Updates from March, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 19:48 on 2025-03-06 Permalink | Reply  

    This crime report by Daniel Renaud sounds like a treatment for a black mobster comedy.

    Carlos Rafael Pena Torrez was sentenced to 13½ years Thursday for a botched hit in 2023 on a person he took to be Francesco Del Balso. Not only was his victim not Del Balso, who was 53 years old, but a man of 78 whom he only succeeded in shooting in the leg.

    Pena Torrez has also been sentenced to 16 years for shooting another mistaken target in Ontario the same year, but Renaud doesn’t mention who Pena Torrez thought he was. Although hit by 11 bullets, the victim also survived.

    Del Balso was taken out by a more efficient gunman later in 2023. I haven’t seen any news of an arrest. Pena Torrez is likely to be deported back to the Dominican Republic when he finally emerges from a Canadian prison.

     

    • Blork 21:34 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      Editorial note: I think you mean a mobster black comedy. A “black mobster comedy” implies a comedy about black mobsters. (Oh, English…)

    • Ian 22:24 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      Perhaps mobster-themed dark comedy?
      Context matters though, I found it pretty clear what was meant 😉

    • MarcG 11:18 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      I’ll take Underexplored Movie Genres for $500. Hoodfellas, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Smokers (starring Method Man and Redman), Shaft in Jersey.

    • Ian 17:41 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      There are many others, but 1973 was a great year for the Blaxsploitation mobster subgenre.
      Among otheres:
      Black Caesar
      Sweet Jesus, Preacherman
      Live and Let Die (arguably)
      Hell Up in Harlem

      Comedy though, the only one I can think of offhand is Harlem Nights…

    • Robert H 20:23 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      I think Harlem Nights is the one with an angry Della Reese impressively throwing punches at Eddie Murphy. Obviously an auteur classic.

    • Ian 22:59 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      Yes, precisely. An underrated gem, IMO.

  • Kate 16:26 on 2025-03-06 Permalink | Reply  

    Hydro-Quebec PDG Michael Sabia has posted a statement on the utility website admitting that the substation project planned on the library block has not received social acceptance while still pitching hard for the necessity of a new substation for that part of town.

     

    • faiz imam 19:49 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      it would help if they had a concrete proposal of how the existing site will be used once its all done.

      If its going to be a nice space, which is certainly possible, then more people will accept the exchange.

      for now its about giving up a nice if empty open space for a unknown new space later.

    • Kate 22:52 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      I hadn’t seen anything recently about plans for that piece of land before this substation idea came up. As I’ve mentioned before, when the library was new I went for a tour, where we were told that the art park beside the building was going to be gradually enlarged with new sculptures and new landscaping until it reached Ontario Street. Obviously that didn’t happen.

      But one thing I find odd is the plea that the Quartier Latin doesn’t have much green space. Émilie‑Gamelin square is nearby and fairly big, although some would say unsavoury. Who’s to say the library green space would not be equally unsavoury?

    • Major Annoyance 01:03 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      Why not put the new substation underground, with mondo foundations, a ginormo service elevator, vent shafts galore and columns-enough to support a range of possible future above-ground development? It’s not like 3D-building is a new Montreal city-centre concept. See the Central Station / PVM superblocks for classic examples.

    • Kate 11:30 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      I don’t think putting this thing underground is viable. There’s already too much going on underground in that area. The Central Station/PVM dig happened before the metro existed, for example.

    • saintlaurent 13:04 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      Residents: We want a socially acceptable, aesthetically pleasing (or at least unobtrusive), functional piece of infrastructure that doesn’t inconvenience anyone with noise, dust, road closures or any other disruptions during its construction and doesn’t displace any existing public infrastructure that we value. Just build it underground, or something!

      Hydro-Quebec: We suppose that could be done, but boy, it would be awfully expensive.

      Residents: Are you kidding?!? No way are we letting you build some electric Taj Mahal that will increase our hydro rates!

