Updates from June, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 16:01 on 2023-06-28 Permalink | Reply  

    There’s a new smog warning on the Environment Canada weather page: “Concentrations of fine particulate matter originating from forest fires will be high tonight and tomorrow. However, concentrations will be less significant than last Sunday’s smog episode.”

    Thursday night was supposed to be the first show of the fireworks festival but the expected poor air quality means it’s been cancelled.

    Now the festival is saying it will have to evaluate the state of the air before each show but that the whole festival could be cancelled.

     

    • shawn 16:54 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      I don’t see any links to it off yours but EC does offer animated smoke forecast maps, here: https://weather.gc.ca/firework/
      “Canada’s Wildfire Smoke Prediction System (FireWork)”
      No idea if its more, less or equally accurate as the https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/

    • Kate 18:27 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      There’s a big red banner on the weather page from here – maybe it’s regional?

    • shawn 19:22 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      You mean the alert? Yes, but it doesn’t seem to direct one anywhere useful. In fact, amusingly, when you click on the link for http://www.canada.ca/info-smog-program you are directed to a page that has a “Most requested” with 3 links including “NAPS data products,” which got me curious. And it’s most requested! Well, if you click on it you get: “Server Error in ‘/’ Application. The resource cannot be found.”

      I’ve said it before but the EC site is a mess. And I say this as a federal civil servant who has worked on the text and links for the new NFB institutional site.

      Somebody there needs to clean this up.

    • Kate 20:57 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      It’s on Steven Guilbeault, the minister. Drop him a line?

    • shawn 21:49 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      And Kate, you were the one who pointed out a while back that if you click on Air Quality on the Montreal page you get “Observed Conditions: Not Available.”
      It’s so bad that I wonder if it’s intentional, like, no to compete with private sector sites… I dunno.

    • steph 08:20 on 2023-06-29 Permalink

      I`m a little bummed they cancelled them, I`m quite the fan.

      The firework shows must be pretty heavy air polluters. I wonder to what extent their pollution effect compares to the wildfire smoke.

  • Kate 09:59 on 2023-06-28 Permalink | Reply  

    A web magazine I’ve never noticed before has a glowing report on Montreal as “what a city can be” – which spends paragraphs idealizing the peace and order that reign here.

     

    • Uatu 10:36 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      I guess he likes our caca filled streets ;P

    • walkerp 10:48 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Well that was pleasant to read. I could nitpick but the author broadly gets most of it right. It’s really directed at Americans and it sends a message that is good for them to absorb (and for us to retain).

    • Robert 11:13 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      I thought you had linked to another of those sloppily written travel pieces composed of clichés about “Paris en Amérique du Nord” or quaint and colorful Quebec, best places for poutine and smoked meat, ending with a stop at Mount Royal belvedere. But Del Mastro has written a short yet thoughtful consideration of what makes Montreal so special. Montreal is not overflowing with dazzling tourist attractions, but what makes it so attractive to visitors, especially from the US is its anomalous “fine grained” urban quality. That makes this city something of a novelty on this continent where the primary model of metropolitan development consists of single family homes on meandering streets with an “office park” campus here and a shopping mall there, all of it threaded by freeways and six lane wide arterials lined with strip malls and lots of free parking. It’s a different experience for people coming from that environment to walk the bustling streets of a thriving city district. Locals, inured to that distinction, wonder what the fuss is all about. Montreal isn’t Brigadoon. Indeed, if we could send tourists to Laval, South Shore and West Island, they might wonder why they even bothered to get on a plane. And if you think Del Mastro’s glasses are too rose colored, you can always recommend translated articles from the Journal de Montréal as correctives.

    • Robert 11:23 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      @Uatu: C’pas San Francisco icitte!

    • PatrickC 11:33 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      It’s a reminder of the importance of older zoning policies (or perhaps the lack of them) that allowed for mixed development and a great variety of buildings on commercial streets. I’m afraid that when whole areas are redeveloped en bloc (Griffintown?), the advantages of that heterogeneity are forgotten.

    • Meezly 12:04 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Even visiting Vancouverites have remarked on how refreshing it is to see the mixed development in our neighbourhoods (primarily the Plateau area) compared to the more demarcated zoning laws (business vs residential) in Vancouver. Griffintown does remind me of Yaletown and similar areas in downtown Van.

    • Kate 12:16 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      i remember being in a U.S. town with friends and asking where the town actually was. But, as the saying goes, there was no there, there. It was all suburban highways and strip malls – there was no walkable older downtown area at all. And I suspect that’s default for much of North America.

      I mean, even Pointe Claire has Pointe Claire village.

