Karl Tremblay, lead singer of Les Cowboys Fringants, has died of prostate cancer at 47, a young age for that condition. La Presse has several pieces on the man and his history.
Updates from November, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
La Presse’s Stéphanie Grammond deplores how the excesses at the OCPM call the whole municipal structure into question.
She reminds us that while some municipal entities are regularly audited – among them the STM and the SHDM – many are not, a list which includes the OCPM, which has been happily plunging around in the trough for ten years now.
Yes, people running things need to have some latitude for schmoozing. I don’t think most of us would argue with that. But with inflation making basics like food and shelter so expensive, it’s a very bad moment to find out city honchos have been indulging themselves and each other with luxuries.
Ephraim
Every once in a while, it’s not a bad idea to have a department look at its budget, from dollar 0 up, rather than simply up their budget by inflation amounts. And reward them for becoming more efficient by letting them keep part of the savings for salary bonuses.
-
Kate
The city’s $7-billion budget for 2024 is out. This CBC piece gives the highlights. I’ll add links to any analysis pieces I spot in this space.
Le Devoir provides a borough map.
-
Kate
School service centres plan to close as of next Tuesday because of the looming strikes.
-
Kate
In the “bread and circuses” category we can also place the possibility of an NBA team for Montreal, which is being bandied about. Nothing yet about the need for a new arena, but a demand would surely be made if a deal is pending.
Josh
A demand would not necessarily surely be made. NBA and NHL teams share arenas all over the place. They do in Toronto. They did in Vancouver before their NBA team moved. They do in LA, in Chicago and New York. The outliers are in fact places where the local basketball and hockey teams *do not* share arenas, like Phoenix and Miami. You’re making assumptions here about a subject area that you have acknowledged many times yourself isn’t exactly your area of expertise.
Kate
OK, it’s provisional. If the NBA moves here, fifty bucks says that within a year they demand a new arena.
Nicholas
The Bell Centre is the largest hockey arena by attendance capacity in the world, and would be the largest basketball arena in the NBA. It has already hosted a bunch of preseason basketball games, so the setup works well for that. The Habs have a practice facility at Dix-30, so having the court in doesn’t stop them from practising, and the two leagues share a lot of facilities and can work their schedules around that. The location is excellent, and the STM knows how to get fans in and out efficiently (Exo though, lol). The only reason not to put an NBA team at the Bell Centre is if it would take away too many concert slots (there are a lot! Especially during winter when the outdoor venues don’t work! Though you can have an afternoon weekend game and an evening concert) or the Molson family doesn’t want it/loses the bid for the team and has a vendetta with the new owner.
However, they will absolutely be asking for subsidies, and I bet they’ll want a practice facility (given how busy the Bell Centre is), though maybe they can use something like Place Bell in Laval.
Josh
It would be PR suicide for them to demand a new arena, if the franchise was granted with the Bell Centre in mind. I follow this stuff closely and I always allow for the possibility I’m wrong.
Kate
It would depend how much popular support they have, and know they have. I can’t even guess, although I do see a lot of young guys horsing around in the basketball court in Jarry Park on any nice day. Whether that converts to the purchase of expensive game tickets I don’t know.
As readers of this blog will know, I’m not really into sports, except where their implications intersect with urban life.
Michael
Would be amazing to have NBA team come here at bell center.
I see zero negatives.
walkerp
Sadly, this is a complete nothing burger. Don’t hold your breath. In the meantime, we have the Alliance while sadly inconsistent as all the CEBL teams (mostly mercenaries who move from league to league), the games at the Verdun arena can be quite fun.
-
Kate
Property taxes are to rise 4.9% in the new city budget, the biggest leap since 2010.
The city is cancelling Christmas parties in penance for overspending and possibly in view of the tax hike.
The STM will have to abolish 120 posts and cut $50 million from its 2024 budget.
Ian
Cop budget is seeing a significant increase, too.
“The money set aside for Montreal police is also going up significantly. The money forecasted for the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) is about $821 million for 2024. That’s a $35-million increase from the previous year. ”
Still waitign for that big, big conversation Plante promised.
Michael
Well well well, not surprised. This city administration can’t fathom the idea of a hiring freeze. Just moar taxes for everyone. Let us all eat cake.
Kate
Ian, and yet the SPVM is running a deficit.
steph
The city should create a special light-changing unit instead of paying cops overtime.
-
Kate
Owners of retail along main streets say their businesses are still hurting from the pandemic, and they need urgent help as the deadline for repaying federal loans is looming.
But there’s also a bit in this piece about luring workers back downtown. A real estate guy says “They’re looking at the physical environment, how do we dress it up? What should we provide the employees as far as amenities, as far as equipment?”
Maybe no amount of amenities and equipment is going to work. Maybe people simply don’t want to commute, don’t want to spend most of their waking lives confined in a space with people not of their choosing. Maybe they’ve realized how much of their time and thought was wasted handling the fractious personalities of bosses and coworkers.
