McGill has been ordered by Quebec’s labour tribunal to stop obstructing the law professors’ union. The union has been on strike since August 26 and is the first group of professors to unionize at the university. (Course lecturers have been unionized for some time.)
Updates from September, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A 15-year-old who was hit by an SUV in Anjou on Wednesday last week has died in hospital.
CTV reports that the SPVM lists ten pedestrian deaths on Montreal streets so far this year. There must be some that are not reported in the media, because I’ve only seen reports of five, which I’ve put on my incidents map.
And before someone points out again that it’s misleading to write that a vehicle hit someone, I will say again that we all know what it means.
dhomas
I think the placement on the fatalities map is just slightly off. As far as I can tell, the crosswalk in question is here, northbound on Boul LHL, south of the met:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/pqmTNDXCinP229ke8The pedestrian was crossing at a crosswalk and was still hit.
I live in the area and use that road often enough. You’ll notice that the road at the level of the crosswalk is two lanes wide. About 100m further, it constricts to one lane. It should be a single lane already where the crosswalk is. It has happened to me at least twice where I stop at the crosswalk to let a pedestrian through and an impatient driver behind me goes into the other lane to pass me.
Even better than single the lane would be to put a traffic light there. It would definitely not be popular with motorists on what’s essentially a highway service road, but it’s apparent some drivers can’t be trusted to not run over pedestrians, so…
Kate
Thanks for the correction, dhomas. It’s such a big interchange that I was just guessing.
Horrible for the kid’s family.
Meezly
Why are the drivers here so shitty about stopping at crosswalks?
azrhey
@Meezly : because they can ? I am not sure what the penalty for not stopping at a crosswalk is in Quebec, but in Portugal it’s 400 EUR if a driver does not stop at a crosswalk that has a pedestrian waiting to cross, up to 600 EUR if there is someone already ON it. If you actually hit a pedestrian on a crosswalk you loose your permit for at least a year, more if other circumstances ( speed, etc. ) . Also cars must reduce speed at the approach of a crosswalk, even if there are no pedestrians nearby that could want to cross. This is one is less enforced because a desert street at 3 am and all… But my cousin got a 600 EUR ticket last winter because he “didn’t see” the pedestrian waiting to cross and got his ticket my mail couple days after because cameras gonna take pictures.
Anyhow, I am sure that drivers in Montreal, Quebec, would be careful to stop at crosswalks if there was a chance they’d get a nice ticket to of nearly 900$ in the mail couple days after. Get them where it hurts?
( also just learned searching for accurate numbers here, that if there are not crosswalks within 50m, a pedestrian can cross any street, ( not highway, duh ) anywhere perpendicular to the flow of traffic. IF a pedestrian crosses a street outside of a crosswalk that exists less than 50m away then it’s 50 EUR for Jay walking .. not sure that would be feasable in Montreal with our very long blocks…. )
CE
When I did my drivers training, the instructor told me I should take my foot off the gas pedal and hover my foot over the break pedal when coming up to a crosswalk. It’s a habit I’ve never lost and has allowed me to avoid what would otherwise have been close calls with pedestrians.
Uatu
Yet another fatality caused by a SUV. Such anti biker/pedestrian design that you’d think that they would be outlawed just by their collision stats. You have to walk with a giant orange bike flag strapped to your back apparently these days
dhomas
I don’t think the SUV is (completely) the problem. The driver behind the wheel is. Unfortunately, driving a large SUV gives some drivers the (over)confidence to drive in a more reckless way. I myself drive a very large SUV, a Kia EV9. It’s quite large if you look at it. However, it has almost the exact same measurements as a Chrysler Grand Caravan (my previous vehicle, which was stolen). Yet I don’t see anyone complaining about minivans.
