In the “problems they should have seen coming” department: parts of Plaza St‑Hubert had to be danger‑taped on Friday because of a hazardous buildup of snow and ice on the new awnings, which were supposed to be immune to the ice and snow buildup that used to plague the old ones.
If I had a store along there I’d be livid.
A good Le Devoir piece considers the Van Horne warehouse and the non‑choice being put before the public: “On nous offre deux options mises en fausse opposition : soit ce « complexe à multi-usage », comme nommé dans le sondage, soit la tombée en ruine du bâtiment… Le parc d’attractions ou l’apocalypse.”
The writer also makes points against the utility of a luxury hotel in that place while the city faces a housing crisis.
I get that it’s an OpEd and you can pretty much get away with saying anything without needing it to be factually true but who exactly would be displaced by this project as the author claims? Is there an underground community of mole people living underneath this building that I’m unaware of?
To say that the project is incompatible with the current social situation given the housing crisis is so disingenuous, have we forgotten the changes that have been enacted since the Lac-Mégantic tragedy? Notably that the city will not permit the construction of any residential projects within 30 meters of a main line. Guess how much of the site this covers? The entirety of it.
https://plus.lapresse.ca/screens/ac52dde4-c04e-4e8c-91ba-223159079b69%7C_0.html
She points out that people stay in a hotel – they may not live there permanently, but if it becomes a hotel, people will be sleeping within 30 meters of that line.
The displacement will come from the gentrification that will follow from the creation of a project like that.
It may be a lapsus in the way the municipal rules were written but it is what it is. The argument she’s advancing is that equivalent of saying “well if I can’t get what I want, I don’t want anyone to get anything”
The whole mile end gentrification sob story has been going on for years. It’s been gentrified and gentrifying for over a decade now. Oh we love all the small boutiques and cafés and restaurants that are heavily frequented by tourist and helping said business meet their bottom line but we only want the benefits none of the inconvenience.
A point I saw brought up on reddit when this topic came up is that Mile-End and Petite-Patrie are the most popular neighbourhoods on Airbnb so a hotel would help fight the scourge of airbnb.
I’d like Ian our mile end resident to come in with a local perspective.
I agree with the writer that the building would be best suited as some kind of cultural hub. But that would require the city to spend millions of dollars purchasing it, and then tens of millions more converting it for public use. That’s a big ask when the city doesn’t even have money to make up for the STM’s deficit.
The reality is that if the city rejects the hotel proposal, the building will sit empty for years or decades to come, like the old sugar refinery in St-Henri or Silo No. 5. Would that be better than a hotel? Maybe, maybe not.
Is there a square inch of Mile-End that isn’t gentrified yet? Wouldn’t a nice Mile-End hotel alleviate some of the airbnb-induced pressure on the local housing market?
The streets over toward the warehouse in Mile End, and also nearby and north of it up the Main, are still not overly gentriified.
Metro talks to a criminal lawyer about the charges faced by Pierre Ny St-Amand and another lawyer gives a terse but clear explanation of criminal responsibility in the wake of the daycare attack.
One of the victims has been identified: Jacob Gauthier, age 4½. The priest who officiated at Friday’s mass said he had baptized the boy when he was a baby.
The STM has cut three executive director posts.
That alone should knock a buck off the ticket price.
The city has named a park in Lasalle after longtime union organizer Michel Chartrand. But this is also the name of the Longueuil park with the deer surplus.
Maybe AFG will hire some trucks to transport 100 deer to the Lasalle park.
Radio-Canada reports on the opening of a new women’s housing building on tiny Avenue Lartigue, but its twelve units are, as admitted, a drop in the bucket considering the number of homeless.
A lot of media have this story, which suggests that somebody really wants us to know that something’s being done to house the homeless.
Things to do this weekend, from CultMTL, Sarah’s Weekend List, CityCrunch.
Like the CAQ, the Parti québécois is using the byelection in St‑Henri–Ste‑Anne to give a young aspirant some practical experience: 23‑year‑old Andréanne Fiola has already chalked up one loss trying to win Laval‑des‑Rapides last year, and this time will try to pip the PLQ and QS to the post.
Frankly I have no time for people who chase a political career like this. From what I know she didn’t reside in the riding she was running for in Laval and she certainly doesn’t live in St-Henri-Ste-Anne. She’s not going to win and is just being a foot soldier and standing in but it just doesn’t sit well with me.
