The New York Post notes that Guy Laliberté’s Outremont mansion is up for sale.
Updates from November, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The Gazette has a whine from Brendan Kelly Wednesday about why the Olympic stadium is the reason Taylor Swift isn’t coming to Montreal.
I don’t use the word “whine” lightly.
Kevin
He’s not wrong. The stadium is a terrible place to see any event, and the sound is even worse.
Especially when you compare it to Atlanta’s stadium which holds 70,000 people, has a retractable roof, and has nice sound and sightlines.
Kate
You’re not suggesting that we… build a new stadium?
Kevin
I think all money spent on the Big O just to get back to what it was is a waste. Nobody was asking for billion dollar objet d’art.
thomas
It is a billion dollar backdrop for tourist’s Instagram photos. What’s wrong with that?
Kevin
Thomas
See item below about the need for cutting costs in healthcare. Cancel the big O. Done!thomas
Kevin. If you want to be a world class city you must think big.
Kate
Do we, though?
Meezly
He’s not the first nor only one either. Many have wondered why big acts skip Montreal when they tour Canada. Not having a decent stadium is a big reason. But at this point, I’d rather have good healthcare.
CE
How many cities the size of Montreal have two big stadiums? The Bell Centre isn’t a bad venue for large acts, Place Bell does the trick for medium sized acts and then we have a number of venues of different sizes (from Metropolis down to Casa Del Popolo) for all different types of shows. Would having a second large stadium really bring in many more big concerts?
Josh
I don’t think two stadiums is the answer, but the Big O is not a long-term solution for big events like this. It’s one thing if the city doesn’t care if it’s in the running for such events, but if it does, at some point the Olympic Stadium is simply not going to cut it.
Steph
How many acts need a space bigger than the Bell Center? The “Taylor swift” touring business model favours doing MANY shows in the same city to lower transportation and setup costs. Oasis is copying them for their upcoming tour as well. We’re getting beat out by Toronto for these shows not because of the lack of venue, but due to the lower population.
Joey
Let’s take Taylor Swift as an example. Her upcoming run in Toronto (six shows) and Vancouver (three) mark the end of her Eras tour. According to setlist.fm, she hasn’t played fewer than two shows in any city she’s toured in. So keep in mind that the expectation would be a minimum of two nights of ticket revenue (and, due to the exchange rate and Montreal’s relative lack of major wealth, these would probably be the lowest-grossing shows of the tour, at least the North American leg). Probably something like 80-90K tickets sold, at, what $500 each? Are there 90K people who would go see Taylor play at a Montreal stadium? Consider that a lot of the big catchment area would compete with shows in New England, Toronto, New York, etc. It’s feasible but hardly. sure thing.
Beyonce’s Renaissance World Tour included lots of ‘one-night only’ stops – are there 45K people who would pay, what, an average of $300 to attend a Beyonce show in Montreal? Again, feasible, but hardly a slam dunk.
And this assumes we have a nice, big, good-sounding stadium to host these tours, notwithstanding Nick Farkas’s hopes, it’s hard to imagine the Big O ever being anything other than cruddy – sound, looks, location, etc. It’s a big dump. And its most interesting feature, the tower, could conceivably continue to exist if the stadium were decommissioned, no?
(Counterpoint: the Rogers Centre also sucks, and yet Swift is playing six shows there.)
Should someone spend $1B+ to build a state of the art football-sized stadium in a city with no recurring need for it? That, in and of itself, would not guarantee that we elevate our place on the concert map? Seems like an easy ‘no,’ but if we’re going to spend $1B+ on renovating the Big O, we might as well at least try for a decent venue. Doing neither seems like a much wiser choice, especially given the province’s fiscal and economic situation.
Kevin
Thomas
My big idea was to fill the toilet bowl, allowing the disconnection of the technical ring, and building a better stadium under the hole.Instead our money is going towards a temporary fix that still leaves us with an unusable venue.
jeather
I will bet any amount of money you like that there would have been 90k people willing to travel to Montreal to see Taylor Swift.
dwgs
Taylor Swift is the exception, my kids have friends who have travelled hundreds of miles, and in one case flew to Europe, to see her. She could sell 50000 tickets playing in Chibougamou.
Ricardo
simply confirms what we already know. Montreal is second class city.
MarcG
Where does all this class-of-city talk come from? The Montreal I know and love is grimy, greasy, arty, cheap, fun, and rebellious. I guess that version’s long dead now, buried somewhere under the Quartier des Spectacles.
dhomas
With respect to having two venues: the Bell Centre has a concert capacity of less than 20k spectators (19200). The Rogers Center has a concert capacity of 50k. The Big O has a concert capacity of 56k.
You would need to fill the Bell Centre close to 3 nights to get the revenue of one night at the Rogers Center.If we do renovate the Big O (which we are apparently doing), we should at the very least make it usable as a stadium tour concert venue (i.e. good acoustics, etc.). Then, maybe all that investment will at the very least net us a couple of mil in revenue from shows like Taylor Swift et al.
Kate
Ricardo, that shows how silly this class-of-city talk is. We will never be London, Paris, New York or Tokyo. And that’s perfectly fine.
Jean Drapeau once said “Laissons Toronto devenir Milan, Montréal restera toujours Rome.”
