On noodling around the web (don’t call it doomscrolling) I happened on the site of Navette Nature which offers free excursions to various spots on and off the island – for example, you can get from Berri bus station to Cap St‑Jacques and back on weekend days in June and half of July, and to many places further afield.
While I’m thinking about this, river shuttles are back.
A solidarity group in Ahuntsic has won a temporary reprieve from eviction: it, and a dozen other groups, had been ordered to leave an old school building by the CSSDM, but Superior Court has allowed them to stay – for now.
Given the wretched state of our older school buildings, isn’t it possible this building would be judged uninhabitable anyway?
The sun was orange on Tuesday evening, and I also noticed that the moon, in its first quarter, was a startling reddish orange. It’s blamed on the smoke from wildfires on the prairies.
Apparently the air quality was fine, though, I wonder how that works.
The smoke may be high enough not to be affecting ground‑level air quality. We’re a long way from the prairies.
I guess gravity is doing its thing, the air quality is trash this morning.
I had read that wildfire smoke from the prairies was travelling in the jetstream all the way across the Atlantic.
There are, of course, different strata in the atmosphere.
Marc Garneau, first Canadian astronaut and later a cabinet minister, has died. He was 76.
I don’t mean to keep posting gofundmes, but a small espresso bar in Old Montreal was hit with a firebomb recently, presumably in error for an adjoining business which also got hit. The Micro Espresso on St‑Pierre was badly damaged and is trying to amass funds so it can reopen in time for this summer tourism season. Gofundme is here.
It’s related to the extortion ring stories you shared below – A5 Hospitality (Flyjin etc.) seems to have gotten into trouble with some mafia types and their businesses and homes are being targeted. Micro Espresso had the bad luck to be located next to an A5 restaurant and the idiot teenagers who set the place on fire probably assumed they were under the same ownership.
It’s a shame because that’s a nice little café.
I read somewhere that these arson jobs are operating on a gig basis, like Uber for Arson. (Uber Burns?) Basically the extortionist pays one of their thugs a bunch of money to do the job, then the thug gigs it out to a teenager for a few hundred bucks. That is vile and disturbing on so many levels.
@Blork that was Pat Lagace’s article in La Presse the other day – this is one of the beats he’s still really solid on (I’d say a full 1/3 of his writing, which has gotten rare now that he’s a radio guy, is of the ‘old many yells at clouds’ variety, i.e., his piece last month complaining about having to sit through an opening act before seeing Martha Wainwright perform).
Right you are Joey. And yeah, that rant about opening acts… although I confess I agree with some of it but only because I’m not 25 years old anymore.
To be fair, he did mention a few times that he’s old(er) and not typically a show-goer. But I do recall that even in my youth I was sometimes annoyed by how long the opening acts went on and how late before the main act showed up. In my case this was only an issue when it was a standing-room only show, not when I had a seat.
The last REALLY BIG show I went to was a million years ago when I was in my late 20s. It was a mega-show at the Big Owe, and we had floor tickets (standing). The first act opened late, sounded bad (acoustics) and went on forever. Then a long break and the second act came out, which sounded only slightly better (but still bad). Then another long break. By the time the main act started up we had been standing on a concrete floor for something like four hours and my back was absolutely killing me. By the time the show was over I was so stiff and locked up I could barely walk.
But that’s just me. I didn’t write an article about it.
Patrick Lagacé on the Uberisation de l’extorsion.
I think he’s been watching too much Westworld lol
https://westworld.fandom.com/wiki/RICO
On the subject of opening acts I know that at foufs at least they fine them if they go over time!
In the last (and probably now) you could call the venue for set times. Now you can go to setlist dot fm, where set times are frequently posted for recent shows.
Every main act was once an opening act, so why the hate?
No hate, I was actually at Foufs to see the opening act 😀
The STM is hoping to limit the impact of strikes planned next week by their maintenance union. There’s an Info‑Strike page on the STM site.
Police are moving against an extortion ring that has targeted restaurants over the last few months.
Later. 13 arrests were reported.
Radio-Canada reports that shots were fired at an apartment building on Drummond near Sherbrooke overnight. TVA reports that shots were fired at an apartment building on Claremont near Sherbrooke overnight. Both place the incident in Ville‑Marie, but the Claremont location would be just inside Westmount.
The west side of Claremont is on the Montreal side of the border with Westmount – most of the apartment buildings on that block are on the west side, so the odds are that the building is just outside Westmount. Regardless, it certainly isn’t in Ville-Marie, as the borough west of Westmount is CDN-NDG…
Anybody know which building was targeted?
They rarely specify specific addresses in news reports. Sometimes there’s a photo that gives it away, but not this time.
Unless a reader of the blog was a witness and tells us, we won’t know.
(I suspect there was one incident, and one of these reports is in error, but which one?)
I walked past both intersections this morning, didn’t notice anything on Claremont but there was a squad car set up on Drummond that was joined by another one that came in at speed with lights flashing. I also saw a couple of cops on foot walking on Sherbrooke and communicating on the radio.
Kate, I was just driving to McGill and usually park around Drummond. The police had cordoned off a large section of Drummond, between Sherbrooke and Dr. Penfield, and were conducting a search for what I imagine to be any shell casings. I decided to check the blog for any word on what may have happened, and, voilà.
Live reports! I love it.
Joey: thanks for the border info. Google Maps made it look like both sides of Claremont below Sherbrooke were inside Westmount.
I know the building that got shot at, it’s one of the few holdovers from the don’t live in NDG south of Sherbrooke rule. It’s nothign near like what it was in the early 90s (crack dealers used to work out of there) but it’s still got the juice, apparently.
Kate, you’re actually partially right. The street and both sidewalks are in Westmount, but the buildings, from the alley just south of Sherbrooke all the way through the train tracks to the hospital, are in NDG. This means street parking and snow clearing are Westmount. In fact, water and electricity are also serviced by Westmount, but billed by Montreal and Hydro Quebec, respectively. There are also some other areas outside Westmount that are serviced by Westmount for electricity or water, such as Greene Avenue near Lionel Groulx metro.
There’s a simialr weirdness on Hutchison as it borders the Plateau and Outremont between St Joseph and Van Horne. Below St Joe both sides are Plateau. Above, though, the two came to an agreement that both sides of the street and sidewalks would be treated as Plateau for tickets, parking, street cleaning, garbage, recycling, and snow removal. I don’t knwo if they have an entente about street or sidewalk repairs though.
Yeah, Claremont is more like that stretch of MacDonald that is split between Montreal and Cote-St-Luc – where they have not harmonized parking stickers, etc.
MarcG 06:23 on 2025-06-05 Permalink
That’s a very cool program, thanks Kate. Also useful simply as a list of places for day trips on your own if you have access to a car.
EmilyG 13:48 on 2025-06-05 Permalink
I only live one bus ride away from Cap St-Jacques, so it’s easier for me to just get the 68 bus there and back. But the Navette Nature goes to some other places off-island, so I might look into that.