A report from a committee of experts has expressed serious doubts about the deleterious effects the REM de l’Est would have on the urban fabric at multiple places along its proposed route.
I was listening to CBC radio and they had Chantal Rouleau on again, reciting robotically that CDPQ‑Infra is listening to critics and residents and paying attention to their concerns. You could tell she didn’t believe a word she was saying. This is such open and blatant bullshit.
Six of the passengers on that notorious Sunwing flight at the end of last year have received heavy fines for openly flouting pandemic and normal airline rules.
Antonia Nantel, one of the founders of the OSM, will be honoured by having a foyer in the Maison symphonique named after her.
In other OSM news, the performances by Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev have been cancelled.
In other Women’s Day news, three women were declared historic figures this year: Nantel, Ludmilla Chiriaeff of the Grands Ballets Canadiens, and an indigenous woman of the 19th century called Lawinonkie Marguerite Vincent. Wikipedia gives her name as Marguerite Vincent Lawinonkié and tells a somewhat confused tale about her being born a Mohawk, although the work for which she’s renowned was done in Wendake among the Huron. CTV mistranslates the CP text and says she was “the Lawinonkie craftswoman Marguerite Vincent” but that’s not a tribal designation, it’s her name.
The format for Ste-Catherine Street will also be applied to Peel Street between René‑Lévesque and Sherbrooke: a bike lane, more trees, and only one lane of traffic.
Of course CBC found some people who hate it.
The arrangement for the bike path is very awkward. And the stretch from the north side of Dominion Square to de Maisonneuve should probably be pedestrianized outright.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a huge improvement over the current situation. But we’re going to look back in 20 years and think this was very unambitious.
The only link that I found from the city was this: https://www.realisonsmtl.ca/peel?tool=map#tool_tab
It seems that the city went with option 2 : 1 bike lane but in what direction? I guess south-bound.
I’ve already used the Peel REV from the canal up to René Levesque and it is a big improvement.
In all scenarios, no bike path was proposed between De Maisonneuve and Sherbrooke however – I guess to narrow…
Very disengenuous to say people were not consulted. The report says that public sessions were held in May 2019. However, option 3 (no bike path) was the most prefered option with option 2 in 2nd place.
The bike path runs in both directions. There’s already a unidirectional bike path on Peel below René-Lévesque that was completed just before winter. It will be extended to Cypress, at which point there will be a traffic light and cyclists will switch to a bidirectional path on the west side of the street. It just seems a bit over-engineered. And it runs against the city’s own policy of moving away from bidirectional bike paths because they create a lot of conflict and confusion at intersections.
I just read the CBC article and I just can’t with Ensemble anymore. At this point they’re lying outright, because they know this project has been in the works for several years and the merchants have been involved every step of the way.
DeWolf: Where is this information available? The city’s planning and public consultation documents showed 3 options but no information seems to be available about what was finally chosen. Press release is pretty unclear. I could say the same thing about many the city projects.
Based on your explanation, the final concept is like option 2 but with bi-directional path on Peel from de Maisoneuve until Cypruss and then changing to 2 uni-directional all the way to the canal. No path will be on Metcalfe as was previously proposed in the public consultation.
100% agree about Ensemble – Projet has a clear mandate since the election to proceed with bike paths and this particular projet has been in the works for many years. There are no surprises here.
Taylor C. Noakes writes a spirited piece about Montreal’s lost cinemas, making a telling point about how having a neighbourhood movie house was often the anchor point for a neighbourhood’s commercial street. He also notes how toothless the heritage designation can be.
As sometimes happens fortuitously on Twitter, the link to Noakes’ story directly followed a tweet by Heritage Montreal, concerning Fulford House on Guy Street, a building Mario Girard says is in demand both by Chez Doris, for homeless women, and by Concordia University, which has begun to feel it has a sort of eminent domain around its downtown campus.
