Monday is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, although Quebec ignores it. Some notes on federal services that are closed.
Updates from September, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A man who worked to help Pierre-Yves Beaudoin evict people from a building adjoining La Tulipe in 2016 speaks to Urbania about his regret at taking on the job.
Blork
Man, what a piece of work that guy is.
Side note: is it just me, or is that Urbania piece the most meandering article on Earth right now?
GC
Interesting to also read the JdeM article from back in 2016. I honestly don’t remember this story from eight years ago, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t read it then. It made me curious if it was discussed here, but the archives only seem to go back to 2017. I suppose 2016 would have been the older site, Kate?
(I don’t remember when, exactly, I started reading this site, but I feel it was at least by the 2013 election…)Kate
GC, this recension of the blog begins in October 2017. I do remember posting about the Coop sur Généreux previous to that, but the archives between February 2010 and October 2017 are not accessible to me or to anyone, and probably never will be.
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Kate
Twice as many buildings are shown in flood-prone areas on new Montreal Metropolitan Community maps as shown on previous maps, although this piece doesn’t specify when the older maps were released.
EmilyG
The map is here: https://evouala.cmm.qc.ca/application/run/1373/embedded
Kate
Thank you, EmilyG.
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Kate
The STM has decided to banish ads from oil companies that attempt to greenwash their activities. Will they also remove car ads?
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Kate
La Presse’s Maxime Bergeron reports on a small, very organic beauty salon in the Plateau, where the owner takes great care to exclude anything toxic and to obey the rules, and yet she’s under constant harassment from neighbours who have invoked a series of inspections on her, and have left open the possibility of further measures.
jeather
I have to say that, toxic or not, I would hate to live above a salon that uses a bunch of essential oils. I very cleverly chose to live somewhere that isn’t above a commercial location.
But they don’t say that the salon has been there for longer than the neighbours and imply the reverse, and whatever “I don’t use chemicals” bullshit she is peddling (organic nailpolish, like everything, is made of chemicals), she is definitely using things that smell, and many volatile organic compounds can be smelled quite strongly however low the concentration is.
Robert H
All right, jeather you’re not buying it. Perhaps you think Alexandra Simard is cynically exploiting the La Presse article to portray herself as a struggling, hardworking small business owner beleaguered by hostile, nitpicking nimbys. Or maybe you’re the cynic?
Anyway, she’s right when she says that small businesses contribute greatly to the attraction of the quartier. I’ve seen this sort of conflict in Boston, Washington D.C., and Chicago among other places and I can say it’s inevitable. As a veteran of urban living, I can say that If you move to a dense, central, convenient neighbourhood of row housing, party walls, and rear alleys, sprinkled with shops and threaded with major streets, there will be noise, there will be smells, messiness, drifting voices, sirens, music (including thumping bass) and a general low background hum of traffic and thousands of folks up to who knows what.
People learn to put up with what they don’t like because of the things they do like about a place. That’s why one of my siblings loves her far-flung suburban, car oriented bosky retreat and why I love my spot in town. I’m not saying you or Salon Primerose’s neighbours forfeit your right to complain. I’ve done my fair share. But I do feel that people, especially new arrivals, need to temper their expectations with realism, understanding, and goodwill.
dwgs
Also, we’re all made out of chemicals.
jeather
I’m not buying anyone who claims they make nailpolish without chemicals, no. But since the complaints started as soon as she opened her salon, it does sound like the salon owner was the new arrival.
I don’t think she’s exploiting anyone, I’m not sure she’s breaking any laws (she moved the illegal vent, and mostly she seems to come across as trying to follow the rules), but the article is very much on her side and painting the neighbours as newly arrived NIMBYs who could not possibly actually find the smells of her salon very unpleasant (or worse). Note that they didn’t actually talk to the neighbours — were they there before she was (I think yes)? What are the problems? Can you actually smell her products in their apartments? Do any of them have, I don’t know, migraines that are set off by this? This is an incredibly one sided piece. And sometimes there’s only one reasonable side, but I’m not sure this is one of those times.
