A gun battle broke out in Dollard‑des‑Ormeaux Sunday evening and three men got shot, two of whom are seriously injured.
TVA talks to a man living nearby, whose son’s bedroom window was shattered by a bullet during this incident.
Updates from August, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Juan Rodriguez, prominent pop music reviewer for many years in Montreal’s anglo papers, has died. He was 76.
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Kate
Tourism numbers may be up, but visitors are not spending lavishly here.
Blork
This should come as no surprise given how expensive touristing has become with the recent inflation. In particular, restaurants. Considering most tourists end up in restaurants for two or three meals a day, that can add up over a week. (Hence the appeal of Airbnb, before people got all stupid and ruined it). We had out of town friends here a couple of months ago; two parents and two teenagers. After four days in Quebec City and three more in Montreal they practically had to take out another mortgage to pay for it all. (We had them over to chez nous for some home cooking to give them a break.)
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Kate
The extension of Cavendish Boulevard will be a bike path and a tramway – and not a road for cars – according to the latest scare story from the Gazette. As mentioned in this piece, the linking of the two segments of road named Cavendish has been under discussion for more than half a century. The Gazette illustrates this weekend’s piece with the same photo used in June 2023 on a Cavendish story, and we’ve discussed the matter before on the blog.
The city toponymy site says the road was named after “Frederick Charles, lord Cavendish”, a man who had nothing to do with Canada, and not for Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire who was Governor‑General from 1916 to 1921.
In fact, there’s nobody called simply Lord Cavendish, because British titles don’t work that way.
The city ought to start claiming that it’s named for Henry Cavendish, who discovered hydrogen.
(I suspect Devonshire Road in TMR was named for the G‑G but, since it’s not in Montreal, it isn’t listed on the toponymy site. We do have Devonshire Park in the Plateau but the site only says “rappelle la présence d’une ancienne école dans le secteur” – a school which was probably also named for the same Duke of Devonshire.)
bob
Perhaps they were both named after the 6th Duke (William), like the banana that replaced the Gros Michel.
Kate
Which is cooler – hydrogen or bananas?
Ian
That’s a hard choice. Hydrogen is more essential, but cooler? Tough call.
anton
So Montreal has been talking about building modern trams for 20…30 years or so. Usually they should be built wherever buses have become too full, too unreliable, too slow. But Montreal is not proposing to put the trams on the busy bus corridors, in some dense neighborhoods. Instead, the proposal is to put them in a rather suburban area, where today buses don’t actually run that often, along an axis that’s not the dominant direction of traffic — a tram to replace a car link that’s viewed as necessary because the neighborhood it serves is somewhat locked in by railways.
I mean, I guess it’s understandable the city wants to not encourage more car use, and doesn’t want this to become a sort of through-fare. But perhaps there are different ways to go about it. Perhaps a toll?
I think a tram may really be better used elsewhere.
anton
…think about it a bit more, perhaps the idea is that by linking the Cavendish extension with a tram, it’s a way to make sure that bridge never gets built — just like all the other tram proposals — without having to declare it openly.
Blork
I agree with @anton that a tram does not seem to be what that area needs. As far as I know, 100% of the noise about “connecting the two sides of Cavendish” is to divert some of the car traffic from the Decarie interchange. (The wisdom of that is a separate question.) It’s not about moving non-car passengers from one side of the 40 to the other.
I mean, who would those passengers even be? People from CSL going to IKEA? (Who goes to IKEA without a car to lug your stuff back?) People from VSL going to visit their Jewish grandparents in CSL? You’re going to build a tram for that?
If it were a proper road instead of a tramway you could at least run buses back and forth, and that could be useful because it would service people from VSL who want to quickly zip over to Royalmount or other places in TMR/CLS, or you could run an express bus from Namur Metro to the airport via Côte-de-Liesse without going through the Decarie circle.
But a tram, with a locked-in and limited route? Why?
Kate
I go to Ikea by bus, and have been known to haul back smaller pieces of furniture in their big blue bags.
I think the tram thing is a red herring.
Ian
I used to go to Ikea without a car. You can call a taxi or have stuff delivered if it’s too big to carry
Blork
Just my luck that THE ONLY TWO PEOPLE WHO GO TO IKEA WITHOUT A CAR just happen to be in here. 🙂 Still not enough to warrant a tram line unless IKEA wants to subsidize it.
Ian
I like the meatballs, what can I say 😀
Kevin
The only time I went to Ikea without a car was when I lived in NYC, and Ikea was in New Jersey. They had a special shuttle bus from Penn Station, and the store had special announcements telling people they had to be in line at a cash by a certain hour or they were not getting home
Now that they’ve opened a store in Brooklyn, they have a ferry https://www.nywaterway.com/ikea.aspx
Ian
That’s actually kind of cool, I love NYC ferries – plus you can get meatballs 😀
Worth noting, you can also order for delivery. It’s a bit spendy but worth it for larger items even if you have a car.
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Kate
The Globe & Mail’s Marcus Gee uses Jean Drapeau as a sockpuppet to plead for the demolition of the Olympic stadium.
Taylor
The Big O: famously owned and operated by the Quebec gov’t precisely because Drapeau had lost control of the situation and couldn’t get it completed on time
It’s not the city’s choice to make. Never was. This crucial detail seems to escape most columnists.
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Kate
A new shelter for the homeless is set to open in Ste‑Marie this winter, but some residents don’t want it there. That’s an inevitability.
Ian
Hey well I’m sure some of the homeless don’t want to be homeless, either. Nobody gets precisely what they want all the time.
Kate
I can see the need for a shelter there, but offering someone a home for maximum 3 months while they find something permanent doesn’t sound too realistic. Going from homeless to affording $1500 or more for a 1½? How often can that happen?
LJ
That is the old Boite A Musique building (BAM moved to Cite 2000 on Notre Dame a few years ago). At least these new neighbours will likely be quieter than the bands that used to rehearse inside.
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Kate
La Presse describes a CHSLD in St‑Michel where features from Italy make
dementedresidents with dementia feel more at home.JP
I know it doesn’t matter much for the purposes of this blog, but in healthcare communications, we typically don’t describe patients (or in this case residents) by their disease; we would say residents with dementia or patients with diabetes as opposed to diabetic patients whenever possible. (I totally get that it doesn’t matter for the blog but I guess “demented residents” had me do a double take)
Kate
My apologies. I will do better.
Ian
That’s a fair take. We have the same thing at college wrt students requiring accomodations, eg, student with need of mobility assistance.
I wonder if the CHSLD will be allowed to talk to residents in Italian?
Ian
If nobody tells you, why would you know? Nothing to apologize for.
JP
Kate, no need at all to apologize. I simply wanted to point it out. 🙂
(I really enjoy reading the blog and visit often but I seldom ever feel I have anything to add to a discussion)
bob 20:30 on 2024-08-05 Permalink
I see a report that the police shot two innocent bystanders, one five times, the other once.
Kate 09:24 on 2024-08-06 Permalink
Reports say the BEI is investigating, which suggests police were involved more actively than simply taking notes.