Whether Mark Carney’s ambitious plans for Canada include a TGV between Toronto and Quebec City is not clear.
Updates from September, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Léa Stréliski waxes lyrical on the lack of political imagination – and man, can that woman write. The last two paragraphs in particular, read those now.
Nicholas
I can imagine writing something that good, but not in French.
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Kate
The Gallant commission started the week, Godin and Côté responding to François Legault’s testimony and Ygreck imagining the other party leaders watching avidly.Northvolt too became a topic, as was the promised cabinet shuffle.
Luc Boileau quits as head of public health.
Putin, Xi and Kim are very impressed by Trump’s renaming of the U.S. Department of Defense as the Department of War. Chapleau has a two‑parter commenting on international politics. Ygreck too adds a comment.
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Kate
Fifty years ago, a massive piece of land was expropriated to create Mirabel Airport, an action that removed many people from their land and homes. Now there’s a group called Centre de mémoire collective de l’expropriation de Mirabel (CMCEM) and they want a memorial to be created on a piece of land ceded by Aéroports de Montréal, with Armand Vaillancourt lined up to create a focal sculpture.
Orr
Better hurry, Armand Vaillancourt is a great artist but he is also 96 years old.
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Kate
Pivot examines the working conditions of drivers for Intelcom, which handles Amazon deliveries in a baroque subcontracting system that only works well for those willing to kick back bribes to get deliveries.
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Kate
La Presse marks the 200th anniversary of the Lachine Canal with some key dates and historical images.
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Kate
Property developer Jonathan Wener has spent years tracking down paintings by his ancestor William Raphael, who did genre paintings around Quebec in the 19th century. Works depicting Bonsecours market and Victoria Square are shown in this piece, although it would be nice if they were zoomable because there’s a lot of detail.
Speaking of painters of Montreal scenes, there’s an exhibit of John Little’s work at Chateau Ramezay till the end of the month.
MarcG
Kate
Thank you!
The Bonsecours picture is the better painting of the two. Rather Bruegel-ish.
Uatu 16:53 on 2025-09-07 Permalink
I hope so. Amtrak just opened up their new Acela service which tops out at 160mph so why can’t we do the same? And yeah it pales in comparison to the Shinkansen, but I’ll take it lol
Nicholas 00:56 on 2025-09-08 Permalink
We absolutely need a TGV and we absolutely do not want to emulate Amtrak. Via is, generally, worse than Amtrak, but the Acela, at its fastest from DC to Boston, averages 106.8 km/h. Via, from Montreal to Toronto, is 107.4 km/h. Both are absolutely pathetic. Just tell the Japanese or Italians or whatever to go wild and hand them the keys.
Ephraim 10:59 on 2025-09-08 Permalink
We need an extreme high speed rail, with no stops between Montreal and Toronto. And like ICE 3neo specifications. Built for 320 km/h. Make Montreal to Toronto about 2 hours and kill all the planes, buses and many of the cars between the two. So you can board at 7AM in be at a meeting at 9AM, or 6:30AM if you are further from the stations. No stop in Ottawa. A line from Ottawa down to the high speed connection and a split towards Montreal and Toronto, so they can add high speed. And then a continuation to Quebec City, if viable. On rails owned by Canada.
MarcG 11:12 on 2025-09-08 Permalink
Has anyone done an investigation into the political influence of the airline industry?
Tim S. 12:12 on 2025-09-08 Permalink
From what I understand, the legal power of a rail industry that’s not interested in passenger traffic is a sufficient explanation.
SMD 13:49 on 2025-09-08 Permalink
@MarcG, I also want an investigation! I am also curious why Air Canada is a partner in the consortium planning the high-speed system. I have seen a few guesses, but would appreciate a deeper dig.
Ephraim 13:51 on 2025-09-08 Permalink
Just a conservative estimate with just AC and Porter is about 40 flights each day and that’s about 4000 people each day. Another 3000 by train and maybe another 700 by bus. So 7700 passengers each way
Single Ice 3neo is 439 passengers, double is 878. And at 75% load 330 to 660. That’s 12 trains a day. Depending on traffic, you might be able to even run it every half hour at the start and end of day and then every hour in between.
And between the time to get to the airport, security, waiting time at gate. It’s about 4 hours from downtown to downtown if you use YYZ and 3 hours if YTZ. The Ice 3neo would be 2 hours up to 2.5 hours. And you sit down, have a meal, work on the train and you are there. Even increase tourism between the two cities. And charge $20 extra for the best view of Toronto (rear view mirror)
Ephraim 14:03 on 2025-09-08 Permalink
@SMD – Frees up planes and makes easier flight connections. AF for example, doesn’t fly to BRU, it “flies” from ZYR. (There is also QKL, ZWS, ZXP, QXB, XHP for example)
There is actually an AF flight to Quebec City Ste-Foy, coded as BQC. Look up AF 314.
AF doesn’t really fly to Belgium anymore. It sticks you on an AF coded train 🙂
P 19:41 on 2025-09-08 Permalink
Demand cooperation from the rail lines in that corridor. Nationalize that stretch of rails if they refuse to cooperate.
Eliminate the Quebec City stop for now.
Nonstop between Montreal and Toronto.
Hire consultants from Japan, China, Italy.
Open the bidding for rolling stock to firms nationwide.
Aggressively publicize attempts by the airline sector to lobby against the project.
Have Carney do all of the above and never once blink, never ever once give into local pressures or interests.
Ephraim 21:51 on 2025-09-08 Permalink
ICE 3 Neo is Siemens with ADTranz/Bombardier. Adtranz was merged into Bombardier. But Bombardier was sold to Alstom. The other version is to go Japanese with Shinkansen. But we need over 300km/h and a new track built for high speed.
Ian Rogers 08:55 on 2025-09-09 Permalink
@Ephraim out of context your post could be the opening paragraph for a William Gibson novel 😀
GC 11:28 on 2025-09-09 Permalink
HA, Ian :D.
As discussed here previously, this train would be less useful if it gets you from Oshawa to Dorval in 2 hours but also spends at least 45 minutes on either end crawling through the cities. How do we keep it going high speed to and from the downtown train stations? That sounds like a lot of expropriation. (But maybe the Japanese consultants would have a better idea…)