Urbanist Marc-André Carignan writes a Le Devoir op-ed about how the REM shows an appalling indifference to ugliness.
Something a commenter said on Twitter recently struck me. We just managed to get rid of the high pylons of the Bonaventure, and the highest pylons of the Turcot – and now this.
New daily Covid cases in Quebec rose over 2000 Friday, the first time since last January and the pre-vaccination era.
Is this Omicron? BBC News says you need three jabs to ward it off.
I’d guess it’s the fall delta wave. It’s been going very strong in central Europe since October.
It’s the inevitable result of the reduction in restrictions and the lack of concern for air quality in schools and work.
If you have to get a test, make an appointment. Lineups at walk-in clinics are more than an hour long, outdoors, and there are dozens of young children in line.
Although most of the people who make use of the tent shelter on Cabot Square are not Indigenous, the city has set things up so it offers little support and insists that it’s on Indigenous groups to find the money to keep it open.
The teacher attacked Thursday was stabbed in front of his class teaching art at the EMSB’s John F. Kennedy high school. The Journal specifies that the class had just ended when the student, who wasn’t in that class, came in and stabbed him in the chest. The photos of the teacher shown by CTV and by the Journal are quite different, but age and a haircut can change a man.
Update: The prosecutor is already asking for the attacker to be sentenced as an adult, which strikes me as premature.
Second update: the teenager has been charged with attempted murder.
The teacher looks fairly buff, like he could handle himself in a scuffle. Glad it’s not too serious but still pretty brutal. Seems like a case of mental illness, as everybody liked the teacher and didn’t seem to be any history there between him and the student. I sure hope this doesn’t trigger a lot of security hysteria. Shit happens.
Oh yeah, it’s ‘mental illness’ because . . . everyone liked the teacher.
In other news, mental illness also resulted in every other crime in Montreal, and we can just let everyone off now.
Mental illness, at least of the sort that leads to violent actions, isn’t a “get out of jail free” card. Look at Ali Ngarukiye. He’ll be kept at Pinel indefinitely. And I don’t imagine Pinel is a party.
It’s a get out of jail free card in most cases, yeah.
^ The autodidact’s idea of wit.
No, just a widely shared sentiment around these parts.
True that the thinking has declined a lot on this site over the 15 years I’ve been haunting it. A shame.
Still a lot of quality – only because of Kate actually being a good news-hound – but where it was once a source of interesting and contrarian discourse, discussion of things to do over the weekend, subsidiary links to interesting articles, etc. . . .
Now, we have an ossified gang (and I continue to consider myself a part of that, even as I’m close to exiting), complaining almost every post about Quebec, virture signaling about how they Quebecois are racists because they’re not on board with this whole Canadian thing, complaining about the growth and development of this amazing city, and just going all-out, stone cold, anti-capitalist.
Not interesting, good sir, not interesting.
You can hate on me, and maybe one of these days Kate will ban me or I’ll just stop posting, drummed out like some of the other really interesting people who used to be ultra-regulars.
See ya, I can see you celebrate and clap in victory that a real-life person with a semi-important job stops reading what you say about the city and place you live.
I see. The thinking has declined since you showed up. Makes sense. G’night, troll.
A Westmount mansion that sold for $18.5 million is lauded here as the biggest single house sale in Quebec history. With a profile of the buyer.
Looks like it’s further east than Westmount — “dans l’arrondissement Ville-Marie, à Montréal,” says the article, and Google Maps specifies that it’s north of Pine somewhere above where Drummond ends. This piece has more photos:
Wonder why they knocked off a million and a half off the sale price.
Interesting that there’s no Google streetview on Redpath crescent – can you buy that too?
You need to re-read that, it clearly states the previous record was $18M for a property on redpath crescent.
The $18.5M one is indeed in Westmount.
Oh, I see, yes, that’s the one on Sunnyside. Teach me to respond to things before having coffee. Googling around I see the ‘Downton Abbey of Westmount’ is also apparently called Timmins Estate:
The Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM), under its chairman, Valérie Plante, is asking Quebec for more money for social housing. A big project to convert east-end Grace Dart hospital, which used to be a big CHSLD, into a condo complex an apartment complex with some social housing, has been stymied by Quebec’s unwillingness to pitch in to support the social housing units.
The Grace Dart hotel isn’t being turned into a condo complex as you put it. “l’ancien hôpital Grace Dart, rue Sherbrooke Est, qu’il compte rénover et agrandir en vue d’y créer 300 appartements locatifs traditionnels.”
Grace Dart used to have two buildings and the CHSLD is still open on Ste-Catherine. The former Hospital on Sherbrooke St. was closed in 2016 and most of the residents moved to St-Anne’s in the West Island. Despite their location in the east end it’s a very Anglo institution, which is why it’s in the West Island CIUSSS.
Thanks to both of you for the clarifications. My mother ended her life in that CHSLD, which I recall as being quite close to the railway line, so I was surprised to see no trace of it in the aerial mockup shown in the story.
Reporting from East of Pie-IX.
Grace Dart CHSLD would be very close to the railway line, as it’s at the very end of Ste-Catherine where it meets Notre-Dame. There is an active railway parallel to Notre-Dame that services the port. There are also train tracks right behind the CHSLD, which are on the site of the soon-to-be Ray-Mont container center that’s recently been in the news:
https://goo.gl/maps/DtzrgMZJBjyn2813A
Grace Dart Hospital is a little further “North” on Sherbrooke, close-ish to Hopital Maisonneuve-Rosemont:
https://goo.gl/maps/5vfZAKPwyPS74NN87
It’s a very handsome property, which is somewhat secluded from the busy street due it being further back on the plot of land and because of all the old growth trees lining the property. From the street, you cannot even see the building because of these features. I hope they’ll be able to keep all those trees when they redevelop.
dhomas, a few times I got my mom into a wheelchair and pushed her around in those grounds. It was really nice and very quiet – there can’t be many trains on that track because I don’t remember hearing any.
