P.K. Subban has decided to hang up his skates after 13 years in the NHL. Here’s one of his notable goals for the Canadiens.
Updates from September, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
TVA reports that workers at Notre‑Dame‑des‑Neiges cemetery are planning a month‑long strike to underline their dissatisfaction in getting no new contract, but there are no details about what this will mean for the public. Will workers go on refusing to do maintenance, or will they also not do burials? Will people still have access?
Some clarification Wednesday from Radio-Canada: burials will continue, but administrative paper‑shuffling at the cemetery office will be halted.
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Kate
I keep a potted history of improvements to Mount Royal in the sidebar, and have added the latest: $60 million over five years to continue the endless task of limiting erosion where people cut new footpaths through the wilder parts of the park, plus a dozen other items including rearrangement of the Smith House area and parking lot, the south side and Cedar entrances, the Camillien‑Houde lookout, the escarpment trail, place de l’Amérique-Latine, upgrades on the cross, restoration of stairs, bridges, paths and other infrastructure, installation of furniture and signage, and preliminary archaeological excavation work.
I hadn’t even been aware that the little triangle on Park Avenue where Côte‑Ste‑Catherine merges into Park had a name, but it is indeed the Place de l’Amérique-Latine (it was originally, going by old photos I’ve seen, a tram turnaround loop). I had thought this was the name of the park at Rachel and St‑Laurent, but that’s the Parc des Amériques.
Joey
Also some plans to upgrade/renovate some elements in Jeanne-Mance Park (the very outdated wading pool, the soccer fields and the pathways). I guess the plan directeur for the park is finally done. Obviously nothing revealed yet about the issues that were top of mind to consulted citizens: a dog park, more bathrooms, the gone but not forgotten baseball field.
DeWolf
I also had to look up where Place de l’Amérique-Latine was. That’s a particularly interesting part of the plan because that whole junction is a nightmare for everyone who passes through it.
As usual, I’m disappointed about the lack of focus on providing more washrooms. They don’t need to be lavish facilities, but we certainly do need about two or three times more public toilets in all of the city’s parks.
@Joey, I know removing one of the baseball diamonds for the tennis court expansion was controversial, but was there really enough demand for two diamonds right next to one another? Especially when the field next to the diamonds is so intensively used by picnickers?
Blork
If I were Latin-American I think I would see the naming of that hostile and inaccessible patch of land as “Place de l’Amérique-Latine” not as a tribute but as a gesture of the middle finger.
Joey
@DeWolf there was at the time, hard to tell now. When you displace a community, it winds up… displaced. Anyway, 100% of players would have opted to keep the north field and ditch the south field, for many reasons (not the least of which is that the field is most often used between six pm and sundown, meaning you are always batting looking directly at the setting sun). BTW the diamond wasn’t removed to expand the tennis court. It was a dumping ground for the dirt they needed to excavate to rebuild the courts, with a promise to put it back. Then Luc Ferrandez and Alex Norris decided, on a BS pretext, to renege on their deal. I’ll leave it to others to determine whether they always planned it to work out this way to just took advantage of a temporary disruption to achieve their long-standing goal of getting rid of the field. That it’s not used for, like, beer pong on the weekends is a surely a victory for Projet…
jeleventybillionandone
@Joey do you think they’ll actually build a real dog park rather than just having unfenced offleash hours on the field next to av du Parc? I get the impression every time I bring it up with nos élus that it is never happening for one reason or another.
Joey
One of the things I appreciated about Luc Ferrandez was his seemingly total unwillingness to tell you what you wanted to hear – I distinctly remember him saying, and I can’t recall whether the context was the baseball field or the dog park, that he would allow any new fencing to go up in the park over his dead body (I might be exaggerating a tad).
One of the guiding principles of the Plateau administration when it comes to the park, apparently, is preserving the view of the mountain at all costs. So some of the prime spots for a potential dog park (considering that you would be drawing people who are as far north as Van Horne, etc.), like the spot where the makeshift unfenced dog park is just north of the peak of Parc ave or the spot where the grassless makeshift soccer field is, seem to be pre-emptively ruled out because they would require new fences that would osbtruct the million-dollar views of the people who live on Esplanade. Insert shrug emoji here.
