you’ve got an idea there. Thank you.
GC
I can’t think of any good suggestions at the moment, but congrats on the milestone anniversary!
thomas
An idea would be to feature the very narrow residential streets of Montreal that have survived redevelopment in isolated pockets in Montreal and are largely unknown unless one stumbles across it by chance. So I am thinking of streets like: Lartigue, Saint-Rose & Dalcourt, Demers, De Chateaubriand, Le Jeune. Though, perhaps, not visually interesting enough.
Kate
thomas, rem acu tetigisti. To find a theme that is both culturally interesting AND can be photographed interestingly, that’s the challenge.
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Kate
New construction will be coming on the north side of Louvain Street East between St‑Hubert and Christophe‑Colomb, a large lot that belongs to the city. The OCPM wants that side of Louvain to become a neighbourhood commercial street as an interface between the new buildings and existing residential streets on the south side. The project will include social housing and the OCPM wants to avoid any stigma that would tend to ghettoize its residents. Good reporting from Metro’s Amine Esseghir.
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Kate
A first mayoral debate was held Wednesday evening in front of people described by CTV as young voters (defined as people 35 years of age and under). Coderre just can’t drop the urge to “have Montreal recognized on the global stage.”*
Montreal North mayor Christine Black (Ensemble) is accusing Projet of a hidden agenda by selecting Will Prosper as its mayoral candidate. Although Black insists Projet intends to defund the police, evidently Valérie Plante is planning no such thing, given that she has supported the creation of a new squad to work on illegal firearms issues.**
*I’d be curious to know how many voters think this is a goal worth squandering millions on. I cannot express how stupid I think it is to try to inflate the city’s importance internationally, and I can’t help feeling it’s mostly a reflection of the ex‑mayor’s ego.
**I find it predictably creepy that Christine Black sees something sinister in the nomination of Prosper. If any borough in the city should have a Black mayor, it’s Montreal North – and I don’t mean Christine.
Jeff
Coderre probably has friends in real estate, and when he says he want montreal recognized, he probably just means he wants “big developers” to raise land values for his real estate buddies, and “big tenants” to pay big rents to his real estate buddies.
Mitchell
When a politician repeatedly uses the same or similar phrases, doesn’t that usually mean that it’s got meaning for his constituents? In this case, if that’s real estate developers, that seems like a pretty small number of voters, no? Unless he’s hoping they’ll pour money into his campaign? Otherwise, the phrase would suggest that he thinks there’s enough voters in Montreal who think being “recognized on the global stage” has a real meaning.
Jeff
I think municipal politicians and real estate developers typically have strong reasons to be friends. Developers depend on the local bureaucracy (permits, zoning, inspections, etc.), so it makes sense for them to donate generously to candidates who are friendly to them.
Kate
Would people rather have a few more Americans know about Montreal than have streets safer for cyclists and pedestrians, a reasonable pace for maintaining infrastructure, and a city that takes environmental concerns seriously? I don’t want to live in Jean Drapeau-ville, with a big showy party every few years to attract tourists, while the neighbourhood I live in is allowed to deteriorate because it isn’t part of the showpiece.
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Kate
The REM tunnelling process has emptied a wetland north of the airport. Ironically, the tunnel was supposed to spare the marsh, but now it’s damaging and possibly destroying a rare ecological niche for many species.
su
This kind of criminality is fine when it happens here in the G7 world, but we engage in great protestation when the same thing is done in far away places.
ant6n
Oh the trainsparence ppl are gonna have a big “told u so” day
Meezly
This is so frustratingly stupid. I’m grateful to the concerned scientists who’ve been monitoring the situation.
Suzanne Mills
Our public pension plan and it’s partners
ant6n
BTW that was one of the concerns at the BAPE
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Kate
Shots were fired overnight in eastern downtown but nobody was hurt. There were also reports of shots fired Wednesday afternoon in Rivière-des-Prairies but no evidence was found.
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