More than 150 firefighters have been working all night to put out a fire on Ste‑Catherine at Towers. Nobody names the business at street level, but it seems to be Hot Star Large Fried Chicken (where the Rotisserie Italienne was located for many years). People were living upstairs and they all got out.
Radio-Canada says the wooden building dates from around 1900 and the cause of the fire is not yet known.
Mpox is back in the news here.
Fireworks are being let off from Verdun beach at all hours, and people living across on Nuns Island are fed up.
Transition Montreal has begun outlining platform ideas and naming candidates for November.
Nice to see someone thinking about ways the city can fight inequality
Le Devoir talked to three residents of homeless camps in and around Montreal about how they get by.
The proportion of under‑age murder suspects has grown so quickly here that the Crown has struck a special team to focus on the trend.
They need a team? Sentencing for minors is much much more lenient than once they turn 18. Gangs / kids know this. Young kids in gangs are eager to rise through the ranks, one way to do this is to serve some time to earn respect. So young kids pull the trigger in gang endorsed killings, get sent away for a few short years and come out as legit bad guys. It’s like finishing school.
As the great Dexter Holland said, among other missives on this subject, “If you’re under 18, you won’t be doing any time.”
Who says Canada is light on crime? This guy just got 6 years for illegal sea cucumber fishing.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/scott-steer-sentenced-illegal-fishing-1.7596672
The article notes that the guy faced “eight charges, including fishing in a closed area without a licence, selling more than $1 million worth of illegally harvested sea cucumbers and breaching an earlier order where he was forbidden from possessing fishing vessels.” He wasn’t just doing a little fishing without a permit.
Laval’s Leylah Fernandez has won her fourth career tennis title in Washington, D.C.
Shots were heard late Sunday on the Jacques‑Cartier pier in the Old Port, but although police found shells, no shooting victims have turned up.
I wish they would have specified the time…wondering if it happened after the fireworks..
The Gazette article specifies that it happened afterwards around 11pm
A man was found lying dead early Sunday on Lacordaire near Jarry. At midday Sunday he’s still unidentified and not yet given a homicide number.
Update: This has been numbered homicide #23 of the year.
CityNews talked to bar owner Sergio Da Silva and other figures in the city’s nightlife about their fear of the new noise fines. The organization MTL 24/24 also speaks to La Presse.
It’s the doldrums of news, the middle weekend of the construction holiday.
Godin references the anniversary of Le Monstre with a joke about SAAQclic, Côté (en rappel) on franglais, on the Quebec deficit and on the new container refund rules.
Trump, of course, is never far from the artist’s pen (or pixels): Godin on Canada vs. Trump, Côté on Trump’s dream. Godin ends the week with a magisterial portrait of the emperor’s new clothes and Chapleau nods to Stephen Colbert and the plan to rename the Kennedy Center opera house for Melania Trump.*
*Saparmurat Niyazov liked to name things after himself and his family members all over Turkmenistan. An excellent exemplar for Trump.
Every year, I forget just how quiet it can be during the construction holiday. There are still lots of festivals and events, and downtown is still busy with tourists, but it’s like half the road traffic evaporates and nowhere is quite as crowded as you’d expect. It’s like our own little version of Paris in August.
Even the pedestrianized part of de Castelnau, which is often quite lively on the weekend, was nearly empty on Saturday. It might be the smoky haze keeping people indoors, but I think it’s mostly that so many have fled for the construction holiday.
I think something like a third of the province is on vacation, and the rest know their favourite spots are likely to be closed
Went to the Canadian Vocal Arts Institute/L’Institut canadien d’art vocal’s annual summer voice academy’s opera concert for the Festival d’art vocal de Montréal today at UdeM’s Salle Claude Champagne: Mozart’s The Magic Flute/La Flute Enchantée, music by L’Orchestre de la Francophonie (high-calibre student orchestra). I am not an opera buff but this show was amazing.
Get out and try something new is always good advice.
I went to the Maison de la culture Villeray yesterday to see the exhibit on Jarry Park. There are a lot of photos and other images extracted from old newspapers and so on – the origins of the park, photos from live shows as varied as Supertramp and wrestling extravaganzas.
The visit of Pope John Paul II in 1984 is a big topic, including a shot of René Lévesque in the audience lighting a cigarette, and a sex bar in the area selling papal souvenirs outside.
A side room focuses exclusively on the Expos and their history at the park, including a video projection.
(Disclosure: I did some enhancement work on some of the photos, but that was the extent of my involvement.)
