Onetime Outremont MP Marc Lalonde, who held several hefty portfolios in Pierre Trudeau’s governments, has died. He was 93.
Updates from May, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
TVA says the 1975 murder of a teenager from Point St Charles is probably solved using DNA evidence. The likely culprit is already dead, and they’re going to dig him up and DNA‑test him to be certain.
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Kate
The city has to pay out nearly $2 million to a snow removal firm after declining to accord contracts to it for two seasons. Nobody from the city is saying why it chose not to do business with them, but Metro’s writer notes that the city received citizen complaints about its practices at a time when it was under contract.
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Kate
A brick façade fell off a triplex in Little Italy this week, the weight of the bricks bringing down a balcony with it.
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Kate
La Presse has a good piece Sunday on Plaza St‑Hubert and notes a Justin Bur talk Sunday afternoon about the Plaza, at Librairie Paulines (whose location they don’t give, but it’s on Masson).
(Looking up the location of the bookstore, I remember passing it by because it had the vibe of a religious bookstore, and indeed it seems to be run by something called Les Filles de Saint-Paul. Its web frontage as a bookstore says it’s sustained by grants from both Quebec and Canada. It claims to be “un lieu de diffusion culturelle” but is boosting a webinar about Jesus. Why is the secular Quebec government supporting this institution?)
EmilyG
I’ve been inside it, and yes, it’s mainly religious books. I used to live near Masson street and I remember there being two bookstores along the part I used to walk down, one being that one and one being a bookstore I found more exciting.
Kate
The Café-Libraire du Vieux Bouc looks tiny but is densely stocked and well organized – if you’re searching for a book in French it’s a good place to look. There also used to be one called Le Puits du Livre on the other side, but it closed a couple of years ago.
PatrickC
I haven’t been to rue Masson in a while, but I read Le Vieux Bouc has had to move to another location.
Kate
I see that it’s reported in Metro but with neither the reason why, nor the new location.
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Kate
The Church of St John the Evangelist, the red roof church on President‑Kennedy near St‑Urbain, is up for sale as the parish is no longer able to sustain its expenses. It had sheltered a mission for the homeless for many years, but that was displaced in December.
Will the building be repurposed, or will it be torn down and replaced with another condo tower? Church buildings are hard to refashion for other uses, as we know.
DeWolf
Demolishing it for a condo tower would be a very long and arduous process, since it would require obtaining approval for demolition (not guaranteed for a landmark like this), then rezoning the site from religious to residential, then obtaining a derogation to go beyond the prescribed 30 metre height limit (about 10 storeys). There would probably be obstacles and opposition every step of the way.
On the other hand, I can easily see this becoming condos if a developer found a way to incorporate at least some of the church structure into a new building that was about 10 storeys high, which seems to have been chosen as a limit because it matches the neighbouring UQAM and Bell buildings.
Best case scenario: the city or a non-profit buys the church and turns it into a cultural/community venue with room for the homeless mission that was there for many years. That’s what church buildings are for, really: culture and community.
Moon
I think this is the loveliest idea I’ve heard.
Be assured, the variance headaches are largely why it has come to this. Otherwise, the church would have sold its saleable assets long ago and kept itself and the mission on site.
I don’t see that municipal lethargy becoming easier for developers to negotiate. The determining “what constitutes a historic wall,” and so on, is years of red tape.
The community centre idea feels less exploitative than the omnipresent condos for rich people (who would probably find themselves needing to live part of the year elsewhere due to the deafening noise during festival season.)
I hope so much that the beautiful stained glass and historic character are preserved and that good homes are found for such treasures as its Wolff organ.
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Kate
Daniel Renaud puts the many arsons in recent months – both vehicles and businesses – into context as symptoms of a power struggle among Mafia players here.
There have been two arsons noted this weekend: a repair garage in RDP on Saturday night, and an unspecified business in St‑Laurent on Sunday morning.
carswell 23:39 on 2023-05-07 Permalink
I believe it was he who, when asked what he liked best about Ottawa, replied “The train to Montreal.”