Heliomass, an occasional reader of the blog, has done an excellent blog post covering various features and parts of town he hadn’t yet seen, or not in their current state. Good photos too. It reminds me to get out and do something similar while summer is still in effect.
Updates from August, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Two cats have died recently after poisoning with antifreeze in an alley in Petite‑Patrie, and another was saved in extremis with an emergency vet visit. No suspect has been discovered.
jeather
Stories like this and not concern for birds are actually why I keep mine indoors.
Kate
I feel fortunate that my cat’s only interested in being outside on the porch or in my yard, and never goes out into the alley these days. If I had a younger more venturesome cat it would worry me.
jeather
Yes, it’s easy for me to keep cats inside when they have zero interest in going outside (they enjoy the balcony only and never try to walk off it). But I’m on the third floor, so it’s possible even if they want to escape. My mother has a cat who is desperate to be outdoors all the time and very fast, it’s a trial. Luckily when she has escaped she has come home reasonably quickly. But really I worry about cars and thefts and injuries too much to let them out, especially in the busy area I live in.
Janet
My cat developed an interest in the outdoors this summer. She is tiny, timid and very pretty, so I don’t want to let her out. (Birds aren’t an issue since she only hunts bugs.) She has allowed me to leash train her and now sits on the table beside the door where I keep her leash and yowls for me to come put it on and walk her around the yard. If she steps over the boundary into the neighbour’s yard I say a sharp “No!”, to which she replies “Meow”; we do this three times before she gives up and returns to our yard. As an extra precaution I have attached an Apple AirTag to her collar. Is it boring walking a cat? Absolutely.
dhomas
My cat is an incorrigible hybrid indoor/outdoor cat. He was a rescue, so he grew up “on the streets” and we never managed to train the outdoor-ness out of him. He’s very friendly to the point that some neighbours had given him a (different) name because he visits them so often. They also give him cheap quality food that he comes home to vomit. He’s getting older, so he’s easier to keep inside. But when he wants out, he’ll yell until we let him out to get some peace (he usually does this at 4 or 5 in the morning, since he knows this is the most effective time). A few weeks ago, he came home stinking of skunk. That was when we decided to be a little more diligent in keeping him indoors around dusk. We had previously worried about cars, but he’s been dodging them effectively for the 11 years we’ve lived here. Now we also worry about the neighbourhood skunk. But we had never considered the dangers of poisoning from a neighbour. So sad!
jeather
I had one cat who liked to cross St Jacques and hang out at the metro to see all the people. (He actually did rehome himself.) My mother had a cat who went on walks — no leash — around half her block, which took about 30 minutes and was absolutely the most boring imaginable walk.
I need to leash train a cat who is getting dangerously large, I think.
Kate
dhomas, I’ve seen skunks around here this summer too, and have been scooping Madame up and bringing her inside at dusk. So far so good. But deliberate poisoning by a neighbour is a whole other category of concern.
Ian
Lots of skunks around my area too but my cats seem to get along with them. Like, I’ve seen them acknowledge one another.
jeather
Skunks are super happy to just leave everything alone, I’m not surprised they will have a truce with cats (they are a bit big to be easy prey).
There was this ice cream place I used to go to near a forested area in a tourist town, and a few times an evening a family of skunks would come out of the forest and circle the picnic tables, people would flee, the skunks would eat their fill of ice cream and then march back in. If you just stayed sitting and watching they would completely ignore you.
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Kate
Three men were stabbed – nonfatally so far – overnight Friday, one in Anjou, and two in a bar in Côte‑des‑Neiges.
Later, it’s reported that one of the men stabbed in CDN has died, making him the 25th homicide.
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Kate
Four McGill unions say the university is attacking free speech because it’s threatening to withdraw funding for a student group that’s pro‑Palestine. The student union is also under similar threat.
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Kate
A Jewish man was assaulted in Park Ex on Friday, and there’s even video. There hasn’t been any arrest.
This didn’t happen in Villeray, though, despite CTV’s headline. The location is at the southwestern edge of Park Ex.