Excellent article by Taylor Noakes. I’ve followed the Empress story over the years–decades–since it was a favorite of my mother’s in the Cinema V days. It is shameful waste of what could be a wonderful neighborhood resource. Great photo, too, not just for the Loews but for the Murray’s restaurant. My nostalgia is limited by memories of how bland the food was, but there was something quintessentially Anglo Montreal about Murray’s. At least, the white bread (the metaphor is apt here) Anglo Montreal of 50 years ago.
The city will welcome floating Petri dishes cruise ships again as of April.
Cruise ships are really no different than any junction point, like a shopping mall, a hotel, schools, daycares or a senior’s centre. It’s a closed system where people breath, touch and share within a closed system. When you have a certain amount of people who don’t properly wash their hands, breath the same air, etc, there will be cross contamination… and the handles on the serving spoons for a buffet (UGH!). And let’s not forget that when people on vacation they are less likely to stay in their room when sick because they don’t want to waste a day of vacation and the day they are in port. How many people do you see who pick up food from a buffet, set it down and then walk over to the bathroom to wash their hands? (Which is one reason that I think the city should mandate that bathroom sinks be outside the bathrooms, so we can see people wash their hands… or they can wash their hands without having to go into the bathroom.
When I walk through any of these junction points, I have to remind myself not to push elevator buttons, not to touch handrails, not to touch handles, and to watch how employees use their hands when serving food, etc. Just wearing gloves means nothing if they flip their hair with their hand or worse, deal with cash, touch credit cards, etc. And are they wearing masks when dealing with cold food? And I’m not germaphobic…. Had to learn food handling… it makes you a lot more aware of the things people do.
Well yes – but a cruise ship is a teensy bit more likely to bring strains of disease from other locations to which local folks are less likely to have been exposed.
I was hoping the pandemic would have killed off the cruise ship industry. Wishful thinking.
I would’ve thought a lot people, especially seniors, would’ve been turned off by cruise ship voyages with the Diamond Princess debacle of 2020. Apparently not.
Not to mention cruising is a HUGE source of environmental pollution and degradation that affects air, water, soil, and fragile habitats. There should really be a moratorium on pleasure cruises visiting Antarctica.
@Meezly I imagine that the kind of people who like to go on cruises have been waiting two years to go on a cruise and couldn’t care less about COVID, the environment, whatever. I assume none of them comment here LOL
@Kate – Well… which is more likely, a cruise ship or airplanes flying from place to place in hours?
Ephraim, even before the pandemic, there were many stories about cruise ships having mass outbreaks of Norwalk virus and other illnesses. There’s something about having a couple of hundred people penned up on a ship for weeks on end that simply breeds illness.
Kate – Norwalk is so prevalent everywhere… we usually call the stomach flu. It’s transmission is fecal/oral, which means it’s passed by common surfaces and unclean hands. So, we haven’t seen much of it in the last two years because people are washing their hands more often. It’s unenveloped, so alcohol kills only about 45% of it, but water/soap gets it 99.9%. The only difference is that the CDC in the US requires cruise ships to report Norwalk. Airplanes don’t have to report it, shopping centres, senior centres, amusement parks… no one but the cruise ships are required to report it.
Again, it’s one of these things that you can take precautions… most of which the pandemic has done to people… wash your hands, don’t shake hands, don’t touch handrails, don’t use buffets, etc.
It isn’t flu. Because people call it that, it doesn’t make it accurate.
It isn’t, but as I said, only cruise ships have to report cases… no one else does. So we don’t really know how prevalent it really is and the sources. It’s like bed bugs… people bring it to the hotels… so, is it really the hotel’s fault? The source of Norovirus is people who get ON the cruise ship.
Three Montreal rabbis have gone to Poland to help Ukrainian refugees there.
Various Quebec municipalities are preparing to welcome refugees if indeed anyone wants to come to North America and not remain in Europe. I keep reading things suggesting most Ukrainians want to stay close and go back home when they can: these are not people who were intending to emigrate to North America.
The SPCA is working with a group that saves refugees’ pets.
