The ARTM has a project proposal for an east‑end tram or similar light rail, costing $10 billion.
Updates from February, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
An empty house on Van Horne in Outremont collapsed Friday morning, fortunately with no one inside and no one walking past. Looking at the building on Streetview it seems to have been abandoned for a long time, and whether it was under active renovation seems doubtful.
Ian
Just down the street from me. It’s been nothing but facade since the summer, open to the elements except for some janky 2×4 framework that I had figured was to keep the balconies from falling off. I believe the company involved is Swimko, behind many projects in the area.
GC
Oh my. We walked by there a couple of weekends ago and my friend took a photo of that “janky framework” because he found it amusing. It looked like one good sneeze would take the whole balcony down, but I didn’t necessarily think the entire front would follow.
Ian
Still blocked off. Whoever is responsible is in a LOT of trouble.
The Van Horne buses have been rerouted up my street the last 2 days.
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Kate
La Presse’s Maxime Bergeron sees a gloomy outlook for the city’s economic prospects.
So does someone called Frédéric Tomesco in the Gazette.
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Kate
Weekend notes from CityCrunch, CultMTL, Sarah’s Weekend List.Lunar new year is on Saturday. CTV has a piece on Chinatown festivities as the year of the Dragon begins. Further notes from Time Out. CBC says Chinatown is celebrating a decolonized Lunar new year.
There’s a lot of talk about some football game happening in another country on Sunday.
Some notes on highways to hell this weekend.
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Kate
Ruba Ghazal is to run a Quebec solidaire campaign to enthuse youngsters for Quebec sovereignty, starting by comparing the oppression of the French language to the situation of Palestinians.
MarcG
If anyone has the original quote I’d like to read it, I did a quick search and came up empty.
Kate
It’s a CP story, although CTV may have extracted the most clickbaity aspect. I’ll post if I find it on other platforms.
Joey
For how many years did young, Anglo lefties discount QS’s pro-sovereignty stance as not really relevant or germane to their identity. Suddenly the PQ is soaring in the polls, support for sovereignty is hovering at 40% and QS wants in on the action.
Kate
Indeed. I always hoped QS’s lefty principles were what they found most important, and they only kept the sovereignist label as a formality. Obviously not.
GC
I’d also be curious to see the original quote, when someone finds it. “Uprooted” is an odd way to describe Quebecois francophones, but maybe that’s not exactly what Ghazal said.
MarcG
Found this. Pretty wild if a single tweet is CP’s source. https://twitter.com/EtienneFG/status/1755943511432605706
Ian
Kate when GND got on board with QS they switched gear to ethnonationalism quite quickly.
MarcG
Actually that tweet seems to have been published after the newspaper articles so he took a paraphrase and turned it into a quote?
Joey
I am not sure that POC would be better off in an independent Quebec, especially given everything we’ve seen re: minority rights in the last couple of years. I guess Ruba Ghazal is fine with an independent Quebec led by a CAQ premier?
And while I certainly understand how one could see a connection between linguistic minorities in North America (Quebecois) and oppressed people around the world (e.g., Palestinians), I’m not sure this is a recipe for electoral success. Sooner or later QS is going to have to expand its appeal beyond its base. It’s disappointing that they seem to be going down the ethnonationalism role. The ‘modern economy stacks the deck against you’ lane is right there, team!
Blork
Any “oppression” of the French language in Canada/Quebec in recent times is entirely due to simple demographics. There are more English speakers in North America than French speakers, so of course English is dominant outside of Quebec. I’d like to see her point to a single law anywhere in Canada that oppresses or even limits French today.
Comparing the situation of French in Canada to Palestine is like saying that (1) Arabic is a required language to work in the Israel government, (2) Arabic is just short of “required” to hold any cabinet position in the Israel government, (3) Israel requires Arabic to appear on all product packaging, (4) Israelis mythologize Palestine for it’s “joie de vivre” and has Arab-immersion classes all over Israel so that young Israelis can fully participate in a bilingual Israel, (5) Israel actively funds Arabic cultural creatives all over Israel and Palestine, etc. Obviously none of that is real. Now flip it and see if you can find any real comparisons. Betcha can’t.
How out of touch reality is anyone who seriously makes such a comparison?
SMD
Original quote, from an email I received in her name from QS:
« En tant que Québécoise d’origine palestinienne, je comprends et ressens ce que c’est d’être déraciné, de voir sa langue et sa culture menacées. Comme à des milliers d’enfants de la loi 101, les Québécois m’ont appris à aimer le français et la culture d’ici. Je veux que ça continue, mais c’est de plus en plus difficile dans un Québec qui n’est pas un pays. J’ai deux nations, mais pas de pays. Je veux mon pays du Québec. »
SMD
Link for quote above: https://mailchi.mp/quebecsolidaire/dcouvrez-notre-nouvelle-campagne
GC
Thanks, SMD.
Uatu
Yeah I don’t know but is there a Palestinian representation in the Knesset? Because there’s a francophone one in Parliament. Most PMs have ties to QC and there’s a party, the BQ, that’s been there for over 20yrs. The BQ even advocated to break up Canada, something that other countries might consider treason yet they’re still an influential presence in Ottawa. So I don’t see francophone QC as being powerless.
Ian
It’s a pretty spurious connection but to be fair she just means in the sense of yearning for nationhood, I suspect.
Anton 04:09 on 2024-02-10 Permalink
500 Mio per km for street running tram? That’s expensive for an underground metro. It would be not cheap for a tram if it was 50 Mio per km.
Is this a fucking joke?
Kate 10:28 on 2024-02-10 Permalink
No, it isn’t. And one of the big selling points is that it’s cheaper than an underground metro.
mare 12:09 on 2024-02-10 Permalink
Sherbrooke is a very wide ‘highway’ for much of the stretch. Making it a bit narrower might even force cars to obey the speed limit. Plenty of room for a non-grade separated tram. (I haven’t studied the proposed plans, if there are details available.)
But the price. WTF?
Maybe this will include fixing all the water, cabling, sewer, road beds etc for the actual street and all the streets around it. And building a huge maintenance workshop, or track to the current maintenance workshop. And sourcing it locally from a firm that has to buy all knowledge/technology needed elsewhere because there’s no local expertises. So even the lowest (and winning bid) will be high.
Anton 12:14 on 2024-02-10 Permalink
Right, so after proposing effectively the most expensive underground rapid transit system ever (in the suburbs), they’re proposing the most expensive surface tram, this time by a very wide margin, ever, globally.
What’s the play? The aim of these proposals can’t possibly be about actually getting something built. Is it about proving to the city the futility of wishing for improving transit? Or trying to build a consensus around highway expansions? The lulz? What’s the 3d chess here?
mare 12:18 on 2024-02-10 Permalink
Having a bit of overlap with the Metro on the east-west stretch is a nice touch though. It eliminates the need to built one huge transfer station for the Metro. People can decide which station they use to transfer and the load might spread out a bit. Or they will all use the first station in order to get a seat.
PO 01:54 on 2024-02-11 Permalink
36 billion to build it underground.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
Faiz Imam 21:58 on 2024-02-11 Permalink
Transit advocate Reese Martin had a fantastic article last week called “Quebec cant build public transit”
Its excellent read and probably deserves its own post:
https://reecemartin.ca/2024/02/09/quebec-cant-build-mass-transit/
Anton 12:58 on 2024-02-12 Permalink
„Excellent“ nope