Golf equipment worth more than $25,000 was stolen from the Queen Elizabeth hotel this weekend. It was intended for the impending big golf tournament on Île Bizard.
There are already warnings about traffic headaches (yes) with 30,000 spectators expected daily from September 24 to 29 across that tiny bridge, and now someone’s gone off with the merch.
Update: There’s been an arrest in the golf theft.
A young man stabbed Saturday night at a gas station in Longue‑Pointe died on Sunday. There have been two arrests.
CityNews doesn’t mention the gas station, showing instead a residential building on a nearby side street.
This happened very close to my house (this is the gas station I used to go to when I had an ICE car). What’s crazy about the story is that the attacker is the one who lost his life. A group of 5 people, seemingly around 19 years old, attacked a 27 year-old at the gas station, to rob him. The 27 year old gave chase (maybe to recover what was stolen?) and ended up stabbing the 19 year old, a few meters away from the gas station (the side street seen in the CityNews article). Hard to tell if it was self defense or revenge. It’s sad that a young kid died, but it would also suck for the victim of the attack to go to jail if he was defending himself. Hopefully our justice system will sort it out.
If the victim of the attack chased down one of his assailants and stabbed him to death it would not suck at all if he were to spend time in jail. That is not self defense.
dhomas, yes, that explanation was added later to one of those links. Sounds like the group of predatory kids picked on the wrong guy. There aren’t any good guys in the story, at least as we have it now.
Yep, it is a shitshow. I was going off some unsubstantiated information on Reddit that claimed the 27 year old chased after the youths to recover what was stolen and that he was possibly attacked again, at which point he defended himself. But it’s Reddit, so I should have taken it with a healthy dose of salt. We’ll let the courts decide. The security cameras at the gas station should at the very least see if anything was taken, even if they don’t have the actual stabbing on film as they had left the premises by that point.
We don’t have an Eater devoted to Montreal any more, but they just updated their list of the 38 best restaurants here.
I’ve have been working my way through the Ho Guom specialties, the D-I-Y roll-your-own Bò Lá Lốt is the favourite so far. I saw a very old vietnamese gentleman rolling his own sort-of-spring rolls and said “What is that? I’ll have the same as he’s having.”
I’ve had Ho Guom’s imperial rolls and they were good ones, but never had Bò Lá Lốt. Google images make them look almost like stuffed vine leaves.
And then you put the wrapped sliced meat inside rice paper wrappers with some leafy things and roll it up nicely and dip it in the special sauce. You don’t have to do the DIY wrapper thing thing but it was a very enjoyable experience. imo this could be a group experience, as I was quite stuffed by the end.
It’s strikingly quiet around here this morning with the marathon being run along St‑Laurent a couple of blocks away. Normally I just tune out the background traffic noise, but it’s notable by its absence.
Update: Kenyan Philemon Kiptanu won the men’s side. I tend to forget every time that it’s also a competition, not just a big collective run.
People don’t realize how loud traffic is until it’s gone. Suddenly you hear birds, the wind, people talking, all much more often. Suburbs are rural areas are loud too. Traffic is the light pollution of sound, blocking out the aural stars.
There’s been a water station in my block for the past (three?) years, so I’m not sure I’d call it “quiet”, exactly. I.e., lots of cheering as the runners go by. All the same, it is much more pleasant noise than car/bus traffic. And it’s not like it starts at the crack of dawn, either.
I didn’t hear any cheering, but it’s a different kind of noise anyway, doesn’t travel like the sound of 18‑wheelers gearing up to get on the highway.
La Presse has a dossier this weekend on people who agitate for the creation of parks, looking at the achievement of the Parc des Gorilles in Mile Ex, but also the ongoing sagas of the promised but undelivered pedestrian park overpass from lower NDG to St‑Henri, and the Boisé Steinberg, partially saved recently, but still threatened by adjoining development.
Two groups of demonstrators squared off Friday in Old Montreal over what kids should be taught, and by whom, about gender and sexuality.
Montreal sometimes prides itself on being the headquarters of OACI, but it turns out a mixed blessing. It’s been revealed that a diplomat of that service leveraged his position to deal Chinese military drones to regimes in Africa and the Middle East. He also dealt in fake diplomatic visas. The UN has sacked James Wan and he has left Canada, but the affair casts a shade over a global agency and, by association, this city.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say it shades the city. New York/Vienna/Berlin/London all have pretty solid reputations, despite being associated with all kinds of nefarious spy stuff.
