La Presse has a list of notable microbreweries divided up by neighbourhood – just in time for the impending heat wave.
Updates from June, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
Luc Rabouin launched his first ad campaign for the city mayoralty Wednesday.
For starters, Rabouin promises to focus on buses, not bikes.
DeWolf
I wouldn’t expect Rabouin to neglect bike infrastructure, but he’s absolutely right that improving bus service should be a priority. In fact that’s been one of the biggest and most mysterious failures of the Plante administration: even before the pandemic and the CAQ’s financial mismanagement, they improved metro service but neglected the buses.
It will be interesting to see how Martinez responds to this, because her campaign up to this point has been entirely negative: bashing everything Projet has done while offering no real alternatives.
Also, just watch all the anti-bike people suddenly turn into anti-bus people when it becomes clear that improving bus service means adding more reserved lanes to major streets. We already got a taste of that with Queen Mary and St-Urbain.
Ian
Reserved lanes are great – seriously, we know that most of the service disruption on bus routes is simply dealing with traffic.
That said, focusing on getting the buses back to a regular schedule would be better. Kind of a letdown to see him already deflecting blame upwards with “While he said he would also like to increase bus service, Rabouin said that would require the support of other levels of government.”
What’s the point of bus lanes if we can’t even return to pre-covid service? The Parc “express” bus only comes every 15 minutes, if that. And that’s WITH a bus lane.
CE
I’ve been pretty happy with the Plante administration but my biggest disappointment has been around public transit, especially the buses. I was more or less satisfied with the service pre-Covid but it has been atrocious ever since. I’ve been finding that there are more and more times where it’s faster to walk than to take a bus. A lived at Papineau near Sherbrooke and there were times I would get off the Metro and it would be 20 minutes until the next 24 would come. In the past, there would have been few times where you’d have to wait more than 7 or 8 minutes. I felt like I was living in a small city with buses that come every 30 minutes again!
James
Smart move for Projet to not campaign principally on a pro-bike platform. It would be too easy for Ensemble to continue their anti-bike messaging.
By putting the emphasis on buses, it forces Ensemble to decide if they want to be the anti-bus party as well as anti-bike.Orr
FYI on Parc avenue there are 16 buses northbound (80 + 480) between 4 and 6 pm. during rush hour.
Outside of rush hour tho it would be nice to return the 80 to a frequent-service bus route.CE
That’s one bus more or less every 13 minutes. In the past, the schedule at stops during rush hour on the 80 used to not show the times the bus would arrive during rush hours because they came so often. Every 13 minutes during rush hour is definitely not frequent service. That shouldn’t even be considered frequent service during off-peak times.
-
Kate
Two class action suits have been filed by residents in Milton Parc and near the old Hôtel‑Dieu, citing vandalism and personal injury caused by the city having parachuted services for the homeless into their neighbourhoods.
Interestingly, the Centre for Research‑Action on Race Relations is taking the part of the residents.
This follows the news earlier Wednesday about private security to patrol areas where the homeless are known to hang out, and the renewed ban on loitering in the metro. I sense that the zeitgeist is getting a little adjustment.
-
Kate
The toddler reported missing on the weekend has been found alive in Ontario.
Taylor C. Noakes
It’s so rare to get good news. Thank god she’s alright. I’m only guessing but I think the mother was having some kind of psychotic break, posting that unusual message to tik tok. We need to invest so much more money in mental health assistance.
MarcG
Is it possible she survived 3 days outside without food and water? I wonder if more will be revealed.
Chris
Why was there no amber alert?
If a kid 1000 km away is missing, my cell phone scares the hell out of me at 03:00, but if a kid in my city is missing, nothing?!
CE
I feel like there hasn’t been an Amber Alert in quite a long time.
MarcG
The news articles that Kate linked to on Monday explained why there was no alert.
MarcG
I guess the first criterion wasn’t met?
- The police have reason to believe that the missing child (someone under 18 years of age) has been abducted;
- The police have reason to believe that the physical safety or the life of the child is in serious danger;
- The police have information that may help locate the child, the suspect and/or the suspect’s vehicle.
Ian
It’s almost always a custody abduction but yeah, good news for sure 🙂
walkerp
What a relief! That poor little kid, abandoned by her mother and just walking alone along the highway. That is going to have an impact on her life but she seems otherwise unscathed physically.
-
Kate
The STM is renewing its ban on loitering in the metro starting Wednesday and running till the end of April next year.
