J.P. Karwacki on The Word Bookstore at 50.
Updates from April, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Mayor Plante has been asked if she would consider running to become party chief of the federal NDP after she ends her term as mayor, and her response was ambiguous.
If the NDP wanted someone from Quebec, wouldn’t Alexandre Boulerice be the more obvious choice?
Kevin
I listened to that news conference and she said she wasn’t thinking about anything except being mayor of Montreal until her term was over, then came back and said she didn’t want people to put words in her mouth and would call any reporter who wrote that she was being coy about joining a leadership race.
But she said that in English so maybe La Presse’s reporter wasn’t paying attention.
Joey
Given what Singh revealed this week (credible threats against him), I’d be surprised if Plante was eager to jump back into electoral politics, especially at the federal level.
My impression is that Boulerice would be great but doesn’t want to upend his family life.
Tim S.
Plante entering federal politics is the only way she can keep her promise to build the Pink Line. Be a great bargaining point for supporting a minority government.
Ian
The Bob Rae effect but for Quebec, great. That’s the last thing the NDP needs.
H. John
@Ian I’m trying to understand your reference “The Bob Rae effect but for Quebec”.
The party would seem to have a far more existential threat than who the next leader will be.
Its debt.
Candidates in each riding spend on their campaigns, sometimes with borrowed money, with the hope that Elections Canada will reimburse 50% of their expenses. For the Liberals that will happen for all but one candidate, for the Conservatives it’s two. For the NDP, 296 of their candidates in this election earned less than the 10% of the vote required for a rebate.
H. John
And to provide a comparison in the last election 237 of 338 NDP candidates got the rebate.
Tim S.
That could be an issue, H. John, though my quick glance at the results suggests that in most ridings where they would have run a well-funded campaign they hit the mark. So some refund losses compared to other elections, but not that much. And I hope they had the sense to pull back on spending in the second half when it became obvious the polls weren’t budging.
But what are expensive for the NDP are leadership campaigns, which is one reason they usually hang to leaders longer than other parties. They cost money to organize, donations dry up without a leader, and other donations are directed away from the party itself and towards the contenders. So there’s probably some very careful planning going on to minimize that as we speak.
H. John
@Tim S Interesting point on leadership campaigns.
When the last campaign ended in 2021, even with the vast majority of their candidates receiving rebates, the NDP was $22 million in debt. They spent the next three years fundraising, not to create a war chest for this election, but to pay off what they had already spent in the past. By early 2024 they still owed $1 million.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say “in most ridings where they would have run a well-funded campaign they hit the mark”. Of the 342 NDP candidates in this election only 46 will get a rebate.
Tim S.
What I mean is most of those 296 candidate below 10% won’t have spent much on their campaigns, so losing the 60% rebate hurts a bit in aggregate, but 60% of not much is..not much. Maybe they spend more in rural Saskatchewan than I imagine, but overall that’s not the figure I would be concerned with.
And the NDP always funds its federal campaigns partly through debt. Before corporate and union donations were prohibited, Jack Layton got the unions to contribute enough money for the NDP to buy an office building in Ottawa, which they use as collateral for those loans. As long as they have the building, they’re OK. If they ever have to sell the building, that’s when any supporters should start to worry. Hopefully (from my POV) I haven’t just jinxed them.
Ian
@H.John I meanat hat Bob Rae was so disliked as an NDP Premier that it scuttled the NDP federally for many years, people would just point to him and say “this is what the NDP does”. That he eventually left the NDP and joined the Liberals says a lot.
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Kate
Besides the consequences of delaying renovations to Maisonneuve‑Rosemont hospital, Quebec’s austerity is afflicting universities and forcing Bernard Drainville to build schools only in CAQ ridings.
DavidH
It’s really rich of Drainville to claim he is not favoring CAQ ridings since “it’s the functionaries who chose the projects”.
The many projects in non-CAQ ridings, such as FACE and the ones that were to follow were all approved by the functionaries. BUT, they won’t go ahead because HE cancelled them. The two transitionary schools to be used by FACE were supposed to host other schools needing to evacuate during their renos afterwards. All of these Montreal-area projects won’t be happening in the short/medium term because these two schools will not become available anymore. He decided they would be the permanent FACE building even though they are not really suitable for that project. The elementary school Le Plateau was to move in next in order to be renovated and then a bunch of others. None of them are being budgeted now and it all stems from one unexplainable CAQ decision.
Money is available for CAQ ridings now because everything planned for Montreal was thrown out the window a few weeks ago by Drainville himself.
Ian
Hey now, NorthVolt and SAAQCliq won’t pay for themselves. In these times of austerity only porkbarreling can be afforded.
