Mario Girard is not impressed by the Centre des mémoires montréalaises.
Updates from May, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Although some towns do it, Montreal is not about to embark on charging residents based on the amount of garbage they put out for pickup.
Ian
I’m surprised given this is pecusely the kind of greenwashed money grab that seems be popular with city admin. These mountain pistes won’t pay for themselves y’know.
Kate
In a suburb like Beaconsfield, where they do this, it’s pretty clear where each individual house is putting out its garbage. In town, who knows which household put out which bag or can? Would everyone need a bin with a chip and every truck be equipped with a scale and a reader? Madness!
walkerp
Lots of ways it could work in the city. Each household gets specially marked bags or stickers per month. Only these bags are picked up. You want more, you have to buy them.
It won’t be perfect, but done properly could still see a significant movement of organic waste to the compost bins (which would remain free).jeather
Surely no one would just put out regular trash in regular bags and just leave them until someone else deals with it.
walkerp
Ah the smugness and ease of poking holes in a solution via exception instead of actually looking for a solution.
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Kate
A customer at a Lasalle store noticed he had been charged for a charity donation on his grocery receipt, and found others to whom the same had happened, without any verbal request from the store. A mistake! cries Loblaws.
Does anyone believe these amounts are turned over to a charity? But I bet they add up, over time.
CE
I imagine they’re turned over to charity but with the intent of lowering their tax bill at our expense.
DeWolf
Exactly. They’re passing along your money so they can claim your tax credit without actually spending a dime on charity themselves.
Lately I noticed the self checkout machines at Pharmaprix are suggesting a $5 or $10 donation instead of $1 or $2.
Nicholas
Stores absolutely cannot claim customer (or employee) donations as a charitable donation. Only the true donor can claim the donation: see this page, and specifically example #3 in the infochart, from the CRA.
As well, they must turn it over, or they’d be committing fraud. Lastly, even if they could claim the donation or a business expense, they would have to also claim the revenue from the customer, so it would cancel out.
What they get is some nice publicity, especially as they can add $1,000 themselves and then say “Loblaws and our customers donated $1 million.”
Of note, you cannot claim the money you donate unless you get a charitable donation receipt, and they won’t send you one without your name and address, which you won’t take the time to enter at the store and they won’t issue for a small amount. However, apparently some stores will do this if you hit $25 or $50. But it’s best to just donate directly to whomever you want.
Blork
It has also been reported (although I don’t have a citation handy) that the stores keep a large chunk as “administration fees.” Apparently it can even be 50% in some cases.
jeather
Loblaws, commit fraud? Never.
SMD
Related, from CBC: How you can get your dough in the $500M Loblaw bread-fixing settlement.
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Kate
A woman evicted from her longtime apartment when new owners claimed they wanted it for a family member was awarded $81,000 when it turned out it had been rented to random tenants at a much higher rate. Landlords make several excuses here about their “mistake”.
Joey
These good faith mistakes keep piling up, eh?
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Kate
Ensemble mayoral hopeful Soraya Martinez Ferrada says, if she were elected, she would abolish the city bylaw mandating social and affordable units in new construction. I wonder if she has France‑Elaine Duranceau’s number in her phone.
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Kate
In recent weeks shots were fired on two occasions at a house on Nuns Island, and several businesses belonging to the same family have been set on fire. The owner, who’s from Italy, maintains that no one has asked him for protection money.
One of the suspects in the Old Montreal arson of a café belonging to the family is an 18‑year‑old who was arrested in hospital where he turned up with serious burns.
Daniel Renaud has a good story this weekend about extortions.
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Kate
Quebec is proposing a bill to let other provinces’ goods in, in accord with the overall plan to reduce trade barriers between provinces.
But what about French labels and so on? There’s nothing about that in this brief report, which says “goods from other provinces and territories may be ‘commercialized, used or consumed’ in Quebec without further requirements.”
CE
Products sold in Canada have to have labelling in both English and French so I don’t think it will be too much of a problem for all but the most artisanal of products.
Kevin
Such as musical instruments and accessories…
mare
Isn’t there a Quebec tariff on ice cream and cheese?
Kate
Quebec makes some terrific, if expensive, artisanal cheese these days. I wouldn’t like that to be undermined by industrial quantities of cheddar from Ontario.
