Le Devoir asks Saturday morning whether the REM will be profitable as it opens for the first time to the public. The total cost to date has not been revealed yet.
On Friday, Louis T. quipped: “Aujourd’hui, beaucoup de gens ont pris le REM pour la première et dernière fois.”
Some have lost their stuff or their place to live following the water main break in St‑Michel on Friday. With some striking photos of the sinkhole.
The Algerian tourist who was affected by this says the Red Cross does not provide services to “visiteurs.” What does this mean? No temporary shelter? Or no long-term help? It’s hard to imagine they would refuse the guy some clothes and other emergency stuff.
I know that the Salvation Army humiliates the poor even more by making them beg for a note from welfare in order to get anything for free from them.
Friday morning’s water main break in St‑Michel means that 75,000 Montrealers are under a boil‑water advisory. The map given in this article, and also on the city site, is hard to read: basically, east from d’Iberville and Frédéric‑Back park to a few blocks past Pie‑IX, and north from Rosemont Boulevard to the tracks beside Boulevard Industriel.
CultMTL reminds us that freezing water doesn’t sterilize it nor does running it through a Brita‑style filter.
When pressure was put on the drugs and homelessness situation in the Village, some of the unwanted elements moved to Chinatown nearby, and now the association there is petitioning for something to be done.
It’s been decreed that gay police will not participate in uniform in the pride parade planned for August 13.
✿Yay!!✿
Great news! FTP
So they’ll be wearing handcuffs and nothing else?
Maybe they’ll beat themselves up, or take turns rupturing their testicles at Station 10.
Le Devoir op-ed writer Aurélie Lanctôt dissects what QMI’s recent piece on dirty Montreal tends to mean as a dogwhistle for racism and xenophobia.
I really think she’s off base here. If Montreal is dirtier than usual, it’s because of increased homelessness, which is not race relate: it is capitalism related..There are many cultural communities represented among the homeless.
Capitalism – by creating a home market that is speculative rather than a way of providing homes for everyone, is now consuming itself by creating the conditions of another economic depression and a decayed society.
Race-narratives are often deployed as a way of hiding the crimes of capitalism.
Is Montreal dirtier than usual? I don’t think it is. That’s the thing, and it’s what Lanctôt’s is trying to say. By harping on the usual state of things in Montreal, the JdeM is sending code to its suburban and rural readers that Montreal is a horrible place full of nasty people who aren’t anything like them.
>Is Montreal dirtier than usual?
Probably depends on the neighbourhood. I wonder if there are actual proper stats gathered about this.
I find the places I travel are dirtier than usual. Garbage out on any day, bags torn open by animals, dog shit bags left around, garbage bins overflowing, etc. etc. Indeed Montreal has long been dirty like that, but I feel it’s worse of late.
And even if it’s merely only as dirty as usual, does that mean no one should complain about it?!
It’s odd that some people think racism is the root cause of everything. One can criticize uncleanliness simply because one dislikes it, no racist motivation is required.
I do see complaints about some Park Ex landlords and store owners chronically putting out large amounts of garbage on the wrong days. But in my general area of Villeray and Petite‑Patrie I never see anything resembling what that article was complaining about.
Two summers ago, while walking a lot more streets doing census work, I only found one stretch of one Villeray street to have a garbage problem and I think that must have been landlords as well because it’s a couple of blocks of apartment buildings.
Montreal is pretty clean compared to most American cities but I too have been finding it dirtier than usual. A bit more garbage around and the streets don’t seem to be being cleaned as often or as well as before. People also aren’t moving their cars on street cleaning days. There’s one stretch near my house that has not been cleaned once yet this year because there are always cars parked on Tuesday morning when the machine passes. I’ve never seen a car get a ticket there.
Some of it might be the labour shortage. Simply fewer people cleaning up the city. It can be a vicious cycle with some litter enticing people to litter more.
Is the street you’re talking about Lajeunesse Kate? I always found that to be the filthiest street on Villeray.
