The camp under the Ville-Marie, where some people had been living for years, was finally demolished by police on Tuesday.
Updates from July, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
We have to expect that thoughts about baseball will always revive around the peak of summer, although CultMTL cites a study that found Quebec is the province least interested in Major League Baseball.
The Gazette recently cited an economics lecturer who says MLB will never come back to Montreal, arguing the necessary billions would be “a lot of money to pay for nostalgia” (and not pretending it could be done without taxpayers’ money) but then Monday they ran a Jack Todd piece in which he blames the billionaires but then confirms the economist’s point that it’s all about nostalgia by harking back to 1970. Todd’s trying to sell a 50‑year‑old memory as new goods but even he must know it’s never going to happen.
But it makes me nervous to read that there’s still talk about Stephen Bronfman pushing for public funding for a new stadium.
Josh
I think the Angus Reid survey is bunk. (Not to say that any of what I’m about to say is an argument in favour of public money to baseball in Montreal. Don’t read it that way.)
The Blue Jays have marketed themselves as “Canada’s team”. All of their games are broadcast nationwide in English on Sportsnet. The opening montage has images of both of Canada’s southern coasts. There is a minor-league affiliate of the Blue Jays that plays in Vancouver. Their games are broadcast in English on radio stations across Canada. It flows pretty naturally that the least-English province in Canada would also be the least interested in the sport. Similarly, I’m sure Quebec is also the province least interested in the Junos, or layoffs at CTV News.
Marc R
that’s all fine but we could def support a AAA or AA team locally; the problem is either that that team is affiliated with toronto (boo!) or boston (booo!)
i’d love a quebec summer league of baseball that pays players on par with AAA or AA and has teams in quebec, montreal, south shore, and north shore– would be a fun thing to bring the family to and if the wages are there would be decent baseball. no need for formal affiliations of teams to mlb teams, could just be a warmer for players under contract to any and all major league teams analagous to florida or arizona spring or fall leagues
Kate
Would we, though? The people who want this would never be satisfied with an AAA or AA team.
Consider: there have been efforts to bring in a secondary hockey team, assuming people would want to attend games at places like the Verdun auditorium. Tickets would be cheaper than the Bell Centre and the standard of play would be pretty good. But people don’t go, so within a season or two the team gets moved out to a town elsewhere in Quebec or even outside it. This experiment has been tried repeatedly, but there’s little appetite for sports that people feel are of secondary interest, unless it’s a university team whose fans are predefined, like the McGill teams or the Carabins.
Consider the pressure put on to convert the Impact prematurely into a Major League Soccer team, even to enlarging their stadium.
Guys like Bronfman or Saputo figure they can pay top dollar so they want the best.
Bronfman ought to fund a hospital wing if he needs to shed a few hundred million to immortalize himself. But I don’t expect a guy like him ever to understand that this is no time for bread and circuses.
Nicholas
I agree with Kate. The average age of a baseball fan in the US is nearly 60. There are Montrealers born after the last Expos home game that just finished CEGEP. There is just no appetite for baseball in Montreal. I remember watching the NDG little league team that was one inning away from going to Williamsport, and they regularly got tens of spectators, most family members. I’ve seen lots of high quality teenage baseball, and it gets little interest. There are very few teams in Quebec, so people don’t grow up playing it and so don’t grow up watching it. Quebec City, Trois Rivieres and Ottawa have teams in the Frontier League, and they get maybe 2,000 attendees per game. I’ve been to cities where a AA team was the only pro sports game in town, where attendance is much higher than 2,000, and they aren’t shown on TV or radio (sometimes online), and not played in bars. This is all nostalgia, and the best a team will do is something like the Frontier League with a few thousand spectators a game, at a stadium a university team uses.
Josh
I think a smaller team, in the right facility, potentially in the right suburb could work. This is a model that works in lots of places, including in the Montreal area, Kate, with the Habs’ affiliate in Laval. See this chart showing that the Rocket rank high in their league’s attendance: https://www.hockeydb.com/nhl-attendance/att_graph_season.php?lid=AHL1941&sid=2023
The key (in my opinion) would be to ensure that it’s not downtown, not competing directly with things like the jazz festival, the Habs, the tennis, etc. Build a cute, little 5,000- or 10,000-seat stadium for an AA, AAA or unaffiliated team (potentially in the same league that Quebec, Trois-Rivieres and Ottawa already play in – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_League), and put it on the West Island or something.