AMF
He was assaulted in front of his three small children. “The suspect then threw the victim’s kippa to the ground before leaving.”
Ian
I’m finding it odd that all the outlets are being coy about what happened. Was there an argument? Did the two men know each other? Was it a random attack? Is it a robbery? A hate crime? a gambling debt?
It’s pretty obviously being presented as a hate crime by the commentary that IS included, all the more reason to say so if it was.
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Kate
The Jacques-Cartier bridge will soon turn 100, and the city has commissioned a lot of studies on options for improving the bike path, although it will cost a lot of money to do any of them.
Blork
That’s great news! One thing they can do right now that won’t cost very much is to change the chicanes from their current rigid and non-reflective metal tubing to something soft and flexible (and highly reflective) that won’t knock you off your bike if you graze one at low speed. It boggles my mind that they haven’t done this already, given what a hazard the current ones are.
I also like the spirals in the illustrations that would let you go from the bridge to the bike path that runs under it and along the river on the south shore. Currently it’s a 5km+ diversion to go from one to the other, and many people unfamiliar with the routes find themselves on that path under the bridge thinking “how TF am I supposed to to get up there?” (Answer: that 5km+ diversion.) Nice as that would be, you’d need a good set of legs (or an electric bike) to climb that spiral, as it’s a long way up.
Nicholas
In a city where elevators didn’t cost like 5-10x what they do elsewhere, we could probably put two, even three, in. I agree with Blork. And, you know, it would cost just a few thousand in cones and signs to just block off a single lane of cars for bikes, giving more space to people walking to. We’re currently down multiple lanes in the Lafontaine tunnel, and surviving alright, so we could, once those lanes are back, use one (1) on the bridge for non-car uses. It’s a choice.
Blork
I’m not a fan of blocking car lanes on the bridge for cyclists, for multiple reasons. For example, the starting and ending mergers would be nasty and would wreak havoc on the traffic patterns (such as the traffic lanes heading north on Papineau and then looping around to get on the bridge) and I have no idea how they would manage it on the other side. Plus the car exit to Ile-Ste-Hélène would be an awful hazard. And even if they did figure it out you’d end up with a low-rent and unsafe lane separated from traffic only by cones, so it would be dangerous and not fun, so who would even want that?
Among the nice things with the existing bike path is that it is completely separated from traffic and it comes with a fantastic view. The main problems from my perspective are the hazardous chicanes (which can easily be changed to non-hazardous chicanes) and the risky bit at the exit for Ile-Ste-Hélène. It’s also annoying that for cyclists entering or leaving the island at that point you need to share the road with cars for a short stretch on the ramp down to the road on the island.
There’s also the problem of the path being “multipurpose,” which means you get a lot of idiot pedestrians on it. (Not all pedestrians are idiots, but those who are idiots seem to love using that path.) Idiotic pedestrians are those who are oblivious to the fact that they are sharing the path with fast moving bicycles, so you get things like people wearing headphones walking right in the middle of the path oblivious to bikes coming up behind them. Or groups of pedestrians in a big cluster that takes up the whole path dawdling along oblivious to the cyclists.
The path on the east side is much narrower and is supposed to be for pedestrians only, so if we were in Sweden or Singapore or whatever then cyclists would use the west side and pedestrians the east side, but that would require people to construct their lives around being aware of the needs of other people, and that shit don’t fly in Montreal.
I think a priority should be put on widening the bike/ped lane on the east side of the bridge. On the Longueuil side there’s a lot going into building up the area around the Metro station with high density housing, and it’s a very short run from that area to the east-side path across the bridge, but that path isn’t suitable for bicycles. Widen that path and it will take some pressure off of the west side and will possibly end up even busier than the west side. (For perspective, getting from the U. de S. building at the Metro station to the “starting point” on the bridge using the east-side path – currently unsuitable for bikes – is about 650 metres. Going around to use the path on the west side is 1.5 km to that same point.)
Widening the east side would also make getting from the bridge to the “village” of Longueuil (shopping area of rue St-Charles and all the housing around there) much quicker and easier.
