Montreal City Weblog

Kate 12:50 on 2024-04-16 Permalink Reply  

• Ian 12:57 on 2024-04-16 Permalink

  If they get rid of real Montreal bagels …
  Schwartz’s “smoked” meat is a travesty, I can only imagine how well electric oven bagels will play out.
  Scratch that, I’m from Ontario, I know. Lead doughuts.

• carswell 13:00 on 2024-04-16 Permalink

  If the city were serious about reducing air pollution, they’d be doing things like introducing congestion pricing, charging tolls on bridges and expressways and making public transit free. Instead, they cave to the NIMBYists and target small businesses and dumb down their offer. Greenwashing run amok.

• bob 13:18 on 2024-04-16 Permalink

  FWIW when I worked, very briefly, at Fairmount decades ago most of the bagels for distribution to stores were baked in convection ovens upstairs.

• Nicholas 14:58 on 2024-04-16 Permalink

  carswell, the city does not have the power to introduce congestion pricing, nor toll expressways or bridges (which are owned by the province and in a few cases the feds). The city barely has the power to have speed and red light cameras (limited to a few dozen). Those solutions would really help, but there is no way this provincial government would allow this, and very little chance any other would too. (You may recall Harper assumed the new Champlain would be tolled to pay for it like the last one and the swing ridings were like “hahahahaha no”.)

  As for making public transit free, the STM already has a huge deficit, is laying off employees and getting rid of buses. If the city got hundreds of millions of dollars (from higher taxes or cutting other things), I would rather it go into better bus service than making fares free, and I bet many others agree. But it doesn’t have this money, so that’s a moot point. I’d also ask which successful cities and transit have gone fair free? And given the answer is “Uhh, well Talinn, but only for residents, and a few places with fewer trips a year than Montreal has in a day”, why aren’t other places doing it?

  Lastly, burning wood is really, really bad for public health, way worse than cars for the amount of activity, especially immediately surrounding the wood burning. I’m strongly in favour of vastly reducing car usage, but the wood burning needs to be remediated, and if they can filter the particulate matter out that would really help.

• dhomas 15:02 on 2024-04-16 Permalink

  I’m with carswell, 100%. NYC is doing it, why not us, too?
  https://ny1.com/nyc/manhattan/transit/2023/10/02/what-to-know-about-congestion-pricing-in-new-york-city
  Though I doubt the bridge tolls will ever return. It’s political suicide. Any politician who institutes the toll is pretty much guaranteed to not be relected.

• Blork 15:07 on 2024-04-16 Permalink

  Perhaps I’ll soon have a side hustle running wood-fired bagels in from the south shore. I’ve been going to Brossard Bagels lately, which was (AFAIK) founded by a former employee at Fairmount. My favorite is still St-Viateur, but I’d much rather have a freshly (wood-fire) baked Brossard bagel than a four-day-old St-V from Provigo that was baked in Laval.

  The Brossard Bagels are a bit less dense than St-V and slightly crisper on the outside, which I actually like. I might even get over my “St-V is always best” prejudice and just start liking Brossard bagels better.

  Odd side note: I was in a fruiterie on Mont-Royal last week (near Papineau) and they were selling Brossard bagels. This is like two blocks from the St-Viateur shop on Mont-Royal. Weird. (Or prescient?)

• Uatu 16:47 on 2024-04-16 Permalink

  Oze bagel plus on taschereau in Brossard is also good.

• Blork 17:00 on 2024-04-16 Permalink

  Another fun thing about Brossard Bagels is that instead of the Jewish/Italian vibe of St-V it has a Caribbean vibe. Along with your bagels you can get jerk chicken, chicken roti, Jamaican patties, etc.

• carswell 17:12 on 2024-04-16 Permalink

  @Nicholas — As was true in the pedestrianized street thread a few days ago, I’m fairly aware of the restrictions placed on the city’s powers (thanks, paranoid city-hating post-referendum PQ government!). And in both cases, I guess I should have been ultra clear and specified “advocating for”.