      One wonders if the prospect, in the medium-term, of living with brownouts has a significant degree of social acceptance in that part of downtown.

    • Major Annoyance 13:27 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      I dunno about that, Kate. For sure there’s infrastructure galore beneath the surrounding streets and sidewalks. Why would anything major need to cross that vacant lot apart from the utilities associated with the metro power sub-station & ventilation station (thoughtfully placed adjacent to Ontario Street)? I’d wager it’s just a lot of rock down there beneath the confines of that lot.

    • Ian 17:52 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      @saintlaurent
      “Pour continuer d’alimenter le centre-ville en électricité, un nouveau poste à 315 kV devra être construit dans un rayon de 500 mètres, explique la société d’État, sans quoi celle-ci pourrait se retrouver incapable de répondre à la demande dans un avenir rapproché.”

      You’re making “pourrait” do a lot of heavy lifting there.

    • saintlaurent 09:53 on 2025-03-08 Permalink

      @Ian Alors, ne le construisez pas et on voit ce qui se passera dans cinq ans? C’est une stratégie audacieuse.

    • Ian 16:44 on 2025-03-08 Permalink

      @saintlaurent
      Bien, si c’est nécessaire, c’est nécessaire – mais pourrait est pourrait.

    • faiz imam 01:27 on 2025-03-09 Permalink

      Remember that a key objective of society for the next few years is reducing fossil fuels. That means stopping natural gas heating and gas vehicles.

      If we want to heat the buildings of the city with electricity (plus install more EV chargers), we need more infrastructure.

      Social acceptability or not, this project is not optional.

    • MarcG 08:27 on 2025-03-09 Permalink

      It would be great if this was taken as an oppourtunity to totally rethink that hostile-to-humans corner and make a statement. The idea of putting the station in the street is brilliant because it’s typically space we consider untouchable.

  • Kate 10:36 on 2025-03-06 Permalink | Reply  

    A case of measles has been reported at a specific show at the Rialto on February 21. Cases continue to rise in Quebec; the government has a page tracking them.

     

    • Ephraim 11:46 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      And the only real treatment… vaccination, but usually within 72 hours of exposure. If a case was found at that show, even if vaccinated, you still have a 3% chance of getting measles. If you are unvaccinated, it’s over 90%.

    • maggie rose 14:29 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      Ephraim, dontcha know there’s always vitamin D and cod liver oil! /large helping of sarcasm

    • Ephraim 15:41 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      Hey, for those against vaccination, they may be in luck, Measles often causes “Immunity Amnesia” so your whole system gets reset and it’s as if you never been vaccinated (or had any diseases)… just like a newborn!

    • Ian 16:02 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      @maggie rose – I thought Captain Brainworms was pitching Vitamin A, I was waiting to see the reports of Vitamin A overdoses rolling in…
      Fun times.

    • jeather 16:38 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      Fun fact that I looked up today: about 30 regular vitamin A pills (from a bottle I saw on Amazon, which contains 100 pills for about $10) will give you acute poisoning, about 3 a day for 6ish months will give you chronic. (These are for adults.) If you stop taking it once you get ill, generally regular supportive care will cure the symptoms (assuming you see an actual doctor), but it causes irreversible birth defects in a fetus. That said it does seem true that, if you have measles, vitamin A can help (but not via DIY).

      It takes 2-3 years on average after measles to be back to full immunity, post immune amnesia. Another fun fact is is that, like chicken pox, measles can settle in the brain and pop up as an (almost invariably fatal) encephalitis usually about 10 years later but possibly as much as 30 years later.

    • Chris 20:11 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      I had to laugh a little when I saw the Rialto show was called FEVERUP. 🙂

    • EmilyG 22:49 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      I haven’t been to any events at the Rialto this year. Though, the second-to-last time I was there, I did get Covid. (Not that this reflects on the theatre itself.)
      I should see if my vaccinations are up to date for measles.

