Plans are afoot to revive a theatre in St‑Henri which La Presse calls Théâtre Cartier but which some of us may remember being Dawson’s Dome Theatre for a long time.
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Kate
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Kate
McGill has agreed to drop its challenge to the right of the law faculty to unionize, ending the strike.
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Kate
Dock workers struck for three days last week, and it didn’t work. So coming up, they plan to refuse overtime.
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Kate
Condé Nast Traveler raves about the local food scene. As one of the oldest cities in Canada, Montreal is built on a smaller, more human scale… – than what?
Blork
Yeah, that article gives a very Anglo-centric view of Montreal, where 90% of everything is in Mile-end or the Plateau, and if you’re really going far afield you might make it to Little Italy or St-Henri (I’m surprised he didn’t call it “the Hank”).
Dude, how about trucking out to St-Leonard for a pizza, or to a greasy spoon in Lasalle? I know a good Mexican restaurant in Lachine, and the ice cream at Wild Willie’s in Pointe-Claire is fantastic. Pick up some curry or an Indian Pizza in Park-Ex. Surprise yourself with a visit to some hole-in-the-wall neighbourhood joints in VSL or CDN. The Teenburger at the A&W in PAT tastes the same as the one you secretly eat at the corner of Mont-Royal and St-Denis. All of those places are in Montreal, but it might shatter your illusions to discover that.
On the other hand, please keep ruining the Plateau and Mile-end, as they’re pretty much ruined anyway, at least during tourist season. Leave those other places for the locals.
Ian
I make a point of never telling people from out of town where the last good Jewish deli is.
Wild Willie is ok and so is Smoked Meat Pete …. But Ripples and Lester’s are still better.
And no, Lester’s is not the last good Jewish deli. Smoked meat poutine? Oy gevalt.Another interesting thing a lot of Americans don’t have is Chilean, Peruvian, or Portuguese food.
daniel
For an article written in first person, it’s awfully hard to find a byline.
CE
More human scale than almost every American city. Americans have either almost entirely ruined their older cities or have built their newer cities in such a way that it’s nearly impossible to get around with any form of transportation other than a car.
I recently ate at both Schwartz’s and Lester’s in the same week and was surprised to find that Schwartz’s was better. I’ve only been to Smoked Meat Pete once (this summer) and it blew all of them out of the water.
Add Salvadorian food to that list Ian (pupusas in particular, which are plentiful in Montreal).
Ian
Schwartz’s doesn’t even use a smoker anymore lol
SMP is a Barbecue Roadhouse, not a deli.Agreed though, by basically having all the left-wing refugees from Central and South America come here instead of the US for obvious reasons we very much lucked out. Pupusas are the bomb, way better deal than Cuban food 😉
The Portuguese was just kind of coincidental as the Azores had a lot of issues in the 50s. Most other places with Portuguese influence were former colonies, we just kind of lucked out. Churrascaro & piri-piri FTW.
TBH even Toronto has the US sprawl thing. The teeny weeny old-town thing basically only exists in a very few places on the Eastern Seaboard or twee artificial villages in North America.
CE
You’d be surprised by how many Americans describe Toronto as feeling “European.” I suspect most of them haven’t been to Europe but the Central parts of Toronto are much more walkable with better transit than most American cities.
yasymbologist
If generican tourism authors limit their definition of Montréal to the French bubble and its vicinity, of course this quaint place is human-scale. But I guess they’d feel more at home if they take a leisurely walk along the boulevard st-jean with the roaring traffic passing by.
Ruin
Haha the audacity of commenters to invite someone looking for culture and cuisine to get into an uber for a 45 minute ride to a strip mall. Truly the real Montreal, right?
walkerp
Anti-hipster hipsterism.
Ian
“You can’t please everybody”, Montreal version: You can’t please anybody.
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Kate
Photo radar enabled $12 million in fines to be issued to delinquent drivers in September.
Joey
That one on the 520 is gonna be a real cash cow, especially when the construction site is not active (the speed limit varies seemingly randomly from 70 to 50). Not sure it’s making the city any safer, but the revenue is good.
jeather
I had a bunch of visits via the 520 this spring (the very wonderful vet who deals with stuff your local vet can’t do), and the amount of speeding is impressive; I’ve always seen a lot of cop cars waiting around to ticket (and, relatedly, ads for lawyers specialising in driving charges).
The cat who required all the stupid visits is fine, but has leapt into the first 10 spots of “most expensive pets in my life”.