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Kate
A young man had to explain to police why he was carrying a gun at Lucien‑L’Allier metro when he shot himself in the leg at the station.
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Kate
A woman who held two franchises of Second Cup at the Jewish General has been charged with uttering antisemitic threats at a Concordia University demonstration. All else aside, a woman who clearly had no sense of consequences.
Colonial-douchebag
Does Second Cup itself support Palestine or Israel?
Kate
The tldr of qatzelok’s link is: it supports neither.
Ian
I’m offended that qatzi is calling the Québécois douchebags. Nouvelle France was certainly a colonial endeavor but douchebags? CAQ Algerians aside of course.
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Kate
The Grande Bibliothèque opened 20 years ago, and although chronically underfunded by the Quebec government, continues to provide Montrealers with services they didn’t know they needed till it existed. Also covered in La Presse.
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Kate
A brief but intense windstorm hit the city Tuesday evening, causing power outages and other damage. A teenager was seriously injured in Ahuntsic when a tree fell on him. Some good photos of wind damage around town on CityNews.
Adding: Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital was hit by an outage, which is having political fallout as it followed the government’s decision to delay renovations of the facility indefinitely.
dhomas
My neighbour’s heavy, metal gazebo flipped over into my yard last night. It’s very close to some power lines (and made of aluminum, so conductive) in its current state, so we didn’t dare touch it. It’s still there today. 🙁 I secured my gazebo ahead of time so it would be damaged or cause damage. Only a few compost bins were tossed around. I did notice some Tempos being shredded; I’m sure their owners are regretting dragging their feet removing them (the deadline in some boroughs, like HoMa, is April 30th). There were also lots of repair crews on my bike ride home today. They seem to prioritize leaving the car lanes free and park in the bike lanes, which kinda makes sense, though it was a bit of an inconvenience to me.
Kate
Going by reports on reddit alone, the winds were most intense on the eastern end of the island, Hochelaga being especially hard hit.
The storm touched Villeray but not for long. This morning, recycling day on my street, some trash and twigs had been blown around, but no worse.
…Has the metal gazebo been moved yet?
dhomas
Re the metal gazebo: the firefighters came yesterday to assess the risk of electrical fire. Hydro Quebec came this morning to move the gazebo away from the power lines. The gazebo itself was pretty much intact, just upside down resting on my kids’ swing set, the fence, and a neighbour’s shed. Then Hydro came. They didn’t even try to salvage the gazebo and destroyed it upon moving it, snapping a leg off to set it away from the power lines. My neighbour came into my yard and is currently removing the rest of the wreckage.
It was pretty scary yesterday because we were observing the windstorm and saw the gazebo seemingly coming directly toward us. Thankfully, there was a power cable that tethered it to the house and didn’t let it travel far.Ian
I was caught outside when the microburst hit my neighbourhood, I ducked into a storefront doorway for shelter until it passed – it was pretty impressive watching the wind changing directions quickly and the intense sheets of rain changing with it… I was pretty surprised no trees or large branches came down but that was just the north end of Mile End. South of St Joe they were still having a power outage this morning.
Glad to hear everything was ok dhomas, that must have been pretty freaky.
Kate
As the climate changes, we’ll have to accept that heavy objects that aren’t fixed down can become dangerous projectiles in windstorms like Tuesday evening’s. We’re not as accustomed to this as some (except for dhomas, who had his gazebo pinned down!).
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Kate
La Presse’s city reporter Émilie Côté talks to the people promoting the Black Rock park.
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Kate
Exo wants to diversify from running trains and get into real estate development.
Nicholas
Exo already has twice as many bus riders as it has train riders. And in some places transit agencies do pretty well with real estate, developing density near stations, which creates housing or commercial with an appetite for generating transit trips. Though after the REM, maybe a transit agency building real estate will go better than a real estate company building transit.
roberto
Why is it soo difficult to accept that public transit doesn’t have to be profitable? Don’t we have other branches of government better suited for real estate development?
Nicholas
It’s not that it has to make a profit; most systems outside of East Asia don’t. But if it doesn’t, government has to fill the gap, and our current governments, at all three levels, of widely varying political stripes, seem unwilling to do so, because voters are unwilling to make it a priority over other spending or taxes or higher fares.
dhomas
I’m of two minds on this. If done right, the proceeds from the real estate could go to better fund transit via additional frequency, more buses/trains, or even more infrastructure. But transit should remain the main focus. That is to say, building out transit where there is a need and where there is a sufficient population to use it already.
The flip side to this is if it becomes a real estate venture that happens to do transit, like Nicholas hinted at above. They could build out new stations to places with no density but where they have already bought land. It would likely lead to more sprawl and goes counter to what public transit should be, IMO.