  There’s lots that the city and the mayor can do on these fronts. They can publicly advocate for these changes and put pressure on the other levels of government and non-cooperating boroughs and municipalities. They can commission studies on and draw up plans for congestion pricing, bridge and expressway tolls and free public transit. To return to my pet peeve, they can build a bike path on Édouard-Montpetit right up to the Décarie east service road (or wherever their jurisdiction ends) and another on Ellerdale (or is it still Isabella?) from the west service road right up to the Hampstead border (there’s already one on Fielding from the western border, Côte-St-Luc Road) and then do everything in their power to pressure and embarrass and shame the provincial government and Hampstead to provide the missing links. Don’t see or hear of city officials doing any of that.

  Obviously, free public transit would require more money from Quebec City, unlikely while the pro-car CAQ and transit-hating Legault are in power. But, again, the city and the STM could be laying the groundwork. They could announce plans for such a system contingent on funding, prepare budget estimates, drum up public support, etc. In a way, they’ve already started doing so with the free fares for seniors, though typically it has never been presented as such. And, as a beneficiary of the service, I can assure you it’s fantastic and a real inducement to use the bus and metro system.

  As for the feasibility of a fare-free system, we won’t know until we try, maybe learning from other cities’ mistakes. And while there doesn’t appear to be any city quite of Montreal’s size that offers free transit, there are some (e.g. Tuscon, Kansas City, Albuquerque, etc.). New Delhi, an order of magnitude bigger than Montreal, offers free transit to women, circa half the population. Wikipedia has a convenient list, btw.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport

  The fact of the matter is we simply cannot continue doing as we’ve done in the past and doing as little as we do now. Climate change and local population growth will soon leave us with no alternative, unless we’re prepared to inflict unimaginable horrors on succeeding generations. Ostrich-mode is no longer tenable. Pretending it is, throwing up our hands and saying, as some people on this blog do, that we won’t be inconvenienced in any way and we’ll vote out of office any politician who doesn’t act accordingly is tantamount to giving up the battle before it’s begun. You don’t want widespread famine or migration on an unprecedented level or the drought-stricken US invading Canada to take over our water reserves? You don’t want the Gulf Stream to die? You don’t want your children and grandchildren to have a hellish existence? Then change things because that’s where we’re headed: data don’t lie. Either we start taking drastic steps now or we make far more drastic ones in a decade or two after the planet gives us a much-deserved idiot slap that will make last — and probably this — summer of smoke seem like Disneyland.

  Have never seen any figures but seriously doubt that bakery and resto wood-burning ovens are sources of more than a tiny, read insignificant fraction of overall air pollution, including particulate pollution. Admittedly, that figure will be higher in the immediate vicinity of the chimneys. But many of these ovens have been around far longer than the complainers, who shouldn’t have moved into the area if they weren’t prepared to live with them. And, if you eliminate wood ovens, you eliminate an important tradition even as you embrace an inferior product. (FWIW I have friends who have a rooftop deck within a hundred metres or two of the St-Viateur bagel shop chimney. Zero perceivable issues with smoke now or in years past.) But sure, put in filtering systems. Just don’t make these small businesses pay for them on their own — offer generous subsidies and loans amortized over decades. Otherwise, butt out.

  Apologies for the screed and thread drift but it’s increasingly apparent we’re on an accelerating downward spiral and that our response to date and in the foreseeable future is wholly inadequate (and that’s before, dog forbid, Poilievre takes over). And while I’m never going to experience the worst of it — I’ll be leaving this vale of tears in a decade or two — that realization depresses me beyond words.

• Chris 20:26 on 2024-04-16 Permalink

  >Either we start taking drastic steps now or…

  Drastic like settling for convection baked instead of wood-fired bagels? Or not *that* drastic? 🙂

• Ian 21:13 on 2024-04-16 Permalink

  Yeah Carswell I’m 100% with you on this. Bagel ovens are misdirection, go for the real goods. Even enforcing anti-idling laws for delivery trucks would have more impact than this “hey presto” act.

• Kevin 22:37 on 2024-04-16 Permalink

  I saw the figures a decade ago when the city banned wood fireplaces, and even then it was evident that the only time wood fires caused any alteration to air quality was when a chimney located in the same block as a monitor was broken.

  The vast majority of PM comes from dust-covered roads, poorly tuned diesel engines, and brakes.