    • dhomas 12:34 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      I once booked a hotel in the Seattle area (Bellevue) that was about 200m, as the crow flies, from my office. I thought “this is great, I don’t need to rent a car, I can just walk to the office!”. Except those 200m included an 8-lane “road”, which was actually a highway in everything but name. What should have been a couple of minutes walk turned into nearly a half hour. Every time I would travel in North America, I would come back to Montreal with a new appreciation of our city.

    • Kevin 16:21 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Kate
      There is a line similar to that in “From Scratch” where an Italian guy’s parents ask if his home in LA is near the city centre, and he tells them for the umpteenth time that in the US there is no such thing.

    • walkerp 17:59 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      We are very fortunate. The battle is ongoing, but Montreal’s mixed use neighbourhood model (plus lots of historical luck) is one that many see as the future of cities in a post climate-change world. This is why shitbirds like Martineau (who I assume actually lives here) need to be consigned to the dustbin of history.

    • DeWolf 18:13 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Montreal wouldn’t have been so remarkable 75 years ago. But US cities have been hollowed out to such an extent that there’s only a handful of cities that offer a similarly large, continuous expanse of lively, fine-grained urban fabric: New York (of course), San Francisco, Boston/Cambridge and the north side of Chicago. (And maybe Philadelphia, but I haven’t been there to find out.) Otherwise, there are lots of great urban neighbourhoods in various US cities, but they’re usually cut off from each other by big expressways, car-oriented dead zones or areas with serious crime problems.

    • Kevin 23:15 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      DeWolf
      I only spent a few days in Philly, but friends who lived there would agree with your assessment. It is extremely walkable with a lot of neighbourhoods.

    • mb 07:35 on 2023-06-29 Permalink

      All you need to agree with Del Mastro is to leave MTL for a couple of months/years. One gets used to everything, except the winter.

    • Shawn Goldwater 07:53 on 2023-06-29 Permalink

      It’s been years since I have been there but I would think that San Francisco no longer works as an example, because those fine urban areas are so hemmed in by high crime areas. One can’t even approach Mission at night. And so what’s left as a vibrant safe city centre is so expensive, so overrun by tourists and investors.

    • walkerp 09:11 on 2023-06-29 Permalink

      Except that is utter bullshit Shawn Goldwater. San Francisco still very much as walkable as it ever was.

    • walkerp 10:26 on 2023-06-29 Permalink

      Or should I refer to you as Shawn “Barry” Goldwater? :). [that’s a joke for us old heads]

    • Blork 15:49 on 2023-06-29 Permalink

      The article does offer some interesting perspectives, but there are plenty of leaps-of-faith and generalizations. It’s nice that he felt safe when walking around in Montreal, and in general I think he’s right that Montreal is safer than most large US cities. But most (or at least many) US cities do have safe(ish) neighborhoods even if they are interspersed with less safe ones.

      Same with walkability and whatnot. Most (not all) US cities I’ve been to have plenty of very walkable neighborhoods, often full of interesting independent shops and restaurants. Chicago, Seattle, L.A., New York (obv.), San Francisco (obv.), Philly, Cincinatti, etc. I’ve had nice neighbourhood walks in all of them.

      But class plays into it a lot. Those tree-lined streets and indy shops don’t come cheap, so the poorer neighborhoods tend to be ruled by parking lots and chain stores.

  • Kate 09:52 on 2023-06-28 Permalink | Reply  

    Bixi has been breaking usage records but that sometimes means users are faced with empty stations when they want a bike.

     

    • shawn 10:26 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      I didn’t realize it was up even compared to last year. Also I’ve noticed more flat tires than ever before. Not surprising, I suppose, if the bikes are in almost-constant use.

    • EmilyG 13:24 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Shawn’s comment makes me wonder: Who fixes the flat tires on Bixis?

    • shawn 13:41 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Well, the same folks that fix everything else. I’ve interacted with them a bit on Facebook. You just report the bike as broken on the app or site and eventually, not always soon enough, it does get fixed.

    • shawn 13:48 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      … other common issues are bent wheels, faulty breaks, problems with the chain/derailleur and most maddeningly, on the blue e-bikes, seat stems that can’t be locked with the collar. Though I’ve seen less of those now, I think.

    • EmilyG 14:21 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Thanks.

      I’d like to try Bixi sometime, though I’m not knowledgeable about bikes or bike maintenance.

    • Shawn Goldwater 14:40 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      But Emily perhaps I have not been clear. We as users don’t fix anything. They do.

    • Kate 19:16 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Shawn is right, Emily. You don’t have to do a thing about a busted Bixi, except slot it in and hit the button that says it’s got damage. It’s always wise before taking a bike out to check that the tires are not flat and the brake cables are intact, though.

  • Kate 09:24 on 2023-06-28 Permalink | Reply  

    Public health in the east end are planning to distribute N95 masks to people deemed vulnerable during the next smoke event, which it sounds like they expect sooner rather than later.

