Updates from September, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 14:20 on 2025-09-08 Permalink | Reply  

    A survey found that a fair number of people they asked (1008 people is not a big pool) are still undecided who they’ll vote for on November 2. I could wish they’d led with the question whether the person voted last time, because in a sense the most important number is the low voter turnout for civic elections.

    Top issues mentioned were housing (48%) and homelessness (47%). No mayor can solve either of these until the other levels of government get onto the same page, and good luck with that in Quebec.

    At any rate, I’m hoping the knowledge of voter indecision lights a fire under some candidates so that we find out what more of them are prepared to promise.

     
    • EmilyG 14:43 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      In the last mayoral election, I did what I usually do in elections, and voted for the person I thought most likely to beat the person I didn’t want to win.

      Now, I don’t know who to vote for. I’ll have to do more research on the candidates/parties and their positions on issues.

    • jeather 15:08 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      I’ve been happy with Projet, more or less, and on areas where I’m not (police funding) I don’t imagine anyone else would be different. That said Craig Sauve was a really effective councillor so maybe I’d vote for him. Sud Ouest went really heavily Projet last time, though I suppose this could split th evote.

    • MarcG 15:54 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      I just checked the Transition website again and they have a pretty full roster of candidates on there now. It would be nice if they had profiles for each person, though. I guess I’m going to have to trawl through some embarassing Instagram profiles to find out who these people are.

    • Kate 18:16 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      Hmm, Transition still doesn’t have a candidate for mayor of VSMPE…

    • DeWolf 19:59 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      It’s funny how much time people spend complaining about municipal affairs but then they don’t actually pay attention to municipal politics, and most of them don’t even turn out to vote.

      Unlike provincial or federal elections, you don’t even need to choose a single party. Depending on where you live, you vote for anywhere from three to four different people (borough councillor, city councillor, borough mayor, city mayor) so you can mix and match parties if you really want.

    • Ian 21:50 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      This is a good point but I think it may be why municipal parties got trendy – it’s a simple shorthand for people that can’t be bothered to check every candidate’s positions. I’m not saying it’s agood thing, but it makes sense strategically.

    • Joey 09:20 on 2025-09-09 Permalink

      1,000 respondents, if they were sampled randomly, is a decent size poll.

    • DeWolf 10:26 on 2025-09-09 Permalink

      It’s a fairly large sample size but it’s also a web poll and I wonder if that affects the response. La Presse doesn’t mention anything about a margin of error.

    • DeWolf 11:13 on 2025-09-09 Permalink

      Oh and I was wondering about the poll’s focus on public safety… surprise, surprise: it was commissioned by the police union.

      Similarly to the downtown poll’s finding that a large majority of people think downtown is unsafe, I would take these polls with a pinch of salt. The police always find a way to serve their interests in an election.

    • Ian 20:24 on 2025-09-09 Permalink

      CBC has a good article on the candidates beyond the usual Rabouin/ Ferrada/ Kacou trifecta.

  • Kate 09:01 on 2025-09-08 Permalink | Reply  

    Andy Riga has embarked on a four‑part series on the city’s language policies with a piece on its guidance of how to speak to an anglo.

    Approach the anglo slowly, holding out a peanut. Carefully warn the anglo in French that they must not eat the peanut if they have an allergy. If the anglo accepts the peanut, you may say “Bonjour” but you must not say “Hi!”

    If the anglo replies “Go Habs Go” then you may either offer another peanut, or inquire in French whether the anglo went to primary school in English.

     
    • Uatu 11:58 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      Remember: Do not make eye contact! Lol

    • haru ki 09:44 on 2025-09-09 Permalink

      va tan

    • bob 17:56 on 2025-09-09 Permalink

      How do you say “Poe’s Law” in French?

  • Kate 08:47 on 2025-09-08 Permalink | Reply  

    A cyclist was killed Sunday in a collision with a truck on Park Avenue north of Bernard.

     
    • MarcG 10:47 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      Kate, do you keep your yearly cyclist death stats? Curious how they’ve changed in relation infrastructure improvements and the increase in bicycling.