DeWolf 11:22 on 2025-08-10 Permalink
That was a fun read.
I’m curious though, the writer alludes to disliking downtown, but doesn’t go into any detail. I hear a lot of comments like that, and sense a general antipathy towards downtown, from quite a few different people.
Is it streets like President Kennedy, René-Lévesque and the especially grim area around Central Station? If so I certainly understand — those streets are awful. But they’re also just a small part of downtown. There’s the unique energy of Ste-Catherine. The squares are beautiful and always lively. There’s always something interesting happening at the Quartier des spectacles and the wide open space of pedestrianized Ste-Catherine is refreshing. The lower McGill campus is gorgeous. Shaughnessy Village has some lovely streets and even the ugly bits are filled with a very dynamic multicultural energy with a lot of interesting restaurants. I’ve even grown to appreciate the Habitations Jeanne-Mance over the years — the trees are amazing, there’s a nice community life and little unexpected features like the statue of Toussaint Louverture.
That’s not even getting into Old Montreal which is definitely (and officially) a part of downtown.
All of this to say that, having visited a number of other North American downtown areas in the past couple of years — Toronto, Vancouver, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh — Montreal really holds its own in terms of liveliness, quality public spaces and architectural interest. Especially post-pandemic. (Large parts of downtown Chicago and Boston now feel pretty moribund.)
walkerp 11:35 on 2025-08-10 Permalink
Thanks for that eloquent defense of downtown, DeWolf. I also was struck by Heliomas’ disdain for downtown. I have spent a bit of time there due mainly to Fantasia and there are tons of quirky restaurants, a few solid bars, decent retail shopping and just a ton of diverse, lively human life along the entire St-Cat strip from Atwater to St-Laurent.
I did otherwise really enjoy the urban voyage and especially the attention paid to the walkway to Royalmount.
DeWolf 11:54 on 2025-08-10 Permalink
The blog post also reminded me that, now that on-island trips on the commuter trains are the same price as the bus or metro, it can be a fun way to get around if you can make the (terrible) schedules work for you.
A couple of winters ago I took the metro to Villa-Maria, walked all the way to Montreal West and hopped on a St-Jérôme train to get back home. It was only 15 minutes from MoWest to Parc, and because my entire journey was within the 120-minute transfer window — even with a brief coffee stop — it was only the price of a single ticket.
Another time I took the Candiac line to LaSalle station and explored the Highlands (a cute little prewar railroad suburb with a decent Greek café). Then I walked along the river to Lachine, up to the lighthouse, and pretty much to the border of Dorval, where conveniently there is a Bixi station. I cycled back along the canal and stopped for a beer at Messorem.
There are lots of fun little adventures you can have in Montreal!
Orr 15:40 on 2025-08-10 Permalink
Met some tourists downtown and one of their destinations was Place Raoul Wallenberg Square.
it’s a lovely oasis, and memorializes one of the great savers of innocent lives of WW2.
Kate 17:53 on 2025-08-10 Permalink
One of their destinations? That’s interesting, because they must have seen it on a map, and not realized it’s kind of a small space where somebody might take a break from downtown shopping, but not a place you’d expect anyone to make a special trip to see. Of course the history may be important to them.
MarcG 18:48 on 2025-08-10 Permalink
When I worked at the Bay it was a good place to smoke and eat a bag lunch – should I add my review to Trip Advisor?
Tim 09:17 on 2025-08-11 Permalink
@DeWolf: I have never confirmed it, but when you tap your transfer at a train stop, it’s supposed to extend your transfer time from 1.5 hours to 2 hours.
DeWolf 21:36 on 2025-08-11 Permalink
Interesting! But when the fare structure was unified a couple of years ago, 120 minutes is the norm right across Greater Montreal.
Unfortunately the STM still has its weird rules where you can’t transfer from metro to metro or bus to bus, so it has to be intermodal to work.
jeather 06:32 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
You can do bus to bus transfer, you just can’t do bus to same bus transfer (in either direction).