Downtowns came about because people needed to cluster together in a certain way, 100 or 150 years ago. Yes, people still need to do some of that clustering, but the need is evolving and so is downtown. Downtowns came into existence to serve people. People do not exist to serve downtown.
Kevin
The only way to lure people back downtown is to turn it into a residential neighbourhood, because at this point it’s evident to everyone who looks that productivity in terms of office worker* output is much higher when people work from home. And why wouldn’t it be? Instead of a floor of cubicle farms everyone’s now got their own office with a door that closes to give them peace and quiet and focus.
It sucks for those with investments in commercial real estate, but not everyone wins all the time, and they can always change focus like Cadillac Fairview is doing right now https://mtlcityweblog.com/2023/11/07/project-shifts-from-office-space-to-rentals/
*People who jobs require a computer that is connected to other computers, and possibly a phone.
bumper carz
Commuting long distances is a huge quality-of-life killer.
But then… why did so many people move to far-off suburbs in the mid-20th Century, to neighborhoods with no sidewalks and no nearby services? To follow the trend? And now they don’t want to leave their houses because… everything is so far away?
Trends have consequences.
Chris
>Instead of a floor of cubicle farms everyone’s now got their own office with a door…
Um, no. Check your privilege. Plenty of people don’t have big houses with extra rooms to convert to offices. Many live in small apartments / condos where the only door is to the bathroom and bedroom. Or, if they have other rooms, they are for kids bedrooms.
Blork
I agree with Chris. While WFH is great for many people it is not so great for many more. As he says, not everyone has the room for a home office (or two!). Plus many people want to get TF out of the house during the day. Some households are crammed with people (kids, in-laws, siblings, layabout boyfriends, teenagers, annoying friends of teenagers, etc.) and going out to the office every day is a bit of a refuge for them. People can be noisy, and if you don’t live alone or with a quiet spouse it can make WFH difficult.
Personally, I would love to go back to the office a few days a week, but after 25+ years of commuting on the Metro I’ve lost the will to do so. But I like being downtown during the day and getting lunch at the various places I used to go to. I liked not having to “commute” to a 5à7 back then.
In my case I have the rare privilege of actually liking my co-workers, and I miss the spontaneous banter and chats that used to happen, which sometimes would snowball into a 5à7 or even a dinner with a bunch of them. I miss the spectacular views from the terrace on the 12th floor.
I miss when it wasn’t a challenge to get my 10,000 steps in every day.
BTW Kevin, downtown is already a residential neighbourhood. The population density of downtown (say, between Atwater and Berri, Sherbrooke and St-Jacques) is quite high, and only getting higher with the amount of residences being built along the René-Lévesque corridor.
Uatu
Some people moved to the burbs because they can’t afford a big enough house for their extended family. And parts of the burbs that are just regular working class folks. The earliest sections of Brossard are almost indistinguishable from st. Leonard with duplexes etc. So not everyone is SUV driving middle class.
Downtown is not special anymore. Laval and Brossard have fake downtowns in Carrefour Laval and Dix 30 that have shows, shopping and restaurants and concerts and free parking. Why should you go downtown for the Santa Claus parade when the Dix 30 has one which is alot easier to get to and less stress and better sightlines and activities for the kids? As far as WFH- the pandemic has made it apparent that there’s more to life than work and it’s too short to waste on commutes.Kevin
True, if you’re living in a one-bedroom studio, WFH may not work for you, but I think that’s more a criticism of the poor planning by municipalities that allowed developers to build these to excess instead of family-sized units. And even then, it’s an issue that can be conquered by good design. And bumper carz it’s that mismatch between what families want and need and what’s been available in urban cores that sent people to the suburbs.
But Blork, I guffawed at “People can be noisy, and if you don’t live alone or with a quiet spouse it can make WFH difficult.” I’ve worked with people who brought in construction-grade earmuffs because the open-floor concept that predominates in offices is horrendously noisy, and I’ve told managers to take their idle chatter somewhere else because they were preventing people from working.
Blork
Kevin: true enough. Just shows how office work environments can be just as diverse (meaning: ranging from awful to really nice) as WFM environments. The takeaway being that blanket statements will always be inaccurate.
I once worked in an open concept office where the technical support team was on one side of my group and the sales and customer service people were on the other side. Yikes. Like trying to work at the Forum during a Stanley Cup Finals game.
bumper carz
@Uatu: “Why should you go downtown for the Santa Claus parade…”
Imagine 50,000 SUVs coming downtown for a Christmas parade. How many children would be killed or injured by this horde?
And the Dix30 is just a big mall. It can’t replace a real downtown at all because it’s mostly parking lot.
That you think that downtown is just a “zone” with “specialized functions” is a product of suburban land zoning and the social isolation of the bungalow-lawn dialectic.