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Kate
The new bridge to Île-Bizard has opened, allowing four lanes of traffic to rush to and from the small island.
Ian
Including all city buses, school transport, and commercial traffic. Not something to sneer at given the bottleneck, as the only access to the island of Montreal.
Kate
Wasn’t sneering.
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Kate
Port workers plan to challenge the binding arbitration ordered by the federal labour minister.
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Kate
As of the new year, it should be easier to get a construction permit in the city of Montreal.
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Kate
A study shows that the magazine L’Itinéraire saves society money by helping the homeless survive and get off the streets.
Margaret
It is a really good publication too. Some solid writing and reporting. I always try to get my issue from my metro camelot, but occasionally pick up somewhere else if she and I don’t meet.
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Kate
Quebec’s healthcare institutions are being asked by the new health boss to squeeze out a billion in expenses without affecting services. Le Devoir’s interview with the head of the new CAQ health bureaucracy reveals more about how she plans to do this.
La Presse also examines a growing chain of clinics that mix public and private in new ways.
Uatu
Yawn. More budget cuts. It’s like a broken record. They should just come out and say that we have two choices: 1- Don’t get sick, 2- Become a millionaire. That’s the crux of it.
rob
We need to find a way to stop public clinics from charging additional fees as though they were a private clinic.
(At a a necessary checkup with my family doctor, he took a biopsy for a test he considered important. On the way out, while making my followup appointment the secretary asked me to pay a 5$ `transportation fee to bring the sample to the labratory`… as though this type of transportation was a new thing and a private service. I told them to charge it to my RAMQ card, which she didn`t protest to. On my way home they left me a voice message reminding me that the fee had to be paid and that they took cc over the phone. No I didn`t call her back. I’ll find out in a few months if they threw my samples in the trash. It`s just extortion at this point. 5$ today, 50$ by new year. 500$ the next and soon we.ll have AI surge pricing based on your analitycs bleeding us into perpetual poverty.The government should have never allowed private healthcare in canada. IMHO it’s anticonstitutaional.
rob
If they can get the english universities to over charge foreign students to subidize the french universities – maybe we can get the private healthcare to use the same structure to subidize the public.
You’d like a MRI at a private clinic? – well that will be the usual 700$ fee, plus a 700$ subsidy to the private sector for a total of 1400$. Those that can afford will pay it – and the rest can will take their money and benefit from it too. Yes it`ll cut into doctor profits and make doctors reconsider going private.
jeather
Do you know what would save money? Preventative care.
rob
Geneviève Biron, PDG de Santé Québec`s, late father was Denis Biron – founder of Biron Groupe Santé (a private company in the health care with over 150 million in annual revenue). Geneviève was president from 2014 to 2022 when her sister Caroline took over.
Let the private company enjoy it`s nepotism, but it`s just naive to ignore the conflict of interest in her government appointed role.
Kevin
I’m sure there are efficiencies because healthcare administration is 70 years of kludge upon kludge. (I don’t understand why some hospitals still insist upon issuing their own ID cards to patients…)
But there’s a whole lot of government- and business-imposed nonsense as well.We shouldn’t have multiple systems for checking exam results. We shouldn’t have central committees deciding who gets to work where. We should all have a better sense of where to go for the kind of treatment we need.
Nicholas
The hospital cards are weird, not a thing I’ve seen elsewhere (not that I’ve been to too many hospitals outside Quebec). They’re being phased out (the CHUM just uses RAMQ, and with a scan of the barcode can pull up your file). It was nice to see an appointment recently where they got a blood test result directly from Carnet Santé, though I had already printed it out.
Chris
>Do you know what would save money? Preventative care.
Not necessarily. It’s not so simple.
Kate
That is one paper, Chris, and it’s the kind of position that may have political bias embedded in it.
jeather
That’s also using a more field specific definition of preventative. (Among other things, I don’t think treatment for a condition you already have is preventative — it stops it getting worse, presumably, but that’s not the general use of the term.)
I’d love to find a well researched article showing how the health care system spends money — in particular on the new centralized testing/referral system, but also on the regularly increasing bureaucratic systems. (There has to be some spent on that, obviously, but I bet we could make a lot of cost savings there.)
MarcG
Maybe encouraging the population to be repeatedly infected with a virus known to cause damage to the lungs, heart, brain, kidneys, and blood vessels isn’t such a great idea after all.
Kate
I was at a dinner party Thursday evening with about a dozen people. I was the only person there who hadn’t had Covid, and most had had it more than once.
GC
I’m pretty sure I finally had Covid last month. Lots of people kept asking me how it compared to “the other times I had it”, because most people just assume you’ve had it by now.
Also, saving money isn’t the *only* reason to engage in preventative care. Though, I suppose if you are trying to run healthcare as a business then that’s going to be your focus.
Kate
GC, yes. Quality of life, also longevity, should be more important metrics. Not longevity for its own sake either, but helping people to benefit from optimum health for the extent of their lives. But the original post was about money, so…
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Kate
Subcontractors used by Hydro‑Quebec to cut trees and brush under power lines are accused by workers of unfair treatment including unsafe working conditions and poor housing. Most of these workers are from Africa.
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