It’s on till August 24. Worth a peek – it’s a couple of short blocks east of Jean‑Talon metro.
Thanks for the tip, Kate! I vaguely knew about the various 100th anniversary events for Jarry Park but had no idea there was an exhibition at the Maison de la culture. Haven’t even been there yet, even though I live nearby. It’s on my agenda now.
Complementing the in-person exhibit, the BANQ has an article on the Jarry Park centennial, and the Park Extension historical society posted a potted history of the park on its 90th birthday.
Thank you, SMD.
Not sure I understand the SAAQclic joke, given that we had ClicSante first. (It’s not letting me make appointments currently, which is fun.)
In this item at the end of last year, Christian Dubé was promising a new portal to replace Clic Santé which the article says is a private business that directs people to private medical services more often than not.
I think people largely had the impression that Clic Santé is a public service – I hadn’t thought about it much but I assumed it was – but you’ll notice it has no Quebec logo or branding on it.
I had no idea! I assumed it was public. I’ve only used it for blood samples or vaccination appointments and I always just choose free ones near me.
Same here. It works, you just have to make the right choices. I wonder whether Quebec can possibly make a public health portal that’s as efficient.
Interestingly, I have found I can’t actually make a blood test for myself when logged in — it autofills my name and medicare number so I can’t edit it but says there’s an error and it stays blank. I succeeded using “other patient”; another friend found it worked if you just don’t log in. The weird bugs like this are probably why I assumed it was government created.
jeather: I’ve encountered that bug as well and have meant to report it but obviously have bigger fish to fry in those moments. They also don’t have a contact form so I would have to call them and try to describe the issue using words rather than just sending a screenshot.
Wasn’t prepared for a Turkmenbashi reference here.
It’s a local blog but it’s a big world!
In that case, perhaps a better analogue would be the Aliev dynasty (which, forebodingly, is a multi-generational affair):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heydar_Aliyev%27s_cult_of_personality
The son of Robert St‑Louis, whose car and remains were found in the Mille‑Îles river last week, talks about his father, who went missing in 1988.
Twenty-nine cats were found living in a Montreal apartment and rescued by the SPCA, which is offering a discount now on cat adoptions because it now has 162 cats on the premises.
If your eyes are feeling gritty on Saturday morning it’s because we have an air quality warning.
Most of my life we didn’t have wildfire smoke every summer. Now it’s just as much part of summer life as butterflies and lemonade.
“You may experience mild and common symptoms such as eye, nose and throat irritation, headaches or a mild cough.” This from the Environment Canada site. Mild and common symptoms. Nothing to worry about.
Let’s build more oil pipelines!
Sad that this is the future we chose and keep choosing.
I probably posted this earlier but if here’s a handy tool to find an air cleaner. I preset some options that you probably want to tweak for your room size, noise tolerance, etc.
I’ve been outside all day since about 10am and haven’t felt any of the usual symptoms of smoky air (itchy eyes and throat, weird taste in my mouth, thirst, etc). I think the air was worse last night than it was today.
Same.
I remember a time earlier in my life when the weather forecast never said “smoke.”
I notice the AQI (air quality index) varies at different stations around Montreal, could account for reports of few or no symptoms. Proximity to trees & parks helps, as does not being over 65 yo. PM 2.5 readings have been higher in CSL/NDG and Westmount for the past 2 days, way higher than further east. And we have lots of trees around us. Weird. With my windows open it was sort of an itchy eye day yesterday, but I ventilate my apartment well. The green hazy sky wouldn’t look out of place in Bladerunner.
The air is still garbage this morning and just because you’re not experiencing acute symptoms doesn’t mean you’re not breathing in PM2.5. I can’t believe this needs to be said but since the pandemic broke everyone’s brains, here we go: Air monitors and studies on the impacts of wildfire smoke provide useful data, people on the internet saying “I feel fine” do not.
Another common-sense-isn’t-useful and delayed-symptom-onset-is-real tip: You can get a sunburn on a cloudy day if the UV index is high. Walking around under a cloud feeling fine, wake up next day with a painful burn.
A couple of issues with all this hemming and hawing about people not reacting to the air quality warnings.
First, we have already a trend of Environment Canada and the news media over-hyping every weather event in advance, basically Never Wolfing them so people become inured.
Second, the actual health impact of this bad air is very unclear. I’ve heard people anecdotally suffering in the short-term (which does sound quite unpleasant) with a sick cough that goes on for a few days, burning eyes, etc. I assume there are also long-term impacts, which I would suspect are akin to the risk of skin cancer going up when you get a sunburn.
