Real estate agent in chief (aka housing minister) France-Elaine Duranceau blamed Verdun borough officials for the 26 signatures that blocked a residential development on Nuns Island – then she withdrew her tweet.
I may be mistaken here, but isn’t the law mandating referendums for certain bylaw and zoning changes a provincial matter? Can cities (or boroughs) change this unilaterally?
Quebec has just voted to cut ties with the monarchy. I believe that means Quebec is an independent republic now.
Lol let the Terror begin.
Maybe someone can explain why they think, based on how the National Assembly works, the Liberal Party of Quebec keeps allowing these resolutions. I know the unanimous resolutions are not binding on the government, but they are embarrassing.
They realized there are no transfer payments.
I’ll miss the crown on the top of the National Assembly.
Quebec MNAs really do like to pass unanimous meaningless motions, don’t they?
Ian, if we follow the previous pattern, we get rid of the king, in about ten years we’ll have an Emperor.
Oh no Kate, that would be a regression from the people who think that the governance of a country is exactly the same as portrayed in a video game, and that a democracy is more evolved than a monarchy.
Unanimous resolutions serve two purposes: to give the QC gov’t (regardless of which party is in power) another tool to attack the federal government, and to allow non-nationalist parties to assert their Quebecois bona fides in a basically meaningless way – without this kind of performative nonsense, I don’t know that the Liberal Party of Quebec ever wins another election…
Excellent with the Royals out of the way I can finally get a GP, right?
For sure, it was probably teh only thing keeping everyone from speaking French in public and in private, so now that we’re all assimilated all the other problems facing Quebec will naturally melt away like a bad dream.
Still bitter about Louis XV selling them out, I see.
Five arrests have been made in connection with a homicide last month. Attacked on April 4 near the old Forum, Glenn Griffith died on April 20, and has been numbered the 12th homicide of the year.
The ages of the accused are a bit older than we usually see in these kinds of things.
The death of Abisay Cruz, who met his end in a police action in March, is being likened to that of George Floyd, the American Black man who was killed by police in Minneapolis in May 2020. Floyd’s death sparked protests and riots all across the U.S. and beyond.
Frank Zampino keeps insisting he never knew, never saw and never owned a hard drive that was found on a search of his house, as his trial for fraud, conspiracy and breach of trust continues.
If Zampino’s getting legal advice that, since nobody can ever prove what another man saw or knew or can remember, he should just stick to denial all along the line, the upshot is that he’s virtually claiming that he walks through life in a state of catatonia.
The “Tremblay” defense to the rescue !
When you’re up for re-election choosing between crooked or incompetent is tough, but when trying to avoid conviction, incompetent is just fine.
The Bifteck on the Main has been in existence as a bar for 30 years but I don’t buy T’Cha Dunlevy’s assertion that its part of the Main was desolate and scary thirty years ago.
I don’t have much memory of that, but I do remember going to Waldman when it was huge and busy, as were a couple other places we went, some of which have downsized more or entirely. It’s certainly changed, but was it worse then?
He said it was desolate and scary when it became a bar for the first time in the mid-80s, so that part of the story is 40 years ago.
ha, desolate and scary! not quite. I was 18 and used to hang out on that strip very late, albeit at the dance clubs featuring bouncers, and sometimes Angels. After the bars closed there would be lineups at EuroDeli.
It was different but by no means worse. When Bifteck turned from being an old-worldy modest steakhouse into a cool hangout, there was still an eastern European vibe in the commercial side of the Main, but that finally died out when Charcuterie Hongroise and the Slovenia deli closed, a few years ago. The Portuguese influence was also prominent then, but it too has faded. But desolate? Never.
I haven’t been to Bifteck in about a year, so maybe they’ve raised their prices, but post-pandemic I really came to appreciate that it’s probably the only place in town where you can still get a pint of Boréale for $5.50 tax included.
Well, he said desolate and SOMETIMES scary, so everyplace is scary sometimes I suppose.