    • Ian Rogers 10:48 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      How awful.
      Does anyone know if the accident happened northbound or southbound?

      Also, “He says the driver, a 49-year-old man, will meet with investigators from the collision unit as they try to illuminate the circumstances around the fatal accident.” Illuminate? Maybe “shed light on”, or “elucidate”?

    • Nicholas 11:22 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      Ian Rogers, it is fun to be able to tell when a story is written by a francophone, often translated from a R-C story. I don’t say this as a criticism of the person or of francophones, but to note that I would not want to be writing media stories in French for this reason, and yet.

    • Kate 12:06 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      MarcG: there have “only” been one or two cycling fatalities reported in the media per year since 2021. I do put them on my incident maps, but am dependent on the media to know about them. Vélo-Québec would have more reliable stats but I don’t know whether they put them online.

    • Joey 12:42 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      This is, what, the third fatality on this block in recent years (first cyclist, IIRC)? That stretch of road doesn’t get quieter than 9:30 am on a Sunday. I wonder what happened. Usually the first batch of road fatality stories have some hypothesis, but not in this case.

      @Ian when I was a student I applied for an internship at the Gazette (didn’t get it). One of the tasks I had to complete as part of the evaluation was a short translation of a French news story.

    • Kate 13:30 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      Joey, a boy was killed at that corner in November last year. He was on foot and a truck hit him. It was a rainy night and the boy was in black Hasidic garb, but as so often happens – it was a truck.

      In August 2023, a man on foot was hit and killed on Park at St‑Joseph, and in September 2021 a cyclist was killed on Park at Mont‑Royal – again a truck, and this time the driver tried to claim he hadn’t felt a thing, but he was seen pulling the crushed bicycle out from under the truck.

      That’s what I have on my maps. I feel like I remember more incidents but they may be from before 2021.

    • DeWolf 14:43 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      @Ian Based on the photo in the JdM story, and its description of the aftermath, it seems to have happened on the west side of the street, right in front of 5902 Park — my old apartment, which is now a Belz synagogue/community centre. Apparently Mayer Feig and several others rushed out to help the cyclist.

      It looks like the cyclist was on a regular Bixi, so she couldn’t have been going very fast heading uphill.

    • Ian 15:19 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      Thanks, DeWolf. I’m beginning to suspect that particular turning lane is a bigger part of the problem, it’s the same direction that kid got hit on in November, also a turning truck, from the same direction. I suspect it’s that as trucks change lanes right there to make a right they’re not paying as much attention to curbside and are racing the light – but this isn’t the only place in the neighbourhood it’s like that. I still wonder if the east-west turning lights help or hinder. There’s a lot of impatient commercial drivers on that stretch.

    • DeWolf 15:51 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      This is almost halfway down the block, though, well before the turning lane. Kind of an odd spot for an accident to be honest.

    • Ian 18:54 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      Just looking at the JdeM article, that is a weird spot, yeah.

    • DeWolf 19:50 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      I was at the die-in earlier and it really made me think: Park is a death trap for everyone who isn’t in a car. (And even then, it’s a very unpleasant street to drive on, since there are so many other drivers speeding and behaving aggressively.) It’s astonishing how many people have died there compared to any other major street in central Montreal. On top of that, there are probably more children crossing Park multiple times a day than any other major street in the city, thanks to the Hassidic community. It’s essential we find a way to make it safer.

      But I don’t know if it’s possible to do that while still keeping Park as a major artery funnelling cars downtown. The amount of traffic on that road is completely untenable.

    • Ian 21:28 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      Well… with no studies at all but lots of opinions, here’s what I suggest:
      1. No parking on Parc at all from Pins to Van Horne. No school bus stops (those should be on side streets).
      2. Get rid of the switching lane between Van Horne & Laurier. There are commercial alleys. The east lane becomes a seperated bike lane between Van Horne and Laurier. Laurier to Mont-Royal the east lane becomes a dedicated delivery lane, no other parking – the west side has a commerical alley.
      3. Pedestrian lights at Van Horne, Bernard, Saint V, Fairmount & Laurier become scramble lights. Light timing is normalized between Pins and Van Horne to prevent speeding.
      3. Bernard becomes one way going east, St Viateur one way going west, Fairmount one way going east.
      4. Delivery trucks with more than 4 wheels disallowed on Bernard or Saint Viateur. Idling fines increased. Double parking, corner and illegal parking seriously enforced – especially Bernard and Saint Viateur.