Volunteers are sorting the torrent of donations coming into the Ukrainian church in Rosemont. My understanding is that it’s almost always better to give cash (if you’re confident you’re not giving cash to scammers) than old clothes and other stuff which someone’s going to have to sort and store and deal with. But I suppose if any refugees do come here, they will need places to live, clothes and furniture and stuff for their kids.
I was told that they’re running out of stuff to buy in Poland so now they are shipping stuff directly. But this is at least third hand information by now, so take it for what it’s worth.
A lot of families are broken up. Do you really want to go to a country far away when your partner/father is still in Ukraine, possibly fighting and at risk of dying? Very few people will, and Poland will (have to) close its borders at some point.
I read that although Ukraine has an excellent and still functioning rail network, there aren’t good rail connections with Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova, so relatively few refugees end up there.
(Recent refugee map: https://www.joshuastevens.net/images/ukraine_refugees_large.png )
Rabbi Poupko, one of the Montreal rabbis in Poland, is an ardent Zionist who defends Israel’s occupation of Palestine unconditionally. He is an apologist for Israeli Apartheid. How can he defend Ukraine with one hand, and support Israeli aggression with the other? How can he condemn Russian violence and condone Israeli violence? Hypocrite. Sorry for the rant.
Odd… Ukrainian Jewish Holocaust Survivors often don’t have a very nice view of the Ukrainians, might have something to do with the fact that there was a Ukrainian division of the Gestapo and other collaboration with the Nazis. And it was in particular the Ukrainian nationalists who were supporters of the Nazis, hoping that it would lead to an independent Ukraine. Not to mention the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police who were used for the roundup of Jews for the Babi Yar massacre. So Jews supporting Ukrainian nationalism in itself is… hypocritical.
SMD 10:59 on 2022-03-09 Permalink
The BS was piled on even deeper this morning on CBC Daybreak, when Harout Chitilian (former city councillor, executive committee member and current CDPQ VP) deflected questions about the committee’s doubts by simply repeating that CDPQ had a “mandate” to develop the REM and would “consult with the stakeholders.” What he did not mention was that this so-called mandate was self-imposed (no elected or accountable public body asked CDPQ to develop the REM, this was entirely their profit-generating idea) and he wouldn’t say what the CDPQ would do if one of the stakeholders, like the City or Borough or ARTM, was not in favour of the plan for the REM de l’Est. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him.
dwgs 11:11 on 2022-03-09 Permalink
I heard that interview with Chitilian this morning. At points I was convinced that he was reading from a script in response to questions.
Robert H 11:40 on 2022-03-09 Permalink
Je l’ai déjà dit mais je ne peux m’empêcher de répéter qu’il faut annuler ce projet désastreux et depenser les dix milliards sur: le prolongement de la ligne bleu ET la ligne Vert, OU construire la ligne Rose et bonifier la navette fluvial (pendant l’ete) entre Centre-ville et Pointe-aux-Trembles. Maintenant que je ne suis plus jeune, je serai optimiste et j’espère que je vivrai assez longtemps pour voir la réalisation de l’une de ces travaux. À ce stade, la ligne bleue seule serait un miracle.
Kate 12:55 on 2022-03-09 Permalink
CDPQ-Infra continues to maintain that it’s adapting its designs in response to criticisms but anyone who observed the development of the new Turcot knows how empty these words are. They will put up a smokescreen of amenability and go on with their plans.
Does anyone believe that the charming scene shown under the REM in the photo on the CTV item will be true? Sauntering people, trees and greenery? Parks and greenery were promised all around the Turcot too – as was the footbridge. They’re a great selling point.
carswell 13:44 on 2022-03-09 Permalink
Try as it might, the CDPQ-Infra isn’t going to be perceived as doing anything other than putting lipstick on a pig. Not that that will make a whit of difference to Legault.
Ant6n 09:43 on 2022-03-10 Permalink
Cdpqinfra got a mandate from Legault to build transit to boost and reward votes in the east.