I live in a triplex near the Ville Marie; I am aware of the pros and cons of living in a dense urban environment and the attractions of small businesses.
Ian
I used to live upstairs from a hair salon, my place smelled like hair bleach. I talked to the salon, they claimed there was nothing to be done. I sealed up the cracks in the floor with plumber’s foam (a good job, i removed all the excess and stained it to match), put down rugs, and bought a powerful air filter with organic chemical filters on my own dime. Didn’t smell a thing after that. After all, I DID move in upstairs from a hair salon…
Some people are too precious to live among others.Orr
@dwgs Step back a bit further and we’re just made of stardust.
Lucky, lucky bits of stardust.
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Kate
Dockworkers have begun a three‑day strike at two of the port’s terminals.
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Kate
Towns in Quebec that have elected six councillors have received permission to reduce council size to four in the next election because so few people want to run for office. The lack of interest is blamed on low salaries, job challenges, little enthusiasm for community involvement – and the online abuse they have to cope with.
jeather
I had no idea that there was a minimum number of municipal councillors as decided by the provincial government.
PatrickC
Is there a reason for having an even number (whatever it is)? Isn’t it more usual to have an odd number on boards of various kinds to make majority votes easier?
Nicholas
PatrickC, the even number of councillors doesn’t count the mayor, who makes it odd.
jeather, you sort of need a minimum of three in any legislative body, as having one is not really a democracy and having two is a recipe for gridlock. Since at least 1987 the formula for the minimum and maximum number of councillors, not counting the separately elected mayor, is found at section 9 of the law. It varies from 6 to 90, not counting Montreal which has its own law.
Overall this seems like a good move, but honestly some of these municipalities are too small to do what is now expected of a municipality, with all the paperwork. More and more, things will be uploaded to regional county municipalities.
jeather
I’m not saying that it doesn’t make sense to have at least 3, just that I had no idea this was provincial law. (Is this true in other provinces, with possibly different numbers?)
Yeah small municipalities will need to band together somehow though I see the drama coming from far away.
Nicholas
Sorry if I was unclear, I understood what you meant. But it is common to have minimums (or maximums) set by the province. In BC and MB it’s 5 to 11, while in AB it’s set based on the municipal type. ON it’s minimum of 5 with no maximum. Provinces love controlling their municipalities.
Fun fact: municipal council districts in Quebec can vary by 15% from the average population quota per district, but the MNAs that set this variance set it at 25% for themselves, with further deviation for exceptional circumstances. But even in the general case, a riding can be 67% larger than another, and difference can expand over a decade of population shift.
jeather
Yes the MNA variance is insane, give physically larger ridings more money for travel/offices/staff rather than make them artificially physically smaller. You can’t do anything about the decade of population shift, but you could limit the beginning range much more. It’s bothered me for ages.
The range in federal ridings is . . . also not ideal, though I believe Quebec gets around the actual average number (as it gets more from one of those complicated formula things), and Atlantic Canada (and, of course, the territories) have smaller population per MP, while Ontario/Alberta/BC have higher. But I don’t follow those numbers closely.
Nicholas
I like the idea to give more money for staff/travel. And you can look at ridings that are growing and make them, on the margins, slightly smaller than average, and vice versa. Instead, the National Assembly just postponed the redistribution by another few years, and I guess no one will sue and we’ll be stuck here. And though the eight least populous ridings are rural ones far out there, the next ones are urban, like Viau, PAT, HM, downtown east, Anjou and Gouin. The ones with too many people are mostly the Couronne suburbs.
Federal is a mess because of historical reasons and constitutional guarantees that keep changing for political reasons, but even within provinces it’s a mess: when the districts were drawn in 2011, Kenora had less than half the population and voters of the largest ridings, and there were huge differences in normal ridings in NB, QC, etc. It consistently surprises Americans when I tell them One Person, One Vote isn’t a thing in Canada, and that Americans consider the system Canada has today as a key tool of Jim Crow when they used it.
jeather
I am not a fan of our system by any means but it’s still better than the electoral college and different voting rules for federal elections by state.
