CTV notes that Momesso’s restaurant is up for sale. I’ve never eaten there, but they did make a fine espresso.
Updates from August, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Traffic blockages on the long weekend are already being dreaded.
CBC also looks at NDG residents annoyed by roadwork and CTV at more general annoyance with road construction sites.
dhomas
At least they’re not calling the municipal government ecoterrorists in this article:
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/proposed-solution-to-flooding-in-hochelaga-should-be-reconsidered-residents-sayKate
dhomas, you should see the fury on the Park Ex Facebook group because the borough wants to run a bike path along Querbes.
CE
There already is a bike path along Querbes and, IMO, it’s made the street much nicer. What do they have to complain about??
walkerp
Many of the pro-car extremists who comment on social media do not actually live in the area being discussed.
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Kate
The hit-and-run killer of composer and conductor Boris Brott, knocked down in Hamilton last year, has been sentenced to nearly 8 years in prison.
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Kate
A Superior Court judge has ruled that Longueuil can cull the deer herd in Michel-Chartrand Park with a crossbow hunt. The ruling may yet be appealed.
Faiz Imam
Goldwater won’t give up till this goes to the supreme court, that lady will go to the ends of the earth for some cute animals.
Those deer unfortunately need to die, there’s no other solution and the longer we wait the more ecological damage it causes.
Kevin
I’m with Faiz. Deer are tall rats, squirrels are tree rats, and raccoons are fat rats that have learned to open the brown compost bins
Kate
Goldwater is a smart woman. So I don’t understand why she can’t see that a piece of land can only sustain so many animals when there are no predators and they’re boxed in so they can’t migrate somewhere else. That park may be nice but it’s not a fully natural setting. If anything, it would be cruel not to cull them, and probably on a regular basis too.
dhomas
If I remember correctly, she wants the deer to be moved someplace else. How you move about 80 deer, I don’t know. Maybe we should release a few wolves instead…
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Kate
La Presse reported Thursday morning that the ARTM admitted it would take four years to update its fare collection system to accept phones and credit cards in payment. Immediately, transport minister Geneviève Guilbault kicked, saying it has to happen faster.
Also mentioned in that second piece is a promise for better wayfinding from Bonaventure metro station to the REM, after reports that a Concordia graphic design student had put up improvised signs to serve the purpose.
Orr
ARTM: Is that a French acronym for underachiever and proud of it?
Kate
The question would be: does the ARTM have the budget to make this upgrade? Does Guilbault know whether they do, and if they don’t, does she have the power to hand over enough money to do it in the time frame she’d like to see?
DisgruntledGoat
I know not everyone is the biggest fan of the REM being imposed on the city by CDPQ Infra.
However when you look at the dumpster fire that is the ARTM it’s kind of a small miracle ♂️
Kate
The ARTM is a relatively recent entity (since 2017) and it is, like everything else here, a creature of the provincial government. So any strife between the ARTM and CDPQ Infra is purely a Quebec thing – it’s not the doing of Montreal or Montrealers.
Spi
That’s being generous, it’s essentially staffed by the same people that were at the AMT before it was split into EXO/ARTM. When the ARTM decided to come out against off the REM-Est, I said that they better come out with an even better project (which they didn’t) or else they’d all be unemployed by the end of 2024. I stand by that, especially since the CAQ plans to create a new agency to manage large transportation projects and the transport providers don’t like working with l’ARTM.
DisgruntledGoat
Completely in agreement. We are held hostage by the rest of the province on a lot of topics, unfortunately.
DeWolf
As Spi says, the fact that the STM and other agencies that actually provide public transport hate the ARTM says a lot about what a dysfunctional entity it is.
PO
It’s going to take four years because instead of paying for and implementing an already existing, off the shelf, well tested and highly effective system that already exists in dozens of other major cities, they’re going to create their own convoluted system in-house that will have half the functionality, four times the cost and only work under specific and limited circumstances. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Joey
Some of the more interesting parts of the project will be completed sooner, but this whole enterprise was doomed when “you need to be able to book a Téo Taxi with your Opus card” was considered essential. We don’t need one app to rule them all – just a way to get on transit with our phones.
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Kate
The 2017 law passed by the Couillard government to make police camo pants illegal as a pressure tactic has been ruled unconstitutional by a Superior Court judge, who also said they posed no threat to public safety.
Nicholas
Quebec certainly has experience telling public sector workers what they can and can’t wear, so I’m sure we’ll get the notwithstanding clause used on police right away.
DisgruntledGoat
The camo pants were just an additional ‘ick’ for me, as someone who deplores the continued militarization of the look of police forces.
Black uniforms, dark police cars, police should not look intimidating. It fundamentally goes against serving and protecting, their supposed place in modern society.
Bring back those blue unis and big hats from the 70s!