TVA takes note of two very different buildings which are actually metro ventilation shafts in disguise.
If you look at Google Street view, you can see that the Towers street building is much nicer since the STM took it over. It was in pretty rough shape the last time Google got its picture 7 years ago:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/ofq5yn3sX6TWbMAC7?g_st=ac
I wanted to see when the STM took ownership, which I would usually use the city’s EvalWeb tool for. Strangely, this property no longer appears on the city evaluation site at all. Neither does the Ontario street building.
I suppose that must be because it’s no longer a taxpaying property?
I thought that, too, but churches still show up on EvalWeb, with a “valeur imposable” of 0$. Same with schools. Even Hydro-Quebec electric stations show up, though these appear to actually pay some taxes. Just found it strange that these STM buildings no longer exist, from a tax perspective.
Curious!
A man armed with a knife entered a mosque in Chateauguay Friday afternoon, and three men were injured in subduing him.
There wasn’t any advance publicity about the flyover Wednesday by Britain’s Red Arrows, but the image is striking even as a still.
All these ridiculous displays make me think of are people with war PTSD and how years of effort to reduce our individual environmental impact are rendered fucking useless by 5 minutes of jet fuel emissions.
Quebec has given out fines for illegal Airbnbs although it’s difficult to say whether this will be effective, or if it’s only being announced as a PR exercise.
The numbers don’t seem to add up. The fines are $100K to the platform where they are listed. The fines for RQ are $2.5K/$25K for individuals and $5K/50K for corporations.
And yet is says… “un total de 698 condamnations et 2 785 452$ d’amendes imposées” so that’s about $3990 per infraction? So if that’s right (and with the court costs, etc, it should be about $3.7K.) So is that very few corporations and mostly individuals? Why aren’t there fines for the platforms? What about the $1K fines for listing without a permit number?
I love the lady crying about not receiving a few warnings? What do you mean warnings? You were warned by AirBnB several times. And she advertised without a CITQ number, which is at least another $1K. And if AirBnB posted it, that’s $100K for them.
Yeah, boo frickin hoo.
Only 150 in Montreal? It’s a start
I would add a zero to the fines.
Though I can say that a friend’s neighbour is still advertising, with a fake CITQ number, in an illegal area, despite a bunch of complaints made about it. It would be nice if these articles linked to how/where to complain.
Send complaints here… https://www.revenuquebec.ca/en/one-mission-concrete-actions/ensuring-tax-compliance/reporting-non-compliance/general-framework-for-reporting-non-compliance/how-to-report-non-compliance/
My complaint is that there should be a system where we can track what RQ does, even if they don’t give out information. For example, once you put in a complaint if you agree, they should send you a link to a file number that lets you track what stage the process is in, or if they can’t move forward because they need more information. That dossier number should be PUBLIC but without address. For example, listed by Postal Code or by street name with a range of addresses. And the public is allowed to see WHEN they got the complaint, when someone looked at it, what stage they are at with the complain, who checked the CITQ number validity and when/if it stops why and if there is information that could be provided that could move it forward…. you know… TRANSPARENCY
Weekend items from La Presse, CityCrunch, CultMTL.
Road closures include marathon routes this weekend.
Radio-Canada reports on a real estate promoter pondering running for mayor.
The guy doesn’t even live in Montreal ! Wow!
He sounds like a perfect fit for Ensemble!
” l’un des plus grands développeurs de terrains au Québec”
“Récemment, l’entrepreneur a fait les manchettes pour la vente à Northvolt de ses terrains en Montérégie.”
Perhaps if he entered the race it might spur some journalists to investigate the financial details of the Northvolt deal.
Northvolt is on the skids. It isn’t a great sign for electric vehicles generally, but it would be good to avoid having a big factory pumping toxins into Quebec’s waterways.
With Duranceau running the provincial side of the grift it seems like a golden opportunity to fleece the population.
It’s nice to see that Ensemble is taking steps to becoming a real party. In the long run it will be good for Montreal to have at least two bona fide political parties vying for power, as opposed to makeshift vehicles for their leaders like we’ve always had in the past.
