Three young men have been arrested in the 2022 shooting death of Jayson Collin in Montreal North. Collin was, by all accounts, a good man involved in his community, with no criminal antecedents, so the motive for his homicide remains to be explained.
Updates from May, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Denis Coderre has accused Mayor Plante and her administration of stealing his credit for the creation of the Place des Montréalaises, the idea for which started during his mayoralty, in 2017.
Plante’s people say that the scope of the project was enlarged under Projet. Completing it took much longer than originally planned.
Ian
Yeah I can see why they’re falling over each other to take credit for the replacement of what was a useful tunnel with a concrete “pré” of sunken planters abutting a triangular microcopse.
Kate
People seemed to hate that tunnel, Ian. But I’ll have to go look at the Place myself to understand how it managed to cost $100 million.
I suspect mission creep, as indicated by “scope of the project was enlarged” above. I think people would’ve been happy with a modest landscaped area near the metro edicule, maybe with a piece of sculpture for focus. Seems to have become something a lot bigger.
MarcG
It looks the area between St-Antoine and city hall got a facelift as well, not sure if that work is included in the price. I guess the engineering involved in condemning the tunnel under the Ville Marie (I’m assuming this is what they did) and building a new overpass over a busy street would be pretty expensive.
Ian
That tunnel was super handy in winter, it’s pretty cold and windy around there. Toward the end there was even some effort to beautify it with murals. That said, scope creep on a project of this size and duration is practically a built-in feature.
Orr
Take a moment to get to know the Montreal women the park memorializes, like Harriet Brooks who worked with both Ernest Rutherford and Marie Curie.
Ian
I appreciate your passive aggressive scolding but let’s be real, libraries exist. Those of us who know the names of these women learned about them from reading about them. Do you really imagine that seeing these names on some concrete stairs will inspire people to find out more about them?
This isn’t a beautiful tribute inspiring future generations to learn more about historically important women, it’s an an overdesigned, pinkwashed boondoggle.
I bet 100 million dollars would have gone a long way to a sculpture garden with some statues and plaques.
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Kate
Groups that were expected to support the Fierté Montréal festival have withdrawn that support among charges of racism, misogyny, sexism and ableism. The festival is supposed to start on July 31 and run till August 10.
The community Radio-Canada calls 2ELGBTQQIA+ held a gathering Saturday in the Quartier des Spectacles to draw attention to the erosion of their rights around the world. Saturday is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia (IDAHOBIT).
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Kate
Clay Sandhu on CultMTL thinks Michelin doesn’t understand Montreal and what we’re good at – he’s annoyed that Quebec City got more accolades – but I think he pins the point here: “the hierarchy of praise seems to privilege a single, over-styled morsel of food (served on a rock, in a bowl of pebbles, on a slab of wood) over a genuine understanding of a city’s dining culture.”
In Le Soleil, the director of the Michelin Guide pomps out about how Quebec has to step up and work harder for its approval. I imagine Clay Sandhu would disagree.
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Kate
A regular reader suggests taking note that Bixi is arriving in Pierrefonds‑Roxboro this summer.
EmilyG
How nice! I live in Pierrefonds and hadn’t yet heard the news. I might go check it out this summer.
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Kate
24Hres – to be fair, another QMI platform – has a piece Saturday countering the recent Journal piece against bike paths. Is there any truth in the claim that too much roadspace is devoted to bikes? Andrea Lubeck says no: the numbers date back to 2018 so may be a little different now, but at that time, only 1.3% of the city’s roads had bike paths, rising to 1.5% in Ville‑Marie.
The number may be closer to 2% now, with the REV installed on St‑Denis and elsewhere.
Lubeck goes on to point out that if anything is clogging the streets for drivers, it’s drivers themselves, with the number of cars – and their size – growing every year.
Kevin
My one beef: bike lanes have a spillover impact on nearby streets without driveways where people need renovations or repairs. The city really needs to speed up the process for approving parking permits, so that plumbers etc. can show up and park their trucks
DeWolf
The Journal article uses a rhetorical technique that has become increasingly common: lie, distort and exaggerate to make your case, because you know it takes more effort to disprove your falsities than it does to make them up in the first place. It’s a cynical way of wearing people down into accepting misinformation.
Misinformation also has the appeal of being inherently more memorable than reality. “Valérie Plante has spent $800 million on bike paths!” is a bald-faced lie, but it’s a lot catchier than “Actually, Plante has spent $70 million on bike paths over eight years, and $700 million on road reconstruction that includes rebuilding underground infrastructure, redesigning streets, planting trees, installing street furniture…”
Similarly, “bike paths occupy HALF of many streets” is an outright lie, but “actually, bike paths make up only 2% of overall road surface, and even on St-Denis, two-thirds of the street is still dedicated to cars” has the benefit of being true but boring to anyone inclined towards outrage.
Al
Kevin
Upon reread, I note I left out a key word: “reserved”. The current timeline is about 10 business days for reserving a street parking space on a street that otherwise doesn’t require a vignette.
And while the initial upfront cost estimate can be several hundred dollars, that may be revised down to about $45 per day when the bill actually comes due.Joey
Wait, there are contractors who don’t just double-park/park in vignette zones/park in alleys/park on sidewalks? Who *pay* to park??!? Also, I’m not sure I follow the link to bike lanes – the presence of bike lanes makes it harder for contractors to park on adjacent streets?
Ian
I got to wondering, seeing it everywhere, and yeah, if you buy a contractor’s hi-vis vest and hang it over the doorframe of your vehicle then shut the door in such a way as to have said vest be be visible from the outside, you don’t get tickets any more. Best 25 bucks I ever spent.
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Kate
This reads like a spoof about stingy government: Quebec only covers one hearing aid for many people with hearing loss. You can get two if you’re a student or are generating profit for somebody, but the retired and unemployed only get one.
Kevin
I’ve been told the prices in Quebec are also much higher than elsewhere. Last year a friend returned what he’d bought here, then travelled to Ontario to pick up a pair for about half the cost.
Kate
They’re more expensive because they have to operate in French, Kev.
MarcG
Trilingual hearing aids are even more expensive and use more batteries
Kevin
Kate
:pdwgs
A good time to corner the market in Babel Fish. https://youtu.be/iuumnjJWFO4?t=127
Ian
It may be closer than we think.
The real-time link in this article is fascinating by itself but also means we are even closer to universal translation… not far off from directly interfacing language center input/ output.https://www.404media.co/this-device-translates-thoughts-into-real-time-speech/
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Kate
Looks like being a weekend mouvementé already, with a nonfatal shooting in eastern Ville‑Marie, a stabbing
in the villagealso in Ville‑Marie, and a car torched in Anjou.thomas
The stabbing did not happen in the village, rather in Quartier des Spectacles around the corner from the Cactus site.
Kate
Rue Berger is not in the village? I guess not. Although I don’t quite think of the area east of St‑Laurent as the QdesS either. The location would be close to Foufounes. Thanks. Editing…
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Kate
Place des Montréalaises was inaugurated Friday by Mayor Plante. The space adjoins Champ‑de‑Mars metro station.
Montreal marks 382 years Saturday as a European‑style settlement on this island, but let’s not forget that it was inhabited at various points by other cultures long before 1642.
To mark the anniversary, the city accorded the Order of Montreal to 17 worthies.
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