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Kate
La Presse says public transit use is up to 90% of pre‑pandemic numbers in the city.
DeWolf
Pretty impressive considering that service is significantly worse than it was in 2019.
Now’s the time to start ramping up frequencies… if only we had a provincial government that wasn’t hopelessly anti-transit.
steph
impressive considering the amount of employees that have transitioned to hybrid or WFH.
Jonathan
This unfortunately doesn’t tell us much. I would love to know what the capacity/use is… In terms of what the capacity is of our current offer, what is the percentage that is being used. Why do we care what the pre-pandemic numbers are if we live in a completely different context.
Orr
Bring back the ten-minute frequency 80!
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Kate
People from the Maghrebi community gathered in St‑Léonard Saturday to express distress about gangs recruiting their kids and to demand a formal investigation into the situation.
Meanwhile, people with family and friends in Lebanon held a demonstration downtown to express their worries about their home country.
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Kate
La Presse’s Isabelle Hachey recounts the history of the developer and landlord who has singlehandedly closed down La Tulipe.
But in the department of balance, La Presse also found residents unhappy about the Plateau’s recent adjustment in its noise bylaw.
GC
Sounds like a real asshole, but the best part is that he’s violated the noise bylaws himself. You couldn’t make this up.
DeWolf
Not only that he’s violated noise bylaws, but he’s a classic scumbag landlord who has engaged in a lot of illegal behaviour.
Blork
This bit is priceless:
“Joint au téléphone, Pierre-Yves Beaudoin a refusé de me donner sa version des faits, sous prétexte que je préparais une chronique « sensationnaliste » sans lui permettre de me donner sa version des faits…”
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Kate
Following a story earlier this month about barbed wire being added to some downtown properties to deter the homeless, Le Devoir inquired into the law, and finds that it’s not strictly legal in Ville‑Marie. Note from the photo that we’re not talking about great tangles of military‑style razor wire, but a few rows at the top of a standard chain link fence.
The article spends several paragraphs on a moment from ten years ago when Archambault added anti‑homeless spikes on its sidewalk window ledges. This is an entirely different matter. Preventing people from merely sitting down is not the same as adding measures to deter people from climbing an already existing (and legal) fence.
Ephraim
Would we be happier if they did it the way they do it in some countries and embed broken bottles at the top of walls and fences?
Ian
“Some countries” I’ve seen this in Mile End alleys, I’ve also seen barbed wire topping alley fences… anyone have some pearls I could clutch? I appear to have misplaced mine.
Ephraim
Never seen it in Montreal… but then again, I don’t often go into alleys, other than the one behind my place. Which is mostly buildings.
Kate
I do a lot of walking in alleys. No barbed wire in evidence in residential areas, but it would not surprise me downtown, especially behind shops with expensive stock.
Orr
While sitting at a window at the back of the grande bibliothèque I watched a person climb over fences in the alley to collect cans and bottles for recycling. From bars and restaurants!
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Kate
Archaeologists are investigating the traces of what’s said to be the last indigenous village on the island of Montreal, located on the Back River near the Visitation church, as reported last month. Inevitably, a certain political spin is being put on the story, with a claim that the natives didn’t submit to the French regime, but felt them to be allies. Nonetheless, the village disappeared 300 years ago.
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Kate
Exactly five years after a grand demonstration for the climate, another climate demonstration took place Friday in Montreal and in other Quebec towns. This one involved 2000 people in comparison to the half a million who marched five years ago. The pandemic certainly took the wind out of those sails.
Meezly
PLUS DE BANQUISE MOINS DE BANQUIERS is a great slogan!
I went with my family and it was a really great atmosphere. The march started in the evening this time, and people made signs with battery-powered LEDS and brought various lights/lanterns as the sunlight waned.