But it was definitely different then than now. Far fewer places to eat, with few if any open after midnight (was Eurodeli really open at 3:00AM? I don’t remember…) Only one cafe in those days (an un-interesting Van Houtte on St-Laurent just below Pine) and it wasn’t open late. The shops were mostly pretty dusty and old-school feeling, even then. The vibe, as Kate says, was mostly Eastern European and Portuguese during the day, and somewhat desolate at night with a few noisy exceptions. It wasn’t the kind of crowded sidewalks at midnight scene like we see now, at least not until the late 90s IIRC.
I was never cool enough for the Bifteck (although I went occasionally anyway). I think I’m the only person I know who actually ate a bifteck there, but hat was about 1988 I think, and by the look I got from the waiter (and the time it took to deliver the meal) I was probably the only person that week to order one.
My scene in those days was farther up the Main, at the Copa and east a bit to Else’s, with occasional pop-ins at places in between like Frappé, a dive at the top of some stairs that I forget the name of, Barfly now and then, and maybe one or two more.
Going way, way back (’87-89) there was the grim little Café du Poet on St-Laurent somewhere between Napoleon and Roy I think, where you could get a beer (in a bottle) for $1 (including tip) and the one sad little pool table was always available.
The only food I remember being available at closing time (3:00AM) was the pizza slice place next to the Copa, another one up at the corner of Rachel, and maybe Patati Patata. (Were they open that late? I don’t remember…)
I remember Biftek in the 80s and lived 3 doors down for a bit in the mid 90s and yeah even by the 90s even though that stretch of the Main was still a little skanky it was by no means desolate. Ti used to sit on my roof and watch the after hours fights in front of Euro Deli between the Gino’s coming out of the fancy joints toward Sherbrooke and the alt crowd coming south.
Euro Deli was open very late until the early 90’s, when it switched to more regular hours. The Main was the place to go for a post closing time bite on the way home, they were open 24 hours. Else’s opened in 1993, the dive at the top of the stairs was probably Miami although it could be Double Deuce or the Garage that you went to. Nobody went to the Van Houtte, Melies was just down from the Bifteck and Cafe Central is still going on Duluth just east of the Main. There used to be a decent cafe in the green building as well at the corner of Duluth. There were also a few holdouts from the Jewish era (Pecker Bros., Simcha’s, Boulangerie St. Laurent…)
Blork, I know that I served you a few times.
How long was Copacabana in its spot on St-Laurent at Bagg? It always seemed like a classic place. My heyday of partying on the Main was around 2006-2012 so we had only the remnants of the 80s and 90s bars. I’d go down to Copacabana to take a break from the party upstairs at Karova which is now a pinball bar. I’d go to Miami (later Montenegro) if I wanted an especially skeezy night out and occasionally to Saphir for a weird night. A couple times I got dragged up to Tokyo, usually by co-workers, but it wasn’t at all my crowd. A night on that stretch was never complete without peanut butter noodles but I was never able to eat them again after having once tried them sober.
dwgs, the café in the green building was called Laïka and was pretty good – nice music too. I noticed recently that the windows are just papered over now.
Right, I forgot that The Main was open 24 hours. I never went there late-night though because by the time I was stumbling out of the Copacabana (or where ever) I only had the stomach and budget left for a slice of pizza.
Laïca opened in the early-mid 90s I think, didn’t it? Maybe it was open before that but possibly under a different name; I’m not sure. I remember going to “spoken word” events there 1995ish, including a reading by Yann Martel before he was Yann Martel.
I loved the magazine store that was on the south side of that space (same level as Laïka). I think it was called the “Green Spot” or something like that. One night there were some people shooting a student film there, totally rogue, and they let me stay in the shot as “random guy looking at magazines.” I never found out what film it was.
I’m pretty sure the top-of-the-stairs place was Miami. I remember being in a line on the stairs one new year’s eve when someone at the top basically upended a bottle of something and arcked a stream of liquid all the way down to the doorway, and we turned our faces up all opened our gobs like chicks in a nest and got our mouthfuls. I have no idea what was in the bottle. Those were the days.
I only went to that Van Houtte a couple of times, like in late mornings, and only on the rare event of there being a table available in the window. The coffee wasn’t very good and there was no “scene” but if you just wanted a morning coffee in the sunshine that was the only option. I think I wasn’t cool enough in the late 80s to go to Melies, and Cafe Central seemed like you needed to show an expired Portuguese passport in order to be admitted.
dwgs, now I’m curious. Where were you serving? Copa? Else’s?
