Victoria Mboko won the Montreal tennis tournament Thursday evening.
Updates from August, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Ensemble has named architect Jean Beaudoin as candidate for the mayoralty of the Plateau, facing off against Cathy Wong for Projet. Ensemble must be very keen to get their man into Projet’s heartland.
Ian
That’s a pretty good candidate…. Ferrada sounds like a creep but vs Wong this Beaudoin guy might have a fighting chance.
Joey
Not a lot of daylight between Beaudoin and Projet MTL, it seems. Hard to imagine a significant chunk of Projet voters opting for the Ensemble candidate, even if he says all the right things about nightlife and pedestrianization. Maybe Craig Sauve will land a name in the Plateau, but odds are that Projet will sweep again in a rout, no?
DeWolf
He’s certainly a decent candidate but it’s disappointing he’s towing the Ensemble line about “mobility studies” which is just an excuse to not do anything transport-related for 3.5 years.
For an example of how that would play out, see Outremont post-2021. Laurent Desbois has spent nearly his entire term “studying” the transport situation (after initially removing a handful of bike lanes) and now, six months before the election, his office has revealed a half-baked plan to put a 200-metre bike path on Fairmount that doesn’t connect with any other cycling infrastructure. It’s tokenism rather than actual planning. And of course there’s been little to no action on pedestrian safety during his term.
Beaudoin’s biggest asset is that he’s a Plateau lifer who probably has a large network to draw from. And of course he’s also qualified. But he will probably suffer from the problem of Ensemble’s last candidate for Plateau mayor, who was also qualified but simply wasn’t able to distinguish himself enough from Projet to make even the slightest dent in their support.
It’s a quandry for any Plateau opposition party: if you go full Martinez and start dogwhistling to the people who think bike lanes are the devil incarnate, you’ll never win, because there just isn’t much support for that on the Plateau. And if you base your platform on things like administrative delays and borough management, people’s eyes glaze over, even if there are legitimate issues there.
Craig Sauvé’s party is interesting because so far they’re attacking Projet from the left and they have the potential to present a coherent platform rather than the dog’s breakfast of Ensemble. But my instinct is that the most they’ll do is split the vote in some of the swing districts.
Ian
I do think Sauvé has a good chance to win a couple of seats, but it won’t be enough to really shake things up.
I disagree that Beaudoin is too like PM – that he wants to do studies and consultations is very un like their MO. Rabouin and his fanbois openly mocked me on Twitter for ahaving the audacity to ask if any mobility studies had been done for transit users and people with monbility issues before pedestrianizing Mont-Royal… I find it a bit comic how PM likes to position themselves as the party of action for stuff like that but somehow can’t do anything about AirBnb, gentrification, housing, tor he police budget, among other things they promise to get a handle on and then mysteriously their hands are tied.As far as Outremont is concerned let’s not forget PM blew their chances there by unilaterally bringing in parking stickers.
DeWolf
Yeah absolutely. They lost the election in Outremont because of the vignettes. It was stupid of Tomlinson to be so bull-headed about that.
The thing about mobility studies and consultations is that they are inherently subjective. In the case of a mobility study, you need to define what kind of mobility you prioritize. Is it fluidity for motorized vehicles? Safety and comfort for pedestrians and cyclists? High throughput public transit? You can gather data to support any of those goals (and in fact there is already data being gathered, at least on some streets) but there’s ultimately a political choice to be made as to what outcome you want.
For consultations, we’ve discussed this on here before. What does that mean? A referendum for every bike path or curb extension? More town hall meetings?
I think you’re right that Projet Montreal has historically been quite high-handed in their approach many things. I would argue that in many cases that approach was necessary, given the political and structural context of Montreal at the time and the likelihood that given a more even-handed approach, bold initiatives would have just floundered. But the limits of a high-handed approach are beginning to show — so yes, absolutely, I think we need more of a consultative and collaborative way of doing things. But we also need to define what exactly that would entail, and what the baseline of expectations and goals should be.
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Kate
The city is putting up a little cash to help businesses find suppliers locally or in in countries other than the United States, now that tariffs are in place.
My impression has been that city assistance to businesses is often plagued with bureaucratic obstacles that make it difficult to access. I hope that isn’t always true.
Nicholas
I usually don’t have much hope for initiatives like these, but I could imagine this helping SMEs. I’ve seen a few cases of small businesses looking for suppliers, and “Look at the top few Google hits” is tried and true. Small businesses also have trouble getting out there what they supply to others. If they can help connect businesses that otherwise wouldn’t have found each other, that could be a real benefit. If it’s just you call them up and some person does the same googling you’d have done, that’s less helpful.
Joey
Shades of the Panier bleu…
MarcG
I was thinking the same thing. Maybe they can buy the platform and slap a new logo on it.
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Kate
Another heat wave is expected from Sunday to Tuesday.
