Pothole season is about to begin, the city expecting to fill 110,000 holes this spring.
Updates from March, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Amtrak’s Adirondack train between Montreal and New York will be back as of April 3.
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Kate
Patient aides at St Mary’s Hospital have been cutting up old pillowcases to serve as adult diapers because the supply of these is so low. The hospital is also direly short of staff.
So I went from reading that article to this one about how three of our hospitals have been adjudged by Newsweek to be among the best in the world: the CHUM, the General and the Jewish.
Chris
Alas, there isn’t necessary any contradiction. ;(
Uatu
Newsweek got the same VIP treatment Legault got when he visited his mom in the ER.
DeWolf
I was in the Jewish emergency room last October and was expecting a horror show. Instead it was calm, almost serene. I was in there for a total of 15 hours but managed to be seen by a specialist who arranged follow-up appointments.
So there’s obviously a lot of variation between hospitals. I haven’t heard good things about the hospital closest to me (Jean-Talon) which is why I opted to go the extra distance.
Kate
My one visit to Jean-Talon went OK, but was a little unsettling because several people assumed I was having a test (ordered by my GP) in preparation for surgery. Medical requests can sometimes reveal facts you didn’t know and I had a moment of vertigo wondering whether my doctor had indicated a planned surgery on there that he hadn’t yet discussed with me. Turns out not. I was fine.
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Kate
Pierre Karl Péladeau has bought the Alouettes in his own name, not Videotron’s. TVA says he’s the first Quebec owner since Charles Bronfman in the 1980s, and the first francophone since Léo Dandurand, one of the founders of the team in 1946.
TVA may be a little too hopeful on that last point. Léo Dandurand was born in Illinois to a family that originated in Quebec but had lived in the United States for a couple of generations. It’s not mentioned on Wikipedia how well Dandurand actually spoke French.
Check the Gazette photo on their version of this story.
shawn
Dang.
shawn
Since there is no broadcast rights component (yet) I guess that’s a reason it made no sense his company to buy it.
Blork
Regarding Dandurand’s Francophone chops, the fact that he kept the accent on the e in Léo is a hint that he wasn’t completely anglicized. Plus he moved to Montreal when he was 16 to attend Collège Ste-Marie (although he might have been in the Anglo part, which later became Loyola College). It seems like he stayed on after college, getting involved in various businesses here, including the Blue Bonnets race track.
Regarding PKP: yet another reason for me to not give AF about football.
shawn
He even just said a sort of nice thing about competing with Bell Media. He’s changed, Blork!
shawn
Well, that’s interesting. Per the stadium, which Kate had previously raised: “As for the stadium / practice facility he said it’s too early to say anything other than next season will be at McGill.”
When the team was up for sale last time businessman and ex-CFLer Eric Lapointe had talked about getting the team out of Olympic Stadium where it practices and building a practice/training site on the south shore.
carswell
Given
Pélasconi’sPKP’s “love” for the city, the team should change its name to Les Alouettes de Péladeau.Kate
Shawn, didn’t the Alouettes play at the Olympic stadium for a time? I have a vague memory of their return to Molson Stadium being hailed as a sort of homecoming. They even enlarged it about ten years ago.
Or does everyone feel now that it’s bad juju to play at the big O?
Blork, we don’t know that Dandurand adopted the accent on Leo.
shawn
Oh yes they played there. And then even after they moved they played some post-season games there, too. It’s too big for everyday use.
shawn
Oh and I see he’s open to the possibility of teaming up with Saputo on a new joint stadium. Interesting.
dwgs
The Big O was their permanent home but a U2 concert forced them to play a game at Molson Stadium and it was such a hit that they moved there.
Kate
dwgs, that rings the faintest of little bells. Wikipedia says that happened in 1997.
Molson Stadium was enlarged in 2010, adding 5000 seats.
carswell
Molson Stadium was enlarged in 2010, adding 5000 seats and permanently blemishing the view of Mount Royal from the Park-Pine intersection and other points southeast.
Fixed that for you.
shawn
Yes, shortly after the extra seating was added, the team stopped needing them because they couldn’t really sell more than 20 k. The novelty of the new home wore off, and the team lost hall of fame QB Anthony Calvillo and went from being a sort of mini-dynasty to a ramshackle operation. There was also a suggestion that there were a lot of ticket giveaways to maintain a streak of “sell-outs.”
Kate
When I was working in that agency in St-Henri, around 2019, the HR person was a retired athlete, and she came in one day all hyped up about how she had tickets for an Alouettes game and we could all go!
Nobody went. Maybe she did.
Joey
When the Alouettes returned in 1996 (the CFL moved the Baltimore team to Montreal), they played at the Big O to a pittance of fans. A 1997 playoff game conflicted with a U2 show at the Big O, so the Als opted to play at Molson Stadium. They won game, a playoff game, and the experience was so well received that they permanently moved to Molson Stadium the following year, usually playing once or twice (e.g., major playoff games) at the Big O when demand has warranted it. The bloom is somewhat off the rose in the post-Calvillo era, but the match between the Als and Molson Stadium is perfect – it’s an ideal place to watch an autumn football game.
shawn
I can’t argue with a word Joey says except about it being “ideal” for this old fan. The absence of actual seats – all except some high-end seats in front of the renovated south side are benches – are murder on this old back.
Regular fans know to bring their cushions or even these contraptions that look like shortened folding chairs that fit over the bench and provide support.
In fact that’s one way to tell a real OG fan: they have these ancient butt-cushions with the old Als logo and they bought them in the days of the Autostade.
Joey
Yeah, Shawn is 99% correct. All a fan is really missing is a snuck-in smoked meat sandwich from Snowdon Deli.
shawn
Well, then I guess that’s one advantage to Percival Molson: it’s a short walk from Schwartz’s or The Main.
For everyone else: I can’t speak for what it was like in the Big O but the food concessions at McGill are as bad as you’d expect. Like tepid hotdogs and cold popcorn sort of thing.
Oddly the thing I remember the last time I was there – which was a few years ago – was a tent at the west endzone selling BBQed turkey legs?
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Kate
Things to do on the weekend from Metro, CultMTL, CityCrunch, Sarah’s Weekend List.
The Ville-Marie tunnel will be closed this weekend.
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Kate
Eighteen police vehicles in three different locations were vandalized overnight in the east end, where the squads against armed violence are headquartered. Among other things, this could strengthen the call for better security around police parking lots.
dwgs
False flag.
Kate
It did cross my mind.
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Kate
A slick website promoting the Festival Aurora, a June event in the Old Port promising a lineup of popular music acts, turned out to be a fraudulent chimera allegedly created by a man with a history of defrauding people in the cultural world with false promises and plans. Very nice investigative work by La Presse’s people.
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Kate
A man known to police as the Casanova de Montréal pleaded guilty recently to having robbed several women of thousands of dollars on false pretences. He’s getting off lightly, with community service hours. Heartening story in there about the women meeting up and creating a dossier of proof to bring to police.
Ephraim
Can his community service hours be done cleaning elevators? (Just a thought)
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Kate
The Alouettes have a new owner whose identity will be revealed Friday at an 11 am presser.
shawn
Yes as the article says the only question seems to be whether it will be Québecor or PKP personally. I’m hoping it’s the company although I don’t know if that will make any difference in terms of stability? PKP worries/scares me.
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Kate
More snow may be on the way after the weekend.
MarcG
I don’t own a car and even I’m done at this point
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