For me, a larger vehicle is a necessity to drive my family of 5 plus my mother-in-law. I actually would have gotten another minivan except they don’t make any EV models, and I have committed to never getting another ICE vehicle.Ian
Realistically the biggest problem with SUVs is simply that they dominate the market. Car manufacturers have it in their heads this is what people want and keep making these huge things for what used to be the sedan market. Now a sedan is basically a luxury car. Fortunately teh auto industry is so rattled by cheap Chinese EVs they are going to pivot – like the compact, fuel-efficient car wave of the 70s in repsonse to Japanese designs.
One thing about crosswalks – in many cities crosswalks are not only marked but there is a light that he pedestrian activates when they want to cross, and you signal your intention by holding out your arm.
Ideally public transit would be sufficient to legislate the entire island car-free but that’s not happening any time soon. In the meantime, traffic slowing measures and consistent fines will help. Traffic flow studies for improved pedestrian and bicycling safety on mixed-use streets would be nice but we all know that PM thinks studies are a waste of time. After all, who needs engineers to develop consistent, neighbourhood-specific, city-wide solutions when you have virtue on your side?
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Kate
CBC has slipped a couple of errors, or perhaps misconceptions, into this brief video about some islands off the eastern end of the island of Montreal. One is that they are the “virtually untouched Hochelaga Archipelago.” Bzzzt. The Hochelaga Archipelago includes the entirety of the islands in this part of the St Lawrence – the islands of Montreal and Île Jésus and all the smaller islands from Île Perrot downriver to the small islands off Repentigny.
The other is that you can reach them by public transit. You can’t, unless they would let you carry a kayak onto the metro and bus. They won’t.
Nicholas
There are folding kayaks, a friend has one, it’s about the size of a large suitcase, so you can take it on a bus. And as they mention, there are also kayak rentals from that launching point, free on Fridays (subsidized by the city/borough), but the season wraps up today. But it’s true that you can’t take public transit into the river there.
Kate
How would you manage the long double-ended paddle on a bus?
Bert
Necessity meets invention. https://ca.orukayak.com/products/oru-paddle
Kate
It all sounds a bit Rube Goldberg, but OK. I wonder how many people are schlepping secret kayaks around town in big suitcases.
Ian
Telescoping paddles up your sleeves Inspector Gadget style, of course.
vasi
There used to be an RTL navette estivale to get to the islands, is that not around anymore?
Kate
vasi, the only thing I find under the name “navette estivate du RTL” is a bus from Longueuil metro to Mont St‑Bruno park.
Ian
Vasi, are you thinking of the river shuttles? Those are ARTM. https://www.stm.info/en/info/networks/other-resources/river-shuttles
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Kate
The city’s going to be making upgrades to Jeanne‑Mance park over the next two years.
Does anyone else remember when the last big upgrade was made? The path from the end of Rachel up to the monument was paved over nicely at some point, at a time when it was also debated whether the sports field should have fake turf on it. Sometime in the 1990s, I suppose.
Meezly
They upgraded the playground area about 6-7 years ago. Not sure if that’s considered “big”, but it was a big deal for families at the time. Wish they had included the old wading pool at the time though, it was really old school!
Kate
I recall it felt like a big thing when the path from Rachel changed from being basically a dirt track, to paving stones. Created more of a sense of monumentality for the Cartier monument and made the park feel a lot more elegant.
The CBC radio news at noon made it sound like there will be a lot of fake turf there this time too.
Joey
Wow the hyperbole. The addition of a splash pad “will reinforce the monumental characteristic of that whole prolongation of Rachel St., that walkway that leads to the Sir Georges-Étienne Cartier monument, which is really one of the most iconic sites in Montreal. So we wanted to improve the services but in a way that reinforces the heritage and monumental status of the site. I think that’s what’s been achieved here”
Ooook
Nick D.
There was also a recent change at the north-east corner, about 5 years ago: they made the tennis courts bigger and got rid of the softball / baseball diamond. Some of my friends were complaining because softball/baseball can have more kids playing at one time than tennis can.