Here are your driving crises of the weekend.
We may get freezing rain Saturday, or in Montreal it may be just rain.
Also there will be police checkpoints for holiday drinking.
James 17:59 on 2021-12-10 Permalink
Too bad that Star Trek transporters haven’t been invented yet. it seems like people want better public transport but don’t want to see it. The alternatives with population growth are either wider and more inhospitable roads or more gridlock. The alternatives for powering the train are 3rd rail or catenary and 3rd rail is definitely not the choice to make with our climate. There are no magic solutions to hide a system like this unless you are willing to spend a LOT more money to bury everything.
dhomas 19:44 on 2021-12-10 Permalink
I don’t see the metro from ground level.
walkerp 20:01 on 2021-12-10 Permalink
The government is willing to spend a lot of money on a stupid tunnel for cars.
DeWolf 22:52 on 2021-12-10 Permalink
I really wish people would stop comparing six-lane roadways to a double-track railway. The REM is ugly but it is completely disingenuous to compare an electric train to a pollution-belching, noisy, pedestrian-endangering expressway that degrades everything around it.
But I certainly agree that our priorities as a society and a province are completely backwards. The government is eager to spend $10 billion on the troisième lien when that same amount as dismissed as too expensive for a new metro line that would serve several times more people.
ant6n 23:07 on 2021-12-10 Permalink
It’s also disingineous to compare a suburban mini metro designed by a money-seeking entity that is sucking money out of transit as whole and privatizing important infrastructure with our urban metro system.
ant6n 23:14 on 2021-12-10 Permalink
Invoking nonexistence of star trek transporters to show it as inevitable that transit has to be ugly and not well designed is kind of silly. Transit could also be well designed, high capacity, and strengthening urban areas rather than suburban ones (that is, encourage walkable neighborhoods instead of sprawl).
Kevin 14:49 on 2021-12-11 Permalink
I thought the pillars were ugly. The overhead wires are like tinsel, accentuating garbage.
If they don’t hold up well to freezing rain the REM is going to be useless for months of the year.
I am just picturing Vancouver’s trolleys, which detach from the wires whenever they go a bit too fast.
Ian 19:40 on 2021-12-11 Permalink
“Something a commenter said on Twitter recently struck me. We just managed to get rid of the high pylons of the Bonaventure, and the highest pylons of the Turcot – and now this.”
Agreed – and even worse, these raised concrete tracks are in places the Turcot & Bonaventure never went to. I realize that the West Island along the 40 is not exactly bucolic, nor is the Southwest along the tracks – but they also didn’t look like the bottom of the Met at St Denis.
Not like the track goes anywhere useful west of Dorval, at least the old train followed the lakeshore where people actually live and work. It’s pretty clear the entire point of the REM in the west island is to encourage new development and yes, increase sprawl. It certainly won’t serve the needs of existing west island commuters, or people commuting to the west island.
One thing I think a lot of the regulars here don’t realize is that a large proportion of west islanders don’t actually leave the west island much. They might live in Pointe Claire, work in Dollard, and go to school in Ste Anne. The REM doesn’t help any of them, and the bus service is sporadic at best. The majority of young people living in the west island rarely leave the west island, and I can guarantee they all plan to buy cars which they will only get rid of if they move downtown for work.
Uatu 21:57 on 2021-12-11 Permalink
If the young West Islanders are like the ones I know, they can’t wait to move downtown. Like I’ve said before, the REM is just a means of making the real estate holdings of the caisse more attractive to buy. Anything else like public transport is secondary
ant6n 01:17 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
@Kevin
Ice on overhead wires could be a bit of a problem, but the trolley issue won’t be. These use pantographs, not trolley poles, which is a much more robust technology (pantograph: long stick with wheel rolling along wire. Pantograph: long metal bar perpendicular to overhead wires pushing against them)
david448 03:02 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
There’s like an iron law in Montreal that nothing positive and progressive can occur without a chorus of cynical naysaying, catastrophizing, and concern trolling, assuming every possible negative scenario as an inevitable and obvious straight line to the complete destruction of both the city and everything it stands for.
Somehow the town survives despite growing, developing, new restaurants opening, laws changing, and all the rest.
The REM could have been done better, but when that thing opens it’s going to be amazing, and in 2030 or whatever, people won’t even be able to imagine the city without it.
Push and advocate for the best possible moves on the eastern expansion (which I still don’t think will happen, frankly), but don’t act like this is some sort of dystopian or transparently moronic idea, because it’s just not.
Kevin 09:53 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
@ant6n
Thanks. Like just about everyone else i missed the connection technology in all the promotional material.
Ian/Uatu
The West Island produces two results: love it or hate it. I think it runs pretty close to 50/50
ant6n 11:47 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
@davidXXX
Youre building a straw man.
Don’t tell anybody how they should advocate for a better city.
Ian 18:21 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
@Kevin it’s funny how the east island is just as suburban and even more underserved by transit but nobody complains about them the way they do about the West Island. One might almost think it has to do with othering Anglos than urbanism.
ant6n 22:19 on 2021-12-12 Permalink
@Ian
That’s not true. Up to and including Anjou (a bit beyond the A-25) the East somewhat suburban, but it is more urban, more dense, better served by transit, having better bus+metro connections, having more transit usage and having less distance from downtown than the West island. As you go further east it becomes indeed more suburban (montreal-est, PAT) but there are much fewer ppl living out there compared to the west island.