Updates from March, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 17:54 on 2023-03-14 Permalink | Reply  

    Carbonleo, developing Royalmount, is promising a world‑class aquarium opening next year.

    I hope they don’t plan to confine marine mammals there. This town has a poor track record with those, besides it being a bad idea generally.

     
    • Ian 19:54 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

      Define marine mammals. There’s otters and beavers at the biodome …
      That said, in Canada it’s actually illegal to keep dolphins and whales in captivity since 2019.

      The last orca in captivity in Canada died last week. Kiska, a 47(ish) female at Marineland in Ontario. She had lived alone for over a decade.

    • shawn 20:42 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

      Funny thing is, Royalmount seems to be going up quite fast? It takes forever to get anything built here but it seems like this seat-of-your-pants megaproject is proceeding rather quickly…?

    • EmilyG 21:33 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

      As soon as I saw that the new aquarium would be in a mall, I correctly guessed it’d be Royalmount. Classy place :/

    • Ephraim 10:27 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

      So basically a copy of https://www.thedubaiaquarium.com/

    • DeWolf 11:08 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

      @shawn It’s been under construction since the beginning of 2019 which doesn’t seem that fast to me.

    • Robert H 11:37 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

      I credit the partners behind Royalmount with superb execution, so far. I think the consensus is that the last thing any major metropolitan area in North America needs is another shopping mall, and I’m certain that Carbonleo & its business partner L Catterton were aware of that. However, believing that there is an insufficiently tapped market in Montreal for luxury, they are doing everything they can to make the place an irresistible retail vortex designed to suck in dollars from Greater Montreal, adjacent regions, and visiting tourists. I’m interested in the machinery behind the Montreal Aquarium’s decision to join this project. As mentioned in Mario Dumont’s linked radio interview with Nicolas Gosselin, the aquarium’s director general, the element of “divertissement” is an essential ingredient in the mix of attractions design to make Royalmount more than just another mall. That along with the fact that the developers have managed to attract prestigious retailers who have been wary of opening a Quebec outpost, should assure a mob scene for at least the first month when the complex opens. Projects of this scale have the potential to redefine the city so I notice in Royalmount’s publicity as well as in this interview, Dumont quotes Carbonleo’s press release describing the mall as being at “le cœur de Montréal.” Really? I would have defined that as someplace downtown: Sainte Catherine at Peel? Dorchester Square? Place D’Armes? I hope the fact that Restoration Hardware, for example, has decided to open one of its lavish “Galleries” at the junction of two congested autoroutes near the airport instead of on La Cat, doesn’t signal a shift in the city’s centre of gravity. Let’s not become Houston.

    • Tim S. 13:51 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

      Is there an opposite effect to “Induced demand”? I have the feeling that traffic will make the popularity of the place somewhat self-regulating. As it is my family doesn’t go to Decarie Square very often, despite it being a logical place for us to do a lot of our errands, because getting there is so unpleasant. On the other hand, it’s unpleasant because lots of other people do decide to go there, so what do I know.

    • shawn 14:22 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

      Can anyone tell me: will construction start soon on the pedestrian bridge from de la Savane metro or is that just proposed infrastructure, at this time.

    • JP 14:55 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

      @shawn I work nearby. It looks like digging near Metro de la Savane has started for that bridge.

    • shawn 16:51 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

      Wow. I get what deWolf is saying but a new pedestrian bridge spanning the Decarie – that’s a first.

    • Orr 22:41 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

      @RobertH I once tried to determine the centre of Montreal in google maps by searching for Montreal and then zooming in and in until I couldn’t zoom in any more. It was just north of RoyalMount around Dawson/Cegep St-Laurent.
      I’m not disagreeing with you though, the centre of Montreal is in centre-ville.

  • Kate 14:40 on 2023-03-14 Permalink | Reply  

    It’s five years since the disappearance of Ariel Jeffrey Kouakou in Ahuntsic. The ten‑year‑old was last seen in a snow‑covered park beside the Back River. Police think it most likely he fell in, but with no body ever found, his father still holds out hope.

     
    • Kate 14:25 on 2023-03-14 Permalink | Reply  

      I missed this weekend piece on the REM: Henri Ouellette‑Vézina considers what the REM era will look like. The launch date has still not been announced and there’s a surprising amount of concern from the people cited that if service is not reliable, people will stay away in droves.