Ian
This is precisely what the REM is attempting north of the 40.
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Kate
April isn’t even over yet and I’m suddenly finding links to summer activities. It’s almost as if the media were holding their breath till after the election. Free summer events, a new bungee jump in the Old Port, praise for a cute village a short distance from town. These have all popped up suddenly Tuesday.
Dancing in the morning is also a thing. By daylight!
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Kate
Pierre Ny St-Amand, who drove his bus into a Laval daycare in 2023, killing two kids and injuring others, has been found not criminally responsible by the judge, in response to the prosecution and defense both proposing this outcome.
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Kate
Been updating the list of MPs on the island of Montreal, which is all red Tuesday morning except for the Bloc’s hold on La Pointe‑de‑l’Île and Alexandre Boulerice keeping Rosemont–La‑Petite‑Patrie orange.
A few items from the Gazette’s slate of winners and losers: the Liberals took LaSalle‑Émard‑Verdun back after a surprise Bloc win in a byelection last September, also shutting out the NDP’s Craig Sauvé.
Carlos Leitão, who was MNA for a West Island provincial riding and Quebec’s finance minister with the Couillard government, has won a seat in Laval. He probably has ambitions for a ministerial position in Ottawa.
Marc Miller, immigration minister under Justin Trudeau but given no portfolio in Mark Carney’s short‑lived pre‑election cabinet, is back in Ville‑Marie‑Le Sud‑Ouest‑Île‑des‑Soeurs.
La Presse looked at some of the new faces in Montreal ridings.
Meezly
I was surprised the Green Party placed Jonathan Pedneault in the same riding as popular Liberal incumbent Rachel Bendayan, instead of a more strategic riding. Was it hubris? Bendayan won by a landslide (no surprise). The other major candidates had similar amount of votes, but Pedneault had the least votes. The Conservative candidate came in a distant second, and like his leader, he had the weakest qualifications (his major achievement was being a camp counsellor) compared to his competitors. Now Pedneault is resigning as co-leader.
Maybe it’s another sign the Green Party isn’t ready for prime time. But it also goes to show that most people won’t read up on their candidates and will just vote according to ideological beliefs.
Kate
I think of myself as moderately environmentally conscious but it would never cross my mind to vote Green. Maybe they’re not a single‑issue party but they feel that way to me.
I want the major parties to take the environment seriously: voting Green feels like doing things the wrong way around.
Ian
TBH I thought that too up until fiarly recently, but got curious after seeing on a vote compass that they are very close to the NDP but a bit more left. I read up on their policies and yes, they are environmentalists, but they also have a very well-developed social and fiscal policy. In most regards they are very similar to the NDP but without the weird urge to become centrist to somehow attract Liberal voters or bitter former party-apparat turds like Mulcair scuttling them in the polls.
That said, I did find it very weird to put Pedneault in a riding that was clearly in the bag for the Liberals. Not like it would have worked out better for him anywhere else in Montreal.
Tim S.
Like the NDP, the Greens usually win only when they run local candidates who have more personal appeal than the party brand. From what I know of Pedneault, he deserved a better shot, but to break through he has to commit to a riding for longer than 6 weeks. He made a good impression during the by-election in NDG in 2023, he might have had a better shot if he had committed to just working the neighbourhood for the past two years. It takes a huge amount of work and some luck to breakthrough as an underdog, but it’s not impossible.
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Kate
La Presse’s Daniel Renaud conveys the police theory that the old Italian mob and the Hells have declared a truce because neither welcomes the competition from newer forms of organized crime.
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Kate
The Filipino community here plans a vigil Monday evening to mourn the 11 people killed in the ramming incident in Vancouver on Sunday.
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Kate
Not much news Monday except that it’s election day. People are being reminded that, in federal elections, if you’re a citizen you can vote even if you weren’t on the list, if you present government‑issued ID and a proof of address.
(I showed up at the advance poll with my voter card, my health card and a sheaf of documents to prove my address, but I was not asked to do that.)
EmilyG
I brought my voter card, health card, passport, and a piece of mail with my address on it, just in case I needed any of those items. I showed my health card and voter card and they accepted those. I think maybe the voter card counts as proof of address.
EmilyG
(when I voted in an advance poll)
maggie rose
I just heard an Elections Canada rep on CBC say we can even use a credit card with our name on it and mailed items like bills for proof of address.
Kate
I had a bank statement and a prescription receipt from the pharmacy.
Since most things now are done by email, it’s harder to scrounge up documents on paper.
jeather
You are allowed to just show your hydro bill (or whatever) on a phone if you get it electronically.