Kate
The loss of the softball diamond is still a gripe for people who played there regularly, and the claims that it was unsafe for passersby rang pretty hollow. I don’t doubt that the decision lost Projet some votes in that part of town.
Here’s a blog entry on the topic from 2019 and another from 2020. I have other postings about the city being taken to court over it, but no resolution, although we can probably guess by how the diamond hasn’t come back.
Ian
Not only did PM not bring back the diamond, Norris and Ferrandez openly lied about it then Ferrandez doubled down saying nobody cared about softball but low class ethnic types.
The south playground was actually redone twice within 2 years as the first time wasn’t draining properly & became a swampy mess that for some reason required venting before they could completely redo it.
Joey
The tennis courts also took an extra year because of some screw-up with the fence. The only thing they ever did quickly (or even not behind schedule) was tear down the softball field.
Kate, the lawsuit ended. The city won.
Ian, Luc specifically went on Paul Houde’s show (IIRC) and said the softball community – which is very, very diverse, especially for Plateau/Mile-End – a group of anglos who like to eat hot dogs. What an asshole. Alex Norris told us it couldn’t be an insult because Luc’s has an English-speaking kid.
Ian
Yes, true.
You should have seen the ethnonationalist French-first moves Ferrandez pulled when I had the audacity to suggest that Mordecai Richler deserved to have something significant named after him. The library never would have happened if it weren’t for Coderre. Ferrandez quit Twitter in a huff not long after, he didn’t feel like he should have to deal with criticism. Of course Norris isn’t much better in that regard but he’s got special protected status as the last of the old guard.A minor correction, though.
As I recall, Ferrandez didn’t say Anglos – he said “blokes”. Right up there with calling francophones “peppers”, them’s fightin’ words.Sara_P
You would not know it from the comments but there there is still a softball diamond in the park. It has a fence around it.
The previous & now-removed open-field diamond, accessible as it was, was a hazard to anyone wanting to use that entire end of the park for lounging in, which was a situation that needed re-balancing. I say this as someone who greatly enjoyed watching softball being played there. But the fact is, the park is better today.
What the park really needs though, is for the tennis courts to be an ice skating rink in the winter.
Re the previous comment: Blokes and peppers are at two separate ends of the hate-speech spectrum.Uatu
Ferrandez has to prove to everyone that he’s a real Quebecois despite his Portuguese surname.
Ian
@Sara_P with this kind of old-timey ethnic slur the most important inflection to determine context is the sneer.
dhomas
@Uatu small correction: a Portuguese last name would typically end in ‘s’. Names of Spanish origin end in ‘z’. Ferrandes might be a Portuguese last name, though I don’t think it’s very common. And of course, there are always exceptions to the rule.
Kate
A small bit of research suggests that Ferrández is a Spanish name, specifically an Aragonese variant of the more common Fernandez.
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Kate
La Presse’s Stéphane Laporte calls on readers to love Montreal and put aside the reflexive grumbling and negativity that have become habitual to so many.
Robert H
That same edition of La Presse includes a report in Maxime Bergeron’s column entitled « On a perdu le contrôle » regarding the sorry conditions found in various parts of Centre-Ville. Serge Sasseville, a municipal councilor who represents the Peter-McGill district and actually lives Downtown, has set up a feed on his Instagram and Facebook accounts where he solicits constituents to send in photos and messages about situations and scenes that they find to be unacceptable or appalling: the death of a homeless woman on the street in Chinatown, the mess of garbage left on the sidewalk outside illegal AirBNBs in Shaughnessy Village, the mess on the narrow, crowded sidewalks at the corner of Guy and Sherbrooke adjacent to the massive construction site there and especially the accompanying stench noticed by tourists too on a passing double-decker bus.
Apparently, Tourisme Montréal is none too pleased with Sasseville for bringing these problems to attention, accusing him of being too negative and not celebrating the city. But Bergeron and Sasseville want to make the point that while we are praising and appreciating the best things about life in Montreal, that we must not put our heads in the sand and forget « le côté sombre de la métropole ». Both points of view are essential to a healthy, functioning city.
