Maclean’s has a nice selection of photos from a photo exhibit at the McCord on scenes after dark in 1980s Montreal.
Updates from May, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Quebec’s new tipping and price display rules are now in force, which seems odd given that tipping is still, in theory, optional and based on personal choice.
Ian
I think part of it is that the machines always calculate tip after tax where back when we paid cash we would refer to the bill. If you tip 20% after tax you’re basically tipping 23%.
Ephraim
The price display rules should be more consistant, saying that all items in the same category should have to use the same exact unit price, so that they could easily be compared. Sometimes a product may be in 100g and others in kg and still others in ml. Pasta in a can (no, I’m not buying it, but just as an example) is in ml but ravioli in a can is in mg.
Others should be by number of doses. For example, detergent. Sunlight 4L is 100 washes, Tide is 3.9L is 100 washes, Purex 4.43l is 110 washes, Persil is 4.43l is 96 washes, Arm & Hammer 4.02l is 136 washes and Attitude 4l is 160 washes. So, how do you compare by 100ml? Not to mention that a certain club pack is 14.5kg for 150 washes and what I use is 16.5kg for 1100 washes and Tru Earth is 116 strips, with no weight mentioned at all.
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Kate
Despite uncertainties in the economy and the world generally, real estate sales were booming in April.
Mark Côté
I’m so glad I read The Wealthy Renter last year; I have way less FOMO about not owning now.
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Kate
In the ongoing saga of the shabby treatment of community groups by the CSSDM, they’re going to court to try to force the eviction of 14 groups from a school building in Ahuntsic.
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Kate
The Lucky Luke stable in Griffintown, the last relic of the calèche trade in the city, will shortly be torn down to make room for more condos.
Jane
Which is what the Ville and the developer lobby were planning on, all along. Such a crying shame. It could have been very, very different. Because the Ville was absolutely, incorrigibly indifferent to any and all animal concerns prior to their “let’s harass all dog owners and make them feel unwelcome [this is not imaginary, this was real], and BTW we need to get a pitbull ban going” campaigns of the early 2000s, which stayed in place until the current dcevelopment-happy administration came in, there was no way to valorize the caleche trade – like they do in Charleston, NC, you really ought to see it – and improve the existing stables. No, the indifference was very convenient. All heritage properties were and are in the crosshairs for developers to take over, and there’s more tax revenue in it for the Ville to ignore the needs and potentials of protecting these sites, these people, and these animals away. You can even see it in the news reports – no mention of what happened to the horses or their owners. I’m sure digging deeper shows as little concern all along.
To battle this kind of indifference, as well as the open hostility of the nearly-insensibly abolitionist urban “animal rights” people, was already too much for one lone let’s-do-it-different voice like my own. What I would have loved to have seen all along was a capital campaign to take over the stables, tear them down and build a proper stable, and turn the land that was being used to store trailers and vehicles and other such equipment into a proper grassy paddock, where the horses could rest rather than be cooped up in their shitty stalls and boxes the rest of the time. Only one or two caleche drivers that I met used to take their horses to the canal to touch real grass – but given the sensibilities of these over-urbanized other users (who already seem to want the whole of the canal turned into an open-air plaza, rather than an actual green space), this was an inconvenient risk, and so it rarely happened.
BTW, I use scare quote because these “animal rights” people are 100% correct that animals deserve rights, but abolition of human use and ownership (guardianship) of animals is something they are 100% wrong about. *They* need to touch grass. Both human and animal lives are better when they’re conspicuously entwined. These activists are not, and never have been, competent at focusing on making real, actual inroads into making concrete change in laws to *benefit animals,* instead they choose abolitionist projects like this, to sweep animals even more under the rug than they already are for 95% of all urban people. Abolitionism suits the powers that be because if you never see an animal, if you never see the source of anything that serves your consumer appetites or the value chain that provides you services, you never have to think about them, and so the power remains in the hands of people who like to dispense with “trivial” concerns like morality or justice towards those who are silent (animals) or most marginalized (the people who work with them). It’s like they, the activists and the politicians, not only implicitly disrespect, they get the pleasure of exerting power in harming the men and women who live and work with animals. This is a complex phenomenon: They think they’ve become enlightened about animals, and agree with totalizing control of animals under municipal by-laws as a civilizing force against animal abusers (they barely even admit that overcontrol of animals emboldens the people who are anti-animal enough to seek ways to harass animal owners) – but can’t imagine that because *all people, politically* used to, still do derive the most power by putting animals as low as they could, the marginal few who didn’t take the hint and remained in the down-enough position to continue to work with animals, that those very people who continue to work with animals *also evolved to respect animals.* No, they are all subhuman exploiters – not people themselves curtailed and exploited such that they are disenfranched, and have next to means to do as well as they would otherwise like to. And so the Perfect is the enemy of the Good.
Plante just fell for, or even orchestrated, the “animal rights people, meet the developers, discuss” machinations of having one set of useful idiots serve the interests of those who think any and all real estate transactions are good. This ugly condo project is already another blight on a much-blighted stretch of former open land, which, by the way, serves an ecological and psychological function that most people, concerned with their daily grind, are blithely unaware of unless or until you realize it. I was a voter for Plante in 2018 and 2022. In 2026, I’m voting her and all of her kind out.
Jane
Please disregard my writing errors (disenfranchised, next to no means, others). I should have written it elsewhere and pasted it here.
