A man was subjected to a fatal beating Wednesday afternoon in St‑Lambert, and there’s been an arrest.
(This happened only a step from a murder in January. No indication of any connection.)
Updates from February, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
As noted last week, the city is opening a French-language office to help the city apply the latest version of the language law, commonly called Bill 96.
Tangentially, currently under discussion is Bill 84, the aspirational legislation which the anglo QCGN says aims to “establish French as […] the only language Quebecers should use if they are to be considered full participants of society.”
Mozai
I wonder if the St.Patrick’s Day parade will be outlawed.
Kate
You don’t have to outlaw things, but you can cut or reduce funding for events that don’t fit your ideal of a culturally pure society.
JP
Lots of dog whistling too: “You mention people arrived here centuries ago. We are very aware of this.” So the only Anglos and “others” who deserve consideration are only those who arrived “centuries ago”? Not to mention, what about the Peoples who have beem here for millenia? Maybe we need to be learning more of their culture, language and history That’s where it all really falls apart for me….
Kate
I would’ve thought that having been here for centuries is a more serious problem. Some of my ancestors showed up here during the Famine (1840s) and I’m still here and still not integrated into francophone culture, after all these years. That’s much more dubious than someone who came here last year.
bob
JP – By the time of the Conquest, the population of what is now Quebec had been slightly French and mostly indigenous for about 150 years. It has been _265_ years since Quebec became British, then Canadian.
Ethnic nationalism imposes arbitrary expiration dates on who countries belong to. For Quebecois nationalists, the “original” inhabitants of Quebec date from 1608 to 1759, period. And everyone else? Well, as Frank “I’m not a racist” Legault says, “It’s important that we don’t put all cultures on the same level”.
Kate – I think what you are thinking of as “francophone culture” is mostly an invention of 20th c. nationalism, a kind of folk culture more literary than real, and in recent decades increasingly tainted with racism, white supremacy, and such. The real culture of Quebec, at least of Montreal, was a big stew of cultures, with elements from dozens of places and peoples. Quebec nationalists has been trying to erase that reality for decades, to the point of chipping English off of the buildings.
Joey
And yet being a Quebecer – even an anglo Quebecer – gives you some buffer to the rest of the North American monolith, no? Just ask Iggy Azalea…
Kate
It does, Joey. Which is weird but true.
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Kate
UQAM is asking for millions to revive the Quartier latin by adding more residential units, enlarging the university’s sports facilities, and generally improving the tone of the area.
David S
Sure, because UQAM is so good with their budget? They were at the origin of the ilot voyageur fiasco: https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2013/07/05/lilot-voyageur-un-gachis-couteux
Kate
True, but that was some years ago and different people are in charge there now.
Joey
Given that Quebec *today* announced plans to cut international enrolment (and even more next year), it seems ludicrous that we would delegate neighbourhood development to a university. Obviously UQAM is an anchor in the area, but there’s really no reason why they should be driving redevelopment. *Especially* since the UQ network is ultimately controlled by the province. It’s almost a guarantee that this will end very badly.
Kate
Maybe they’re finding something else for UQAM to do. The CAQ doesn’t care much about education, even in French. Property values, that’s more interesting for them.
dwgs
As an employee of a large local university I sure as s@*t wouldn’t trust a similar institution to take on a major property development.
Kate
McGill’s been doing property development around its campus for years, dwgs. It’s doing it now to the old Royal Vic.
dwgs
The New Vic project dates from 2015 and according to McGill’s timeline construction will be finished in 2028. I will eat my toque if it’s actually occupied before 2030 at the earliest.
Wilson Hall, at the corner of University and Milton, has been unoccupied and scheduled for either a massive overhaul or demolition for at least 15 years with absolutely no activity whatsoever.
I could go on…Kate
I didn’t realize Wilson Hall was empty. The nursing school used to have its offices there, which I know because I used to lay out and typeset a journal they produced. I used to meet with the editors there. The building was solid but dark and gloomy inside. I didn’t even know they had moved out.
bob
Joey – But think of the pork! The barrel is going to be huge!
David S
Wilson Hall also housed the school of Social work. It was still open 15 years ago (I was working there at that time). It closed down in 2017 for major renovations, but I had not realized that it was still closed. It is located in «Secteur de valeur patrimoniale exceptionnelle Campus McGill» so it will probably still take years before its done due to all sorts of restrictions.
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Kate
Quebec is putting a cap on the number of foreign students, with particular interest in strangling the commercial colleges that structure programs to allow newcomers to establish residency.
More on this later from La Presse, where it’s reported that CEGEPs and universities here are not happy, while the CAQ promises to further reduce the permitted numbers in years to come.
The Gazette also reports on university displeasure with the reductions.
Nicholas
It’s great that people come to Quebec to study, fall in love with us, and stay and help us grow (not just the economy, but culture, etc). These commercial colleges, where people sign up for a degree, rarely if ever go to class, use their study permit to work as much as possible, and then transition to PR, that’s not good. I hope trying to stamp down the latter won’t hurt the former, but I’m not optimistic.
Tim S.
I agree with Nicholas here and would add that with the crazy cuts being made down south, this is also a good time for us to recruit a lot of talent. I hope we don’t waste that opportunity with short-sighted cuts of our own.