    • maggie rose 04:24 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      Ah, yes @Ian, vitamin A is what I meant. We live in such interesting times my brain is a bit befuddled with information re: inane and psychotic political leaders. It’s funny, I take a few natural supplements, but A is one I always steered away from. One recent success for me was magnesium for a 15 out of 10 on the pain scale attack of plantar fasciitis. In less than a month I can again stand and walk without feeling like a sharp stone is implanted in my heel. According to Mayo clinic, feet are affected by Covid. Long variety in my case, though a direct link is elusive. Sorry for side-stepping measles discussion.

    • PatrickC 10:38 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      I grew up before there were vaccines for them, so I had measles, “German” measles, and chicken pox, all before I was 10 or 11 (I missed the mumps, but my brother got them). They were certainly no fun, but is it only because I was a 1950s child (or lucky) that I don’t remember those diseases being as serious as they are now? To be clear, I am totally in favor of requiring all kids be vaccinated and think the idea “religious” exemptions bogus.

    • jeather 11:06 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      Rubella/german measles is mostly only serious if you are pregnant (see the Agatha Christie book about this), mumps is mostly not serious but occasionally results in temporary or permanent deafness, chicken pox is mostly not serious until it comes back as shingles, and the immune amnesia effect of measles was only discovered around 2010, but studies show a correlation, post vaccine, of a decrease in measles death rate and non-measles death rate in children. (This is the first article I found, but I’ve seen it before.)

      But measles resulted in millions of deaths per year before the vaccine (directly, not the related deaths for the next year as you rebuilt immunity), it wasn’t ever not serious. Maybe it was because polio seemed worse?

    • MarcG 11:26 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      Perhaps in the pre-vaccine era it was normal for a certain number of children to die so not newsworthy, and also most deaths occured at ages before our memories developed and school started so it’s not like you would have recollections of your friends and classmates disappearing.

    • Kate 11:35 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      I had measles around age 4 or 5, and have only the haziest memory of it. Later, my parents said it was the sickest I ever was, as a kid. Neither parent caught it then, but odds are they’d already had it. As PatrickC says, measles wasn’t considered a panic then, to be reported and traced as it is now.

    • MarcG 11:49 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      Life expectancy at birth for males born in Canada in 1950 was 66 years and in 2009 it was 79. “Lower life expectancy at birth during the early 20th century was, in part, a reflection of high levels of infant mortality. About 1 in 10 Canadian babies died within the first year of life in 1921, compared with about 1 in 200 in 2011.” statcan

    • PatrickC 12:33 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      @jeather, thanks for these details. What I remember about mumps is that it was really bad to get it after puberty, and so my brother was lucky he was still a young kid. As for chicken pox, I have had shingles twice in later life, the second time despite having had a shot to prevent it. And yes, polio was probably seen as a so much greater thought. I can remember how my siblings and I lined up to get that vaccine as soon as it was available. IIRC, it was at a temporary clinic set up for the purpose at Notre-Dame de Grâce school (or was it Le Manoir? in that neighborhood, anyway). We were there in droves, though I also remember that in those days we used to tell bad jokes about iron lungs…

    • EmilyG 13:56 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      I’m old/young enough that I got a vaccine for measles, but I got chicken pox before there was a vaccine for it. Should probably get the shingles vaccine.

    • Kate 14:04 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      MarcG, my grandmother had five kids in Point St Charles, between 1911 and 1921, of whom only three grew up. Kids just died of things we’d cure with a quick course of antibiotics now.

      My mother used to talk more about tuberculosis than polio. She worked in the huge Northern Electric plant – now Le Nordelec – where from time to time mobile x‑ray machines were brought in, everyone was screened, and a few people were always taken off work and sent to a sanatorium in Ste‑Agathe where they had to stay for months. (Who paid for this? I have no idea. This was before socialized medicine.)

      PatrickC, was that the oral polio vaccine? I remember being given that in grade school.