CE
I think it would be better in the centre of the city. It wouldn’t necessarily compete with the festivals but compliment them. You could go to an afternoon baseball game, have a couple beers then make your way over to the Jazz Fest or JFL for the evening. Locals would do that but to have tourists join in, it would have to be an MLB team.
Josh
Nicholas – on the one hand, you seem to be arguing that Little League and the unaffiliated Frontier League are good indicators of how baseball might do as a spectator sport in Montreal, but on the other hand, that you’ve been to cities where the AA team is quite healthy. These two points seem to be in contradiction with each other.
Vancouver – not a city that regards itself as minor league (and a city that used to root more for the Seattle Mariners than for the Blue Jays) – regularly sells out its ~5,000-seat stadium for its class-A Blue Jays affiliate. When the weather’s nice, it can be impossible to get tickets. If people invest in the business and have a great product, it can work. The problem in Montreal is that no one properly did that with the ballclub after about 1986 or so.
walkerp
They are just halfway through their second season and the Montreal Alliance basketball team is regularily drawing good crowds to the Verdun Auditorium. They are part of the Canadian Elite Basketball League which is pretty low down on the hierarchy of leagues in the world. It’s a lot of fun and is responding to and encouraging the growth of hoops culture here.
I don’t see why that would be any different for a triple-A baseball team.Joey
Kate, have you forgot about the Laval Rocket?
Josh
Good point, walkerp. I think non-sports fans don’t realize what a change is happening across the board in sports in North America – all kinds of examples of leagues pretty far down the pecking order doing a tidy little business, even in big cities. Vancouver alone has three different levels of pro and semi-pro soccer playing to crowds of (roughly) 2,000, 5,000 and 20,000 spectators a game. The CEBL is starting to make a bit of a name for itself, including with the Scarborough Shooting Stars in Toronto. The Winnipeg Goldeyes of an unaffiliated baseball league in the American Midwest draw 5,200 people a game.
The landscape for sports is really changing fast as people get priced out the top-tier events.
Kate
I had forgotten about the Laval Rocket.
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Kate
The Museum of Fine Arts has hired an Indigenous arts curator. They are from Samoa.
Harry
This hiring is not the first time the MMFA has hired an indigenous curator. But this time, I hope that they get their own office with a window, and not a closet.
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Kate
The contentious magic mushroom store has opened, and police say they’re watching it. Technically shrooms are illegal, but businesses get away with selling them online.
It would be wise for the authorities to concede this one. Shrooms are not among the drugs causing problems in our streets. If cannabis can be legal, so can these.
Prediction: within five years the SQDC will be selling shrooms alongside its current products. Not in candy form, of course. Maybe shroom‑infused Brussels sprouts for a real treat.
Update: CBC radio reported at 4:30 that the store has been raided by police.
Ian
Shrooms in beet aspic
TVP shroom jerky
Soy cream of shroom soupKate
Marc R
LOL at that prediction; the SQDC is allowed to sell pot but the CAQ has stomped on it at every turn. if you think they’re going to expand their product line into hallucinogens in 5 years you’re predicting a very significant change of government
walkerp
Nothing the Montreal police like better than a raid on a retail establishment. You knew they were going in within 24 hours once the news came out.
JS
Wonder what kind of lease the store has.
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Kate
Almost all our media are reporting that the city has bought another rooming house, this one in Sud‑Ouest borough.
I wonder what happens now. The building has 7 current tenants and is full. Will bureaucracy venture in and renovate?
Ephraim
I think they are buying them and leaving them. There is no point in renovation, just maintenance. We really need a stock of rooming house. To the point of building rooming houses as they are a smart way to accommodate singles on limited incomes who pay weekly rather than monthly. But someone with authority needs to be there to keep order and/or remove a resident who causes problems.
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Kate
Despite the fatal fire in March in Old Montreal, fire inspections are down in Ville‑Marie.
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Kate
The ARTM has unveiled a new transit map showing the current state of metro, trains and REM (at least when it opens at the end of the month from Brossard to Central Station) and future expansions shown with dotted lines.
I’d like it if they also produced the same map in pozzy, as we used to say in the business. It’s more dramatic against a black background, but it isn’t necessarily easy to read.
