The lighthouse pier in Lachine has been relooked and named Quai 34 because it’s effectively an extension of 34th Avenue.
Updates from July, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The city is responding to U.S. tariff menaces by reducing its contracts with U.S. firms. In 2024 only 1% of its business was done with the U.S., mostly software.
Joey
Many (all?) of the contracts for US products, like software, would already be with Quebec-based resellers.
Kate
True, and there certainly aren’t many Canada- or Quebec‑based alternatives for basics like word processing and spreadsheet programs.
Idea for a satire: everyone at city hall is ordered to only use software developed in Quebec, with the result that the only thing anyone can do all day is play video games…
Ian
Corel is still around, now named Alludo. Not Quebec but at least Canadian.
dhomas
There are alternatives that are open-source, European, or both. Corel/Alludo’s WordPerfect Office could replace MS Office, but realistically if people are considering alternatives to Microsoft Office, they’ll look to open-source solutions like LibreOffice. A lot of other products are available as open-source. For example, my company uses Odoo as our CRM. We also use OVH, a French company with datacentres in Quebec, for cloud computing.
There are pros and cons to switching away from the giant American software companies. The one big pro for them is that onboarding is usually very easy and relatively cheap, at first. There are many cons, though:
-Lock-in: not only do you need all your users to be on the same software, but integration with other software is usually dependent on other products from the same vendor (think synchronizing your Teams meetings with your Outlook)
- Cost overruns: it’s very easy to add capacity, but it’s equally easy to explode your costs with that added capacity
- Subscription cost increases: the vendor can decide that they change the cost of their products as they see fit (a recent example would be what Broadcom is doing to VMWare customers)
- Data ownership and privacy: your data is often hosted on the vendor’s machines. This raises concerns for data ownership and especially privacy. The US administration could potentially force those vendors to give access to those machines and your data.
The main con for the non-American and/or open-source alternatives is that there is a significant initial cost to switch. This ranges from IT infrastructure projects, to user training on the new solutions and so on.
The are many pros:
- Total Cost of Ownership: TCO is lower, if not at first, a few years of savings after the initial project will recoup your initial spend.
- Customization: since you “own” the solution, you can tailor it to your needs. A good use case in the Quebec market would be to create French translations for open-source software.
- Generally stable costs: there is no change in licensing costs when you are not paying for licenses in the case of open-source software.
- Data Ownership and Privacy: pretty much the reverse of the private companies’ stance,
Anywho, I could talk about this forever, but I see a wall of text already, so I’ll leave it at that for now. 🙂
Kate
If nothing else, I know that once you’ve trained some people on how to use the computer for basic tasks for their admin jobs, that’s pretty much it. Coming into an office and telling people that they’re now going to be using Libre Office instead of Word and Excel, and asking them to change a few habits, could be pain and chaos and errors for months.
dhomas
100%. The “enablement” training can sometimes be most of the work. There are examples of this being attempted (and failing) in the past. For example in Munich, they switched away from Microsoft Windows in the early 2000’s and moved back to Windows in 2017: https://www.theregister.com/2017/11/24/munich_will_spend_about_50_million_euros_on_windows_migration/.
Now, there is another push for moving away from Microsoft (again in Germany):
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250613-we-re-done-with-teams-german-state-hits-uninstall-on-microsoftI get the impression we hear more about the big moves BACK to Microsoft because they kinda push it to be part of the news cycle. When companies are successful in moving to open-source, there is no marketing team that will blow the horn for this kind of project. Industry insiders will know, but (often non-technical) executives will read the Munich headline and figure “open-source doesn’t work”.
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Kate
Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, the city’s most massive cemetery, has announced a new online mapping tool, but this isn’t quite as new as they’re claiming. It used to be possible to enter names and find grave numbers and get a PDF list of who else was buried there, but that system was discontinued awhile back. It often provided useful data for doing genealogy. But the current tool’s better than nothing, although I hope they’ll restore the option to download a list.
As a footnote, I don’t believe Mount Royal cemetery has anything comparable, although the Repos St‑François‑d’Assise does. I’ve never researched in the Jewish cemeteries so I don’t know whether they put any archival data online.
Orr
I tried it with famous Montrealer Thomas D’Arcy McGee and it extremely didn’t work. From the english language side of their website the link didn’t exist and on the french side it worked “somewhat” but the map was just all-black. I’ll try again in a few days to see if it eventually they get the bugs fixed.
Fun fact about D’Arcy McGee: some Lintel stones from D’Arcy McGee’s house are displayed in the rear of the lobby of the Engineering and Fine Arts Complex.Orr
My bad, I forgot the first rule of “if a website isn’t working did I try it using Chrome?” and it works fine.
MarcG
For some reason WebGL only works for me in Chromium-based browsers as well. Research tells me it should work in Firefox but in practice it doesn’t.
dhomas
Very odd. It worked for me in both my main browser, Firefox, and in Chrome. I could find D’Arcy McGee in both.
Kate
Good testing.
I do wish the English side of the site wouldn’t label this feature “Search for a Loved One”. At least in French it’s more straightforward: “Recherche de défunts.”