Kate
Glad to hear the cat is fine.
jeather
Well, he’s still rather fat. And I don’t understand how! He lost like 2 lb during his hospital stay and I swear he’s gained it back and more, but he is fed separately from the others and I pull the food away when they aren’t separated. Where are the calories coming from? (Please don’t say mice.)
CE
My cat is the opposite, he eats and eats and sleeps all the time but remains very slim.
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Kate
There were complaints about the slowness of the emergency 809 bus that replaces the three eastern stations of the blue line, so the STM has adjusted the route, while admitting it can’t be as fast as the metro.
In the Journal, Laure Waridel’s op‑ed says we’re on the way to losing the metro because transit is underfunded and maintenance hasn’t been kept up.
Ian
That’s a genuinely worrying prospect. Like, way more worrying than whether people say bonjour-hi.
If only papi Legault and his crew of mononcles agreed.Nicholas
Fabre and d’Iberville will reopen this morning at 10 am, and the 809 temporary shuttle will now run just between d’Iberville and Saint-Michel, along Jean Talon, no detour onto Bélanger required.
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Kate
Another major water main broke Monday morning on Rachel Street near Lafontaine Park. Some roads in the area are closed.
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Kate
The Middle East grabs the local spotlight again with marches involving Jewish Montrealers and supporters of Palestine, meaning heightened security on all sides.
Update: Report from CBC about various demonstrations around town. So far things have remained peaceful.
MarcG
Comments on?
Kate
For now. It’s about the local scene and it can’t be ignored.
Chris
Even if either side of protesters convinced Canada to take their side 100%, nothing would change. Canada has basically zero leverage or influence over what Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, Lebanon, or Iran do.
They’ve been fighting since my grandmother was in diapers. Whatever happens in Montreal won’t change it.
MarcG
Isn’t what we are witnessing is the result of Canada “taking the side” of Israel 100%?
MarcG
Let me rephrase: Hasn’t Canada already “taken the side” of Israel 100%? Why would they do that if it had no impact on material reality?
Chris
MarcG, you are low on imagination if you think Canada is 100% on the side of Israel. Have we sent our military there to help them (like the USA has)? For Afghanistan, we sent boots on the ground. We’ve done nothing of the sort in this war.
Blork
Also, bear in mind that “taking sides” on issues like this rarely has any effect where the issue is real, but is done for performative reasons at home and abroad. For example, Canada needs to be seen (both locally and elsewhere) as “supporting a democracy in its fight against terrorism.” That has no effect on the actual situation on the ground but it keeps things un-ruffled in diplomatic circles and arguably looks good at election time.
Ian
Tons of cops in my hood since Thursday but super chill otherwise since Hasidim aren’t pro Israel hawks. This flavour of Jewish Montrealers aren’t getting their schuls and synagogues defiled. Heck, they don’t even lock up their bikes. Let’s be clear, it’s not “Jewish Montrealers” it’s pro-Israel Montrealers.
AMF
Five people were arrested with incendiary devices on the eve of Rosh Hashana near a synagogue last week. At Concordia today, on the anniversary of the Hamas massacre, people chanted for global intifada, then went over to McGill to smash windows. A professor I know was physically attacked. This is the only city in North America with multiple attacks and firebombs of schools and synagogues, including the school my kids attended, and there have been 213 hate crimes targeted at the Jewish community. It is a dramatic and terrifying escalation of prejudice and antisemitism. Let’s be clear, it’s Jewish Montrealers, and the minimization, gaslighting, justification and denial contributes to their targeting.
Ian
Not in Mile End.
Ian
oh… and not the Hasidim. Unless of ycourse you don’t think they are “real” Jews, which I have heard from a few Zionists.
I understand the fear and worry you express and I really don’t want to whatabout or both sides this BUT there are a lot of POCs and Arabs in this city that have expressed very similar harassment, and we all know the cops target POCs way more than others too so that’s a whole other level of harassment and fear to consider. I have actual Palestinian and Syrian refugee students but only Hillel is allwoed ot organize on my campus, and I still hear zionists talking about their fear of antisemitism…
Zionists don’t speak for or represent all Jews. you just have to look at Theresienstadt to learn that.
AMF
Yeshiva Gedolah was shot at–a black-hat religious institution. And in “your” neighbourhood, so was Falafel Yoni. But please, tell me exactly which Jews deserve to be shot at and firebombed in Montreal.