But yeah, after the torrential rains and flooding you’d think more people would catch on about the urgency of the climate crisis. 2000 peeps was pretty good, considering post-pandemic malaise/fatigue, general cynicism and lack of famous people to draw a huge crowd.
EmilyG
I wonder if maybe this demonstration wasn’t as well-publicized as the one five years ago. I hadn’t heard of this one until after it happened.
Chris
Likewise hadn’t heard of it.
JaneyB
Just hearing about it now – and I work in post-secondary education….not well publicized.
Kate
No, it was not. Like EmilyG, I only knew about it after it was over.
Meezly
It may not have been as well publicized as previous marches, but September is climate action month, and if you follow local sites like ClimateJusticeMontreal, Pour Nos Enfants / For Our Kids Montréal, Greenpeace Québec, Équiterre, etc. they will post these types of events.
Joey
The 2019 march was well publicized because Greta Thunberg was in town.
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Kate
Plan to permanently pedestrianize part of Notre‑Dame in Old Montreal inevitably has some merchants worried and there’s the inevitable claim that they were not consulted. That’s what they say, but as always, it’s a preface to saying they don’t want to adapt to change.
DeWolf
To be clear the part of Notre-Dame that has been pedestrianized is the area directly in front of the basilica. It feels like the most natural thing in the world to be able to walk from the centre of Places d’Armes up to the church without dodging cars and trucks. It’s very nice, I recommend everyone go check it out if they’re in the area.
DeWolf
Also, this is bit like the bit of ginned-up outrage about St-Zotique. Everyone cries that the sky is falling the moment that the change is implemented. Nobody told them it would happen! And yet the details of this specific plan were released several months ago, and the overall plan was announced more than a year ago. St-Zotique was announced five years ago, changed in 2020 after public feedback, and then specific details of the new plan were announced earlier this year. Do people expect a personal one-to-one consultation? Do they not read the news or pay attention to the notices delivered directly into their mailboxes?
CE
When Place d’armes was renovated about a decade ago, the street, square, and sidewalk in front of Notre-Dame were built level with each other with the intention that cars and pedestrians would share the space. That idea largely failed. Banning vehicles from that block was a natural next step because the previous configuration just doesn’t seem to make sense to drivers in North America. Pedestrianizing the block very quickly made that space much more pleasant and safe for the very high number of people that use that space.
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Kate
It’s the weekend of the Journées de la culture in Quebec – official site of the event. Also the usual listings from CityCrunch and CultMTL, and notes about Pop Montreal from La Presse and CultMTL. The New York Times has a piece about the tribute shows to Lhasa de Sela.
carswell 16:48 on 2024-09-30 Permalink
CEPSUM, the Université de Montréal sports centre, recognized the holiday and was open only during holiday hours (11:00-18:00)… on Friday.
Don’t know what the reasoning is but the decision seems mildly disrespectful, like a tacit admission that the holiday is really just an excuse to give staff — none of whom is, AFAIK, indigenous — time off.
Ian 17:25 on 2024-09-30 Permalink
Yes of course, and Remembrance Day is disrespectful to verterans unless you’re a veteran.
Did I do that right?
carswell 17:56 on 2024-09-30 Permalink
No.
impossibus 19:45 on 2024-09-30 Permalink
My kids’ francophone public school holds special events on this day for the past two years , the principal encourages children and staff to wear orange and teachers share educational resources on residential schools even in Grade 1. So at least the government’s schools don’t (all) ignore it. I’m not sure the initiative comes from the principal or le CSSMB.
Nicholas 23:34 on 2024-09-30 Permalink
A friend noted that veterans lobbied against making Remembrance Day a holiday so that kids were in school and could participate in events; we always had a moment of silence at 11 or 11:11, and sometimes an assembly. They didn’t want it to just be another day off that people forget about, a long weekend to go the chalet. We know that’s not the reason of the current government, but it’s an interesting perspective.
Daisy 09:50 on 2024-10-01 Permalink
We had Remembrance Day off when I was a kid in another province, and we still had an assembly to observe it the day before.