Shooting incidents were down in 2022, compared to last year, with 186 incidents vs 206 in 2021. It’s not a significant drop, but police are taking credit for having locked up more of the kind of people who use firearms.
Opioid overdoses have also dropped since 2021.
When Greyhound pulled out of Canada in 2021 it left a lot of people with no easy intercity transit. Now there are new bus services but they mostly do big cities: you can get from Montreal to Toronto or Ottawa, but nowhere in between.
Deregulating is a worship word for neoliberals, but sometimes the government has to step in and say “if you want to run a bus service between Montreal and Ottawa, you have to stop at Rigaud and Hawkesbury at least some of the time.”
Of course, this is what we had for Quebec, once — intercity transit was insanely expensive (Montreal-Toronto much cheaper than Montreal-Quebec City) but small towns had transit, as bigger routes subsidised them. Then they cut off the small town requirements but — somehow! — the other routes still stayed just as expensive.
It will only get worse as they privatize rail service, too. I read up on this a while ago, but nobody is really talking about it:
https://www.railwayage.com/regulatory/canada-to-create-separate-railway-for-corridor-hfr/
Nobody is talking about it @dhomas because they are trying to gloss over the fact that it is “high frequency” rather than high speed, the proposed route involves a milk run to Ottawa and the travel time only goes down 75 minutes (5 hours to 3 hours and 45 minutes). It’s a terrible project that should not see the light of day.
https://corpo.viarail.ca/en/projects-infrastructure/high-frequency-rail
I completely agree. It’s terrible. And it will bring about the end of Via Rail, I think. The “private partner” will end up making the smaller town trips expensive and/or unsustainable. We should be making a stink about it. Make Via Rail better. Don’t replace it with something that will make things worse for everyone but the people running it.
The Journal has two lists of the notable criminal goof‑ups of 2022 in Montreal and nearby. (In some cases the crimes were committed this year, while in others, they were heard in court.)
La Presse is predicting a soggy New Year’s day as warming temperatures will be followed by rain on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
In Quebec, where 280 churches have been closed or demolished since 2003, the challenge is to find affordable ways to convert church buildings for other uses. Le Devoir’s Jean‑Louis Bordeleau finds a couple of examples of successful repurposing.
Le Devoir running two stories the same day on preserving (overwhelmingly Roman Catholic) religious buildings is another indication of how important this is to people, even in secular Québec. That said I’m a secular Jew who’s spent enormous amounts of time working on Wikipedia articles about Quebec Catholic Church architecture so I suppose I am part of it too.
A lot of times the churches sit right in the heart of a town or neighbourhood (esp in small places) and the steeple is a defining piece of the skyline. I’m not religious by any means but I’m always happy to see them preserved as a community gathering space of some sorts.
A whole pile of synagogues were repurposed in my neighbourhood. Some became churches for a variety of denominations, some became residences. Some became school buildings. One even became the local Ukrainian hall.
There’s an old synagogue on Duluth that’s been an apartment buiding for decades – maybe since the 1950s.
Em: I know what you mean exactly.
CultMTL reports on how a predatory landlord doubled the rent on a longstanding Villeray fruiterie, then opened a new fruiterie right across from it. The Facebook group Sauvons Tsikinis mentioned in the article has been “put on pause” for some reason.
Does anyone here know if the culprit (Holdings Rubino) has any connection to the Rubino shoe stores?
OK, a couple of minutes on Google confirms they have the same owner. I know where I won’t be buying my shoes from now on.
@Blork – if you’re on reddit, you could post this on the Montreal subreddit, along with the connection to Rubino shoes. I’m pretty sure La Presse editors read reddit.
Also, you could just directly email the newsroom at La Presse with this connection. I’ve done that and there was a front page article on the subject a day later. It’s surprising how fast local media will move.
Here’s their OG if anyone wants to leave a message – https://www.instagram.com/rubinoshoes
Hi!
Is there anything “alive” concerning protecting Tsikinis? “Sauvons Tsikinis” has been out for a while, people seems to think any action could compromise wathever. Seems to me more pressure the better. I am disgusted by that kind of rich narcissistic destructive people. Thanks!