EmilyG
I just heard of someone using a prescription bottle as proof of address, and it was accepted.
Janet
This election I was registered in my boyfriend’s riding in the Townships whereas I normally vote in Ville-Marie. So at the advance poll, I unthinkingly presented them with my driver’s licence with a photo and my Montreal address. The nice lady checked me against my photo and gave me my ballot without a word.
Anton
Just y’all don’t tell Mr Orange about all that widespread voter fraud, we won’t hear the end of it.
Chris
If that’s the extent of identification checks that are done, it’s no wonder so many worry about voter fraud.
Kevin
Worrying about voter fraud is a right-wing issue. It’s up there with talking about violent crime (aside from gun deaths committed by people with legally-owned firearms) as a way to proclaim that Society Is Breaking Down And We Need Strict Laws And Punishments That Only Our Government Will Provide.
azrhey
I usually use my health card + Hospital Card for address when I don’t have my voting card with me… has always worked
Nicholas
A lot of people get confused as to what’s accepted. Federally you do not need a photo, you do not need something issued by a government, and it’s ok if there’s a wrong address on one document. You can present either a non-foreign govt document with name, address and photo, OR two documents from any source, one with the name and one with the name and address. An old address on one document doesn’t invalidate its use to prove your name, so if your other document has the correct address then you’re fine. Election staff do not ensure the photo matches your face, nor use a blacklight to ensure the document is real. The card mailed to your home is an acceptable piece of ID. Electronic documents are valid, shown electronically or printed, but photos of physical documents are not. Expired documents are ok. And you can also be vouched for by someone who votes at the same box you do and has ID. (And note I said federally; Quebec and municipal elections have different standards for ID and registration.)
Kate
Thank you, Nicholas.
Ian
To add to Kevin’s explanation, the point of concern trolling about voter fraud is to create disenfranchisement. It’s easier to control a population that thinks voting doesn’t matter and that the elected government isn’t valid.
Ian 21:57 on 2025-04-30 Permalink
Considering how much has changed in that area it’s amazing that anything is still on Milton after 50 years, let alone a good bookstore. They really are an institution.
Blork 16:07 on 2025-05-01 Permalink
Probably a third of my library comes from The Word. And I’m definitely part of the ecosystem; I dropped off a couple of boxes of books a few weeks ago for reintegration, and probably 3/4 of them were “coming home to roost” so to speak.
True story: about a decade ago I was in The Word looking for a slightly (but not entirely) obscure book by an African writer. I asked Adrian and he even checked the store room, but no luck. More than a year later I was back, having a chat with Adrian (who I know socially a little bit but not well). He excused himself for a minute and then returned with the book I had asked about previously. “Are you still looking for this?” he asked? (I had not mentioned it again; he just remembered.)
Kate 16:46 on 2025-05-01 Permalink
Blork: he really bought all your books? Or did he just take them off your hands?
Late last year I had some books I knew had some value and the Word wanted nothing to do with them. They were in good shape, too. I used to sell them books occasionally, but this time they were firm about wanting none of them. (It wasn’t Adrian I spoke with.)
I should add: I wasn’t trying to raise money. It’s more that although I didn’t want the books any more, I didn’t just want to leave them in a free library box in a back alley, where someone might bring them home for their kids to scribble on. It’s more that I wanted them to go to people who would like to have them.
Blork 16:53 on 2025-05-01 Permalink
They bought about 2/3 of them. It wasn’t Adrian that day, it was Scott and Brendan.
It’s a bit of a crap shoot. If you go anytime around late November or late April/May then they won’t be buying much, because they’re overflowing with recent acquisitions from McGill students who are moving away.
There’s also the matter of what kind of books they are and whether or not they already have it. They’re looking for books that are either rare and somewhat valuable, or will turn over quickly (generally, contemporary literature). I was a bit surprised that they didn’t take some of the ones I had, but Brendan noted that they already had several copies of this and that (in the rejects). But if I wait a few months and try again they might take them.
Blork 16:55 on 2025-05-01 Permalink
BTW, for the ones they bought they offered me a choice of store credit or (slightly less) cash. Decent cash too!
Ian 09:38 on 2025-05-02 Permalink
I’ve always found the Word to be fair, but selective. As a general rule of thumb most used bookstores will give you 20% of what they intend to sell the book for.
Once when I was there a woman was selling books and there were a couple that Adrian refused – I offered to buy a couple from her and when she quoted a low price he said “I wouldhave given her 5 bucks each if I had taken them” which I thought was fair & quite conscientious. I don’t think every bookseller would have piped up to make sure she didn’t get lowballed. Of course, I gave her 5 for each book I took.