A pro-Palestinian march was held in the Plateau on Saturday afternoon.
Updates from June, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Deegan Stubbs writes a brief ode to the 15 bus, one of the routes to be retired this summer.
Frank
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Kate
More than one hundred private jets have brought people here for Grand Prix weekend, or should we call it the Weekend of Environmental Mockery?
Friday’s experience on the track was described by driver Lewis Hamilton: “It was literally summer this morning, then it rained hailstones. […] then sunny again, really hot and humid, and then raining again.” Welcome to summer in Montreal, Lewis.
La Presse checked out the experience of downtown merchants, who have so far also found the rain a pain in the ass. The Journal looks at how jet‑setters spend their money.
Ephraim
Can we not forget that over 4.7% of Montrealers are employed in the hospitality business. And not only do these people spend more, they tip more. It also extends income in the retail sector, the services sector, even the STM.It also brings Montreal into the newspapers around the world. Hospitality is a big industry in Montreal. (And yes, it’s my industry. And this weekend pays a LOT of bills.)
Chris
Economics is indeed the quintessential counter argument to any environmental argument.
Anton
As a wise man once said: „Nature decays! But latinum lasts forever.“
Uatu
I’m just waiting for the caq to pass a bill making The Rules of Acquisition Quebec law lol
Ian
Hey now let’s not forget how much money is made off hookers and blow! The hooker and blow industries need this!
But yeah it is pretty weird how F1 gets a free pass when even street parking for residents is somehow a political flash point the rest of the year.
Ian
Kate
Yes, I didn’t blog that demo, because it was pretty small.
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Kate
Genetic detective work may have succeeded in reviving the fabled Montreal melon – but you might have to go to La Pocatière to taste it.
CBC also has a podcast on why the melon disappeared. It’s a bit talky, but – like things I’ve read – they conclude that the melon was demanding to cultivate and didn’t travel well. That was why it was a delicacy for the wealthy. But its disappearance seems to have been a more complicated matter – the original farmlands where it was grown were urbanized, the market demanded hardier produce, and fashions among the affluent had moved on.
Orr
The writer of the Montreal Melon story Daphne Cameron is one of the more interesting (also: one of the few) actual reporters currently on the local food and agriculture beat. As legendary local food columnist Julian Armstrong once told me, food is a huge, rich beat. There are so many food stories that are right out there, waiting for their time in the sun.
Kate
Everyone has opinions on food, but if you’re going to be taken seriously as a critic, you either have to have serious chef training, or food science training, or both. Ideally you’d have travelled widely too. And then, of course, you need to be able to write.
CE
Were the old school restaurant critics for newspapers and magazines typically chefs or people with training/experience in the industry? It always seemed like they were journalists with a keen interest in eating good food and writing about it.
Kate
Anthony Bourdain’s credibility came from having trained and worked as a chef for many years. I suppose that’s who I was thinking of, but anyone writing about food at a high level needs to base their responses on something more solid than “I liked this, I didn’t like that” – no?
Bill
Helen Rochester has a street named after her. Lesley Chesterman never will and Marie-Claude Lortie is doing far more significant work now.
Joey
Did Bourdain ever write restaurant criticism? He certainly used food as his niche and was a much of a journalist as anyone, but I don’t think he ever did many reviews…
Kate
In a way, all those TV shows where he travels and eats in restaurants and discusses the food are a kind of restaurant reviewing.
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Kate
Ferreira Café’s Peel Street terrasse was shut down abruptly Friday evening by firefighters, when it was full of Grand Prix visitors. The owner is not happy and there’s noise all over social media about it Saturday morning.
Other restaurateurs in the area also had their terrasses closed without warning. It’s still to be made clear why resto owners who had received city approval for their terrasses were treated like this. I suspect some internal power struggle was being acted out, but it may never come to light.
By Saturday, the swoop is being blamed on “confusion” and the mayor has tweeted, if not an apology, words meant to soothe: “Nous avons tous été ébranlés par le témoignage de la restauratrice du Ferreira café, dont la terrasse a été fermée hier soir par les équipes du Service de sécurité incendies de la Ville de Montréal pour des raisons de sécurité. Les équipes du SIM ont confirmé la conformité des terrasses de la rue Peel et elle pourront toutes réouvrir aujourd’hui.”
Joey
Shades of the fire department forcing the city to move the completed Clark bike path median a few centimetres – like then, this feels like the fire department flexing its muscles in front of the mayor… the inevitable lawsuits will be fun to watch play out.
Ian
That’s not a fair comparison, the Clark debacle was a planning kludge that dudnt leave enough room for firetrucks or ambulances to pass – this terrasse thing is all temporary construction. The Clark planted medians were a planning debacle of an entirely different order of magnitude.
Given how fire-prone Mile End has been historically I’ll take the side of the fire department over the indignant blatherings of Alex Norris.
TBH the Crescent street situation sounds more like somebody forgot to pay off an inspector.
Kate
CBC radio news hinted at an element not mentioned in those text versions: it’s possible that the restaurants put up sheltering roof structures that had not been approved by the city when the rain moved in. But it will have to play out.
Joey
As the story develops there’s more nuance and it’s clear that the restaurants didn’t do every little thing the fire department told them to, so maybe enough with the were IF videos?
@Ian how far off were the measurements? I seem to recall the distance seeming trivial but I can’t remember specifically.
Ian
It was actually the residents that called it in and fire trucks couldn’t pass. The concrete median was reduced from 1.8 to 1.5 metres, so 30cm or about a foot. They also had to put in gaps to facilitte snow removal. It was not a negligible mistake, and at immense cost to redo.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bike-lane-street-too-narrow-1.4759346
On social media of course Alex Norris was abusive and condescending as always, Plante finally had to step in and apologize. This and bagelgate are why he’s basically not allowed to talk to media on behalf of PM anymore.
Joey
I suppose the lesson learned was don’t bother trying to keep two lanes of parked cars. I bet that factored into the thinking around the new bike path in Parc Ex. Clark could have been an interesting bike-first street, actually.
Ian
I would have hoped the lesson learned was to actually make urban refection plans that involve careful measurements and not lie about it if you didn’t, but hey.
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Kate
It’s such a joy to read that François Legault wants to offer Quebec more freedom from the shackles of Ottawa, and I’d be quite happy for him to achieve it – so long as Quebec residents were also offered a federal tax cut commensurate with the equivalent loss of protection from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
No? I didn’t think so.
Is Deegan the son of DAvid?