      People would freak but I think it might work. Even just normalizing the light timings and making the pedestrian crossings consistent would make a big difference.

    • Joey 09:27 on 2025-09-09 Permalink

      @Ian there are commercial alleys on the east side south of Laurier – all the way down to Mont-Royal, no? Anyway, I like these ideas. I know the fire department hates one-way streets, but we shouldn’t discount how frustrated drivers become super aggressive when having to make a left turn onto Parc from any of the east-west streets, even with the recent addition of left-turn signals on most of them.

    • Ian 09:28 on 2025-09-09 Permalink

      Related: in this CBC article the speed limit on Parc is cited as 50. It was lowered to 40 years ago.
      People defintiely do speed, especially Beaumont to Van Horne, only slowing down at Bernard if they catch the Van Horne light – so traffic slowing measures are needed as clearly the speed reduction is being ignored and we all know cops only give speeding tickets at certain times of the month and usually from Pins to Laurier.

    • Ian 09:33 on 2025-09-09 Permalink

      @Joey no, there’s no through alley on that side. Behind PA is closed off at Laurier and south of there is blocked at Mont-Royal and is basically just a residential alley.

    • Joey 10:14 on 2025-09-09 Permalink

      You’re right, PA Nature gets its deliveries from the street (as did SA, until the city re-arranged the corner this summer). South of St-Joseph the deliveries happen via the alley…

    • Ian 10:32 on 2025-09-09 Permalink

      Ah interesting… so really just that one block is the outlier. Might be a good place for a bulbout with a bixi rack, leaving that one space for deliveries only. Or maybe PA Nature sucks it up and only gets deliveries from cube vans.

      Step 2: No big trucks except for city workers allowed in the city centre

  • Kate 08:33 on 2025-09-08 Permalink | Reply  

    Le Devoir’s Zacharie Goudreault asked an architect about the plans for the FACE building that made the government kick at the estimate of $375 million. The architect – also the mother of students at the school – says that parts of the plan were ridiculously extravagant and not necessary. But Goudreault also talks to a CSSDM honcho who says the school must be completely gutted and rebuilt and that the $375M is needed for that alone.

     
    • Ian 18:55 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      I thought that the CSSDM returned administration of the building to the EMSB? I guess they maintained ownership, either way.

  • Kate 08:14 on 2025-09-08 Permalink | Reply  

    A firefighter’s job is understood to be stressful, but as they have become first responders over the last 20 years, many have faced and handled crises for which they were never trained, not least in how to cope with the emotional fallout of dealing with traumatic situations of all kinds. But there’s still not enough psychological support, as La Presse explains in this two‑parter.

     
    • dwgs 09:37 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      I regularly update my First Aid / CPR training. The course is almost always taught by an EMT and they have told us that the fire department is usually the first to arrive on the scene so it’s understandable that they have to deal with some nasty stuff.

    • CE 12:32 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      I was hit by a car on Ste-Catherine years ago and the firefighters were the first ones there. Then the police arrived and finally an ambulance. It felt like a lot for a couple broken ribs, although I was in shock and couldn’t move for a few minutes which freaked me out a bit. The person who hit me was military and driving a van with Canada plates. He actually ended up being my first responder.

  • Kate 08:05 on 2025-09-08 Permalink | Reply  

    The head of a man was found in the Back River off Montreal North on Sunday afternoon, but whether a criminal act was involved, and anything about the head’s appearance, is not yet known.

    Although Radio-Canada says it was a head that was found, CTV says only that it was a body part and that police wouldn’t be more specific.

     
    • Ian 13:50 on 2025-09-08 Permalink

      On CBC radio this morning they were being coy and said “body part”.
      Reminds me of the line from “The Tenant”:
      If you cut off my arm, i say me and my arm. If you cut off my leg, i say me and my leg. If you cut iff my head, do I say me and my head, or me and my bod?

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