Kate
Business Insider is also running a piece on the downsides of Montreal life currently.
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Kate
La Presse looks back 40 years to the bombing at Central Station and talks to a man who was injured in the incident that killed three young tourists from France. Wikipedia has a detailed entry on the bombing; here’s the Gazette front page the following morning.
I’ve never been convinced that the addled Thomas Brigham was capable of constructing and placing such an efficient device. Brigham was convicted of murder, but his conviction was appealed and he died in prison before his second trial could take place.
La Presse claims the incident has largely been forgotten. They may be right – I’ve seen it mentioned occasionally only because it’s the reason Central Station has no lockers for passengers.
Adding later: Radio-Canada also recalls the incident and speaks to Claude Beaulieu, who was also present that day.
Janet
I arrived in Montreal shortly before that incident, when there were still lockers. I had no job, little money and no place to stay so I stowed my big knapsack in a locker and set off to find a bed at the youth hostel. For the next few weeks, I would return to Central Station at the same time to pay for my locker for another day. And every day they would announce that the train was about to leave for Vancouver — where I had home, friends and could easily find a job. But I stuck it out and made a great life here. Can’t believe that was 40 years ago.
Daniel
That’s a nice story, Janet. Thank you for sharing 🙂
Kate
Indeed.
It can be quite odd, the public incidents that become signposts in our memories.
Ian
I always found it odd that this single incident was grounds for removing lockers, compared to Europe where there are multiple bombings per decade in major cities from the 60s onwards including of trains and train stations and yet there are train station lockers in pretty much every station.
At least we didn’t get armed soldiers paired with cops like NYC post-9/11.
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Kate
Passengers on a Via Rail train from Montreal to Quebec City – a trip that normally takes a scant three hours – were stuck on the train for ten hours on Saturday, after two mechanical breakdowns. There are accounts that the train ran out of food and water and even that a Via worker became aggressive with a passenger.
Federal transport minister Pablo Rodriguez says passengers deserve better treatment.
Joey
Via also said they couldn’t locate any available busses to ferry the passengers while the train was being repaired. I suppose that’s plausible but you would think the province’s supply of school busses wouldn’t be all booked up over Labour Day weekend (then again, maybe?).
JP
I’m getting the sense companies aren’t prioritizing getting passengers (clients) home when unexpected things happen. My friend was on a greyhound bus coming home from Burlington. The border agents took the driver into custody…this was around 10 pm. After 2 hours or so the company should have done something but nope. Everyone had to figure it out for themselves. Some people waited around overnight.
Nicholas
The only thing I can imagine is either there were not enough drivers available on the holiday weekend or some of the agencies are not allowed to leave their service area. RTL/STL/STM/Exo all run way fewer buses on the weekends than weekdays, so many are sitting around. Some are even coach buses. Surely they could have been put to use (same with Quebec or other places along the way), but they might not be allowed to “compete with private operators”.
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Kate
La Presse looked into how merchants assess the benefits of pedestrianized streets and, not surprisingly, the responses are mixed. In inquiring along Mont‑Royal and St‑Hubert Plaza, the journalist finds that while some shop owners find pedestrianizing a benefit, others feel sales are down because of the removal of parking spaces.
Joey
If we’re going to do more of this – and I suspect we should and will – we need more than just merchant anecdotes and a sense of vibes to understand the implications. The owner of a clothing store on Mt-Royal blames pedestrianization on a decline in sales compared to last year – yet the journalist doesn’t push back (wasn’t Mt-Royal closed to cars last year too?).
It would also be interesting to quantify how many Montrealers – in direct contradiction to the naysayers – actually seek out shopping/dining on these closed streets specifically because there are no cars. Surely there must be people who travel from, say, the West Island to spend an afternoon strolling on Wellington or Mt-Royal.