There are different reasons for entering politics. We tend to think of it as most noble if a person truly wants to represent the place where they live, but there’s an argument for thinking of politics simply as a career. In that case, running for a randomly selected riding as an entry point, if you happen to have joined up with a party having its time in the sun, is a great way to start.
Unfortunately for Ms Fiola, there’s little chance that St‑Henri–Ste‑Anne will flip to the PQ next month. I’d say it’s an even chance between the PLQ and QS, now that Dominique Anglade is out of the equation. Anglade won the riding in October with 11,728 votes over QS’s Guillaume Cliche‑Rivard’s 8,992. The CAQ candidate got 5,751 and the PQ only 2,683 votes.
I would be surprised if the CAQ would win in a normal election. A byelection gets weird results, though.
jeather, five bucks says QS wins next month, CAQ comes in third. You in?
Nah, QS/PLQ/CAQ/PQ would be what I would guess as the order as well. I wouldn’t be shocked to see QS/CAQ/PLQ/PQ though.
The aftershock of the daycare attack is still the biggest item in local media. La Presse traced the bus driver’s origins and tried to find clues to his motives, discovering that he was adopted from Cambodia as a child by a couple from New Brunswick, and raised in Sept‑Îles. Did some deep buried trauma resurface this week? Nobody can know that yet, if ever.
The Journal looks into the response of Urgences‑Santé when the call came in.
Other daycares are putting out white flags – towels, by the look of the photos here – and there are discussions about how to approach the incident with kids.
There was a vigil Thursday evening at which the Prime Minister appeared, and there will be a mass Friday morning.
shawn 21:09 on 2023-02-10 Permalink
Right but as the article says, we’ve known for about a year that this sort of thing was going to happen with the flat-topped design. What a mess.
Kate 21:26 on 2023-02-10 Permalink
It seems in retrospect that the borough was indulging in magical thinking not to consider how flat‑topped awnings would collect snow and ice. OK, so they’re not pitched at the same angle as the old ones, which would sometimes drop a big slab of ice and snow directly into the street – I saw that happen once – but there’s no mechanism to clear the snow off the flat tops either, so…?
This piece was in La Presse more than a year ago, saying the awnings would have to be painstakingly cleared by hand. Has anyone bothered to do it this season?
Spi 21:52 on 2023-02-10 Permalink
This was entirely predictable from the moment the renderings came out. The old awning would shed snow but because it was so steep it would generally shed it quickly and it consisted mostly of snow, the flat ones (shockingly) retain more of that melted snow and doesn’t shed it as quickly allowing for a much more significant and dangerous buildup of ice.
jeather 22:12 on 2023-02-10 Permalink
Relatedly, a man who was killed by his tempo.
Blork 22:29 on 2023-02-10 Permalink
I feel like it’s Benny Hill night at the Montreal City Weblog.
Mark 01:01 on 2023-02-11 Permalink
Feels like heated cables would solve this. Considering they gave a 90k contract to a firm to remove the snow last time..150k-200k of heated cables would probably be enough to cover 2km of awnings (Jean-Talon to Bellechasse is about 1km, you would need cables on both sides)
MarcG 11:27 on 2023-02-11 Permalink
So the issue isn’t the inability to bear the weight of the snow and ice, it’s where the snow and ice go when it slides off. Maybe the design needs to include a place where it’s impossible or unlikely for a person to be at the edge of the awnings, like into the gutter of the street, making it easy for the snow clearing machines to sweep it up.
MarcG 11:29 on 2023-02-11 Permalink
Or, you know, hire some dudes to shovel it off into the street right before the plows come through. There’s a guy selling his services in my neighbourhood on Nextdoor that would probably do it for way less than $90k.
Kate 13:33 on 2023-02-11 Permalink
We have Nextdoor here? I thought it was just a U.S. thing.
(I went to look, but it won’t let me look around without creating an account, and I’m not that interested.)
Janet 19:50 on 2023-02-11 Permalink
I know there is a very active and helpful Nextdoor in Hudson. (I had to sign up to look at a cat someone was offering.)
Kate 20:19 on 2023-02-11 Permalink
Thanks.
My immediate neighbourhood has a good, non-gossipy Facebook page, but maybe I’ll have a look.