Pierre Fitzgibbon, one of whose hats is the hat of the Minister Responsible for the Metropolis, says he wants to make a personal project of the Quartier Latin.
That’ll be fun.
Updates from May, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
TVA reports that 200 coffins are awaiting burial because of the ongoing strike at Notre‑Dame‑des‑Neiges.
steph
Families should be suing the cemetery for breach of contracts. It would help force them to settle with the union.
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Kate
Bernard Drainville’s attempt to acquire even more direct control of education in Quebec has proved not so popular among people in the educational service centres, big surprise there.
jeather
I saw they want to do the same for the English school boards, name the DG and ADG, but I think this is still being fought in court.
Kate
Not surprisingly, anglo groups are super unhappy about the new arrangement.
I don’t have kids or grandkids, but I’m not too happy about Quebec removing the layers protecting public schools from direct political control. Our political parties have been all too keen to inculcate kids with the Quebec nationalist flavour of the moment. Unfortunately, the old school board system was something of a dead weight – almost nobody turned out to vote in school board elections – so it was easy to say it didn’t work, and simply remove it. As I recall, nobody on the francophone side saw any virtue in maintaining public participation in the boards. So I have no alternative suggestions, but this direct control thing makes me uneasy. Education has other purposes besides obeying the bidding of the politicians of the moment.
jeather
Yeah, all those quotes about “the directors were making decisions we didn’t agree with” lacking any details about what KINDS of decisions. (Air purifiers?) I don’t know what the solution is either, but “the minister will hire and fire all the school board (or whatever the francophone side is called now) members as needed” is definitely not the way to run education.
I’m also unconvinced that “our change didn’t work over the 3 years of the pandemic” means it is actually a failure that must be given up on. Education is not a short-term game.
Kate
This is a good read in Le Devoir about Drainville’s power grab.
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Kate
The city is not offering free access to downtown metro stations this summer as it did last year.
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Kate
Rosemont borough is making 32 of its alleys off limits to cars this summer.
mare
My ruelle is on the list!
Kids will love to be able to play undisturbed. Some of my neighbours will be very grumpy, cause there are a lot of car parking pads in our alley. Let’s just hope nobody starts digging out their basement this summer, because the last couple of years the alley was de facto blocked by contractors trucks every weekday. Now it’s possible some people will be *really* locked in. Well, they can park on the street.walkerp
Lucky you! Enjoy.
jeather
It looks like parking remains undisturbed, if less convenient.
“Deux accès sur quatre sont donc fermés avec l’ajout de bacs fleuris en béton afin d’empêcher les voitures de traverser une ruelle en ligne droite. Les automobilistes pourront toutefois y accéder pour leur stationnement.”
walkerp
This is a reasonable compromise until we finally get to the day when all these car addicts have beaten their addiction. It stops the people from driving straight through between two roads and the side that has the barrier is a great place for kids to play.
jeather
I’m not against that solution — sorry to say I am a car person, and my ruelle is a one way only one, and though occasionally it would be nice if there were a second exit, overall I appreciate that it is not used as a speedway. (I am told that it used to be so used, which is why the other exits were blocked.)
I commented because I was curious how the city could get away with blocking everyone’s ruelle parking by making it entirely off-limits to cars. Yes, it would be great if we could build better solutions, and I miss being able to take the metro to work, but this, like most things, is a systemic issue.
Kate
Even as a non-driver, with a narrow alley out back, i understand that sometimes cable companies need to bring their small vans through to do repairs, and people bring construction or gardening supplies in via their back gates too.
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Kate
Seems to be news that nice weather is coming as of Friday.
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Kate
Quebec has launched a carpool app
with the clumsy name qUBERccalled Covoiturage ARTM, in an attempt to relieve highway congestion.mare
That name is pretty bad, especially because carpooling is very different than taking an expensive unlicensed taxi.
Next up, a provincial app for finding an apartment that is named qAirnBNBc?
Matthew H
The app isn’t called that, though? It’s just a dumb clickbait headline. The app is called Covoiturage ARTM.
Blork
…which isn’t much better.
Kate
Thank you, Matthew H.