My guess is they will either punt on the dog park or build a small one closer to the Duluth/Pine areas of the park. I don’t have a dog, so I can’t say whether that would meet the needs of Mile-Enders, etc., but I suspect it wouldn’t.
One thing that seemed abundantly clear throughout the consultation process (but especially at the end) was the total unresponsiveness from city officials, elected and unelected, to the actual stated demands of citizens and residents who participated in their sessions. I am certain that whatever the plans are, when they are revealed we will be told that they are the product of citizen engagement – I am equally confident that they will reflect the desires and initial viewpoints of the borough administration. How much those two overlap is a guessing game at this point.
Anyway, we’ll wind up with a prettier verison of what we have now – a park with a big fat football field (lit up at night!) where young kinds can bash their brains in, with no space for dogs to run around safely and the ghosts of the north field floating nearby…
Ian
I find it telling that Norris has been effectively muzzled since Ferrandez quite. Plante probably got tired of having to apologize for stuff he had doubled down on.
Joey
@Ian this is just my impression (Norris was, after all, named majority leader after the last election), but I suspect that Norris wields considerable influence behind the scenes, though Projet is perhaps more interested in having the mayor and fewer middle-aged white men who’ve been around forever be the face of the party. It also feels like beyond curb extensions and arguing with the premier, the party doesn’t have much it wants to do…
dwgs
This discussion of a potential dog run has been going on since I was part of the dog crowd there in the early 90’s, I wouldn’t count on any imminent changes.
walkerp
So Norris is basically the boss of PM in Plateau?
They have been weirdly quiet. I wonder if that is also a function of city hall tightening up party discipline?Ian
Since Huggins got thrown under the bus, Bergeron flipped, Ferrandez quit, and Ryan retired our old pal Alex represents the last of the old guard. That he didn’t get the boot over Clark street or bagelgate, let alone his well-deserved reputation as an abusive zealot (I have seen and heard receipts that are pretty shocking) says a lot about how much grassroots power he still wields.
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Kate
The city is considering buying the remaining rooming houses in town – there are 78, containing 1270 separate lodgings – to keep these modest rentals available at an affordable rate.
Blork
Oh boy. What a can of worms. I applaud the idea behind it, but turning the city into a landlord (arguably, slumlord) is a Pandora’s box of issues.
If they don’t renovate, they’ll be seen as city-owned slums. If they do renovate, they’ll be seen as gentrifying. (Both are incorrect, but how people see things rarely coincides with how they actually are.)
So they need to find a rather fine balance point of keeping them clean and liveable without making them more expensive. Probably not hard to do on an individual basis, but once it become a bureaucratic thing all bets are off.
Ephraim
This should have been done a long time ago. But these places need micromanagement…really. Someone needs to be onsite.
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Kate
Teachers, who only get six paid sick days a year, and have been told they now must use their personal sick days if they test positive with Covid, are considering teaching while sick because the official guidelines still say to isolate for five days.
Ian
I’m a college teacher and accrue sick days – but even so I am expected to go back 5 days after testing positive according to Ministry guidelines.
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Kate
Pierre Kwenders has won the Polaris prize for his third album, José Louis and the Paradox of Love.
A young Montreal guy has won a really big trophy as world junior chess champion.
Speaking of prizes, you have till the end of October to nominate people for the Order of Montreal.
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Kate
The city passed a bylaw making the Publisac opt‑in only, but Transcontinental has riposted by having Canada Post deliver it to all addresses. Mayor Plante is angry that the federal service is allowing TC to get around a city law designed to eliminate waste.
Kevin
Every government needs a person whose job it is to figure out ways that their laws will be used and misused.
Chris
Kevin, that won’t help. Corporations, especially big ones, have 10 people whose job it is to figure out ways to get around the impediments that one person would introduce.
mare
Wow, letter carriers won’t be very happy with that. Publi Sacs are thick and heavy, printed on bad paper. The people delivering them used shopping carts and big trucks. Letter carriers need to haul their mail on their backs, or use one of those tiny carts. Also they can ignore the “No Junk Mail’ stickers if there are addresses on every bag/envelope. Lots of stairs to climb…
Harold 07:15 on 2022-09-21 Permalink
If any one wants to make comparisons… https://stathead.com/hockey/pcomp_finder.cgi?player_id2=subbapk01&player_id1=webersh01&sum=0&request=1