    • EmilyG 14:54 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      My friend got tuberculosis as a university student in Montreal a little while ago. It surprised a lot of us. We didn’t know it was still around.

    • jeather 15:10 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      FYI if you were born in the 70s in Quebec you only got ONE shot of the measles vaccine and should get a second dose. They claim one is enough, but it is not. (You can get one, but every now and then you get a nurse who argues.)

    • Kate 15:13 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      EmilyG, I know, it seems like something from a Victorian novel now.

      A friend’s dad had polio as a kid, and while not visibly limping, he’s apparently always had weakened legs as a result. He’s the only person I’ve knowingly met that had it.

    • PatrickC 15:56 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      @Kate, As I recall it was a shot with a long needle.

    • MarcG 16:52 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      @jeather: Funny timing, I was at the clinic a few hours ago to get a vaccination record reviewed and they said one measles shot was enough, and when I pushed on the issue they said that they couldn’t under any circumstances give a second dose if it’s not indicated in their rulebook.

    • jeather 17:09 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      Here is the case (scroll down) if you are entitled to a second measles shot and were born in the 70s:

      People born between 1970 and 1979 who are trainees in the healthcare sector, health care workers, military recruits or who planning to travel outside Canada

      I’ve been told that using the “planning to travel somewhere where there is measles” works.

    • MarcG 17:34 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      Good trick, thank you. I wonder if the real sticklers would ask for proof of travel. This is the webpage they were using as a reference.

  • Kate 10:18 on 2025-03-06 Permalink | Reply  

    Champs Sports Bar on the Main, which despite its jock‑ish name has apparently become a gay hangout, has been temporarily closed by a noise complaint.

    Wasn’t Plateau borough supposed to have tweaked its noise laws to allow for nightlife?

     

    • Nicholas 13:28 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      This seems like it is the regie des alcools, not the borough. They had occasional line dancing and that needs a dance permit if in a place regulated by the regie. And their karaoke needs a show permit. So this was a penalty for lack of provincial permits. I, uhh, don’t even know what to say.

    • Kate 13:53 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      I wasn’t even aware of a thing called a dance permit. Thank you for the clarification, Nicholas.

    • steph 14:21 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      have you been dancing at home without your permit?

    • Kate 14:37 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      What, moi? 💃

    • Joey 15:12 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      There was a short-lived performance space above Champs called the Diving Bell that had to close because of complaints in 2023.

    • Nicholas 16:22 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      I didn’t know these things either until I read the article. But it seems you need separate authorizations for Spectacles, films ou danse. Your article says they’ve already been rejected for a show permit, so that’s the end of karaoke there, I guess. And, uhh, poetry slams?

    • Kate 18:51 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      Grr. Why do people move in beside, upstairs or behind a busy strip full of bars and venues and then complain about noise? Do they really not understand the nature of the location till they move in? Or do they simply expect everyone else to conform to their needs, regardless of the history of the area and its purposes?

    • Tim S. 19:05 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      They might visit in daytime, when everything is calm, and whoever’s showing them around assures them that it’s fully soundproofed and the noise is no big deal, and a few sleepless months later…

    • Chris 20:12 on 2025-03-06 Permalink

      Or, because there is so little housing, they may not be able to find anything better or cheaper.

    • Ian 07:57 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      Anyone looking for a cheap apartment on St Larry in this day and age is living in a fool’s paradise.

      Champs really did blossom into a queer cultural hub, it’s a real shame to see it get shut down by gentrifiers.
      Again, as with so many places on that street, if you don’t like fun, don’t move intoa fun neighbourhood.

    • CE 11:25 on 2025-03-07 Permalink

      Champs is also a hub to watch Latin American soccer in an area where its otherwise Portuguese and Italian fans which makes things interesting during international tournaments.

    • CE 00:18 on 2025-03-08 Permalink

      Never mind, I got Champs and Frappé mixed up.

    • Ian 21:41 on 2025-03-08 Permalink

      Late at night it’s all a blur 😀

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