     

    • carswell 10:05 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Sitting near an open window in my office located at about 350 feet above sea level on the north side of the mountain, 200 m from the UdeM metro station. Whiffs of campfire have just started drifting in. Looks like I’m going to have to budget for a recirculating air conditioner and air purifiers. In the short term, hoping the forecast thunderstorms clear the air.

    • shawn 10:27 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      I hadn’t noticed it yet in Mile End but yes the numbers seem to be creeping up.

    • walkerp 10:32 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      I just tested positive for covid and wearing an N95 inside at my own house, so still plenty of needs for them!

    • shawn 10:54 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      I hope it’s mild, walkerp! Do you have an idea where you might have contracted it?

    • Kate 10:55 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Get well soon, walkerp!

      And thanks for reminding us that covid is still around. As a society we seem determined to put it behind us.

    • walkerp 11:56 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Thank you for your kind wishes. So far it is the opposite end of when I got it the first time. That was truly awful, down for the count for days with all kinds of weird gross symptoms. This time it started yesterday as a scratchy throat which I thought was due to the smoke but when I woke up this morning it was the classic old-school cold sore throat. I feel fine except for a nasty but not epic sore throat and mild cough.

      I may have caught it at the Alliance game, where I did some very close, loud talking and was generally surrounded by other people cheering. Could have been dinner at some friends. Otherwise pretty much been home and with the family.

    • Meezly 12:27 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      In addition to talking about which masks or air quality apps are best, we should be harassing our MPs and lighting a fire under their butts, so to speak: https://350.org/canada/mp-call/

    • shawn 13:01 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

    • MarcG 13:09 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Every infection is a dice roll in terms of acute symptoms but there’s at least one huge study that shows that the more times you’re infected the more likely you’ll have long-term negative outcomes like autoimmune disease, heart, kidney, brain problems, etc regardless of vaccination status. Glad to hear you’re at the very least trying to prevent onward transmission.

    • Shawn Goldwater 14:41 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Ok Marc you scared me straight I am wearing my mask at Olimpico right now.

    • MarcG 14:45 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Get one of these and you can still sip your latte (through a straw).

    • mare 14:45 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      TIL that Quebec’s forest fire prevention agency is named SOPFEU. The official name is Société de protection des forêts contre le feu, so that acronym is only very loosely based on actual word initials.

      So they could have easily worked a T in that acronym, because STOPFEU would be both easy to remember and a good action word! Now it’s just a soppy mess.

    • Shawn Goldwater 14:48 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      Marc, that’s hilarious. Never seen that before.

  • Kate 09:01 on 2023-06-28 Permalink | Reply  

    Businessman and TV figure Vincenzo Guzzo has been charged with criminal harassment and has actually spent a night in jail while waiting to be charged.

     

    • dwgs 10:24 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      He is not a nice man.

    • shawn 10:29 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      I recall he was one of the suitors last time around to buy the football team and he just started quarrelling with everyone.

  • Kate 08:52 on 2023-06-28 Permalink | Reply  

    A company that builds student housing is planning a new building at St‑Laurent and Ontario. Places like this are needed now that there are no more cheap apartments for students in the regular market.

     

    • Mozai 11:02 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      The old punk bar Katakombes closed before COVID lockdowns, and I remember a sign on the building in 2020 saying it would be the site of new student residences. The article says “st-laurent et ontario” which describes that place, but the architect’s picture looks like Ontario & St-Urbain.

    • james 13:18 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      The image in the article is a bit deceptive because this new building seems to have frontage on all three roads: St-Laurent, St-Dominique & Ontario. It will surround the existing building at 24 Ontario E.

  • Kate 22:45 on 2023-06-27 Permalink | Reply  

    The biggest Canadian owner of rental apartments is ready to sell buildings to the city – and it’s not the only one. Evidently investment companies were going nuts buying up Montreal properties awhile back.

     

    • Ephraim 13:57 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      It makes me wonder if this is a bad sign… and the apartments that they are selling are apartments that they don’t ever see as being profitable. That the expenses of upkeep far outweigh the rents brought in.

  • Kate 22:40 on 2023-06-27 Permalink | Reply  

    Amtrak’s Adirondack train only returned to service in April after a long pandemic shutdown, but it’s on hold again because Canadian transportation officials limit train speeds north of the border when the temperature reaches 30°. As one of these articles says, this would push crews over their federally mandated workday limit.

     

    • mare 23:51 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

      Unfortunately I found this out yesterday, an hour after it was announced. A friend’s son from NJ is going to stay with me for a few weeks and had booked a ticket on the Adirondack this weekend. But it was canceled because the train wouldn’t go any further than Albany. Now he has to take the terrible Greyhound bus, which is more expensive too (US$105 vs US$71). Maybe because of surge pricing or just because US politicians want Amtrak to go bankrupt so they can dismantle and privatize it.