Ian
Ontario has a very big artisanal cheese offering, too, which should come as no.surprise.
Nicholas
CE, not everything needs to be in both languages. For prepackaged non-food consumer products, “The product identity must be shown in English and French. Non-mandatory label information, such as directions for use and promotional statements, do not need to be bilingual; however, you are encouraged to include such information in both languages.” per the Competition Bureau. For food there are more stringent rules, where things have to be bilingual in most cases, but there are a few exceptions, and, “In general information on labels and in advertisements that is not part of mandatory information (such as recipes on a can of soup or games on a box of cereal) is not subject to bilingual requirements at the federal level, although manufacturers and importers are encouraged to present such information bilingually.” There are also different rules for some other categories, like drugs, and non-consumer products generally only need labelling in one language. That’s why Quebec has its own, stricter law.
Kate, Quebec does make some great artisanal cheeses, and I don’t think many people buying those would be switching to mass produced Ontario cheddar. We might get some good artisanal Ontario cheeses, but presumably Ontario will get some good Quebec artisanal cheeses too. More choice is great.
MarcG
More choice is great but it also means more emissions moving products around.
dwgs
AFAIK Saputo is the largest cheese / dairy producer in Canada so those artisanal cheeses already compete against the biggest of the big boys. Also, surely those are two different markets. We buy mozzarella from Super C but for real cheese we’ll go to Fromagerie Atwater, Hamel, or the little goat cheese people at Jean Talon market.
MarcG, I don’t think that having products from other provinces available means that people will consume more but might be more likely to choose Canadian products over American for example.MarcG
I wasn’t suggesting that people will consume more. Continuing with artisinal cheese as an example: if you currently buy 10 cheeses a month and they’re all made in Quebec, and after these changes you buy 5 Quebec cheeses and 5 Ontario cheeses, and somebody in Ontario does the exact same thing, we’ve now transported 5 cheeses out of province and 5 cheeses into the province that wouldn’t have happened before, despite consumption being the same. Does that make sense?
Orr
Besides being a giant industrial producer of mass-market cheese, Saputo also has a fine cheese division, made in their Plesisville factory. Several brands you might think of as artisanal in the grocery store are from here. Any cheese that, at the end of the aging process, is underweight by a few grams is sold in the factory store there at *incredible* prices.
That said, I also appreciate/adore/can’t get enough of Quebec’s many top-rated, world-class prize winning cheeses from small producers. There are a lot of them. #DeathByCheese is a risk I live with daily.
Anyhoo, breaking down the interprovincial trade barriers is a noble goal, but let’s not be fooled into thinking Quebec is removing it’s most popular non-tariff trade barrier aka language laws. Labour mobility into Quebec is severely restricted by these same laws. That isn’t changing anytime soon/ever.Nicholas
MarcG, there’s a photo that goes around every so often of a fruit cup of pears that were grown in Argentina, packaged in Thailand and sold in America (I think NYC). It turns out the carbon emissions from transport of that cup are less than driving two blocks in your car to the store. It could also replace cheese from France, which have larger emissions (yes, I know that’s not happening, which shows how much people care). I’m not saying this swap of cheese would have no effect, but it’s miniscule, and if we’re really worried about food transportation emissions we should look at fresh fruit transported by plane. And, of course, the emissions created by growing food are way, way, way higher than transportation.
dwgs
We can split that hair as finely as you want to. What if the artisanal cheese I buy from Ontario is made in Glengarry (https://glengarryfinecheese.com/collections/all)? That’s an hour’s less travel time than from the townships.
MarcG
Yeah I thought about that geographical point too, and don’t have any real numbers on emissions from transport, so fair nuff, I just thought it was worth mentioning. Not sure if any of this affects alcohol but if it does, craft beer nerds are going to rejoice not having to organize private imports through the SAQ just to get their hands on stuff brewed next door.
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Kate
American businesses near the border are offering exclusive deals for Canadians, but don’t they understand it isn’t about the deal, even if their Great Leader is the lord of the deal? It’s about people not wanting to visit a hostile regime.
jeather
A bucket of golf balls. Be still my heart.