CE: Ding! Exactly right. Lajeunesse running north of Jean‑Talon is not much like the surrounding streets. It was actively unpleasant on hot days, and this during a period when the landlords had clearly evicted all the old tenants and were trying to refill the buildings with more affluent people. Most of the buildings were half-assedly renovated inside, much of the work incomplete.
I should note that on Saturday, I was saddened to find a fair bit of garbage on the sidewalks along St‑Denis north of Jean‑Talon. The borough needs to tighten up on this, do a serious publicity push about pickup days and then specifically fine any apartment building owner that’s putting stuff out on the wrong days.
Justin Trudeau, François Legault and Valérie Plante, as well as Philippe Couillard and Denis Coderre, were among the dignitaries Friday at the ceremonial opening of the REM.
I’d wondered who would get the honour of cutting the ribbon: this La Presse video shows that six people had scissors and they all snipped at the same moment.
Here’s the trip from Central Station to Brossard compressed into 30 seconds.
Make of it what you want but I thought it was telling that in the ribbon cutting video all male politicians ended up with a piece of ribbon in their hand, but neither of the women did… (at 32 seconds)
Ideas for the weekend from Metro, CityCrunch, Sarah’s Weekend List, CultMTL.
Highway closures of the weekend.
The biggest story will be the opening weekend of the REM. CDPQ and CDPQ Infra have spoken up in defense of the cost overruns and delays, with a reminder that the original promise in 2016 had been that the system would open in 2017 – did anyone believe it could be built within a year? – with no delays or extra costs. And here we are, more than six years later.
CTV has an unusually critical piece on the financial background to the REM, which we’re reminded is a for‑profit venture, wondering whether it will turn out to be an exemplary model of how to do this sort of thing – or not.
We have another severe thunderstorm watch for Friday afternoon and evening.
Perhaps not the best day to choose to be out on my motorcycle.
Environment Canada does have a tendency to overstate their warnings.
A serious water main break is flooding part of St‑Michel.
Stickers with random French words have been appearing around Park Ex, part of a city campaign to make more of the residents speak French. Residents are not thrilled with a patronizing campaign that they see as a waste of resources, but the city had to promise Quebec it would promote French in the area.
Reddit found the sticker shown here and comments were immediate. Not only are the words the same in French as in English, they’re actually Greek, Dutch and Portuguese words, the Portuguese originating from a now extinct Indigenous language. No French here.
I love the idea of the government trying to make Park Ex people say “feta” instead of “feta”….
(Can this one be a fake prank?)
So the purpose of the campaign is to promote the notion that transitioning from learning English to French is not a difficult task?
Doesn’t look like a prank. The QR code links to this: https://montreal.ca/articles/activites-et-ateliers-de-pratique-du-francais-dans-parc-extension-52542
It looks pretty targeted at immigrants which is bordering on racism.
Also, in Europe there’s a law on ‘Geographical indications and traditional specialities’. Feta like cheese made in Denmark can’t be sold as feta, only feta made in Greece can, just as bubbly wine from Italy can’t be sold as Champagne. Gouda is a bit vague, because even in the Netherlands most Gouda cheese isn’t made in Gouda. Tapioca isn’t from a certain region afaik.
I thought Canada was going to acknowledge those geographical indicators as part of some international treaty but I guess I thought wrong, because I still see all kind of cheeses being sold that are made in Canada and not in their original region.
mare, there are exceptions for “Asiago”, “Feta”, “Φέτα” (Feta), “Fontina”, “Gorgonzola” and “Munster” if they were used by a company here before Oct 18, 2013, or if they clearly display both a qualifying term such as “kind”, “type”, “style” or “imitation” and a geographic descriptor such as Canadian or Quebec. See 11.17(3) and (4): https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-30/royal-assent (you can see the full list of the 172 protected indications at the bottom, in schedule 6)
This is nuts. And if it proves anything, it’s that “pure” French doesn’t exist.
As they say on 94.3 FM, Plus de fun !
All you have to do to make a lot of menus and signs illegal is put some accents on them, Fèta. Goûda. Tapîoca. Maybe change some spellings. Bageule. Pite-ça. Bourritteau. Hambourgeois.