I also found McGee.
dhomas
I didn’t even see an option for English. It’s not in the “Hamburger” menu at the top right; it’s waaaaay at the bottom of the page. It does indeed say “Search for a Loved One” in English. I didn’t love D’Arcy McGee, but I found him anyway! ;p
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Kate
The city wants to get a handle on the chaos of delivery vehicles, which this piece deems currently to be a Far West.
Blork
I think they mean a “wild west.”
jeather
“Quant aux livraisons de biens de type Amazon, Montréal veut multiplier la présence de « points de dépôt », comme des comptoirs de collecte dans les commerces ou des casiers à colis.”
There was a really nice one near me but it closed — I never understood how it was financially sustainable. Canada Post dropped off there, which was convenient — I occasionally sent Amazon packages there but for some reason it would always take several days longer that way.
Kate
Blork, yes, in English we would say “Wild West” but in French it’s deeply implanted that the expression is Far West. It even has a page on the French Wikipedia where it says, somewhat inaccurately, that it’s “une expression anglaise” which I don’t think it ever was.
I mean, the words are English but it isn’t a natural term in English, not in the sense of meaning the cowboy days of the American West.
There are some interesting links in the Wikipédia for “Far West” – two American westerns (1928 and 1942) which were retitled “Far West” for French distribution, and two natively French productions using the phrase as a title. No movie made in English was ever originally titled “Far West”.
John B
Far West was an outdoor clothing brand based in Vernon, BC, that was big in Goretex coats in the 90s and early 2000s, but went bankrupt and the brand was bought by Mark’s.
Robert H
The term “far west” as it’s used en français is forever fixed in my mind with a certain 90s classic by franco-rap god MC Solaar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=1R2etg__x1Y
ottawaowl
Fixed in my mind from 1963: Hold-up au Far West. Love the cowboy! Ce court métrage canadien d’animation emprunte avec humour les symboles classiques des westerns américains. https://www.nfb.ca/film/hold_up_au_far_west/
Orr
In Quebec the far west is the Abitibi.
It even has gold prospectors.
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Kate
24heures says that St‑Denis in the Plateau is becoming a hot spot for friperies, so that the street is “en train de renaitre de ses cendres.”
I know the area was hit hard by the Covid downturn and urban churn, but I would not quite have said ashes. Also, while second‑hand clothing is a respectable trade, and it’s good that clothes are being repurposed rather than trashed, it’s rather more a St‑Hubert Plaza kind of business. That section of St‑Denis used to almost have a Laurier West vibe, but not so much any more.
DeWolf
These are trendy vintage friperies with a curated selection of clothes, not Renaissance or Salvation Army type shops. If you go to Saint-Denis on the weekend these days it’s a real scene. It’s basically the biggest fashion destination for teenagers and 20-somethings now.
Kate
Some people can make the most of Renaissance, Salvation Army and Village des Valeurs. I’ve known a couple of women who could walk out of those places with fabulous finds in perfect condition. Somehow when I go in, I only see worn‑out rubbish. It’s a talent.
jeather
Many of those people who are good at it then go on and sell the Renaissance etc items in their trendy vintage friperies, to bring this all full circle.
DeWolf
Yes, exactly! A lot of the stuff at the Saint-Denis places was probably found at Renaissance for a few dollars and is now being resold for ten times that (to help pay for the weekend DJ sets).
Ian
Rents and locations aside, the difference between used and vintage or even better, antque, is a picker with a good eye.
It’s like anything used, yeah, you can go to the flea markets and yard sales and junk shops and bin sales and auctions and scour online shops for deals … or just walk over to the record store.
I remember when Mont Royal was just strings of junk shops where the frips re now, and the slightly higehr priced “vintage” shops were on St Denis. The rents are way to high for that kind of arrangement anymore.
Robert H
I remember those times decades ago when Saint-Denis did indeed have that Laurier Ouest vibe. It could still return, as the street has been on the come-up post-covid. As things are going, it could be on the way to Queen Street West, version Montréal. It’s fascinating but baffling how urban locales cycle in and out of fashion shifting from the-place-to-be to the-place-nobody-goes-anymore, and back again! If I understood the process, I could make some bank in real estate investment. Could Sherbrooke Street downtown be next up?
What’s even better than knowing where it’s at is knowing how to get it cheap. When I lived in Boston, one of my roommates had a friend who knew how to track down pricey designer-label clothing in mint condition. This fellow just had a knack like some kind of sartorial bloodhound on the prowl. He would give me tips about the best spots to find the best stuff, and he was nice enough to pass a few items on to me gratis, that I still wear today. Unfortunately, when I left Boston, I left all that insider knowledge behind and I’ve yet to replace it with le savoir-faire Montréalais.
Kate
I miss Arthur Quentin, Giraffe and Kaliyana on that stretch of St‑Denis. It was interesting in those days because the classy places were not necessarily overly expensive. I still have some kitchen utensils from Arthur Quentin as well as wooden spoons from Giraffe, which had all kinds of things from different parts of Africa. I wish I could source spoons like that now, but I don’t even know which country they came from.
There was a time when the fries place on the corner of Duluth (the Bien Bon) was flourishing at the same time as the earliest version of Toqué a half block away. It was a great mix.
Ian
It all went to hell after Rapido renovated haha
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