Ephraim
Have you noticed the uptick of travel ads on US channels? VT and NY both advertising heavily to get Canadians to visit.
JaneyB
Cute, Canadian-themed golfballs…against the threat of detention in ICE facilities or Salvadoran prisons. So many Americans don’t value ‘habeas corpus’, the very foundation of democracy. It’s strange that they don’t see the danger. Then there’s the annexation issue, of course…grrr.
dhomas
I listen to the radio in the morning with the kids. They play a commercial constantly advertising for travel within the US from Plattsburgh airport, via Allegiant Air. Not sure who is paying for the advertisement: the airport, the city of Plattsburgh, or the airline. I’m not sure if I want them to stop so as to avoid convincing Canadians that it’s a good idea to travel to/via the US or if I want them to continue wasting their money supporting our local economy (in the hopes they convince no one).
Orr
A nice vacation vs an Ice “vacation”?
I know which I’d choose.jeather
Upstate NY is a pretty red area, too, so a lot of them did in fact vote for this exactly.
Ephraim
21st Congressional District…. Elise Stefanik who is a BIG orange supporter.
saintlaurent
> Upstate NY is a pretty red area, too, so a lot of them did in fact vote for this exactly.
Not quite as much as you think. Clinton County, where Plattsburgh is located? 48.9% Harris, 51.1% Trump.
Essex County, where Lake Placid and most of the Adirondack High Peaks are located? 50.3% Harris, 49.7% Trump.
Warren County, where Lake George is located? 47.9% Harris, 52.1% Trump.
So the three upstate New York counties that attract the most Quebecers as tourists? All three are pretty close to purple. When I wasn’t growing up in Montreal, I grew up in Essex County, and I’m still pretty surprised that it’s pretty much as purple as purple gets. Yeah, Lewis County may have gone 70+% for Trump, but I’d argue that very, very few Quebecers go there as tourists.
For the whole 21st Congressional District, which by east-of-the-Mississippi standards is a *huge* district and stretches all the way down to Saratoga Springs and almost as far west as Lake Ontario, yes, Trump won 60%. Stefanik is a big (if opportunistic) Trump supporter (don’t get me started on that; she used to be a *very* establishment Republican), and slightly outperformed Trump (62%). Her consistent re-elections since 2014 are partly due to the Democrats putting up a series of severely weak candidates over the last several election cycles. A Democrat represented that district as recently as 2014.
Now, myself? I find a couple of souvenir golf balls pretty chintzy. But I would gently suggest that you don’t dismiss these efforts as entirely insincere. Having known many of these people for my entire life, they think the bullshit annexation talk is exactly that – bullshit – and truly do value Quebecers as both neighbours and customers.
Uatu
F that. ICE is supposed to be raising it’s arrest quotas to 3000 a day which means that anyone is fair game for detention even if you did nothing wrong. Border agents aren’t necessarily bad people, but they believe that the system will prove your innocence…. eventually. In the meantime they fill their quota and the privately run detention center gets paid- which is what’s really important to the current administration.
Ephraim
Elise Stefanik got 62% of the vote. Clinton was 52%. Essex was the lowest with 51.7%. 55.6% in Franklin (the next county to Clinton) and 60.6% in St-Lawrence country, where the Akwesasne reserve is located. And as you move more west and more south they all get much worse. But not a single country went blue.
Kate
saintlaurent, that’s a mixed message if I’ve ever seen one.
saintlaurent
Ephraim, I was counting how each county voted for Trump or Harris, not Stefanik. The numbers are roughly similar, but Essex County went (very slightly) for Harris, and Clinton was only very slightly Trump.
Kate, I would argue the message isn’t that mixed. If about 50% of voters in Clinton County voted against Trump, it stands to reason that about half of all small business owners didn’t vote for Trump and are desperately trying to salvage whatever they can of that summer business from Quebec tourists. So it’s really a 50/50 shot if the guy with the golf balls is a Trump voter or not. If he isn’t, can you blame him for trying to promote his business? Again, I think the golf balls are pretty cheesy, but I don’t think it is logical to immediately jump to the conclusion that he’s obviously a Trump voter with buyer’s remorse. Although who knows, maybe he is?
Kate
You make it sound like we owe it to these people to bring them our business.
