People may enjoy this rather lush autumn story about Montreal by Leonard Cohen, apparently unpublished till recently.
(Since I like to cavil, the staircase photo in the middle of the story is not in Mount Royal park, but extends up from the top of du Musée to Pine Avenue.)
A man was stabbed downtown Monday evening, no arrests, and in the same general area, a pedestrian was violently hit by an SUV, in the TVA headline writer’s terms, around 3 am Tuesday.
Nearly 23% of eligible voters turned out to vote on Sunday and Monday, up from the 18% seen at the 2018 election.
Ballots now have photos of candidates on them.
This is new.
The work being done on Pine Avenue has uncovered traces of the Jardins Guilbault, a combined zoo and botanical garden of the mid 19th century.
That’s very cool, I had no idea.
So there used to be this zoo/aquarium, an aquarium at La Ronde, a zoo at Parc Lafontaine… how many other former zoos/aquariums are therein Montreal?
It’s why there’s a short street called Guilbault just south of Pine and St‑Laurent. I don’t know whether the exact bounds of the park are still known.
This came up when I was researching the history of amusement parks here – Guilbault’s was very much a European‑style “pleasure grounds” with brass bands on weekends and things like that. Sohmer Park near the waterfront was a similar venture but I don’t think it included botanical gardens and animals.
The Lafontaine zoo was moved to some kind of interior warehousing at Angrignon Park some winters. I remember going there once years and years ago. I’ve a vague memory that Angrignon was considered as a possible permanent site for a zoo, but I don’t know how seriously. In the event, it never happened, although there was a small farm-style petting zoo there for awhile.
Arguably the Ecomuseum in Ste-Anne and the Biodome are both zoos.
Agreed on the Biodome and Ecomuseum. Technically the ecomuseum is a sanctuary since all the animals are rescues, though. I remember the Angrignon farm now, but I didn’t know it was related to the Parc Lafontaine zoo.
I don’t know whether that’s how Angrignon Farm began.
Members of the public were surveyed and they said this is the kind of police chief Montreal needs: someone who communicates well and runs things transparently, but can also handle the public safety dossier, which is on people’s minds. (They also said the person needs to be “perfectly bilingual” which I suspect may cause a fuss, but we’ll see.)
I would think a police chief has to be more circumspect than totally transparent. Police must be making investigations and devising tactics all the time that can’t be revealed to the public. Some things can be explained in retrospect, but not everything – e.g. that mysterious secret trial that was reported earlier this year that apparently involved a police informant whose identity can’t be risked. So you don’t want someone prepared to be naively open either.
Ian 17:42 on 2022-09-27 Permalink
Lovely, I’ll have to check out the book.