       
      • Josh 14:32 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        Is there even a target date? Or like, 2023 Q2? Anything remotely like that?

      • Kate 14:43 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        Target dates are shown in the map illustration in the article. The branch from Central Station to Brossard is supposed to open this spring.

      • Josh 16:35 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        Ah, thank you.

      • John B 22:30 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        I’ve had to cross the Champlain bridge at least weekly for the past several weeks, and for the past 3 weeks or so a lot of trains have been running. They’ve gone from single-unit, (2 cars), trains, to double unit, (4 cars), and seem to be running quite close together. I’m not sure what the operational goals are of the testing, but from the highway it looks like they’re working.

      • Robert H 12:00 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

        Controversy aside, I hope the REM at least succeeds in attracting enough riders to spur the momentum to improve and add even more to the public transport infrastructure that already exists in Montreal. The city has a good foundation in that regard relative to most places on this continent. It should continue to build on that.

    • Kate 12:21 on 2023-03-14 Permalink | Reply  

      La Presse manages to tell us about a website that keeps track of openings made in railway fences by citing reasons they’re unsafe.

       
      • walkerp 13:09 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        A snitch site! Seems like we should just flood it with fake openings.

      • walkerp 13:14 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        Oh wait, the guy is on our side, it’s supposed to be helpful!

      • Kate 18:50 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        If it’s kept up to date, certainly.

      • Ian 19:58 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        The idea that CP isn’t looking at this site is silly.
        Keep your grassroots grassroots – put it on the internet and everyone has access.

      • Hamza 20:19 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        see y,all tomorrow at girouard park , metro vendome , sector N.D.G. …………. datsdats all calice du taberNAK

      • MarcG 08:20 on 2023-03-16 Permalink

        @Hamza: It took me a while to figure out what you were talking about. Very little news about the annual march against police brutality yesterday. I saw a bunch of cops in the neighbourhood early this morning, not sure if related. Would be interested in reading some reports but can’t find anything, even from the COBP.

      • SMD 08:48 on 2023-03-16 Permalink

    • Kate 12:08 on 2023-03-14 Permalink | Reply  

      It’s loin loin de la ville but the incident Monday in Amqui is the big news here. Police say the crash of a pickup truck into people on a sidewalk was a deliberate act and the driver will be charged.

      The driver is called Steeve Gagnon and is 38 years old. Two people are dead and nine injured, three of them seriously.

       
      • Dominic 17:20 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        I’ve never seen that spelling of Steeve before, but apparently it means “crowned with garland” and is-was very popular in northern France, especially in the 60s and 70s.

      • Ian Rogers 19:34 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        I have worked with a couple of guys named Steeve, and even one Steeeve. It is very much of a specific generation.

      • EmilyG 21:36 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        That spelling “Steeve” was mentioned in an article linked in this entry on this blog: https://mtlcityweblog.com/2022/08/06/france-also-has-a-problem-with-kevin/

        The Guardian article linked there talks about English names being used by French speakers: “Other American-sounding names found popularity in France in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Jennifer, Bryan, Jordan and Steve, sometimes spelled Steeve.”

        That bit of the article stuck in my memory because it was such an odd spelling.

      • walkerp 09:58 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

        I wonder if it is a way to ensure that the e is pronounced in the english mode rather than french where Steve would sound like Stehve.

      • Kate 10:57 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

        walkerp, I’ve also wondered whether that’s the reason for all the Steeves.

      • jeather 11:37 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

        Ok I was curious. Checking the donnees Quebec website, since 1980 and up to 2021 there have been 1461 boys born with the name Steeve or a varation (Steeven, anything containing the characters “steeve”) and 12,122 with the name Steve or a variation (anything containing the characters “steve”). This includes middle names.

    • Kate 09:15 on 2023-03-14 Permalink | Reply  

      Another fire was set in St‑Laurent overnight, TVA saying it was a car repair business.

       
      • Vazken 14:22 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        It’s 2023, can’t the mob think of new rackets aside from “Protection Money’

      • Ian 19:36 on 2023-03-14 Permalink

        Oh, they do – but the protection racket is still great business. Very easy to enforce, everyone lives in fear … it’s so endemic that it really is basically another tax.

      • dwgs 08:16 on 2023-03-15 Permalink

        The classics never go out of style.

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