Kate
But they wouldn’t speak French, Tim S.
Tim S.
I know, I know. But they might, I dunno, develop vaccines.
Joey
Unlike in 2016, when many Canadian universities responded to Trump’s Muslim ban by making all sorts of outlandish promises (we’ll accept anyone whose offer of admission to an Ivy is in jeopardy, etc.), there’s hardly a peep from our higher educations sector about recruiting top talent either in or ostensibly headed for the U.S. I assume this a function of (a) the housing crisis, (b) the general lack of ambition around making our economy stronger/more resilient/more research-based, and (c) the inflation-based general sense of hopelessness.
McGill, UofT, UBC, UofA, etc., could recruit entire departments and labs, if they had the funding and the physical capacity to do so – but we’ve turned our HiEd system into almost purely a consumer good – which is why the bulk of HiEd policymaking in the last 20 years has been around ‘affordability’ – and not ‘excellence’ or even ‘access’… Just a total own goal.
Kate
Joey, I could not agree more. We’ve come to rely on the U.S. for too much, and we can see that their science (including medicine) is going to go down the drain. But our universities have been turned into business schools and anything that doesn’t turn an immediate buck is scorned as a luxury.
bob
Putting a cap on international students has nothing more to do with the profitable scam schools than banning hijabs has to do with secularism. McGill especially is a problem for nationalists because it is at the same time so good and so English. To a fragile ego that is intolerable.
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Kate
Relatives of people damaged during the 1950s in experimental brainwashing treatments at the Allan Memorial are still fighting for reparations, but the federal government and the MUHC – the present‑day incarnation of the hospital – say the lawsuit should be dismissed.
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Kate
Like the potholes of early spring, news stories that the Canadiens aren’t doing so well but have some great prospects for the future come around the news cycle like clockwork.
Blork 12:36 on 2025-02-27 Permalink
For those wondering how such a thing can happen in genteel and noise-averse Saint-Lambert, the location is only nominally Saint-Lambert. Roll the body across the street and it would be in Vieux-Longueuil (which is to say, the new Vieux-Longueuil, not to be confused with the old Vieux-Longueuil). Roll it 20 feet down the street and it would be in Lemoyne, a sleepy and grim borough of Longueuil which is not quite as sleepy and grim as nearby Greenfield Park. #south-shore-geography-lesson
Kate 12:50 on 2025-02-27 Permalink
Is Greenfield Park sleepy and grim? The name is so pretty. I’ve never been there.
I’ve also wondered how it goes on being called that and not Le Parc des Champs Verts.
(Why is there a new Vieux-Longueuil?)
MarcG 13:46 on 2025-02-27 Permalink
Agree that area is pretty rough and the traffic is often terrible so I’m going to put my money on road rage.
DeWolf 14:03 on 2025-02-27 Permalink
I’ve been to Greenfield Park a few times and it seems nice enough to me?
@Kate It’s one of those boroughs that has managed to maintain bilingual status, although it’s only about 30% anglo these days.
Daisy 14:07 on 2025-02-27 Permalink
The “new Vieux-Longueuil” is the part of Longueuil that was Longueuil before the merger. As opposed to the “old Vieux-Longueuil” which is the older part of Longueuil and was called that before the merger.
Blork 14:51 on 2025-02-27 Permalink
Greenfield Park is mostly sleepy, but there are a few corners that are on the grungy side, and one entire border is Tachereau Blvd, so I always see it as grim.
Elaborating on Daisy’s reply:
Before the merger there was Longueuil, and the old village part was Vieux-Longueuil.
After the merger, Longueuil, St-Hubert, Greenfield Park, and St-Lambert (briefly) were incorporated into the larger new city. The larger new city was called “Longueuil,” which begged the question of what do you call the former “Longueuil” which is now just a borough of the larger “Longueuil.”
The answer: call the entire borough “Vieux Longueuil” as a borough of Longueuil. But that begged the question of “what do you call the old village of Longueuil that used to be referred to as “Vieux Longueuil?”
As far as I can tell that has never been answered, beyond ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Blork 14:54 on 2025-02-27 Permalink
Google Maps unhelpfully calls it “Old Longueuil” (within “Le Vieux Longueuil”).
Tim S. 15:55 on 2025-02-27 Permalink
Nice and grimy neighbourhoods exist in kind of a chequerboard pattern in that part of the South Shore. As Blork and DeWolf said, most of Greenfield Park is fine, with some cute cottages that I suspect predate the post war suburban boom, but mixed in along Taschereau and the railway are some industrial sectors, and scattered everywhere are remnants of when the area used to be kind of a slum. Mixed in with all that are pretty basic postwar constructions, and now more modern stuff.
Uatu 16:47 on 2025-02-27 Permalink
Brossard it’s by section – i.e.- B section= middle class, S section=$$$$$.
Robert H 13:09 on 2025-02-28 Permalink
Kate, Blork, I find that Greater Montreal is riddled with geographical and toponymical oddities. I have had a hard enough time sorting out places known by English names even in French and vice-versa, or where one quartier begins and another ends. After reading everyone’s comments, my head is wobbling if not spinning. You could all write a book!