Via Rail was operating its Montreal-Toronto trains normally Tuesday but some Hydro‑Quebec customers are still in the dark five days after the pre‑Christmas storm, loin loin de la ville.
A young man has died after an incident at Bordeaux Jail on the weekend. The SQ is investigating, and no homicide number has been given out.
Update: A prison guard has been suspended and an investigation has begun.
When Daniel Renaud put this summary of 2022’s homicides to bed, there were 39 counted this year, the most homicides since 2007. Renaud examines the incidents from several angles – motive, method, age and gender of victim.
Why would he put his summary to bed when there are still five days of 2022 remaining?
The week between Christmas and New Year is a notoriously slow news week, so there are bound to be recaps of various kinds all week. It’s still a fair analysis of the homicide situation for 2022.
The solved rate of 56% is super low if you presume that the conjugal, the suicide and the innocent bystander were very easy to solve, (10) and the murders after conflicts usually have a lot of witnesses and/or obvious suspects (7).
Unknown motives also means unknown suspects, so those are probably not solved (8).
To get to 56% (20) we need 3 more solved ones that are categorized as settling criminal debts. So of the murders in that category only 3 out of 14 are solved, that’s a meagre 22%. Even if two of the ‘conflict murders’ aren’t solved it’s still only 36% in the criminal debts category.
Not very good numbers, despite hiring all those extra cops to investigate gang related crimes. Maybe we should actively recruit (and offer free police academy tuition and fast career tracking) candidates coming from the communities the criminal gangs are operating in. Witnesses might be more willing to talk to cops that look like them and are part of their community.
Not that it excuses police shortcomings, but I think (after reading Daniel Renaud, Paul Cherry and other crime reporters for years) that in many of the unsolved criminal killings, police know who did it, or are within a couple of guesses, but haven’t got enough concrete evidence to get a warrant for an arrest. Or maybe they simply don’t know where the guy is?
>The solved rate of 56% is super low…
Be careful what you wish for… do you want people arrested on hunches, hearsay, and circumstantial evidence? Do you want everyone’s every action monitored Chinese police-state style?
These are the tradeoffs we make.
Collective “ugh”
A man and woman were found dead around midnight in Pointe-aux-Trembles in an apparent murder‑suicide, the 40th homicide of 2022.
Some more details from La Presse.
Info-Neige tweets that some boroughs are starting a new snow‑clearing round. Radio‑Canada says 12 boroughs are getting the treatment.
Daily Hive poses the question how many restaurants are there in Montreal? The definition of Montreal is not clear – is it the city, the island or the metropolitan area?
Also the math is bad. If we have 5,170 restos, however you define the city, that does not make it 392 eating establishments per capita! Assuming the full metropolitan census area of 4,291,732 people, it divvies out to one resto per 830 residents, give or take. But there’s no point making calculations with such poorly defined terms.
I would be far more interested in what the churn rate is, and whether there are more openings, or more closings?
If I see such an article, I will post it.
Here’s a nice picture of our archipelago in winter, taken last winter and recently posted to NASA’s Earth Observatory. I especially appreciate how it uses Montreal compass directions.
It says that Heron Island is downriver of the Champlain and Nun’s Island – they mean upriver surely
Good spot, Tee Owe. I’ve emailed a correction, no idea how long till it will be seen on a week like this.
Update: Email replied to, and it should be corrected now!
Change has been made already! (I also sent in a correction.)
The city is planning to offer mostly vegetarian food at its events, and to encourage vegetarian offerings in its various installations.
It was more than two years ago that I posted an article I found in Est Media about how Espace pour la Vie was going to offer an exclusively vegetarian menu in the snack bars at the botanical garden, the Planetarium and the Biodome. So this isn’t an entirely new idea.
After all this weather fuss, we’ll experience a thaw starting Wednesday night and running into next weekend, which is forecast to be rainy.
Some in Quebec are still without power from the pre‑Christmas storm.
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