DeWolf
The article cites an SDC survey that shows 30% of businesses on Mont-Royal reported a decline in business during the pedestrianized period in 2023. That’s a good starting point, but we also need to consider that these streets are public spaces, not shopping malls, and just because they are lined by businesses doesn’t mean the business owners are the only voices that count. What is the benefit to the surrounding neighbourhood? What is the benefit to people to travel to the street from afar? What is the impact on air pollution and noise levels? How much does pedestrianization affect people with mobility issues?
We also need an analysis of exactly how much benefit on-street parking gives to businesses, considering its extremely noxious impact on the city overall. Here’s another anecdote to add to the pile: St-Hubert was de-pedestrianized ahead of schedule and when I was cycling home the other day (and being tailgated by an Uber) I noticed there was absolutely no parking available on the street, and yet this was Saturday at 10pm, well after all of the shops and most of the restaurants had closed. The bars were lively but certainly not any more so than during pedestrianization. So where did all these cars come from? Where did they go during pedestrianization?
jeather
And 43% said they sold more, and we don’t know if this was actually fact checked in any way. I did not look for the SDC report, but the wording suggests that they just took everyone’s word for it.
DeWolf
Yes, it sounds like it was a survey. And of course there are many reasons a business might see declining revenue. Maybe most of their customers arrive by car, in which case they probably shouldn’t be located on an urban retail street with limited parking at the best of times. Maybe it’s the economy. Or maybe they just suck as a business. God knows there’s a lot of terrible retail businesses out there.
It’s pretty remarkable that we now have a summertime pedestrianization program that is so extensive. But at a certain point we’ll have to make a real decision about what kind of streets we want in this city. Do we want to compete with strip malls in the West Island or Laval? Or do we want complete streets that work for many different types of people, not just the merchants who happen to rent retail spaces along them? And given that the large majority of merchants say that pedestrianization either makes no difference or a positive difference to their bottom line, I think the answer is pretty clear.
Incidentally even Dix-30 is permanently removing cars from its main retail corridor. And the developer that owns it is moving towards redeveloping parking lots with residential, so that eventually the poster child for suburban sprawl will be a mixed-use neighbourhood with… a pedestrianized main street.
Nicholas
There was a study done looking at St Denis post-REM vs St Laurent, and the former recovered better from the pandemic. This study used sales data from a point of sale provider (I think Moneris? But it could have been another one), fully aggregated (so anonymous). Revenue Quebec also has data from sales taxes (except a few categories, like some groceries, which are tax-exempt). And of course the businesses themselves could release their data (they won’t). But we know every year some businesses will close regardless, some will open, some will make a profit and some a loss. It’s easy enough to find people in any category to create “balance” in an article, but it’s much harder to know much on such a cursory look. I remember some noodle place on Mont-Royal Ave between Papineau and de Lorimier (iirc) complaining, and they didn’t open past 5 pm! How do you run a restaurant in a residential neighbourhood without offices and close before dinner?
Also worth adding that I’m on that street a lot, and even when it’s cold, rainy or snowing, there are almost almost always more people walking than in cars, often by a lot. And buses are often full at rush hour, but tend to be less so at other times, possibly because they can be slower than walking, due to all the traffic. I bet if you just allowed transit and walking, they would be much better used.
CE
I remember after the smoking ban, every shitty bar that closed down would blame it on the ban for years after it went into effect so the owners wouldn’t have to blame themselves. I can see the same thing happening with shitty and poorly-run businesses on the pedestrian streets.
Joey
Half of the appeal of Mont-Royal being closed is that it creates sufficient space for pedestrians. The sidewalks are too narrow to handle the volume of pedestrians; it’s nice to have space in the summer to walk without being on somebody’s heels.
jeather 21:02 on 2024-09-02 Permalink
Of all the departments to go after with illegal tactics.
Ian 23:05 on 2024-09-04 Permalink
This administration keeps making very interesting choices. Negotiation does not seem to be a strong suit.