Kate
I found them entertaining, like clown pants. Many of the cops were sporting pink or pale blue “camo” prints which were never intended as military camouflage.
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Kate
I can’t say I ever watched MAtv Montreal, but Videotron’s shutdown of the station is being called another loss to local media by some who were involved.
Ephraim
Anyone know what it means to their cable licence? And if this has to do with the fact that they were required to broadcast about 20% in English because Montreal isn’t unilingual
Kate
Steve Faguy has some details which suggest Videotron still has the licence for now.
Blork
Community television like that had a much more prominent role before the Internet (and by “prominent” I mean it was a tiny speck then, versus now when it’s a microscopic spec). I can’t say I’ve watched MAtv much either, but a few years ago the QWF (Quebec Writers Federation — anglo writers) did a series of sit-downs with local writers that was nice to see.
But ultimately I think they have no viewers. One could argue that they still have a role to play in terms of local media, but that’s sort of moot if nobody watches. And why does nobody watch? Because most people would rather scroll through Tiktok and the platform formerly known as Twitter than sit down and passively watch a few local talking heads blah-blah-blah about something that’s covered well enough (in their opinion) on Facebook or YouTube.
User-generated media like FB, Tiktok, YouTube, podcasts, etc. was supposed to save us from the tyranny of the networks, but they haven’t really; they’ve just become networks in their own fashion. While any knob can stick up a podcast or YouTube video of a sofa filled with ango writers discussing their work, nobody’s going to watch it. Same as nobody’s going to watch it on MAtv.
Kate
We’re always dealing with the problem of who does the primary reporting – and I say this as someone who’s had a secondary news blog for more than 20 years. Social media is fine as a place to boost news stories we find interesting or complain about news that upsets or disturbs us, but someone has to go out and collect that primary news or investigate those stories, then write them up or record them for broadcast.
What most people don’t realize is that reporting is a slog. You have to go out and question people who might not want to talk to you, or dig into matters that someone would rather keep quiet. A reporter has to sit through tedious council sessions or press conferences waiting for that one nugget of information that’s the key angle that makes a news story.
I don’t know how much primary reporting was done by people working for MAtv Montreal. The little I heard of it sounded like it was mostly talking heads, and that’s where regular media fall down now. Social media makes us all news commentators, we don’t need to watch other people doing endless analysis and giving their opinions – not unless it’s one of the rare people whose thoughts on the news are worth hearing.
But we do need the primary news, now more than ever, given how much obfuscation is created by social media, and potentially also by artificial intelligence.
If we don’t have reliable primary news, everything we hear about is nothing but rumour.
Blork
I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure MAtv wasn’t any kind of primary news source. Anytime I’d pass by it was just local people sitting on sofas talking to mild-mannered and very earnest hosts about very non-offensive things.
CE
Im always surprised when I see that cable TV still exists. For anyone around my age and under, having cable is akin to having a fax machine and has been that way for a long time. I read recently that the average age of viewers of even youth-oriented cable networks is somewhere in the 50s.
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Kate
More people are opting to carry naloxone kits as fatal drug overdoses are on the rise. Last year, 175 people died in Montreal from overdoses.
Statistics also show that 3 out of 4 overdose deaths here occur inside the home and not down a dark alley as usually imagined. And only 9% happen to the homeless.
Also challenging received ideas about the homeless, a recent study showed that homeless people in Canada given a sum of $7500 spent most of it on housing and food, not booze, smokes or drugs.
Ephraim
You would think that someone would come up with a system to provide housing and food the same way that they do for independent senior residences. You pay a certain amount, but the government subsidizes it as long as you have a basket of services that includes at least one meal a day. Independent companies have built these buildings specifically for these services. You would think they could do this more like a rooming house and offer stability
Orr
175 people dying out of 1,255 total overdoses in Montreal area in 2022. It’s a lot, and it is somewhat preventable.
In BC by comparison, 6 deaths per day.
No wonder Canada’s chiefs of police are calling for decriminalization.walkerp
It’s one more statistic demonstrating how disproportionate the police budget is compared to actual needs in this city. 175 ODs vs 30ish homicides and yet we need to give more money to the police to combat the scourge of gun violence that is destroying Montreal.
Chris
That study with the $7500 seems to have some serious flaws, like in how they selected who’d get money. They excluded the long-term homeless, drug and alcohol abusers, and the mentally ill.
It looks more like they wanted to show a conclusion, and made a study to fit.
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Kate
Wednesday’s rainstorm stopped the REM for an hour at 2 pm because of a power failure, and water infiltrated the stopped train.
Uatu
I was wondering about that gap between the train doors and the station and how it’ll be freezing cold in the winter and snow might get in. I guess my questions were answered.