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Kate
The city intends to add 11,000 EV charging stations by 2030.
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Kate
That building on Park Avenue north of Bernard that began to collapse in March still hasn’t been dealt with. The city can’t locate the owner. Residents of the building next door are still unable to return home, but somehow, the city is not able to act directly until the owner is served a notice.
Ian
I dn’t understand why this is still an issue, unless there is a regulation about time elapsed somewhere …
From the city website:
“If the owner fails to take action
If the owner cannot be found, or if he or she refuses, neglects to or is unable to carry out the work required to eliminate a danger after receiving a notice to do so, the city reserves the right to:
take the measures required by the situation concerning the building in question, at the owner’s expense
carry out the necessary work at the expense of the owner, the tenant or the occupant
fence off a property that poses a danger
The costs incurred by the city constitute a senior debt on the building in question. These costs are also guaranteed under the legal mortgage on the building.”https://montreal.ca/en/topics/dwelling-inspection-corrective-action-and-evacuation
Joey
This is a gem of the use of the conditional tense: “The borough says it will have to consult with its legal department if it’s unable to serve the owners with the demolition notice.”
Ephraim
Meanwhile, how do they collect the city taxes? Doesn’t someone have to get the bill and pay it?
Ian
Kind of surprising they. don’t have the right of seizure under force majeure, as a hazard to the public.
dhomas
@Ian: Chapter III, Section II, Article 52 here seems to answer your question:
https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/fr/document/lc/C-11.4/20120615The city should be able to take action within 24 hours. So, they should already be taking action, not sure why they haven’t yet.
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Kate
More closures of metro stations are likely soon as nearly half the network’s stations are in bad shape and will need repairs.
Joey
Do I have this right? The REM only works reliably when there’s no precipitation. Half of all Metro stations are on the verge of being shut down indefinitely because they are structurally unsound. The 31 most critical bus lines couldn’t operate at a maximum of 10 minutes between buses, so they raised the interval to 12 minutes. Ambulances can’t get to patients in time because street construction is so poorly managed. There’s, somehow, $90 million to turn Camillien-Houde into a circuit for fancy cyclists.
What am I missing?
Kate
Things are siloed. To the observer, it looks insane that we’d spend that kind of money on a recreational feature under the circumstances, but – as I understand it – the city can’t simply wave a wand, between budgets, and say “We’re taking those millions back and putting them into metro repairs.”
I sort of get that you can’t just let everything else slide if one thing needs money, otherwise we wouldn’t have parks, libraries, sports facilities and all those other things that make a city pleasant to be in. An individual might have to say “I can’t pay for the gym any more because I need to pay the rent and have my teeth fixed and buy groceries” but a city can’t quite do that.
Or so I understand it.
Also, Projet has always had a bee in its bonnet about the Camillien‑Houde.
roberto
Neoliberalism is an economic process of undermining public services to justify their transfer to the private sector with the belief that the private sector can operate them more efficiently. This results in higher costs and reduced access at the public’s expense due to profit-driven motives of the private sector.
roberto
Additionally, in Montreal, the Public Transport Fee for car registrations has gone from 59$ (2024) to 150$ as of January 1st 2025. In some municipalities the fee went up to 180$.
I hope that money is put to good use, but it wont. It’s just to cover the shortfall from provincial cuts – don’t expect services to get better for it despite the additional fee.
How much more is my metro pass going to increase July 1st??
Kate
The metro pass that costs $100 now will cost $104.50 on July 1.
A regular ticket remains at $3.75, and an aller-retour at $7.
Ian
…and it will still take 40 minutes minimum to take the 80 from Bernard to deMaisonneuve any weekday morning.
jeather
Again, I will note: that’s two hours of street parking if you go somewhere solo, so unless you already have a monthly pass, it’s often both cheaper and more convenient to just drive. The STM is very poorly set up for occasional use.
Tim
I agree that it’s poorly setup for occasional use: why can’t I get on the metro multiple times if I pay a fare that is valid for an hour and a half? I usually try to figure out getting somewhere on a bus so that I can double back on the same fare by metro.
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Kate
It’s in several sources now that Quebec is ordaining a minimum 150 metres between schools and drug injection sites.
Doesn’t anyone understand how short a distance 150 metres is? It’s like three short city blocks.
Ian
It’s ok, junkies and nimbys can’t count
jeather
Given the (still somewhat unclear on the exact numbers) increase in crime around the location in St Henri being quite concentrated around the shelter, three blocks might be sufficient.
Ian
I wonder how much of that is that people three blocks aaway no longer feel compelled to be nimbys about a safe injection site.
Ian 20:24 on 2025-05-07 Permalink
Aw now you’re making me miss the Thunderdome circa 1987.
I actually went to Foufs a couple weeks ago to see the band that was the kids of one of my old friends. I hadn’t stepped foot in the place this century and now I was watching kids I have known since they were babies performing on stage. Crazy. They were pretty good, too.
Sigh.
MarcG 07:24 on 2025-05-08 Permalink
Fun pics, thanks for sharing Kate. Ian, your comment made me think of this new tune from aging punks Propagandhi. (lyrics)
Ian 07:56 on 2025-05-08 Permalink
Haha fair go
Bill 09:49 on 2025-05-08 Permalink
what’s the name of the band of the kids?
Ian 19:43 on 2025-05-10 Permalink
That’s a little too personal, but suffice to say I’m happy to report that the kids still have the goods.