Has anyone ever heard the word “hambourgeois” spoken?
A previous post talked about bullshit jobs. Here’s your prime example. A job to figure out how to spend government money on pointless stickers.
Canada’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Tony Accurso so the 71‑year‑old is on his way to prison for a four‑year sentence.
Radio-Canada has a collection of pieces about the REM, the construction sites, the tunnel, how a train with no driver works and so on.
After working on this project for more than 5 years I’ll finally travel on the train this Friday. Very exciting! I’ve never even seen the inside of the stations except Du Quartier and Brossard. Because of virtual tools like drones and geo-referenced images, you can do a lot of work without leaving the office – at least for the design portion.
It has been very enriching project from a professional standpoint. However, there is still a lot of work to be done with the phased openning of the remaining stations.
What was your part of the design, james lawlor?
I’m thinking of going down to have a look at it this weekend, what should I be checking out?
Although, I have to say, it’s kind of sweet the fuss being made about driverless trains. There was a driverless train system at Expo 67 and, like idiots, we scrapped it.
For driverless trains in commercial service in Canada, there is the Vancouver Skytrain since 1986 and the Scarborough RT since 1985.
From my LinkedIn :
Coordinate design inputs between NouvLR and GPMM consortium.
Design of automatic depot door system (including safety interface with signalling system)
Design of remote lock-out function of traction power system and power presence warning system.
Coordination of energy systems (1.5kV traction & 25kV)
Detailed specification of the energy control system including autonomous functions
Definition of interfaces and data points for SCADA system for all NouvLR sub-systems (>20k data points)
Detailed design of fibre-optic backbone network
Ah, an electrical engineer. Thank you.
Impressive!
Okay so now that this boondoggle is out of the way, let’s get to work on some IMPORTANT work and restore teh La Ronde monorail 😀
(seriously, I love that monorail)
The eternal epic of replacing the Olympic stadium roof (La Presse’s headline: Le cauchemar continue) has taken an even more expensive turn: the technical ring that anchors the roof, and which contains the lighting and sound equipment, also needs to be replaced.
Tear. It. Down. Or put a safety fence around it and let it slowly decompose on it’s own but please don’t spend any more money on it.
Just make Canadian Independence Day and make the Big-Owe 24 Sussex. Let some studio / producer pay to actually blow it up, no CGI for us.
They should have a guided tour where you get to walk around on top of the roof and the technical ring.
I’d pay to do that.
A mother and daughter were found dead in a Lachine residence on Wednesday night.
As mentioned in the comment below, the father’s body was found drowned in the Lachine canal later on Thursday. More detail from CTV, which declines to give the names of the deceased, but La Presse does.
Father killed them, then himself according to a neighbour we know. Another evil asshole.
Not surprising, but grim.
CBC says they found his vehicle in a different part of town, but there’s no mention of a third body.
His body was found late yesterday in the canal, near the old marina.
Taylor 11:42 on 2023-07-29 Permalink
I’m sure the organization that pitched it to the premier, strongarmed the gov’t into buying it, came up with its route, chose the engineering firms to build it and the technology that would run on it, managed the construction phase, blamed everyone else for its cost overruns and delays, and decided that they should also profit from it, will eventually tell us how much we need to pay for it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to walk into a car dealership with a bag full of money and ask a salesperson what cars cost.
Ephraim 13:24 on 2023-07-29 Permalink
We could run it like the British did when they spelt broke up British Rail. Now they guarantee them a profit or no one will run the rails… And the CDPQ is an investor in Southern Rail, for example.
Robert H 19:27 on 2023-07-29 Permalink
That’s fine, Taylor. Try to buy something comfortable with all the latest bells and whistles. Because, if projects like the REM, despite its problematic origins, can’t convert enough of those first-day novelty-seekers Louis T. amusingly and cynically quipped about in another post today to frequent public transport users, then you can expect to spend even more time trapped on traffic-clogged highways inching your way through the sprawl-scape while breathing exhaust polluted air.