Orr
All major large-scale engineering projects have teething problems, and the rem is no different, and teams of very smart people are working to solve them as they arise.
Some people might be surprised to learn that rail passenger transport has been operating successfully going on for two hundred years, and even in winter in nordic countries.
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Kate
Bus routes on Nuns’ Island have been redrawn to focus everything on the REM, and some there are not happy – like some Brossard dwellers – that it takes longer to commute than it used to. The STM is promising to make further adjustments to keep riders happy.
Orr
I’d like to know what is the # of cars removed from Pont Champlain/autoroute Bonaventure because of the REM is.
Uatu
Work from home has probably removed more cars than the REM. No buses across the Champlain and into town is the bigger change on bridge traffic from the REM.
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Kate
Toula Drimonis writes about the three Montreal activists who’ve been commemorated with postage stamps.
(I find the typography harsh but the subject is a good one.)
Blork
One of them — Simonne Monet-Chartrand — was the spouse of Michel Chartrand, mentioned a few posts ago (union chief who is getting the prominade in LaSalle named after him).
Ian
I don’t mind the typography – I see it as a nod to old political letterpress posters with a kind of 90s Paula Scher (Pentagram) vibe. A bit old school, a bit fierce, totally communicating the urgency and celebration motifs.
Orr
Simonne Monet-Chartrand has a park named after her around Sherbrooke & St-Christophe.
Google streetview pic notes wearing high-heeled shoes there may be problematic.
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Kate
The city has made it official that Sir John A. Macdonald won’t be returning to Place du Canada although the plinth will remain, and the statue may be displayed somewhere else with interpretive material explaining why he is no longer honoured.
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Kate
Enough rain is falling that it’s flooding roads and closing autoroutes.
Meezly
It’s really been an unusually rainy summer.
Kate
Just now it was raining hard enough for the water in the toilet to be sloshing around, although luckily not spilling over. I’ve been in this ground-floor flat since 2005 and this has happened before, although not in recent years.
maggie rose
Later in the day, around 2pm, we had a strong down-burst of rain in NDG that went on unabated for about 15 minutes – with hail the sized of grapes. Was a bit scary, or I’m just getting old.
Mozai
There’s someone posting weather high-score tables to reddit, including data from Montreal. July 2023 got the high score for most rain during a July. Thirty-year average is 9cm, and we saw 21cm. https://redd.it/15lhn2g
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Kate
Three cars were torched last night near a house in Kirkland. My incident map includes a lot of other probable arsons, which I pin there and don’t always add to the blog.
bumper carz
“The arsonists were treated for shock but sustained no injuries.”
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Kate
A tramway for the east end, projected to cost $4 billion, is being proposed by a collective of experts and residents.
Forgetful
THE GOOD
The group is right to say that the ARTM mandate for the PSE was initially too limited. The provincial and municipal governments probably didn’t want to put to waste years of work from CDPQ Infra, so I can understand why they asked the ARTM to piggyback on the REM de l’Est for the PSE. But the PSE is simply not working within the same legal and financial parameters as the Caisse REM de l’Est, and is more susceptible to reactionary opposition and political interference.
THE BAD
The proposal is just egregious. They severely underestimate costs, and that’s not even accounting for the inflation cycle we’re in. $4B just doesn’t line up with similar projects in North America. Even with its own right-of-way and signal priority, the speed estimates seem delusively optimistic. I feel that like groups such as the CEM-E either don’t understand trams, or simply are against metros, especially if not buried, but don’t want to appear strictly oppositional (there’s a lot of overlap with people protesting social housing, or density around rapid transit stations for… environmental reasons).
LRT is either unfairly derided or touted as some kind of transit wunderkind interchangeable with metros, buses, and regional rail, when it’s really not. It’s a little infuriating that we have people pushing for tram where trams are likely not a good option, and people railing against or stalling really good tram projects.
vasi
Does anyone know if a copy of the proposal is online? It’s super unclear to me whether they’re envisioning a separates right of way, or if it’s run-of-traffic.
Orr
As a cyclist I really don’t like the idea of rail tracks embedded in city streets.
Joey 09:20 on 2023-09-01 Permalink
In other institutional restaurant news, Amelia’s is moving after its landlord refused to renew the lease. Not sure when but I think they’re taking over the spot La Cabane had on St.-Laurent.
Kate 09:42 on 2023-09-01 Permalink
La Cabane has closed?!
Joey 09:53 on 2023-09-01 Permalink
Guess so. The address for the new Amelia’s is the same as La Cabane, so…
Blork 10:05 on 2023-09-01 Permalink
Yeah, I walked by La Cabane a few days ago and it was shut. This means Amelia’s will inherit the liquor license, so no more BYO with your pizza. On the other hand, it won’t be 40 degrees in there on warm summer evening (like it was in the old location).