Ian
Falafel Yoni is Israeli. The only Hasidic school to get “shot at” shares space with non-Hasidim associated with Zionists. For that matter, the Hasidim are not black hat, they wear shtreimels and kippah – but please, keep lecturing me on how all Jews are the same and this is not about Israel and Zionism but about anti-semitism.
אָבער יאָ, מיין געגנט, מיין שכנים. ממילא — גײ קאַקן אױפֿן ים
walkerp
So by your logic, anti-semitic attacks against what you label as “Zionists” (i.e. the bad Jews) is okay. Come on.
Ian
No, you “come on”. That’s not what I wrote at all. I said “Let’s be clear, it’s not “Jewish Montrealers” it’s pro-Israel Montrealers.”. Nice try putting words in my mouth , painting me as an anti-semite, and trying to play some kind of definitional shift misdirection. Assuming “all Jews” is reductive, and this kind of false equivocation puts non-Zionists at risk of being targeted.
For that matter, there are lots of pro-Israeli Zionist folks out there who aren’t Jewish. There are even Christian Zionists. And then there’s whole swaths of Jews that are not Israeli, not sympathetic to Israel, ethnically Jewish but not practicing, etc. Again, if you think the Zionists speak for all Jews, you are worng. The Zionists happily sacrificed non-Zionist Jews for their cause in many sitautions that are a matter of historical record – like Theresienstadt. They also really hated socialist Jews and non-religious Jews. That the current Zionist stronghold that is the right wing Israeli government is openly persecuting Jews in Israel for not supporting the war speaks volumes.
Ephraim
Ian, it’s just so far more nuanced than that. Just because you believe in the right of Israel to exist, doesn’t mean that you don’t believe in the right of the Palestinians to a homeland either. You can support Israel and Palestine, which was the point of the Oslo accords anyway…. two homelands. Secondly, you really need to remember that we have the fingers of an axis of evil involved (if not more than one.) The Iranians are intentionally fomenting the problems. People seem to forget that from from 2005, Israel has completely disengaged from Gaza. The door was completely open to a new future. And finally, you also have to remember that until 1977, the left-wing Israeli government sat there asking everyone to make peace with it. And in 1977, the right-wing comes to power and only then does anyone come to the table.
Israelis, just like Canadians are on a spectrum of political beliefs. There are hawks and there are doves, just like there are here. The same is true of every group. There are plenty of Iranians who are secretly big supporters of Israel (and others that show up with the Iranian flag with the lion and sun to support Israel.) We just can’t make assumptions about people, even from their support or lack of support of Israel. But what they should make clear is… are they supporting the Palestinians or Hamas, because these are two very different things. Are they supporting Israel’s right to exist but also the rights of the Palestinians to a free and peaceful homeland? Or pushing the Jews into the sea?
My biggest objection is that apparently some of the reporters (Noovo in particular mentioned it) were threatened to not film. That’s where I draw my line in the sand. That’s where democracy ends and totalitarianism starts. Like the Ramallah lynching, where the press was threaten to not film and not report. If you don’t want the press there, it’s because you are going to do something stupid and illegal. The press is our safeguard.
(PS I’ve intentionally written this to not give my opinion on the subject. This is so far in the realm of Dunning-Kruger More people should learn to just say “I don’t know enough, sorry.” and the world would be a much better place.)
Ian
Fwiw I completely agree, and yeah, it’s hard to overemphasize the importance of nuance.
Ian 09:30 on 2024-10-08 Permalink
Before it was rented by Dawson and called the Dome is was Théatre Vendôme. It was only the Cartier from 1929-57 when it was a movie house. The designer was Joseph Raoul Gariepy, the same guy who designed the Rialto (1923-24).
Danny Greenberg 10:18 on 2024-10-08 Permalink
Here is a little more of the theatre’s history, from ” Montreal Movie Palaces” by Dane Larken. https://photos.app.goo.gl/iP6Dqbxk3SjUzFfX7
Ian 11:49 on 2024-10-08 Permalink
It’s interesting that they don’t mention the Vendôme as that’s the name it was still going under when Dawson started renting it. I did wonder what it was used for between Cartier and Vendôme incarnations, htouugh, so that’s interesting. It’s proibably only becasue it was being used for warehousing instead of retail htat it didn’t get gutted & ruined. Lucky!
“The Vendôme theater existed at 3990 Notre-Dame West, Montreal, until 1974, the year it was acquired by Dawson College as a rental facility. Then, this theatre was renamed “Dome Theatre”. This downtown theater became the central physical plant of the Dawson Professional Theatre Program and the program’s productions were presented there until 2007.”
wikipedia