    • dhomas 03:15 on 2023-06-28 Permalink

      It seems temporary. You are able to book a ticket from July 2nd. All dates prior to that are shown as “cancelled”.

  • Kate 20:38 on 2023-06-27 Permalink | Reply  

    TVA says that 95 households have asked for help as Moving Day looms and they have nowhere to move to. But this TVA piece runs this story in with another, about a new subsidized rooming house for women, run by Chez Doris, which has just opened, and doesn’t sound like it’s meant for families in a jam. There are rooms for 20 women in this new facility.

    Josée Legault writes about the need for political will to tackle the housing crisis.

    And as always this time of year, there are stories about abandoned pets but more because of the rising cost of living, rather than specifically because so many landlords like to ban them.

     

    • Kate 20:31 on 2023-06-27 Permalink | Reply  

      Twin girls age 6 have been abducted by their mother, which sparked an Amber Alert on Tuesday evening.

      Update: News items say the kids have been found.

       

      • Kate 10:26 on 2023-06-27 Permalink | Reply  

        I rarely notice Toronto news at all but it’s bound to be nice for Mayor Plante that the new mayor of that city is also a left‑leaning woman.

         

        • Meezly 12:07 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

          Hard not to notice as it also made international news!

        • Gilles Beauchamp 12:26 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

          But not in the Quebec version of the Globe and Mail ! I noticed the first page of the Ontario edition… but search in vain in my edition: no article at all.

        • Joey 15:01 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

          @Gilles maybe the QC print edition went to bed before the polls closed…

        • Blork 15:35 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

          Can’t wait to see MBC’s stories about how Toronto is being run by a “Chinese spy.”

        • H. John 22:55 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

          I liked Jan Wong’s tweet:

          “Lol On 100th anniversary of Chinese Exclusion Act barring Chinese from entering Canada, an Asian-Canadian woman will lead Canada’s biggest city.”

          https://twitter.com/WriterWong/status/1673663545697812481?s=20

      • Kate 10:14 on 2023-06-27 Permalink | Reply  

        Transit fares in the Montreal area will be going up on July 1 except for people 65 and over, for whom it will be free of charge.

        Update: As noted in comments below, there was a protest downtown on Tuesday.

         

        • Nicholas 12:41 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

          The free fares are only for agglo residents riding within the agglo (Zone A) with a photo OPUS ($15 for 7 years). Fares for non-residents (off-island, tourists, etc) in Zone A are more than doubling from $1.25 to $2.75, etc. (And without a photo card, e.g. tourists, and riders who don’t know you need a photo card, it’s full adult fare, as before.) (They used to be half the price of student fares, but will now be the same price, and since those are going up with inflation the price increase is >100%.) Fares in zones AB/ABC/ABCD are going up slightly if at all. Laval (and some MRCs) already has free 65+ travel for its residents on its networks, but it means no one is eligible for free travel between any two sectors as you only get free travel within your sector where you’re a resident. It’s still a nice benefit, but will confuse lots of people.

        • Kate 12:54 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

          ARTM promised to simplify the old fare system but inevitably brought in a new system that’s confusing in a whole new way.

        • st 13:49 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

          how long will tickets I buy today be valid?

        • shawn 14:04 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

          I had the same question: my assumption is tickets bought today won’t be accepted as of July 1. Is that so?

        • Kate 14:14 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

          During previous fare increases I’ve always been able to go on using any tickets I had already bought, till they were used up. After all, they’re just bits on a chip and the STM machine has already placed them there.

        • Meezly 16:17 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

          I think I heard on the radio that there was a protest at Square Vic earlier today about the STM fare hikes.

        • Spi 20:08 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

          Tickets purchased before the fare increase remain valid until their expiry (which I think is 2’ish calendar years).

      • Kate 09:38 on 2023-06-27 Permalink | Reply  

        In five weeks this city has seen a hundred incidents of arson. La Presse has a table dividing them into buildings, vehicles and other.

         

        • Kate 09:35 on 2023-06-27 Permalink | Reply  

          The construction consortium building the REM has been fined multiple times for putting its workers into dangerous situations.

           

          • Kate 09:24 on 2023-06-27 Permalink | Reply  

            A CHSLD nurse has been charged with sexually assaulting residents – and TVA says the victims are elderly priests.

             

            • Meezly 09:45 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

              This raises so many questions (and assumptions).

            • Kate 10:16 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

              I know. I had to make an effort not to add a satirical flourish about priests.

            • dwgs 20:18 on 2023-06-27 Permalink

              Turnabout is fair play.

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