And you know? We really don’t.
saintlaurent
> And you know? We really don’t.
I agree with that, 100%.
You make it sound as if you want to punish any and all of them, because the barest majority of them happen to made a bad choice. I could see that if, for example, Montreal was a 45-minute drive from rootin’ tootin’ shootin’ ruby-red Texas or middle-of-nowhere ultra-Trump Wyoming. But those parts of upstate New York (e.g., Plattsburgh, Lake Placid, Keene Valley, Lake George) are not that.
Thought experiment: if this story had been about the efforts of business owners in Vermont to reach out to their Quebec customers, I imagine some readers’ reaction would have been rather different, since deep blue Vermont that voted nearly 2-1 against Trump is cool in a way that merely 50/50 purple upstate New York is not. Burlington is hip in that QS/NDP crunchy-granola way, whereas Plattsburgh is a little bit quétaine.
Ephraim
Honestly, we used to go to Plattsburgh, but haven’t visited in more than a decade and likely a lot longer. (I checked, last time we stayed in Plattsburgh overnight was 2011) New York State Troopers in that region target Quebec and Vermont plates for speeding tickets. The mall decided they were going to charge Canadians for Internet access, when it was expensive to roam. And of course, they have a Sam’s Club, not a Costco. And slowly there were less and less businesses. So, we started going to Vermont instead. The people are nicer, the businesses as well. There is a Costco. But it changes, too. I looked at our last overnight in 2020, before COVID. We paid C$88 for a night in January (tax-in). Now, a hotel below that is $169 tax-in (also January). And when we went to the US it wasn’t about price, it was about variety and different products. But we just stopped going. In fact, even vacations have moved from the US to elsewhere. We have on vacation planned with a friend in 2026 that starts in the US, but nothing else.
Kate
saintlaurent, you’re playing a range of tiny violins here but I can’t hear them.
I don’t want to punish anybody. I don’t want to spend my money in that country and I’m not going to lose any sleep over Canadians choosing to spend their money at home, or elsewhere. But it’s not chiefly about money and deals (it always comes down to money and deals). The U.S. isn’t a safe place right now. It’s better to stay away.
jeather
There is absolutely no reason to assume that business owners track the overall voting population.
But reliably blue NYC and southern Maine and California are trying to get Canadians, and they’re not working either. I’m not blaming the hotel and restaurant and etc etc owners for trying to get Canadians back, and I think they are sincere that they want Canadian tourists. I just don’t CARE, and I can’t see that people who are avoiding the US would be swayed by some golf balls. I’m sorry for (some of) the people getting caught up in this, but their problem is not Canada, it’s their own government.
saintlaurent
I’ll entirely concede the point that crossing the border can be viewed as a crap shoot. I have dual citizenship (and a NEXUS card), so for me there’s virtually zero apprehension. I certainly wouldn’t, though, advise someone who has PR status in Canada or has a Canadian passport that shows their place of birth as, say, Tehran or Port-au-Prince to have a jolly good Saturday day trip buying cheap groceries in P’Burgh. In fact, quite the contrary – I’d be right at the front of the line, telling them that is a Very Bad Idea.
But I do take issue with what I perceive to be a massive amount of shade you’re throwing at the folk, a significant number of whom, safe to assume, are anti-Trump voters, just trying to maintain their existing Quebec customer base and keep their own small businesses afloat. That casual dismissal of their efforts is, IMHO, kind of shitty.
And I’m sorry, the vibe I feel you’re throwing off really does smack of a desire for (or at a minimum, a schadenfreude attitude towards) collective punishment. As you said, no one owes these people any business, and I agree without hesitation. But you make it sound as if a U.S. business even attempting to market itself to Quebecers, in the current environment, is an affront to your sensibilities.
J’ai eu la bonne chance de passer environ la moitié de ma vie à Montréal et l’autre moitié dans le nord de l’État de New York (principalement, à Plattsburgh ainsi que Essex County). Je comprends parfaitement la colère des Canadiens, et ils ont raison, à mon avis. Je comprends aussi que les New Yorkers de Plattsburgh et des Adirondacks savent bien de quel côté leurs tartines est beurrée, et c’est pourquoi plusieurs d’entre eux essaient de sensibiliser les Québécois pour leur faire savoir qu’ils sont toujours les bienvenus, ainsi que leurs dollars touristiques, malgré les efforts du gouvernement américain actuel.
