The new owners of the remnants of the Just For Laughs festival will mount a revived comedy festival in July.
Updates from June, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The city is expecting to temporarily shelter 250 households which haven’t found new digs this Moving Day, as compared to 120 last year at this time. Hundreds of households throughout Quebec are still seeking new living spaces.
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Kate
The MUHC plans to close its drug addiction program, but Mayor Plante is asking them not to do it.
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Kate
Will government ukase pull French commercial signage back from the bottomless pit of English? Not so long as there are too many exceptions, not enough complaints, not enough inspectors.
David
“On est francophones et il faut que ça paraisse.”
20.4% of people in Montreal have English as their first language. Why deny this reality, Mr. Roberge?
Kate
We’re just NPCs.
Indigenous people even more so.
Ian
The narrative is that since Quebec has only one official language and that multiculturalism is a conspiracy to destroy Quebec culture, not only is French the only language that should be acknowledged, it’s the only one that can be.
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Kate
Carla White, whose long tenant struggle with Mondev, the developer who wanted her out of her convenient, cheap apartment in the old Da Giovanni building near Place Émilie‑Gamelin has been in the news before, has finally accepted a deal to move out but is not allowed to disclose the terms.
I was irritated to hear a Mondev spokesman on CBC radio claiming that the new development would be such a great thing for the area. Please don’t pretend you’re putting up condo buildings for the good of society, you twat. You’re doing it for profit.
Blork
It’s an interesting case. The logical thing would be to subsidize her rent elsewhere while the new building is being constructed, then move her into one of the “affordable” units that are supposed to be in the new building — perhaps even at her original rent.
That’s the logical thing, which means the actual solution arrived at was probably completely different.
Kate
On CBC radio she said that the settlement was not, or not merely, monetary. I suppose this means she was offered a new place to live that she could afford. We should all be so lucky – but we’re not all that stubborn.
Nicholas
She was previously offered a place two blocks away owned by the same firm that was larger in size, for the same rent (1/3 of the normal rent), and with a $10,000 cash incentive. Presumably if she wanted to be back in the original location once the new building was constructed they would have let her move back. But she held out for more, because she could. And in the meantime hundreds of people who could have had a home here have been delayed, but they are unknown future residents and she is a (loud) current resident.
Once they finally build this building it would be great if we got even one-tenth of the media coverage of all the new residents and what they think about their new living space, and if they had wished it was completed earlier. Especially, but not only, the people on a list waiting for affordable housing. We can see if they’re happy to be in their new place or grumbling because it’s not affordable enough.
My mom has moved around a few times in the last few years into large, 10ish storey buildings, both condos and rentals, two new builds, and they all had lots of people who seemed really happy to be there, including some families. But I’ve seen countless articles about other people, who already have homes, complaining about new construction in these two specific neighbourhoods, and not a single one about the new residents being happy to have a roof over their head in a nice building with good people in this housing crisis we’re living through. My mom has never had such a great social life as today, and she doesn’t even have to leave the building to experience it, and she can walk to restaurants and a grocery store and a ton of bus lines, but because of some nearby residents who already had a place to live and don’t like the changing neighbourhood (which were both mostly industrial), now all construction of similar buildings is banned in her current neighbourhood. I’d love to hear the stories of the people who’ve been helped, but those are positive so we rarely if ever hear them; instead we get dozens and dozens of stories about this one selfish person.
Ian
Fine line between NIMBYs and little tenants taking on corporate landlords & winning.
I take the side of the underdog in any anticorporate fight.
I understand your perspective, but it’s not the samr thing as NIMBYism.
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Kate
Business Insider offers us a piece on a typical day in Montreal and yes, it calls us the Paris of North America and mentions croissants.
A writer for Wired experimented with Ray‑Ban’s AI sunglasses to test their translation skills on French in Montreal. No spoilers – the result is revealed in the headline.
CE
I interact with a lot of tourists through my work and a number have mentioned that Europe is too expensive so Montreal (and Quebec City) seemed like a good alternative (and they’re generally not disappointed).
For Americans from car-centric cities like Phoenix or Atlanta or dirty, congested, run down, etc. cities like Philadelphia or Baltimore (and even New York), Montreal does seem pretty European in comparison.
EmilyG
Whenever I think of Ray-Ban sunglasses, I think of how there used to be a large amount of spam ads for them on Facebook.
Blork
I wonder if they’d have any better success trying those glasses in Scotland, or the fishing bays of Newfoundland.
Blork
Oh wait… it translates written text not spoken. So the glasses are the problem I guess…
Kate
The first incident is she nearly walks into a construction zone. I don’t think a pair of translation glasses could help with that kind of obliviousness.
central dogma
Half Paris and half Bronx, you got the mix called Montreal. though this is a coarse analogy only applies to the eyes of tourists.
Kate
Someone, maybe it was on Reddit, said a combination of Barcelona and Manchester. But I’ve visited neither place so I can’t judge.
CE
I’ve always felt that if you took Brooklyn and Queens, mixed them together, switched English for French and Spanish for English, you more or less have Montreal.
Ian
Brooklyn in miniature, but yeah for sure. I even get people from Brooklyn noting it unprompted.
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Kate
An estimated 200,000 French expats live in Montreal, and roughly 77,000 of them will be able to vote in impending French elections.
(Why doesn’t François Legault blame these wandering Gallic visitors for our housing crisis?)
Ian
They certanly made the rents jump noticeably in Mile End…
JP
They’re white and they speak French. How could they be part of the problem.
Nicholas
JP, about one in six people in France are not white (if you count Arab as not white (race is a construct and… complicated)).
JP
Thanks Nicholas…. 🙂
JP
Also, just because it’s a construct doesn’t mean it’s not relevant…one in six is not a majority by any means.
Daisy
I was surprised to see a French election sign in Verdun today.
DeWolf
France doesn’t collect any data on ethnic origin so any numbers are going to be approximate. But I think it’s worth noting that French immigrants to Montreal are a fairly diverse bunch and they’re probably one of the reasons the Plateau is a lot less white today than it was in the past.
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Kate
The city’s archivists are moving the city’s vast archive from its temporary home near Rosemont metro back to its permanent underground bunker below city hall. Thirty thousand boxes, and nothing must be misplaced.
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Kate
Three of the four peregrine falcon chicks hatched on the UdeM tower this spring have survived so far and are starting to take their first flights.
P 23:44 on 2024-06-26 Permalink
Christ that’s sad. What a shame the whole thing fell apart. Dane Cook?
Kate 08:34 on 2024-06-27 Permalink
I had to look him up. He does have a Wikipedia page.
Ephraim 13:32 on 2024-06-27 Permalink
He’s actually quite a well known comedian. Big around like ’05 or ’06 or so. Had a few movies. Has been pretty quiet for quite a few years (ie read desperate)