Port of Montreal workers are to go on an unlimited strike starting Monday, and truckers plan some highway slowdowns, all while the STM is on partial strike too.
On the other hand, some school buses have been inspected and are back in service.
Updates from September, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
La Presse’s Émilie Côté visits Notre‑Dame‑des‑Neiges cemetery and tells us about the various notables buried there, and ways of locating specific graves.
My experience is that finding graves by number, especially in the older sections, can be hit or miss. Sometimes the numbering breaks off in one spot and resumes in another – you often have to scout around a little, and, as mentioned in the piece, there are 65,000 monuments in there, so it’s a lot.
For simply walking I prefer Mount Royal cemetery, but the sheer scale of Notre‑Dame‑des‑Neiges is impressive.
Ian
I prefer Mont-Royal for its wildlife, and Notre Dame for its monuments. There is a lot more sculpture in a wide variety of materials in Notre Dame but Mont Royal has a ton of great flowering trees and shrubs, and a variety of wilder areas that do their own thing. That said, there are some amazing groundhog colonies in Notre Dame. At he right time of year you can see whole families of them grazing on the lawns.
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Kate
Popped by the Chateau Ramezay Sunday for a look at the John Little exhibit, on till the end of the month but I knew I’d never make time midweek. It’s definitely worth a visit for anyone interested in the evolving atmosphere of Montreal’s streets.
From some of his viewpoints, nothing has changed; from others, everything has been demolished. One painting shows the front of city hall – you could exit the museum, step across the street and stand right there, nothing changed except the addition of the harsh bulk of the modern‑day Palais de justice in the middle distance.
I also had a peek at the Place des Montréalaises, which is easily traversed between Champ‑de‑Mars metro station and Notre‑Dame Street. I can’t say I love the bits of semi‑arid greenery poking out of circles punched through the concrete, but it speaks of easy maintenance.
Remediation must have been done since we discussed the tripping problem at the site in early June, because I didn’t see anything underfoot likely to be a hazard. The small gulley you can see in a photo from June in La Presse is no longer present, and the area is free of cones.
There are still barriers blocking the area off from the rest of the Champ de Mars, but it’s not obvious why.
Orr
We visited here a little while ago, and we took the tour of Montreal city hall too.
When the tour goes into the city council chamber you are invited to sit in the chairs, and you can sit in any chair, and I was told personally by the person who is the chair of the city council (Martine Musau Muele) that is is perfectly ok to sit in her chair, and she suggested it is actually the best chair to sit in.
Also the garden behind Chateau Ramezay is very nice to visit.Kate
I was going to do the garden, but I went down early to see the exhibit and by the time I was done, a horde of tourists was entering the garden, so I gave it a pass. I’ve seen it before but would’ve visited again if it had been quieter.
It’s odd that there’s no direct access via the rear of the Chateau into the garden. You have to leave by the front door and circulate around outside.
DeWolf
The space directly behind City Hall is being renovated and work will be done by December, which explains the barriers between the Champ de mars and the Place des Montréalaises.
I’ve never actually been to the Château Ramezay so this sounds a great excuse to finally visit. Thanks for the tip!
Kate
It’s quite small, but there are some nice artifacts and portraits of people, both from the French régime and the ensuing English upper crust (actually, most of them are Scots). There’s that one big elegant room lined with boiseries from France.
I know I must’ve been in the Château Ramezay before, but can’t remember when. School trip, possibly.
Thanks for the explanations, DeWolf. Now I want to know what’s meant to happen in wintertime with the larger hole in the Place des Montréalaises where you can look down into the metro station and see a tree.
Ian
@Kate that’s great, I love John Little’s paintings. I’ll definitely check it out.
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Kate
Mario Dumont pulled the “we hates Montreal” short straw Sunday with a sparkling piece headlined Montréal va si bien que les gens fuient following an MBC column from Friday, Un désastre nommé Montréal. For a change, MBC doesn’t blame anglos for his “disaster” – he blames gauchistes.
DeWolf
That ISQ projection still has me scratching my head. Are we really meant to believe that Montreal will be losing 10% of its population over the next four years?! The only precedent for that is the period from 1971–1976 when there was large-scale deindustrialization, mass suburban development and political instability.
Orr
@dewolf Parti Québecois’s current ad campaign now in the newspapers is highly anti-immigration, so I expect some new anti-immigrant laws when the PQ wins the upcoming election that will incentivize immigrants to move out of Montreal/Quebec and the ISQ takes political factors like that into account.
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Kate
This week, Côté spliced the flaming Lion bus story with the ongoing saga of the CAQ’s decline. His other work this week was of a more socially satirical tendency. Côté is turning to more Quebec City satire as the elections loom.The Lion bus story, and its reflection of CAQ politics, was also useful to Ygreck. Neither cartoonist quite dared to draw the conflagration that destroyed the real bus in Côte‑des‑Neiges.
The federal government deficit also loomed over the horizon, and the testimony of Karl Malenfant at the Gallant commission raised a few eyebrows.
Freedom of expression in the U.S. was on the radar, too, Chapleau drawing a typical caricature, Ygreck with one of his crude but effective pieces and Godin going for something more low‑key.
And Côté tipped the pen to Ken Dryden.
(There’s already a statue of Ken Dryden, outside an arena in St‑Laurent. It’s tiny – blink and you’ll miss it.)
jeather
Odd that they wouldn’t show that fire — no one was hurt, so it seems ok to draw.
Kate
May just have been artistic choices.
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Kate
It looks like Monday will see a partial STM strike. La Presse offers a survival guide. Its infographic is easier to understand than the page offered by the STM itself – some days service will be normal, but on others, there will only be rush hour service.
I saw a bit somewhere about Bixi boosting their service during the off times, but can’t find a link now.
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Kate
A onetime Conservative Party candidate organized public prayers for Charlie Kirk at Cabot Square on Saturday.
Kevin
I was impressed by the Journal de Montreal calling it “Square Chabot” this morning.
Blork
It seems likely that many of the people who organized and attended that tribute did so out of blind and naïve old-school faith; they seemed to be oblivious to the dark side of Kirk, seeing only a martyred Christian and not a hate monger. That’s not to excuse this unbelievable gap in rational thinking; just an observation on how easy it seems to be for so many people to selectively dismiss things that don’t jive with their perceptions of reality. (And it’s not just the MAGAs and the Christian Americans who do that…)
Kate
Kevin: so they do. Jean Chabot?
Ian
Giovanni Caboto, surely
Kate
The French have often changed foreign names to conform with French usage. We say Leonardo da Vinci, they say Léonard de Vinci. French Wikipedia lists Giovanni Caboto as Jean Cabot. But at least not Chabot (I was joking).
jeather
Christopher Columbus was anglicised, I’ve seen him called John Cabot, I’m sure there are others. For a while names were all localized.
Kate
True enough. We don’t call him Cristoforo Colombo.
jeather
The school here is John Caboto for a half Anglicized version.
Annette
‘Public prayers’, you say?
Kate
I raised an eyebrow at that too, Annette, but the bill has not yet passed into law.
GC
I knew someone would beat me to it, Annette!
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Kate
There was a five-alarm fire on Mont‑Royal at St‑André early Sunday. A photo in the TVA version of the story suggests it was the building with a Multimags in it (it wasn’t – see below) but neither news site says anything more definite besides mentioning a corner.
One person was taken to hospital; neither report suggests the fire was deliberately set.
Later. it’s reported that a man died in the fire and CTV specified there was a loan agency on the ground floor, and three households have lost their homes.
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