Margaret
I’m sure many of the American affected didn’t vote this regime in, but neither did the Canadian workers that are suffering as a result of its tariffs etc. My money and my consumer loyalty is going to Canadian enterprises and I don’t see how any offer of “a deal” changes that. “American deals” are never without fallout.
Kate
That casual dismissal of their efforts is, IMHO, kind of shitty.
Am I expected to express sympathy for a country that wants to take mine over and which, if it doesn’t assent to this, will be faced with a constant barrage of economic attacks and threats?
But you make it sound as if a U.S. business even attempting to market itself to Quebecers, in the current environment, is an affront to your sensibilities.
It is. The idea that all we need is a little “deal” and we’ll rush happily across the border to save their businesses would be funny if it didn’t smack, in a small way, of what Trump is already trying to do to us.
dwgs
Speaking as someone born and raised in a border community where there is a lot of back and forth (I have American and dual citizen relatives due to intermarriage) I get where saintlaurent is coming from and it’s a valid point, there are a lot of decent Americans doing their best to get by. I am also outraged by the insanity that has taken root down there and refuse to cross the border or give them any money until Trumplethinskin and the rest of his evil posse are sent packing. Decent people down there need to feel enough economic pain to get them demonstrating in the streets by the millions.
Orr
Once you’ve seen, as I have, a car at the border get surrounded by a heavily-armed swat team, see everyone get pulled out of the car and forced to lie face-down on the ground with weapons aimed at them, and after a few minutes they are told “it’s all good, you can proceed now,” you might think twice about if this is a place you really want to visit.
Bonus points if you enjoy the experience of ICE roadblock checkpoints 50 miles into the US to examine your papers.
Tl;dr: a police state is a state I don’t plan to visit.Ephraim
All I have to add is that the Munich pact was signed by Neville Chamberlain, who seems to have some things in common with Keir Starmer… inviting him to the UK for discussions…
jeather
I don’t really blame Americans who want to regain their Canadian clients for it. But “ok our president is threatening to take you over, he has fucked up the world economy, and if you’re unlucky you might get held by ICE for a few weeks” is not something that “here are some golf balls” can fix, and it feels patronizing.
Kate
Well put, jeather!
Joey
“Only half the population is MAGA” is hardly a consolation (let alone lone a marketing slogan) if you clock MAGA as a racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, death cult. If the “folk” who want to retain their Canadian customer base mean it, they’ll leave the golf balls for now and revolt against their crooked government.
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Kate
Weekend notes from CityCrunch, La Presse, the Gazette, Le Devoir, CultMTL. Free or cheap weekend events in the Journal.
Most media include “warnings” about road closures for the Tour la Nuit on Friday, and the Tour de l’Île on Sunday.
Your road closures and construction sites.
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Kate
The OQLF wrote six times to the STM to pressure it to scrub ‘go’ off city buses. And finally it did, in a triumph for the French language.
Nicholas
Verville said there is a “huge difference” between using the word
“go”“God” in reference tothe Montreal soccer teamIslam as compared tothe Montreal CanadiensCatholicism.He said fans of
CF MontréalIslam typically chant“Allez Montréal”Allahu Akbar duringmatchesprayers, while“Go Habs Go”Le Seigneur soit avec vous has long been part of Quebec culture.Uatu
I should ask them for the translation of “bullshit job”. It’d be a learning experience for both of us.
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Kate
Closure of La Tulipe had sparked promises of a new noise policy in the Plateau and in the city as a whole, but it’s difficult to find a happy medium. Should developers be stopped from building residential spaces adjoining bars and venues? Or should people simply have the common sense not to move in close to lively streets if they don’t want to be woken by revellers in the night?
Tim S.
There probably should be an official “noisy” area status that real estate agents/landlords be required to disclose. Visiting a place at 11AM on a Sunday morning tells you nothing about how noisy it will be at midnight on Friday.
P
Still can’t believe what happened to La Tulipe. That neighbor who caused all this should have had his name and face plastered all over town and should have been made in a pariah until he stepped down and sold and moved away.
