Lucien-L’Allier train terminus is going to close starting next April so work can be done on the open-air quais – including building an awning structure over them. It will partially reopen October 2024 but won’t reopen completely till the following April.
Updates from May, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
I was reminded by a Neil DeGrasse Tyson tweet that this is the date of Manhattanhenge, and that we have a henge effect too, as has been discussed in our media previously. The Gazette gave it the date of June 12 in a 2011 piece, and Spacing, back in 2009 – citing an earlier recension of this very blog – also cites June 12, at least from the Plateau grid that’s in line with most downtown streets – a grid that runs east to d’Iberville and north to Jean‑Talon, and is shared by NDG and lower Westmount as well. Other parts of town will not be henging on June 12.
EmilyG
I seem to remember around June 21st, the setting sun can be seen down St-Laurent or St-Denis street.
Kate
There would be 2 every year of course, as the sun goes and then comes back.
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Kate
It’s not quite a Montreal story, but most of Quebec is under an open fire ban as a hot dry week continues, and as fires sizzle Alberta and Nova Scotia.
Facing the hot week, the city is opening the taps on some of the splash pads in parks and may open cooling stations if needed.
It didn’t feel too hot to me Sunday, maybe because it wasn’t humid, but the daytime high broke a record.
DeWolf
The lack of humidity is a real blessing. When it’s 31 and dry you can sit in filtered sun and feel pretty good. If it wasn’t so dry, even the shade would be uncomfortable.
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Kate
A new committee announced Monday by a joint Montreal-Quebec power quartet is going to work on finding a way to build housing on the Blue Bonnets site without breaking the bank.
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Kate
Quebec is putting in $5.7 million against armed violence in Montreal, but from recent incident reports I think they’d be better off looking for the guys with matches and canisters of gasoline.
walkerp
100%. Unfortunately the bosses of those guys with the matches have a very powerful lobby.
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Kate
A mention in a Washington Post item, suggesting Montreal as a summer vacation spot, has spawned a La Presse piece about Montreal as a luxury destination. The WPost piece pitches the city as an alternative to New York, a bit of a novelty since we’re usually the cut‑price Paris, safely still in North America and without the strikes.
Ian
Brooklyn in Miniature, maybe. Utterly unlike Paris, though.
To be honest I would be VERY surprised if you couldn’t better French dining in New York than here.
Shawn Goldwater
Well I can only say that I once went with friends on the upper west side to a French place and thought that it was inferior to what we have.
But that was just one place, not high-end.
I personally am a fan of L’Express.
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Kate
Quebec actor Michel Côté has died. He was in many things – Broue, Omertà, C.R.A.Z.Y., La petite vie. He was 72.
Update: Pieces about Côté from Le Devoir, La Presse, Métro, the Journal, four pieces from Radio‑Canada.
Deb Prothero
A sad day. I enjoyed his performance in C.R.A.Z.Y.
JaneyB
That is sad. De Père en flic was priceless. So many good ones. RIP.
PatrickC
A propos of C.R.A.Z.Y., it’s too bad more people can’t see the film. The producers failed to secure the proper rights for the songs they included, and so the film can’t be screened commercially in the US and no doubt elsewhere.
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Kate
The Journal’s Danièle Lorain drew the “we hates Montreal” straw this week, so she writes a piece laced with sneery sarcasm – you know when they begin a column with “Madame la mairesse” that you’re in for a bumpy ride – about driving difficulties in town.
She starts off with a list of highway closures that can’t be blamed on city hall because they’re ordained by the Quebec transport ministry. Then she slams the pedestrianization of a few streets for summer as if every major artery in town has been shut down, even though the popularity of these streets is evident.
I bet this gets a lot of people in Joliette really steamed, though.
bumper carz
For all those frustrated drivers who live in bungalows that have replaced forests, this video might be a wake-up call. A text analysis would reveal that the victim says “car” more than any other word.
DeWolf
Mont-Royal was slammed all weekend. Busier than I recall it being any previous summer. Pedestrian streets are extremely popular but they’ll always be a convenient boogeyman for people who never actually come into the city.
Aineko Marcx
Securing some minimum guaranteed readership by hitchhiking the “hatred towards cars” topic seldom fails. After all vehicles are our sacrosanct avatars in the asphalt-concrete subuniverse.