Mark Côté
I’ve been working 95% from home for 13 years now. I went into the office yesterday for the first time in months (and for only the third time this year), and I plan to go in once a week now. I surprised myself at how I felt more energized than I have in a while. I admit I have pretty much the ideal situation: I walk my daughter to school early anyway, so it’s another 15 minutes to the metro and then 20 minutes downtown, so I’m there by 8:30. The office is relatively quiet these days with lots of free meeting rooms. The office is also used for get-togethers for various (distributed) teams so there’s a rotating cast of people who I don’t normally see except on video. I think this hybrid environment might be exactly what I need right now.
Uatu
@bumpercarz- hey don’t get me wrong, I actually like downtown. I’m just saying that with these “lifestyle” centers like Dix30 (and now with the quartier Solar right next to it) there’s alternatives for suburbanites. Dix 30 has a fake downtown main Street with shops and restaurants where they have all sorts of activities for families. Even fire pits to warm up. And I don’t blame families for wanting the ease of a weekend afternoon spent close to home with free parking and a “good enough” Santa parade to entertain toddlers. As far as downtown losing its lustre – that was decided years ago when most HQs decided to move their offices to the sticks. My own employer the MUHC left downtown (which I really hate) Even in NYC some HQs moved across the Hudson to Jersey. The fact that Glen Castanheira the head of the downtown chamber of commerce has to literally beg people to come downtown again speaks volumes. Hopefully the REM will change all that.
walkerp
If you like your job and your colleagues and you don’t have a lot of family responsibilities, going to the office can be great. There is a middle ground here.
Robert H
I believe a thriving city center is a great asset for a metropolis, but I also agree with Kate’s point that downtowns exist for people and not vice versa. There is a tone of reproof to so much of the coverage of work from home, as if people were skipping out on their obligation to hop into a car, train, or bus to come to the city and spend, spend, spend. Mind you, I might feel differently if I owned or managed downtown real estate, but even then, I would hope my concentration would be to think of other uses for the space I oversee. Instead of scolding the public for not showing up and consuming, I would consider how places evolve to reveal new possibilities. Canada and the United States don’t seem to cultivate urbanity, or at least the dominant car-based life styles and general preference for single family detached housing have led to a default setting of booming, leap-frogging subdivisions and strip malls surrounding a depressed central zone. There are exceptions to this pattern in a few major, and smaller cities across the continent. Montreal is actually in a better position that most urban areas: Centre-Ville, despite it’s well-publicized problems is still holding on, and the transformation that Kevin referred to is well underway. It’s telling that most of the taller towers rising there now are residential. I hope these new buildings will draw people who not only want the convenience and amenities of urban life, but also prefer it. Too many people live in major metropolitan areas, because that’s where the opportunities are. If the city is nothing more than a place to get a paycheck, I don’t blame anyone for wanting to get the hell out and not return. Technology has blessed you with options, and if the suburbs or the countryside is where you find your bliss, pursue that without guilt. Meanwhile, those who remain in the city because they like it will benefit from the greater presence of fellow citizens who are also there because they want to be, not because civic and business leaders have nagged them to return to places and practices they don’t care to resume.
-
Kate
Fires Tuesday evening and early Wednesday injured nine people.
These accounts, French and English versions of the same CP story, say one of the fires was on “rue Gascon” in Hochelaga‑Maisonneuve, but Avenue Gascon is in eastern Ville‑Marie. The Journal gets the location right.
The other fire was in Verdun.
Neither fire seems to have been caused by arson, but the causes are not given.
-
Kate
There will be a Canada-wide emergency alert system test Wednesday at 1:55 pm.
Blork
Pro tip: Set a reminder for 1:53PM, so it’s less of a shock when your phone blows up.
Kate
So instead of being startled when the alert goes off at 1:55, you can startle when your phone suddenly speaks to you at 1:53.
Blork
Well, I’d rather a gentle reminder (a notification on the screen and a chirp on my watch) than the blaring BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ END OF THE WORLD! BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ of the emergency alert. 🙂
Kate
My phone went off in a café but I didn’t hear noises from the other half dozen people present. Odd.
EmilyG
I was in a mall. The sound went off on multiple people’s phones at once, though for some people it came a little bit later. And then when I was in a bus just after 2 PM, someone’s phone made the sound.
(I hadn’t brought my own phone.)MarcG
Mine actually went off this time, it never did before.
EmilyG 22:23 on 2023-11-15 Permalink
I love Les Cowboys Fringants. Seen them live a couple times.
This news is just so sad.
Tim S. 22:35 on 2023-11-15 Permalink
Really sad. Their live album was one of my favourites for a few years, I really regret never seeing them in person.
DeWolf 00:57 on 2023-11-16 Permalink
Sad news. I loved Les Cowboys Fringants when I was younger, didn’t really follow them in recent years but they were a very special band.
Ian 13:28 on 2023-11-18 Permalink
I guess this is like how if you don’t care about the Tragically Hip and don’t consider Gord Downey’s death a national tragedy you’re not a “real” Canadian?
47 is young for prostate cancer, regardless. RIP.