Between this and recent news that the city has engaged a private security firm to patrol the homeless, it feels like there’s a tendency to get more stern with the situation.
-
Kate
The city is ponying up $100K to lure refugees from Trump’s America to our universities.
Blork
$100k? That doesn’t even sound like lunch money.
DeWolf
It’s a marketing stunt. The article specifies that half of it will go to a campaign meant to bring foreign investment etc to Montreal (so not specifically related to universities), and the other half will go to five research grants.
I’m not sure anyone is going to move to Montreal for a $10k grant.
Tim S.
I imagine it’s also a nudge to other levels of government. Getting a headline on the issue might be worth the money all by itself.
-
Kate
The body of the young man who drowned off Verdun beach earlier this month has been fished out of the river off Verchères. We had some discussion about the hazards of the river and the futility or otherwise of putting up signs, at the time.
MarcG
At the very least his family and friends get some closure. I imagine not knowing for sure would really eat away at you.
walkerp
I hope we find out what actually happened. Was it simply a super powerful current or did he have some kind of sickness or was in a state that led to him falling and not being able to get out?
MarcG
It is weird how skimpy the details are – was he there all by himself?
Kate
MarcG, the original news items reported people having been nearby, although not as if anyone was accompanying him. La Presse’s piece says around a hundred people were in the area.
I imagine anyone who was close to the incident will have been questioned, but it may be impossible for anyone to be certain what kind of mishap he had in the water. And it may be too late for an autopsy to make it clear.
MarcG
Yeah the beach was full of people for sure. My thinking is that people generally do sporty things in the water with friends and they would have some more info – we don’t even know the activity he was doing or whether or not he was past the buoys. Maybe he went off to SUP by himself and nobody noticed until they heard him screaming.
MarcG
Here’s a helpful video about how drowning doesn’t look or sound like it does in the movies.
-
Kate
Trudeau airport is starting a major project to reorganize its access roads and enlarge its parking.
Billions of dollars! Wasn’t the REM supposed to make airport access easier and negate the need for more access for vehicles?
walkerp
I don’t know about the cost but the REM isn’t done yet and I suspect it will significantly improve things and even with that, the access roads and parking also need to be improved.
Blork
Didn’t they just do all that? Wasn’t access a mess for several years up to about two years ago because they were re-doing all the access roads?
Although you wouldn’t know it. Even after that round of work I found that driving from the 20 to the terminal (and back out again) was like being dropped into some strange world where navigation was some kind of high-stakes immersive VR game with artificial rules and barriers all over the place.
DeWolf
It’s not just the roads. The airport is expanding the terminal, adding a new jetty and demolishing the existing garage opposite the main entrance. The current drop-off and pick-up area will be occupied by the new terminal expansion, so road access will be shifted about 100 metres away from where it currently is.
https://www.admtl.com/en-CA/corporate/about-us/future-projects
Nicholas
The previous access road project was mainly that direct connection to/from the 20. But the number of cars going onto the pickup/dropoff ramps is just too high for the number of lanes, which was designed decades ago for way fewer passengers, so you have constant backups. I would have hoped that the REM would cause enough people to skip driving in, but people think otherwise. But due to induced demand, them building more road capacity will, in fact, cause fewer people to take the REM, because driving will be easier.
And to be fair, the biggest transit use to the airport is always employees (second being business people going to downtown), and employees wouldn’t be driving to the terminal ramps, but to employee parking. Most people flying with bags just do not want to navigate transfers, especially when more than half the metro is inaccessible. (I take transit to the airport even when work has paid, and have even biked, so it’s not me.)
And DeWolf is right, it’s way more than the roads. I would guess car stuff is nine figures, but the expanded island jetty will be ten.
DeWolf
The construction will probably help the REM in the short term. Yesterday I dropped my in-laws off at the airport and it took an hour to get there because of traffic. (And nearly an hour to get back into town.) If the REM was operating, they would have been happy to take it to some in-town station where I could pick them up. Nobody likes sitting in traffic.
-
Kate
There were public toilets at Snowdon metro for a couple of years as a pilot project, but the STM is shutting them down and won’t be expanding the experiment because it was too hard to keep them clean enough to be safe.
Philippe Teisceira‑Lessard asks why, if Paris, London, New York and Toronto can maintain public toilets in some of their subway stations, it seems Montreal can’t, especially as we’re short of public facilities in general.
