A woman was found dead Saturday afternoon in an apartment in St‑Michel, and a man has been arrested. Sunday morning he’s been identified as her ex‑husband; he’s 71, she was 55.
Radio-Canada says this was the second woman killed in Montreal in three days. They may be counting the Ormstown killing on May 15, but that’s quite some distance from town.
The Adirondack train between Montreal and New York is suspended again as the tourism season peaks, for maintenance to be done on the tracks.
It’s been many years since I took that train, but I can remember how much rougher the tracks were on the Canadian part of the trip than on the American.
The Wikipedia article on the train documents the long history of unfulfilled promises to improve the route, which, I had forgotten, originally used CP/D&H tracks from Windsor Station to the border.
@PatrickC In the early days of the route, you rode from Windsor Station to Grand Central Station and, before Amtrak took over, on a train with an actual sit-down dining car that had a waiter, tables with a cloth tablecloth and a rose in vase, a wine list and food cooked to order by a chef. Departing, travelling and arriving in style!
Yup, but now it’s slower and more expensive than a bus.
True, but the bus is far less pleasant a ride, even without taking the scenery into consideration.
@carswell I don’t remember the dining car (probably because I was a young student and couldn’t afford it), but I do remember a cheerful D &H hostess with a colourful scarf and the observation car, which, IIRC, couldn’t go all the way to NYC, since it wouldn’t fit in the tunnel to Grand Central.
I’ve taken the Adirondack quite a few times and it’s always the most pleasant (albeit slowest) way to get to New York. I wish there was a dining car on that train, the cafe car is comfortable but the food isn’t great (unlike VIA which has very good food). I’ve eaten real meals in dining cars on both Amtrak and VIA and both were excellent meals and nice dining experiences as you often have to share a table with other passengers.
If Amtrak added an overnight NYC train with sleepers, I think it would be very popular. Especially if it were possible to do customs in advance.
Can we just get some fast trains, already? I’ll be in Spain for work this summer. There’s a fast train from Barcelona to Madrid that takes 2 and a half hours to travel about the same distance as Montreal – NYC. A ticket costs about 20 euro. Why can’t something like this be built here? Maybe the international border crossing complicates things, but surely Montreal – Toronto should be doable? What is holding us up here in Canada?
@dhomas – a possible answer to your question – ownership of the tracks, and the fact that (slow) freight earns way more than fast passenger trains – nothing to do with the border, everything to do with $$$
Having followed this issue: What seems to be going on is, allll the tracks north of the border (Rouse’s Point) to Montreal need ripping out and changing. Otherwise, the trains can only go 25-40kmh, even in winter – and during hot spells in summer, even slower than that (because the tracks expand, warp, and risk derailment).
So much slower, that the total runtime NY-YUL exceeds that (12h) allowed by the union contract of Amtrak workers, so they would have to do a crew change. Which, they can’t.
CN insists Amtrak pays for the track work. Amtrak says “That’s in Canada; you pay for them.”
It seems, in this case, Amtrak has agreed to pay CN replace the tracks “in the Rouse’s Point vicinity” between May 21st-June 30th, saying this will mitigate – but not fix – the problem.
The claim, now, is the Adirondack train is suspended only until June 30th. But, I don’t see how the partial fix described in the press fixes the problem north of Rouse’s Point, so that the train indeed begins again July 1st.
So I fully expect, come July 1st (or before) we’ll hear “Ooopsies! No, we can’t restart it at all until further notice.” And then they’ll wait until the temperatures drop in September, and start up again.
Thanks for the explanation, BobR.
There’s more talk here about a 24‑hour party district and about how the city’s culture of after‑hours parties might fade away if more official money is poured into 24‑hour venues.
Turbo Haüs’s Sergio Da Silva is extensively quoted, and he’s a realist: by 3 in the morning, “people have already done what they’re going to be doing. They’re either a little too high, or a little too drunk, and it’s just time to get everybody home and be done with it.”
Same piece in French in La Presse.
A man is dead after a stabbing in St‑Henri on Saturday morning. CTV makes it sound like he was found in the street but TVA says it happened in an apartment.
The Journal is opening a series on archaeology in Quebec – the archaeology of Montreal, of heritage buildings that “permet de comprendre comment nos ancêtres vivaient au XVIIIe siècle” and so forth.
Granted, indigenous cultures didn’t leave permanent houses or fragments of European crockery in their middens.* But, like François Legault’s history museum vision, this all manages to sound like human existence began in Quebec in the 17th century, and nothing happened here before that – or nothing with any claim on our interest, at any rate.
*Actually, they might have, later on. But I was thinking of before 1535.
Two men entered guilty pleas Friday over their attempt to kill Leonardo Rizzuto on a highway in Laval last year. Rizzuto’s car was riddled with bullets but he was uninjured. Both men will be serving time.
Possibly useful open or closed notes for the May two‑four.
McGill is trying again to get a provisional injunction against the pro‑Palestinian encampment.
McGill will try anything but considering what’s being asked of them: to divest.
There was a minor encounter Friday between militants on both sides of the issue, but no arrests.
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