Mozai
Weather forecast says until Thursday night, and then another starts Saturday night. And smog warnings discouraging you from opening your windows — already twice as many smog days as 2023. D:
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Kate
Pistachio nuts and trendy pistachio chocolate bars from Dubai have been recalled after some people were hospitalized with salmonella.
Similar bars (a different brand from the ones shown in the article, but also from Dubai) have been on display in a nearby fruiterie. It’s not a fancy‑pants store but those bars were going for $20 each. Luckily, I prefer dark chocolate without filling, or I might have been struck down.
walkerp
I suspect that this trendy chocolate is one more PR tactic by the Saudi regime to legitimize and market themselves. They were heavily pushed by instagram influencers, the same ones who are always in Dubai.
Nicholas
Something’s off here. The first recall notice, chronologically, is from a nut wholesaler from Chateauguay, for their raw pistachios. The second, five days later, is from a small ethnic grocery store in Ottawa, also for raw pistachios, surely ones that came from the wholesaler. The third, six more days later, is for a Quebec City distributor of confectioneries, for their Dubai-style chocolate, chocolate with a pistachio-tahini based cream. The distributor says it’s made in Dubai. But how did the salmonela get from fresh pistachios near Montreal to a product with processed pistachios “made in Dubai” imported by a Quebec City company, yet no other products of that distributor? Even if it was shipped in bulk bars and cut and packaged in Canada, which seems unlikely given their other products, what are the odds the fresh pistachios were just rolling around on the same production line as the to-be-cut-and-packaged chocolates with pistachio, but contaminated no other products, and this was all found in a few days from the other outbreak? Or maybe the salmonella was just coincidentally in different pistachio products from different countries but in the same province within a week of each other, like maybe the Dubai producer is importing pistachios from this random local wholesaler in Canada, which themselves were imported, likely from the US or Middle East? I’m not going to say the distributor is passing off their locally-produced Dubai chocolates as Dubai-made so they can charge more, but I hope someone is investigating this odd coincidence. Sorry for the rant.
Nicholas
walkerp, Dubai is in the United Arab Emirates, not Saudi Arabia. They’re aligned on some things but in conflict on others; I doubt chocolate is in either category.
MarcG
It looks like “Dubai” in this case is the brand name, not where they’re from.
MarcG
Nicholas the product you linked to is not the same one that was recalled.
DeWolf
Dubai chocolate is just a style, for the most part it doesn’t actually come from Dubai. It’s so named because that’s where this type of chocolate bar with a mix of pistachios and knafeh was invented in 2021. But “Dubai chocolate” could be made by anyone, anywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai_chocolate
Dubai doesn’t grow any pistachios, either. It’s a city in the desert, after all, and the UAE doesn’t have any significant agriculture. The biggest pistachio producers are the US, Iran and Turkey.
TeeOwe
With DeWolf on this – it’s like saying that Danish pastries come from Denmark, or that Iriish coffee is made in Ireland
walkerp
jeather
I had it once — I was given it as a gift — and I’m really a dark chocolate fan, not milk, but it was delicious. I’ve seen bars, but it’s not a $20 amount of delicious.
Kate
This thread confirms my observation that posting about food – even food I’ve never tried! – gets more response from blog readers than crime, sports or politics.
jeather
You could open comments on the Israel/Palestine threads if you really wanted to test that theory.
Kate
“Who has better falafel, the Arabs or the Jews?” – ?
MarcG
The transportation and urban planning items get a lot of comments, too. Could be a fun feature to allow you to tag your posts and show comment count stats in the sidebar. I would do it pro bono when work is slow if you’re interested.
MarcG
A problem would be that sometimes you post about a croissant shortage and we end up debating the pros and cons of teleportation in the comments.
jeather
Ask that, even as a joke, and you’ll have to shut comments overall.
Meezly
I certainly learned a lot about Dubai chocolate from the comments. Even something innocuous as food can have socio-political-economic implications! The real deal uses pricey ingredients and companies who want to cash in on the trend are clearly using subpar substitutes or taking shortcuts. Hoping the salmonella scare will slow things down as I don’t want any more reason to rely on palm oil or drive pistachio prices up.
DeWolf
@walkerp The foodwashing argument is awfully vague when there’s no direct financial benefit to the rulers of the UAE. It’s not like Dubai is struggling for attention or reputation, given that it’s a major financial, transportation and tourism centre. It’s a bit like saying you shouldn’t eat Chinese food because it’s actively promoted by the CCP.
Meezly
I didn’t find it vague and thought it made an interesting point. It’s about image and financial gain. South Korea is flourishing due its highly successful cultural exports, but unlike the UAE, it’s not mostly done to whitewash their political system.
MarcG
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Kate
Eighteen-year-old Victoria Mboko has reached the tennis final to be held at Jarry Park on Thursday evening. There’s a lot of excitement in the media.
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