I’d like to see another grassroots party arise more than watching Ensemble edge further to the right.
The city only started having formalized parties in the late 1950s with Jean Drapeau, and the parties have never had the object permanence that federal or provincial ones do. They’ve tended to fall apart a few years after their leader is defeated or quits.
The Civic Party faced Drapeau’s defeat in 1984 but dissolved in 1994, the Montreal Citizens’ Movement faced Jean Doré’s defeat in 1994 but dissolved in 2001, Vision Montreal faced Pierre Bourque’s defeat in 2001 and dissolved in 2014 after functioning as city hall opposition to Gérald Tremblay whose Union Montreal dissolved in 2013, only a year after Tremblay stepped down.
Ensemble was established as Équipe Denis Coderre in 2013 but changed name quickly after Coderre’s defeat in 2017. Depending who becomes their chief, we might expect another name change before the election.
CBC reported this morning that Dominique Anglade is considering a run for Ensemble’s top spot. Apparently, having led a major political party to a near-death experience isn’t an automatic disqualifier for the position.
Well that’s one way to tank a political party. I thought she was a bad leader for the PLQ and then she was a poor loser for dropping out immediately.
@Kate Good point. I was thinking more big picture but I agree about Ensemble, it’s a weird coalition of people with varying interests and that doesn’t bode well for any cohesive political vision or agenda.
Équipe Denis Coderre rose from the ashes of Union Montreal. It began, not with an urban vision, but with a group of people who had figured out how to get elected.
It isn’t surprising that you never hear about Ensemble presenting a platform or proposing concrete solutions to the city’s problems. They know they can get column‑inches simply by carping about troubles Projet has failed to fix – which, in many cases, are the same problems being faced by cities all over the world: too much traffic, environmental change, unaffordable housing and resulting homelessness.
If I were getting soundbites from an Ensemble rep, I’d want to ask them every time: You say Projet has failed to fix this issue. Do you think you have a better solution that hasn’t yet been tried? What is it, and how would you pay for it?
The city is committing to pedestrianized streets for three more years. There’s a lot of positive reaction to the Mont‑Royal pedestrianization here, so that the journalist clearly had to work hard to find the “balance” in one shopkeeper who didn’t like the layout outside his stores.
When did journalism become so dedicated to balance? If you have a piece about pretty flowers, you have to also mention people with allergies who hate flowers, or it isn’t journalism?
QMI reports on residents of Chabot Street in the Plateau carrying on a war on cars by themselves.
The quotes from the guy who owns Maha Lakshmi and Bouddha Art is a token attempt to provide “balance” but as you note, it’s completely disproportionate because that business owner can’t claim to speak for anyone but himself. And sure enough his complaints have nothing to do with pedestrianization – they’re all about Bily Kun’s terrasse and customers, which would still exist even if the street was open to cars year-round.
Incidentally I walked past there today and Maha Lakshmi had a huge display of clothing on the street so I don’t know what the owner is on about when he says he doesn’t have room to sell things outdoors.
“when did journalism become so dedicated to balance?” When accusations of secret agendas became effective enough to shut out journalists and publishers from their audience.
Our airport rates very low in passenger satisfaction, being too crowded and too cramped.
Not surprising, given all the traffic woes. But what is meant by the complaint that the ranking is unfair because Canadian airports are “défavorisés” by comparison with American ones? That there is less investment in Canadian airports? Perhaps true (though I wonder), but if so, that’s just the point, isn’t it?
I only have one major complaint with PET airport. The domestic baggage claim is insanely long, just the worst of Quebec corruption and incompetence. It’s bizarre how bad it is (literally waits averaging 40 minutes), especially when the international is so fast (worst I’ve waited there has been 10 minutes). I would love someone to do some investigative reporting and figure out why it is so bad.
Too crowded, too cramped, too expensive, too difficult to get to, poor services…. badly managed. And yet, we can’t get good management in because well…. it’s another “not-for-profit corporation” not non-profit. Meaning that they overpay the people at the top to make sure there is no profit. And rather than being rated by metrics that would be advantageous to the users, they don’t really have anyone to answer to, but the press.