CE
Does anyone know why the Exo trains are numbered 11 through 15?
jeleventybillionandone
And also why the Mascouche line loops around the city to finally arrive at the Gare Centrale rather than going more directly.
carswell
In one of the stupidest transit decisions in the province’s history, CDPQ Infra was given control of the Mount Royal tunnel, which it is reserving exclusively for the REM. While work is being done on the tunnel, the Mascouche line, which used to join the Deux Montagnes line and travel under Mount Royal to/from Central Station, is currently rerouted around the west side of the mountain. When the Deux Montagnes REM line opens, the Mascouche line will end at the Côte-de-Liesse REM station, meaning passengers wanting to go downtown will have to transfer to the REM, much as they can currently do at the Sauvé metro station.
Some expect this will spell the end of the Mascouche line unless it is somehow integrated in the “REM” de l’est.
The closure of the tunnel to non-REM trains is also a massive problem for Via’s planned TGF/TGV from Quebec City (via Trois-Rivières) and on to Ottawa, Toronto and Windsor, which now has no fast and convenient way to get to Central Station. Last I heard, some are proposing that its only “Montreal” stops be at one of the metro stations in Laval and at the Dorval circle, while others favour Jean-Talon station. Another “solution” is to have two TGF/TGV lines: one from Windsor to Central Station) and one from Dorval and/or Jean-Talon and/or Laval to Trois-Rivières, the QC airport and downtown Quebec City, with through passengers having to change trains (and maybe take a metro or REM ride).
An actual through TGF/TGV with a stop at Central Station would require the construction of a new tunnel under or slightly to the east of Mount Royal, with various scenarios having it shared with the St-Jérome and Mascouche lines (and stopping at Jean-Talon Station), the Pink metro line, the “REM” de l’est, etc. Don’t hold your breath.
bumper carz
Wait carswell, couldn’t future TGVs go to the beautiful Windsor station instead of Central Station?
Oh wait… Our “governments” let another group of businessmen wreck that downtown train entry as well.
Tux 22:44 on 2023-07-11 Permalink
You can always count in the cops in a housing crisis
Marc R 00:17 on 2023-07-12 Permalink
you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here
Blork 08:57 on 2023-07-12 Permalink
My understanding is that this was done because of necessary roadwork that has to be done, so it was for safety reasons. They’ve also provided storage lockers for each of the people that were displaced so they have someplace to keep their stuff.
Chris 09:37 on 2023-07-12 Permalink
Tux, ah yes, let’s blame the cops. Why not blame the politicians that made the bylaws against vagrancy? Or the judges that ruled against them?
H. John 10:05 on 2023-07-12 Permalink
James Hughes of the Old Brewery Mission commented recently:
https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/opinion-montreal-keeps-dismantling-encampments-what-happens-to-unhoused-campers
Ephraim 10:24 on 2023-07-12 Permalink
@Chris – The problem isn’t the bylaws on vagrancy, the problem is that they can’t supply needed housing and in this case, rooming houses. We’ve legislated zoning in particularly stupid ways… which created illegal AirBnBs when we needed rooming houses. The AirBnBs should have required commercial property taxes, which would have at least brought in a lot more money and made people think twice. We haven’t built rooming houses. I’m not sure why, but at some people thought that they were entitled to a whole apartment, which isn’t always affordable or tenable. Yes, it’s great to have your own apartment, but in some cases, people can’t afford it and we need to look at private living quarters with shared spaces as a move forward or micro-apartments with higher density built more ecologically (with geological heating/cooling) So you get your own room, and maybe your own toilet, but shower, kitchen and living room might be shared, to cut the cost of housing. At the moment, rooming houses are allowed to have microwaves, but no stove/oven, though with air fryers, essentially you could do a small “oven” today.
We need a lot of rooming houses. And that also takes supervision. You need someone around for when drama breaks out. So you likely need to build in a superintendant/social worker into the situation as well. With the power to get someone moved off the premises quickly and into other housing. But people need a stable home if we want any chance of helping them get up and forward with their lives and they need a network under them along with house if we want to get them off of drugs and alcohol. You don’t get off drugs without a network… but the natural tendency is for people to walk away from them, rather than be there but with tough love and conditions.
Ian 10:25 on 2023-07-12 Permalink
@Chris just following orders, huh.
Time to make Arendt’s “Banality of Evil” required reading for cop school.
jeather 12:47 on 2023-07-12 Permalink
“There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
qatzelok 17:59 on 2023-07-12 Permalink
Ephraim, I really appreciate the nuance you have provided to the burning question of why we don’t have enough houses for all our human residents in such a rich civilization. As you say, it is much more complex than simply changing a by-law or disciplining someone for naughtiness.
It’s obviously a deeply systemic problem, and it is connected to the fact that private housing is treated like a speculative luxury product, rather then as a basic need that everyone must be provided with.