EmilyG
I currently live in the suburbs, and it takes a little while for me to get into town and back. Add to that the fact that I have a few health conditions, and it means that I usually need to find washrooms when I’m in town. It’s not always easy to find them. It leads to situations like buying something at a restaurant to use the washroom, or trying not to drink too much water even on hot days.
Montreal isn’t a good city for public washrooms.Jane
Montreal is full of people (and I don’t mean you) who don’t deserve nice things. Our “Be ungovernable, appease and enable bad acting!” left wing makes sure of that. It’s like “Leave it like you found it if not better” is a morally repugnant obstacle that no one should have to meet.
Kate
I wasn’t aware that socialists have bad bathroom habits, Jane.
JP
At our work building, we’ve had codes placed on all of the washrooms in the last couple of years. We’ve been told not to share the codes. When couriers and delivery people ask for the code, I don’t give it to them but I do open the door for them. I feel bad, but we have had issues in the past with the state of the washrooms. When I’m downtown I usually try to find a washroom at PVM or the mall….
MarcG
Jane can you link to your full dissertation “Les Maudites Anarchistes are the reason Montreal doesn’t have public washrooms”? I’d like to read the whole thing.
Nicholas
This is just a really simple budget priority. It would cost some money to do, funds are limited, everything is a tradeoff and all the people who could pay for it have chosen not to make it a priority over spending elsewhere or lower taxes. And this is true with public bathrooms in general: transit doesn’t see it as their problem, parks theirs, streets theirs, etc. I was saying the other day, with respect to AC on the metro, that people say, “It’s good enough, I didn’t have that in my day and I survived.” Same with bathrooms. And saying, “Well it would be hard and that money could be better spent elsewhere” is exactly my point: that’s what the majority of the population thinks, and that’s why we don’t have public bathrooms in the metro, or AC, or platform screen doors, etc. If we forced the STM to do it they would; that’s what Ontario did to the TTC for elevators, and next year their whole system will have them. But we don’t, we don’t give them the money to, so they don’t. “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”
saintlaurent
If you’re interested in a more detailed look at this issue, the May 2 edition of the NPR Planet Money podcast examined this issue in-depth. tl;dr: It really comes down to money. Cities have decided that there are more important issues for them to spend money on, when you consider the one-time costs of building public toilets (see San Francisco’s famous Noe Valley $1.7M public toilet), and then the ongoing annual costs of maintaining them and keeping them clean and in good working order.
Jane’s observation isn’t entirely off-point. All it takes is for one person to blow up (figuratively speaking) or vandalize a public toilet, and if ten other people try to use it before the maintenance staff even realize there’s a problem, then there’s probably between seven and nine of them who will quickly reach the conclusion that why are we even spending money on these public toilets if the city can’t even keep them usable.?
Ian
I am pretty sure any of us that have kids have had the experience of “I GOTTA GO NOW” and yo uhave to think fast. Even for myself, I have had instants where I just really needed a bathroom but was forced to buy something before they would give the key. Have I seen public bathrooms that look like a shit bomb went off? Yes. Do I think the public needs access to bathrooms? Yes.
Personally, if I see a sign on a bar, restaurant, or cafe that says “toilettes pour clients seulement” I take my business elsewhere.
Screw all of you who don’t have the basic human decency to see that.
su
Surely our private sector investors and developers could finance some well maintained WCs if given tax benefits.
Kevin
You don’t need Jane to write a manifesto, you just need to visit a place where random members of the public/elders keep people in line.
Have you ever seen a senior citizen yelling at random youth to pick up their shit in a park, and the youth actually doing it? That’s the kinda vibe you need to make public toilets happen.MtlWeb
As someone with ulcerative colitis x 35 yrs, along with 4 abdominal surgeries related to the disease, I can never be more than 5 min from an accessible washroom or else…..Montreal may not be as bad as NY but decent bathrooms are often difficult to find. Read a great book by Canadian Lezlie Lowe (No Place to Go) that details how each major city in NA ranks in regards to access/supplies.
Sad, as at one point, everyone requires access at some point in their life.
-
Kate
The city has hired a private security firm to manage the manifestations of homelessness in town. Some groups that look after the homeless are not happy.
seb
Disgraceful.
thomas
Not only about homelessness. In the area around Beaudry Metro and Place du Village, the security is there to discourage drug dealing.
Kate
The two phenomena are connected, though.
thomas
Sure, and connected to businesses closing in the village (Couche-Tard being the latest example).
Reply