I always expect new products of such specific variety cultivated from the Journal.shawn
BTW Le Devoir article gets it slightly wrong? While St-Denis is indeed pedestrian-only during the comic fest, Mount Royal Ave. is once again pedestrians and slow biking… https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/791899/urbanisme-les-pietons-ont-conquis-le-plateau-mont-royal
Ian
I was just down by Mt Royal and Papineau, most of Mt Royal in there is closed fir the installation of street planters and soforth, everyone is walking AND bicycling on the sidewalks. It’s a bit of a log jam in spots as nobody wants to walk their bikes and pedestrians are refusing to give up their right of way.
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Kate
A teenage driver is in critical condition after colliding with a wall in St‑Léonard early Monday. Firefighters had to pry him out of the vehicle.
shawn
BTW that driver near Joliette who tried to avoid hitting a family of ducks on the road has been found guilty, even though the oncoming teenaged motorcyclist was speeding around the curve. https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/justice-et-faits-divers/2023-01-26/canards-sur-la-route/eric-rondeau-coupable-de-conduite-dangereuse-causant-la-mort.php
Thomas 21:21 on 2023-05-29 Permalink
Not to be a pedantic train nerd (even though I absolutely am), but in English we call them platforms 😉
LJ 21:40 on 2023-05-29 Permalink
What a complete waste of funds that could be much better used elsewhere. At that terminus everyone can wait indoors during inclement weather, and in nicer weather no one needs the awning. I see no purpose to having it at all. Reminds me of the rebuilt waiting station for some buses outside Lionel-Groulx, which made everyone walk much further than necessary, provided no useful shelter, and has now been closed for a very long time.
Kate 08:22 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
I’m willing to believe the external platforms (thank you, Thomas) need some work, since they’ve been sitting out there since 1976. Maybe the awning is meant to protect the infrastructure and will only protect passengers as a side effect?
I still need to find out which incredible idiots decided it was a great idea to build a hockey arena directly on top of the tracks leading into Windsor Station, which could have been in use for centuries for trains, but is now meaningless.
shawn 08:57 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
Yes the loss of Windsor Station as a working train station still hurts – for me, anyway.
Kevin 10:37 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
I assume it was Dore, looking at a wasteland in the wake of the Overdale debacle.
Kate 11:05 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
Kevin, you’re right that Jean Doré was mayor in 1993 when construction began on what was then called the Molson Centre. Why did CP allow it, I wonder.
shawn 11:44 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
I don’t think CP cared. Windsor was being used only for commuter rail and CP stopped operating the line in 1982.
Taylor 20:35 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
If memory serves Mulroney facilitated the deal.
The fact that CP left Montreal two years later may have had something to do with it too… I think Shawn may be on the money, they probably simply didn’t care anymore as most of their business had, by that time, shifted to Western Canada, and commuter rail operations had been transferred to the AMT.
That being said, never say never (again)
The Bell Ctr is nearly 30 years old and the NHL will invariably start getting fussy about the age of the arena in a few years
The railway right of way is a possible route for a downtown TGV terminus
If you demolished the Bell Ctr you can still access Windsor Station
In my dreams, this is what will happen. They’ll recycle the old Forum into a new arena, bring hockey back to where it belongs, and turn Windsor Station back into a jewel of a train station. Better still, in a major redevelopment of Windsor Station, they vacate the commercial properties within and make it a hotel.
Don’t discount the ‘moving back to the Forum’ thing either… it would be the mother of all sports marketing/PR efforts… quite possibly the only way to convince locals to spend public money on a new arena. They’d have a parade with 24 replica stanley cups brought from one location to the other. Big parade. The Molsons could potentially make a fortune selling their land back to the gov’t for a train station. And then there’d be the whole hockey nostalgia angle… people eat that up. I’d be surprised if they weren’t already working on such a plan.
shawn 06:20 on 2023-05-31 Permalink
I am the furthest thing from a rail guy but according to Wikipedia, that line and the old CN line to the west island were actually sold to and run by the old STCUM: the Montreal urban community transit authority. The AMT – that didn’t exist until the 90s.