Finally, in practice, most people don’t actually suffer, at least in the short-term. Yesterday (Saturday), I played intensive outdoor sport for 2 hours and finally spent the rest of the day outside at Pocha MTL (which was very fun!) and do not feel a thing today.
Is there anywhere that clearly explains to the layperson the real risks of exposure to particulate matter from forest fires, both long and short-term?
If I currently do a personal risk analysis, the physical impact of breathing in the bad air is less negative for me than the psychological impact of being stuck inside the house on a precious Saturday with so much going on in this great city. This would be different perhaps if I were not already 5+ decades in, reproduced, etc.
CCOHS is a good resource. Worker health and safety is much more closely monitored as there are legal repercussions when someone files a claim for workplace related exposure to toxic substances.
https://www.ccohs.ca/newsletters/hsreport/issues/2021/05/ezine.html
Alberta is even more specific:
https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/news/ev/ne-ev-wildfire-fmm-smoke-exposure-info-for-workers.pdf
It’s the cumulative effects of exposure that is the concern.
Sun exposure has a cumulative effect, meaning the damage from UV radiation builds up over time, leading to premature aging, skin cancer, etc.
We all know cigarette smoking, including 2nd hand smoke, has a cumulative effect over time. This is similar to breathing in bad air whether from wildfire smoke, pollution, etc. Sure, a day outdoors won’t hurt, but seeing that wildfires are becoming a regular occurrence, we’re going to have more poor air quality warnings during our summers.
According to a Stanford U study, an AQI measurement of 20 is equivalent to smoking one cigarette a day.
It noted that exposure to wildfire smoke causing an AQI of 150 for several days would be equivalent to smoking about seven cigarettes a day if someone were outside the whole time. Looking at Montreal’s AQI today is ranging from 110 to 127.
The warnings are there to help people decide how they want to manage their time outdoors.
The choice for the individual isn’t between having fun and hiding at home. This is exactly the same false dichotomy that was presented for Covid; a result of the pre-existing cultural resistance to masking (based in anti-Asian sentiment?) buttressed by political and economic forces pushing against the normalization of socialistic empathic behavior.
I went for a walk by the river on Saturday morning and a family gathering in the afternoon, and on Sunday I went for a jog in the morning and several walks – the last one without a respirator because the AQI was finally below 100.
The problem is that at a population level these health events cause harm. Maybe not to you or anyone you know, at least in the short term where it’s easy to draw a correlation, but to the collective. ERs are more crowded, more people die waiting, more strokes, more dementia, more traffic accidents, more burned out health professionals, more sick days, more pressure to work while sick, more days off to take care of unwell loved ones, resources become strained. And the current response has been *more* individualism, more austerity, more ignoring simple preventative measures, rather than building up the habits and support systems we need to deal with the effects of smoke exposure, repeat Covid infections, aging population, etc. We all want a functional healthcare system to be there when we need it, and as much as the major problem is neoliberal government underfunding, the actions we take as individuals play a role as well. Self-care is social care, all is one, thanks for coming to my TedTalk.
Here’s someone else’s interesting thoughts on prevention: No One Knows When They Don’t Die
The concert by Sean Feucht was held despite the city ban and the presence of protesters outside. One man was arrested and a smoke bomb may have been let off inside.
Photos of the event show a handful of people in the audience. This was no major revival event.
The city intends to fine the church for holding the event without a permit.
The evangelical Ministerios Restauración Church now owns the building at Berri and Roy that was originally St‑Louis‑de‑France but was sold by the Catholics years ago. It was built to replace the original church by that name on Roy, destroyed by a fire in 1933.
No one thought to call in a noise complaint?
If they did, it hasn’t been reported.
I don’t understand this permit issue. Yesterday I briefly skimmed the church’s website and recent videos and there was lots of singing and music (and preaching). Is that not allowed in a religious venue? Singing and music have been a part of religion for a long, long time. How is what this guy doing different from what this church does every week? This isn’t Paul McCartney or Taylor Swift; his song, from what I understand, is specifically preachy, and the CTV article says he spent two hours singing and preaching. He’s a missionary!
The number of chamber music concerts or quartets I’ve seen advertised in churches is too many to count, but I guess they all had concert permits? But even if so, you’d think a church occupancy permit would include music as part of religious events, which this clearly is. And this is obviously retaliation from the city for views they don’t like. If we’re going to shut down every religious event that expressed backwards views….