It shouldn’t take much more of a policy than “if you live near a music venue, there will be noise.”
Kate
La Tulipe should have had the same protected status that the Monument National has. The “mistake” that allowed someone to move into a space that should never have been zoned residential should be examined to figure out exactly what was going on there.
Joey
I’m not sure how it happened, but we seem to have tacitly decided that we’ll tolerate noise pretty much everywhere we shouldn’t (transit, movie theatres) and not where we should (clubs, theatres).
Kate
Joey, that’s an excellent point.
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Kate
The community is divided on the prospect of year-round pedestrianization of Wellington Street.
MarcG
Here’s a link to a group trying to organize the voices of people in support of year-round pedestrianization.
su
Sounds like it is specifically the stakeholder partner citizens who are at odds with some of the commercial interests on Wellington.
su
Thanks for the link MarcG. I like this quote
“allow residents to affirm their rights and ownership of public space without the outsized influence of passing drivers and business interests.jeather
I’m not even sure why the business owners are arguing this time — there are even several nearby lots with regular city priced parking.
Kate
There are parking lots nearby St-Hubert too, but the business owners voted not to close the street to traffic this summer.
JaneyB
If Wellington is pedestrianized year-round, then the recent bike lane system installed all along the parallel Verdun Ave. should be moved to Wellington. Verdun Ave is now a bit tricky for cars, thanks to the permanent ‘danger stick’ pylon-like things at every intersection; turning onto the street from side streets is very tight, especially in winter. One or the other street is fine. Both…less so.
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Kate
Despite the recommendations of the Charbonneau commission report, the city is still heavily dependent on engineering consulting firms. The value of contracts has increased eightfold since 2012.
Nicholas
It absolutely can make sense, if you’re doing a unique, small project, to hire a firm with expertise: maybe you’re checking to see if your historic windmill or canal locks need work, and you won’t do that again for decades. But everyday things like roadways, sewers and waterworks, bridges, building construction, etc.: all that stuff should be happening all year, every year. And even a large unique project, if it takes a decade then hire some full time staff. The consultants have an incentive to increase billable hours. Not that city workers sometimes don’t have bad incentives themselves, but get people working for us.
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Kate
The STM maintenance workers’ union plans to strike June 9.
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Kate
Plans for airport expansion may doom the hoped‑for nature park nearby.
su
A small example of how the global middle class consumer population growth ponzi scheme is decimating what is left of the biosphere. Infinite growth on a finite planet.
su
ACI World projects 22.3 billion passengers by 2053. !!!!
New 30-year forecasts highlight robust growth, despite short-term uncertainties
Montreal, 26 February 2025 – Airports Council International (ACI) World today unveiled its anticipated Airport Traffic Forecasts 2024–2053, projecting significant long-term growth in global passenger traffic. Over the next three decades, global passenger numbers are expected to reach 17.7 billion by 2043 and 22.3 billion by 2053, the later nearly 2.4 times the projected volume for 2024.The new forecasts, which cover 99.8% of global markets across 161 countries, highlight a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.4% from 2024 to 2043, with a slightly slower CAGR of 3% from 2024 to 2053. The projections indicate a steady upward trajectory in global aviation, driven by factors such as rising middle-class travel demand in emerging markets, strengthened international travel, and continued investments in airport infrastructure.
Ian
While I agree that air travel is very problematic in terms of ecology, this particular “nature park” is small potatoes considering the vast majority of Quebec’s land mass is so wild it isn’t even accessible by road.
Nicholas
I’m not sure what to say here. My first thought was Ian’s, that this area is 230 hectares (about half being a highly manicured golf course), in a province with a land area of 136,512,800 hectares, nearly all of it left to nature. One in half a million, or 0.0005%, for the second most important airport in the country, and you can’t easily move it. And the quote about “increased health risks for everyone working and living in the area,” I mean, it’s fully surrounded by industrial with tons of trucks every day, and after that there are some homes, yes, but this isn’t a mixed residential and commercial neighbourhood. It being a reserve could make sense, though I get the bird strikes, but who wants to go to a park next to the airport? I go to Terra Cotta sometimes, it’s really nice, but the planes and the cars on the 20 don’t help the experience, and this would be worse, just 500 m from an active runway.