You see, if salary was related to how efficient they were and measured metrics like satisfaction, the game would be entirely different. We pay $40 to use the airport. The rest of the fees collected are at https://www.admtl.com/sites/default/files/2022/2022_AERONAUTICAL_FEES.pdf
Just to give an idea… the AIF was $15 in 2007, then $25 in 2010, $30 until 2021, then went to $35 and this year went to $40. That $15 in today’s adjusted value would only less than $22. And yet…. no one asked questions as to WHY the airport fees are almost DOUBLE what they were 17 years ago in inflation adjusted numbers.So, is the airport twice as good as it was then? NOPE, it’s worse. And yet, they are collecting more and more money. I wonder who set up this system of non-profit run airports. Well, let’s see, this started to happen in… 1992. Hmm… seems to be the same people involved in the Airbus Affair… can someone call Journalist Stevie Cameron and ask him what he thinks of all of this?
The Montreal airport is quite autism-unfriendly, especially compared to the Toronto and Vancouver ones.
Montreal’s airport mentions that they’ve had sessions where they show the airport to autistic kids, but there’s nothing on their website saying that they have any services for autistic adults.
Toronto and Vancouver, I think, at least recognize the sunflower lanyard (lanyard for autistic people indicating they might need more assistance,) and Vancouver even has a “calm” area where autistic people can relax.
Autistic people can get overstimulated easily, and airports can be overstimulating even for non-autistic people.
I gather that most, if not all, of the problems with the airport have to do with its being too small – it was never intended to handle the volume of traffic it sees and the measures taken to mitigate that will always be inadequate.
We had the more spacious airport, and everyone hated it.
There’s no way to have a more spacious airport AND have it close enough to town YET spare most residents the noise from planes taking off and landing.
It’s still nicer than the NYC airports FWIW…
Dorval was a much smaller airport than what we see today. For one thing, the whole US terminal was built and the International terminal too. In fact, there were makeshift front desks along the halls. But Mirabel, was a complete different building and it was awful to use. I’m not sure who had the idea of not building jetways, but it meant you had to get into these weird buses.
But the point is, the management isn’t incentivized to make things better anyway. Of course, there are problems with every decision. For example, you want to move traffic and yet, you rent space along the hallways so that CIBC can accost you for a credit card, then RBC can accost you for a credit card, then TD can accost you for a credit card and then…. because you can bring in more money, which you can pay to management, and just increase the AIF and still not answer to anyone.
Learned not too long ago that the original location for the new Montreal airport that would become Mirabel was to be west of Montreal, in the Vaudreuil-Dorion area. The many advantages included the location’s relative proximity to downtown, its being on major highways and a major rail line and its closeness to Ontario, enabling it to easily serve passengers from Ottawa, Cornwall, Kingston and other parts of the Ontarian southeast, to become a truly regional airpot.
That last reason was also why Quebec rejected the location: the government was fearful airport workers would chose to live in lower-taxed Ontario. So, instead we got a costly boondoggle that didn’t last even 30 years and are left with an outdated, cramped facility occupying valuable city land that could be put to better uses.
I don’t necessarily think American airports are better to be honest. That was not the impression I got in Chicago (O’Hare) or even Washington D.C (Regan). LA’s and San Francisco’s seemed nice but it’s been a while.
Re New York’s airport…they’ve really revamped LaGuardia..it’s not what it used to be and was quite nice actually when I passed through this summer. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/02/laguardia-airport-redevelopment-american-infrastructure-lesson/673015/
Wasn’t Mirabel supposed to be connected to the city by some high speed rail? At least that was the vision I heard about back then. In any case we’re stuck with Trudeau because it’s anchored to the REM so that’s that. Hopefully they’ll expand service at St. Hubert (MET) so I don’t have to schlep all the way to Dorval.
EmilyG 20:59 on 2024-09-22 Permalink
I live near Ile-Bizard and often go to the grocery store there. I wonder if the bus will still go there. Or if I can walk over the bridge.
The last time there was a big golf tournament in Ile-Bizard, I also lived where I’m living now (in Pierrefonds) and there was bumper-to-bumper traffic on a lot of streets around here, especially on the big roads. I wonder how traffic will be this time.
Kate 13:14 on 2024-09-23 Permalink
I have a feeling you may need to make other grocery plans between those dates.