Sim
AMT already had a carpooling website, it seems like a repackage
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Kate
Martineau drew the anti-Montreal short straw this week and writes about how crazy and dangerous the city has become.
walkerp
It’s absolutely bananas out there. The station where I wanted to return my bixi was full! I’m moving to the Laurentians tomorrow, I can’t take another minute of this insanity.
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Kate
A man “known to police” was shot, non-fatally, in an east-end apartment – CTV says “early Thursday night” making me check the date again on Thursday morning. The Journal has “dans la nuit de mercredi à jeudi.”
(CTV fixed it again. I should send in an invoice for editing.)
dwgs
That article reads like a Google translation of a French language story. “Montreal police (SPVM) reported late in the night that the injured individual would be safe.”
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Kate
La Presse says there will be an announcement Thursday of more than $1.2 billion by Quebec to shore up Montreal’s aging road infrastructure.
After the cheering it may occur to people that this work will involve a lot of orange cones.
jeather
If the work lasted and they didn’t tear up the same street again within 12 months, that might be different.
Kate
I’m no engineer, but my observation is that roads are not forever. We think of them as permanent parts of the landscape, but what they actually are is structures laid down on the earth which take a hell of a pounding from vehicles while being affected by temperature changes, water infiltration, geological instabilities. They will always need to be maintained and repaired. Road repairs are a permanent fact of modern life, you can’t just do them once.
jeather
Yes, they aren’t a one and done, but Quebec’s roads are notably worse than Ontario’s, or northern New England, and — as we know, as we discuss regularly — they tear them up for a water main, then tear them up 12 months later for power cables, then tear them up 12 months later again for whatever new thing. They aren’t going to last forever, but roads should be able to last longer than they do now.
JaneyB
@jeather. Agreed. Quebec’s road repair schedule is nowhere near normal. My feeling is that the life of pavement here is about 10% of what it is in neighbouring climatic zones. I have seen roads here redone from down to the pipelines up to new landscaping that were dug up entirely less than one week later! Not normal. Not by far. When they redid Queen-Mary, it took almost 8 years to do and there were grooves in the asphalt a mere one year later. Not normal. Corruption or incompetence or both.
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Kate
Responding to rising complaints about open drug use, homelessness and weird behaviour in the metro, the STM is adding more special police to the metro system and planning a squad of “safety ambassadors” to patrol as well, but only starting next year.
shawn 07:40 on 2023-05-05 Permalink
What is the issue with Théâtre Saint-Denis? It’s had hundreds of millions poured into it for renovations, I know that…
shawn 08:08 on 2023-05-05 Permalink
Ok I shouldn’t say that I “know” 100s of millions because that’s high. But this website (that I don’t know) has a history of all the work done right up to this month and the theatre has hardly been neglected? https://lanauweb.info/les-grandes-renovations-du-theatre-st-denis-son-adaptation-au-fil-du-temps/
shawn 09:51 on 2023-05-05 Permalink
BTW that website is from Lanaudière. Which only reinforces my view that the CAQ minister is just cherry-picking cultural/patrimonial-type projects that might matter to their base without any concern about the more pressing issues facing Montrealers.
DeWolf 11:15 on 2023-05-05 Permalink
I think he’s saying the Théâtre Saint-Denis has been revamped at great cost but the neighbourhood around it is a “disaster.” At least I think so. He’s not very articulate.
It will be good to have more investment in the Latin Quarter. Maybe we’ll finally have some movement on the old Saint-Sulpice library. But the big Quebecor media focus on the area, and now Fitzgibbon’s involvement, is definitely because it’s a neighbourhood with a lot of sentimental value for francophone bungalow boomers who used to live in Montreal but never come into town anymore (ie, CAQ voters and TVA viewers).
shawn 12:23 on 2023-05-05 Permalink
I see. In my lifetime the Latin Quarter’s always been a bit pleasantly seedy. And yes the old Saint-Sulpice is magnificent and in need of a new mission. But you’re saying more articulately what I tried to say. Yes, this is the old neighbourhood for a generation of francophone Quebecers now in the burbs who used to go downtown.