Bistro 4 was before Laika. Also a nice cafe.
Point vert. I was a regular, they had a really great magazine selection. Years later the owner worked in the same building as me downtown. When I was a smoker, he’d be out there too, we were friendly. I said after a few years: you look so familiar… “yah! you were always in my store!”
Miami had a line? Possible I guess. I feel like I might’ve seen lines to get in to bifteck in the late 90s. I could be wrong. But Miami was not a really a line-up place.
Nobody’s mentioned Bagel etc. A bit father up, sure, but after 3am was definitely a thing. I was one of the guys making those CC/Lox. It was a pretty fun place to work for a time.
Not sure when Barfly opened, it was Cleo’s then G-Sharp in the 90s, or the other way around.
Blork, similar: early 90s walking down the street, someone stuck their head out from Cleos or
Gsharp, said: do you want to be in a movie? I sat at the bar watching a blues band, they gave me whiskey (no prop drink), there were many takes. There was a few too many takes that I didn’t think to ask what the movie was called when I left.
The line at Miami was only because it was New Year’s Eve, and even then it was more like a long row slowly trudging up the stairs.
I stole the velvet rope from Miami one night because I was annoyed it was blocking up the sidewalk with nobody there. ’95 or so?
Copa was a bit cokey for my tastes, I mostly hung out at the Deuce but there were certainly some fun places that came and went. To add to the list, anyone remember Loonies?
Blork, I definitely served you at Else’s (we used to play softball together too, we were both friends of Dwight B.) but I also worked at Quasimodo, Balmoral, the Deuce, Miami, and BSL so…
Ian, Miami really wasn’t a velvet rope on the sidewalk place, you must be thinking of somewhere else.
Agreed on Point Vert, great spot, friendly staff.
GSharp immediately preceded Barfly, the current owner bought the biz from Gary, who died not long after.
I think Copa opened when the Deuce did, which would have been around 1991.
Fair enough, it was somewhere on St Larry near Prince Arthur, I just figured it was them. On another note, I was in Else’s on Monday afternoon, love that place.
The STM is testing fare‑paying by phone this summer with a focus group. If it works, it will be gradually rolled out.
Given that it already works in dozens of cities around the world (including Toronto and Ottawa), this test better be successful.
Yeah, but apply Montreal’s special sauce and all bets are off.
There will be corruption for sure but hopefully they can manage a simple Bluetooth handshake.
Small nitpick: the technology used is not Bluetooth. It’s a different wireless standard which, from memory, is Calypso or MiFare (or a mix of both?). The technology used is compatible with NFC (Near-Field Communication) which most phones are now outfitted with. NFC is the same technology that allows us to use tap-to-pay for credit/debit card payments. It is also why we can recharge an OPUS with the Chrono app from our phones.
Oh, I was just guessing. Thanks for the specs, that’s interesting to know.
I hope the option to just pay by credit/debit card will be implemented as well. It would make it so much easier for someone visiting to be able to jump on a bus without having to find a pharmacy or metro station to buy a card.
Nicholas 14:22 on 2025-05-28 Permalink
That was the case, but it seems it no longer is. Back in 2017 the Couillard government passed Bill 122, which allows municipalities to avoid referenda on any zoning change, or really any by-law, if they have a public participation policy that meets certain requirements. The policy requires a lot of openness and transparency and notice, but doesn’t require citizens to have a veto, just influence.
I have no idea if any municipality has adopted such a policy. And it does note the minister may “establish different rules on the basis of any relevant criterion or for any group of municipalities”, so it could be Montreal or the metro area has stronger requirements. But given the summary of Bill 122, it’s pretty clear the intent was to allow municipalities to avoid referenda if they have a more open process. It would be interesting to see if, eight years later, any have, and how it’s gone.
Nicholas 14:40 on 2025-05-28 Permalink
In reviewing further, Rosemere has a policy it adopted as the provincial rules were changing, but says in it, “The Town does not intend to circumvent the referendum approval process provided for
by the Act respecting land use planning and development.” So they are aware they had the option to get rid of the referendum process, but chose not to. There was also this op-ed about these changes that fall, right before the municipal elections.