@Nicholas I had the same concerns.
According to two of the news reports, “although the performance was indoors, the city considered it subject to public event rules because of its scale, publicity, and impact”.
And from what I can see, the Service de sécurité incendie de Montréal (SIM) requires a safety/risk management notice for events, whether in public or private venues, if they are considered “special events.” That means large, organized gatherings—even indoor concerts of significance—need authorization in advance (at least 10 working days before).
As Kate referenced the poster from the church posted on X says “concert gratuit” – concert, not church service.
If the church had complied and submitted a permit request in time, I can’t see how it could have been refused.
I do think we have a major problem when officials like Plante’s spokesperson say publicly that an event was forbidden because of content.
CBC reported:
“Catherine Cadotte, a spokesperson for the Montreal mayor’s office, told CBC News that the show “goes against the values of inclusion, solidarity and respect” and that the venue, located in the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, would be advised that the concert cannot take place.
“Freedom of expression is one of our fundamental values, but hateful and discriminatory speech is not accepted in Montreal and, as in other Canadian cities, the show will not be tolerated,” she wrote in French.”
My concern is that some people seem to think that only “nice” speech is protected. Freedom of expression protects “hateful and discriminatory speech”.
When government officials start to make those decisions for us, minorities will be the first to lose.
I had the impression Montreal felt under pressure to close this man down because half a dozen other towns had already done so. But Quebec City’s event, at any rate, was meant to be held outdoors on a public site belonging to that city, which is not the same thing as a performance held inside a church.
CBC says that his shows planned on public space elsewhere were also an issue.
CTV says the city is fining that church $2,500 for holding a concert without a permit – apparently it was arranged in a hurry after Feucht was deplatformed in Quebec.
Possibly the distinction between a concert and a religious gathering is the issue here.
Thanks for all that info, both of you. It seems weird for a venue that is designed to hold events with lots of people, many of which have music, needs a special permit and fire review to hold an event with music for people. What if someone dies and they want a concert instead of a traditional funeral, will they have to wait two weeks? Are the fire concerns different between this and a regular sermon? Is plugging in a guitar a danger? There were no pyrotechnics (at least no planned ones).
Having been to a number of Baptist Church services, not out of choice, they always have singing of religious songs, usually accompanied by piano. This is 15 minutes long before the pastor even came out; is that a concert? When one of the teens played three violin pieces with no religious context, just to celebrate life accomplishments of one of the congregants, is that a concert? What about the teen Christian rock band with incredibly cringe lyrics? Or the worst, which offended me as a Montrealer (but also made me laugh, especially when they noted how the original lyrics were not fitting with their values), a Christian version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah (no I will not link to it)?
And all this for, what, some event with 50 people? And as many protestors outside? I’ve hosted parties with that many people at my home! And now they get a news cycle before, one after, and surely another when they protest the fine. For probably the 473rd most attended event of the day in Montreal, with fewer people that can fit into a city bus? Just let them be assholes in their basement.
But overall, it just seems like leading to a really bad place if the government, incited by its disapproval of certain speech, is going to decide what is and is not a proper religious service and fine those it disapproves of.
An article on CBC says that he performed in Toronto and the concert was well-attended. Apparently people even came from other parts of Ontario, some of them to “support the cause.”
I guess he has gotten a lot of free publicity from the media, unfortunately.
jeather 09:58 on 2025-07-29 Permalink
Apparently I had no idea what that street was called. I had Hot Star Large Fried Chicken a few times and I enjoyed it, too.
The Radio-Canada article also says there were Airbnbs in the place.
Kate 10:52 on 2025-07-29 Permalink
Yes. I looked up ownership of the building, but it’s a numbered company. You know whose name I was expecting to see…
…In a weird way, I’d be happier knowing that it was Airbnbs only, so people will only have lost a small amount of possessions rather than all their stuff and their home. But this later TVA report suggests there were some permanent residents and some short‑term. It also says the building dated from 1885.
Ian 12:05 on 2025-07-29 Permalink
Only tangentially related but I was up the mountain about a half hour ago and saw what looked like a huge fire on the south shore, looked to be just the other side of Chateauguay – maybe a wildfire?
Kate 12:46 on 2025-07-29 Permalink
I’ve looked through the most recent news bits from the Montérégie and no mention of a fire over there. Will come back to this if I see anything.
Ian 13:15 on 2025-07-29 Permalink
Emailed you some pics
Kate 14:58 on 2025-07-29 Permalink
As of 3, I don’t see any reports.