But then I saw their plans…solar panels??? I gather Quebec has experience in bringing clean energy long distances to where the people are, and a fair amount of clean energy, do we really need this here? Can’t we put that somewhere else? Is that the greenwashing commitment? Fuel storage seems reasonable, but page 110 of the report says they have a fuel hub north of the golf course, on Saint François Rd just west of André Ave, that is connected by underground pipes to oil refineries in the east end and also to the airport, for efficient refueling. I guess they will need different pipes for the new fuels (though “The current kerosene infrastructure is also capable of processing SAF [sustainable aviation fuel]”), but there seems like some adjoining lots that are empty and could be used for that. I’m not an airport fueling logistics expert, but the plans on pages 113-115 seem a little vague.
Chris
>this area is 230 hectares…
And for comparison, about 10 000 000 hectares are on fire every year in Canada.
Em
While there’s a lot of land in the province, you still need green space in the south where there is a lot of biodiversity and ecological pressures.
Meezly
I guess I can blame our capitalistic mindset in trying to find practical worth in 230 hectares of “undeveloped” land. It’s not about how much wildland Quebec already has. This parcel of land is home to 200 species of birds and other flora and fauna. They don’t need to cross a highway to get to Tim Hortons. But perhaps this piece of land is part of the migratory routes for birds and monarch butterflies. We hear how important it is to have pockets of wild spaces in the concrete sprawl of urban areas so migratory animals can stop, rest, refuel. Perhaps in our eyes it’s just 230 hectares of undeveloped land, but to other living beings, it’s a green oasis.
Kate
Nicely put, Meezly!
Kate
Yes, and people need access to a little nature now and then. Especially those of us who don’t drive.
Ian
Going to a field by a golf course by the airport wouldn’t be my first choice, but apparently some disagree.
DeWolf 11:29 on 2025-05-31 Permalink
tl;dr, he prefers old-school museums oriented around collections, whereas the MEM is a more experiential museum oriented around interactivity and storytelling.
Personally, I enjoyed it, although I still haven’t seen the permanent exhibition since it opened. It’s worth going just for the old signs in the lobby.
Orr 11:36 on 2025-05-31 Permalink
When we visited the MEM last winter one of the two main rooms wasn’t open bc software problems.
Mario Girard makes a good point that you need to visit Pointe-à-Callières Museum, the Château Ramezay, the McCord Stewart Museum, the Maison Saint-Gabriel, the Musée de Lachine, the Musée des hospitalierières, in addition to the MEM.
I’d add to that excellent list the Roussillon Archeology Museum across the river in La Prairie.
Orr 11:38 on 2025-05-31 Permalink
it’s worth going for the display of Montreal street parking signs and its “do you understand these signs?” quiz.
Nicholas 12:13 on 2025-05-31 Permalink
The other day I went to an Ethiopian restaurant. It was good, but when I looked at the menu, there was no pizza, no pasta, no poutine, no steak and kidney pie. What about our heritage? By showcasing one thing, they were neglecting everything else, for which I have no options in Montreal, and I cannot go to other restaurants another day. If only I had gone to a food court, I could get a mix of everything.
Kate 14:20 on 2025-05-31 Permalink
Nicholas, your metaphor is extra special today.
mb 16:03 on 2025-05-31 Permalink
Nicholas, the MEM actually is located next door to a food court (Le Central)!
Nicholas 01:16 on 2025-06-01 Permalink
Thanks, Kate. This guy sounds like the kind of person who goes to London and complains about the lack of French, the bad Mexican food and how there are no warm, sunny beaches. Enjoy Epcot!
Margaret 07:08 on 2025-06-01 Permalink
I have visited the MEM several times and found it to be an enriching experience as a local, and would not hesitate to bring friends visiting as tourists. I think the layout and curation honour the city. The short videos in the Detours section ae as diverse in subject matter as is Montreal itself. I would also take friends (and visit often ,myself) the McCord, the Écomusée du fier monde, MUMAQ and Pointe-à-Callière. Montreal City Hall also has a variety of artifacts under glass if needed. Each place has it’s own pov and, like the city, the different perspectives mesh well. The staff at the MEM are wonderfully helpful and informed without being intrusive. It is a favorite spot for us.