Four luxury steamships used to ply the St Lawrence from Montreal to the Saguenay Fjord and back, a pleasure cruise that was possible from 1928 till 1965. The article doesn’t say whether the service was interrupted during World War II, given that U‑boats were known to be lurking.
Updates from July, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A good Globe and Mail piece (via Fagstein on Twitter) examines how Quebec municipal police refuse to cooperate on investigations into civilian deaths that occur during police interventions. A brief but telling coda from journalist Frédérik‑Xavier Duhamel simply says: “a total of 0 police officers faced accusations so far for any of the 190 deaths investigated by the BEI since its creation in 2016.”
I did not realize police could refuse to answer to the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes.
Ephraim
One more reason we need a civilian oversight board. We need real reform.
Ian
…and yet we just keep throwing more money at them.
So much for that “big, big cinversation” Plante mentioned back in 2020.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/plante-police-defund-discussion-1.5603076Ian
As Ted Rutland points out, we need to stop calling BEI a “police watchdog”
Tim
190 deaths in 7 years. Wow. That is a lot of people. I’m lazy Kate: how does that compare to the homicide numbers in Montreal over that same time period?
walkerp
That is a lot, jesus. Tim if you scroll down on the right you’ll see we are at 13 so far for 2023. So let’s say 30 a year, that’s 210 in 7 years. Basically municipal cops in Quebec have killed just a little less then actual homicides. Nuts.
Meezly
These are deaths that happened in the “care” of municipal police for the whole province, so I guess the SQ is not included? Would be nice to know how many deaths are attributed to which municipality.
Anton
To put that in perspective: The East German Dictatorship killed about 140 people at the border wall …in a 28 year period.
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Kate
Here’s Christopher Curtis on some of the people who were living in tents under the Ville‑Marie until very recently.
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Kate
Toula Drimonis tracks how La Presse has amended its version of the “rape victim turned away because francophone” story as the understanding percolates through that it’s actually a story about flawed protocols for treating rape victims.
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Kate
An analysis of the potential for turning disused office buildings into residential space has found 611 possible buildings in downtown Montreal, but it’s expensive and takes time. And many larger buildings are disqualified because the floor size is too big to allow natural light into the interior.
Blork
There are many ways to think about this issue. One way (and probably the most common way) is for developers to look for ways to make a buck by turning these spaces into chic residences like all the other new construction downtown. Personally, I think that’s the last thing we need.
I’d rather they found ways to turn them into reasonably priced condos or apartments. Forget the quartz countertops and the gleaming top-of-the-line appliances. Forget the imported tiles and Italian marble. Just make them liveable and basic, leaving room for the people who live there to fancy them up if they want.
Think about people living in “loft space” in Manhattan. Super expensive and unattainable for most people. But think of what those lofts were like in the 1970s. Cheap and basic, and no frills, because they were empty with no hope of being rented to businesses, so the landlords rented them cheaply to artists and other bohemians who used their own money and effort to make them liveable.
I used to know a guy who lived in such a loft space on St-Alexandre in Montreal in the early 90s. Huge open loft (probably 2000 square feet) with a makeshift kitchen at one end. The bathroom was funky too, and when he took a shower he had to run a garden hose from the sink in the kitchen to the shower stall in the bathroom. Not luxury, but a fantastic space to live and work (he was an artist) and I think he paid something like $700 a month.
So there are the extremes. Fancy Griffintown-like spaces or funky lofts where you run a garden hose to take a shower. Surely there’s a middle ground that would be appropriate and useful for these office spaces.
Kate
I also knew some people who had a place in the same area, next to St Patrick’s – in fact I think the building had been an orphanage connected to the church, then a warren of artists’ studios. They had a fair bit of space once they took down some plywood partitions, but the fittings were not luxe.
PO
No idea how the tax code works at that level, but eliminate the ability for the building owners to take any sort of deduction or write-off for unrented square footage. Watch em scramble.
All land and any space on the island is extremely valuable, finite, and scarce. People shouldn’t be subsidizing anyone who willingly sits on it and takes a loss. From the empty store-front on St-Denis to the empty office suites on René- Levesque. No write offs. No deductions. Full tax burden.
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Kate
A man in St-Michel is mourning his daughter who was killed, as pedestrians tend to be, in an incident with a large truck. He’s been sitting for 22 days near the spot where she died. This was the news item when it happened. Residents had been warning of the street’s hazards and asking for traffic lights for some time.
DeWolf
“Depuis la mort de Dilan Caya, des mesures d’apaisement de la circulation ont été mises en place rue Bélair, et le Service de police de la Ville de Montréal a remis plus d’une centaine de constats d’infraction à des conducteurs de camion, a fait savoir le commandant Claude Lizotte, du poste de quartier 30, dans Saint-Michel.”
Too little, too late. It’s astonishing the driver hasn’t been charged with anything for running over a pedestrian in a crosswalk (!!). But in terms of the big picture, there are two parties at fault here: the borough administration, which should have been proactive in responding to citizen complaints, and the SPVM, which has essentially decided to give up on enforcing traffic rules unless something really bad happens.
Tim S.
Well, at least the city did a traffic study before deciding to do nothing.
Seriously, this is heartbreaking, for Caya obviously but for all of us in this city who see dangerous situations like this everywhere and are at our wits’ end about how to protect ourselves. Good for La Presse reporting on this, but it’s telling that a death and a 22 day vigil get only 1 measly follow-up article.
Joey
How many of these urgent, pleading emails have been received in, say, the past six months?
bumper carz
St-Michel, Park Ex, Montreal-Nord…it seems that some of the neighborhoods with the most young children are also the most dangerous neighborhoods to be a child in.
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Kate
A young man was injured, probably stabbed, in a brawl in St‑Michel early Saturday. He’s not expected to die.
The driver in Wednesday’s hit‑and‑run that injured two road workers has turned himself in. He’s not facing any charges – yet.
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Kate
The “voice of the REM” is to be provided by Caroline Dhavernas, daughter of Michèle Deslauriers, who’s been the voice of the Montreal metro since 2003.
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