  Temperature inversions cause smog days, as do forest fires. The very small number of wood stoves in the city do not.

• Ian 07:57 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  Another possibility worth considering, there’s no fireplace or wood oven ban in Outremont …it’s in the adjacent borough after all, just a few blocks over…

  I know Lester’s on Bernard has their smokers in Laval. By comparison, Schwartz’s is basically just pastrami with more cloves in the rub.

• MarcG 08:18 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  @carswell: I think you’re being optimistic about how long we have before the climate disaster becomes critical. “Exponential” is a hard concept for humans to wrap their heads around.

  D.A.D.’s Bagels in NDG was also awesome because you could grab some channa masala and a samosa with your half-dozen. I wonder what the fate of that oven was?

• Kate 08:33 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  Lufa sources both bagels and Indian foods from an outfit called Bagel Henri-Bourassa in Ahuntsic, but I haven’t tried the bagels.

• walkerp 08:37 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  We don`t even know what the restrictions will be and you all are already kvetching. You really think PM is going to kill the bagel industry in the mile-end?

• Kate 09:05 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  Obviously most bakeries are not using wood, and bagels can go on being baked, but the tradition of wood‑fired ovens for bagels is likely to be lost.

  Some people have been militating for the end of wood burning for awhile. And there’s definitely evidence that wood smoke is bad for us. But I have no sense of how the filtered smoke from a couple of bagel bakeries compares to all the transportation and industrial exhaust in the city’s air.

• Kevin 09:12 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  @Kate
  Henri Bourassa bagels has been my go-to since St. Viateur pulled out of NDG. They’re great!

  The transportation and industrial exhaust causes something on the order of 80% of pollution. All wood burning together, year-round, is around one percent. But because our nostrils are attuned to wood smoke (what’s the burning equivalent of petrichor?) some people incorrectly blame it for their ills.

• Kevin 09:37 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  *That would be my estimate of current figures, ever since Montreal banned fireplaces.

• jeather 10:36 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  Another thumbs up for the bagels from Henri-Bourassa. Their Indian food is also pretty good. I, too, miss DAD’s Bagels.

• Mark Côté 13:45 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  Isn’t Henri-Bourassa bagels super far from where DAD’s was? Curious what the connection is—just bagels & Indian food? My kingdom for a samosa source in NDG…

• MarcG 13:58 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  @Mark: Bombay Mahal recently opened a location on Sherbrooke.

• Mark Côté 15:01 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  Yeah, I don’t think you can get bulk samosas there, though, à la DAD’s or Pushap’s, can you? Samosas as an appetizer are like 3x more expensive than the places that sell them by the dozen.

• MarcG 15:23 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  True nuff. I wonder if they’d do a deal for you if you asked. “Meet my nephew in the back alley at 9pm, cash only.”

• jeather 18:43 on 2024-04-17 Permalink

  Yeah, the connection is bagels + Indian, I don’t think there’s any relationship between them.

• Ian 08:12 on 2024-04-18 Permalink

  A few years back almost all the bakers at Fairmount were Indian … and a lot of the Hassidic businesses are staffed by Indians. I have no idea why or what the connection is. That said, if you know how to make bagels and samosas, it’s not that surprising your own business would make & sell both, right?

• MarcG 10:29 on 2024-04-18 Permalink

  I hypothesized a connection between the bagel oven and naan bread but I can’t find any evidence.

• Chris 10:47 on 2024-04-18 Permalink

  I always assumed the connection was simply cheap labour from nearby Parc Ex.

• Francesco 22:45 on 2024-04-18 Permalink

  A lot of kvetching that “Schwartz’s sucks since they switched to electric,” not realizing that Schwartz, Main, Lester’s et al haven’t smoked meat over wood *fires* for about 50 years… Because of the control, electric smokers – which still use wood (chips or chunks) – can actually make smokier food than wood-*fired* smokers, but with more consistency for high-volume establishments. The smoke still comes from wood, but electric smokers are more efficient to operate. If you don’t believe it, try a Schwartz’s (the “fat” for me, please) against a Carnegie or Katz’s (or any) pastrami and decide which is “smokier.” But it’s the dry brine and curing technique that makes Montreal Smoked Meat what it is, more than the amount of smoke or its source.