Luc Rabouin says he wants to make the river more accessible to Montrealers, which is nice – more riverside promenades would be a bonus, undoubtedly – but this is not the first time we’ve seen this kind of thing promised.
Updates from October, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
CBC has a resumé of how the war in Gaza resonated in our streets, with photos.
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Kate
Saturday, both Projet and Transition are promising to protect the wooded areas near Ray-Mont Logistics.
Linda Gyulai examines Valérie Plante’s claim that the city’s good credit rating is due to Projet’s good management. She doesn’t outright say “that’s bullshit” but the whole article reeks of that position. But she’s not examining the situation the right way around: nothing Projet has done in eight years has damaged the city’s credit rating. There were no expensive debacles on the order of Denis Coderre’s Formula E project.
Campaign stories are piling up with the election now three weeks away. TVA compares the policies of the three leading parties on AirBNB although the lack of effective enforcement of existing rules doesn’t get raised.
I think that’s what’s bugging me. Ideas are pie in the sky. The real question on any municipal issue is not “what would you do” but “how would you get it done” under the current economy and political atmosphere. Projet would also have to answer the question that follows – if that’s what you want to do, and haven’t got it done in eight years, why not?
There’s little prospect that the Quebec government will be favourable to Montreal during the next four years, whichever provincial party wins next year. “How will you overcome Quebec’s attitude to Montreal, which ranges from indifference to hostility?” – there’s your big question.
Tim S.
Great question, Kate. I suspect the way to answer it would be diligent attendance at city and borough council meetings, but not many citizens without a specific issue have the patience to do that.
bob
You need to put the hostility into it’s context. The PQ’s preoccupation is not sovereignty, it is neoliberalism. They serve capital and themselves, and they do that by fanning nationalist flames to get votes. The nationalism gets them power, but then the power is used for privatization and graft. That is not an attitude that can be overcome, it is a sociopolitical reality that can be changed. The mechanisms to do that are absent because the electorate is distracted by ancillary issues that have no effect on the way things are done. “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it”, and we do it with statism, elitism, morally dubious distractions, and crime. You can’t beat City Hall, much less Quebec, so you may as well protect your withered sociopolitical self-esteem by voting for things that feel like you did something when you really did nothing. It is Doritos: they chemically trick your brain onto thinking you are eating real food, but there really isn’t much actual food there (even an “econo” size bag is a mere 400g of salty, greasy starch) and so you end up hungry, and you eat another bag of Doritos.
Ian
The same could (and should) be said of all the PLQ and CAQ. They’re ALL neoliberal crooks who immediately turn to cutting services and infrastructure whenever the economy takes a downturn (or they make a bad investment). Ethnonationalism is just a subterfuge, and that it is still so successful after all these years speaks volumes to the secondary effects of generations of cuts to education.
We KNOW a real wealth tax would help solve the shortage of family doctore more than cutting helath spend & forcing GPs to take on more patients and work more hours. We KNOW funding public transit would go further to helping the environment than pouring money into projects like Northvolt. We KNOW that UBI would help bolster the working class better than “creating jobs” with PPP… but it’s easier to make all legislation time about ‘protecting Quebec’s culture’ than actually governing in any meaningfully progressive way.Their only real goal is to line the pockets of their parasitic class with funds earmarked for public spending and policies that only serve to strengthen thier death grip on the mechanisms of power.
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Kate
It’s emblematic of this unfocused election campaign that Ensemble and Projet are both claiming to make plans for the ruined Empress Theatre. Ensemble wants to revamp it as a venue – but when asked if their plan would include housing, said yes. Projet wants to revamp it as housing, but including “a cultural space on the lower level.”
Neither of these ideas makes a damn bit of sense given the state of the building and the fact that no viable plan has been suggested in decades. Also, nobody can realistically live in a venue. Show me any entertainment venue with apartments in it. We don’t build those for obvious reasons so talking about it makes no sense at all.
And we all know that, once elected, whichever party will conveniently forget about it for the next four years.
Ian
Again, I wonder where all this money will come from. If they do reno the theatre it will end ub being PPP and go into cost overruns as soon as the first wall is cracked open. Inevitably teh construcion firm will claim it’s impossible to uphold the residential aspect and it will all be commercial.
Besides, PM already has lots of property to rebuild (looking at you, Parc Ex) and has already said they can’t do anything without provincial funding.
It’s all hot air at this point unless there is a source of funding nobody knows about yet. At least with the Ensemble plan there will be private money on hand to finish the job, hypothetically, but it’s still a boondoggle.
Kate
You’re right. The city has bought up buildings which would be far more readily (and affordably) converted to housing than the Empress.
Nobody really wants to see that building demolished, but I think they should remove and store the ancient Egyptian façade and raze the rest, find a way to incorporate the Egyptian stuff in a new building, and build one.
DeWolf
Given the state of the Empress, I think it’s pretty clear that it would essentially be demolished, with only the façade preserved. A mixed-use development combining a theatre with housing is not that unusual. Even Carnegie Hall has apartments on top of it.
Kate
I did not know that. Wikipedia says: “The eighth floor of the main hall, which contained studios, was installed after the complex was completed There were a total of 133 or 150 studios, many of which doubled as living quarters. […] In 2007, the Carnegie Hall Corporation announced plans to evict the 33 remaining studio residents. […] The last resident, poet Elizabeth Sargent, moved out during 2010.”
Dwgs
The building is beyond repair and even the facade is in rough shape. Knock it down and start fresh.
Ramsay
On a related note the Natatorium in Verdun will be “saved” increasing the costs by 33% at a minimum and delaying the completion by years
Kate
Yes, I linked to that story last week.
Kevin
We need to start a betting pool for which wasted space will be developed first: the Empress, The Cavendish Extension, Blue Bonnets housing, or the direct rail link to the airport
And make it a codicil in our wills so our heirs can eventually win.
Ian 18:58 on 2025-10-11 Permalink
As long as we’re lining up for pipe dreams, I’d like a castle and a pony.
Kate 20:56 on 2025-10-11 Permalink
I’d settle for a shoebox house and a scooter.
MarcG 08:20 on 2025-10-12 Permalink
Can anyone identify the location of the first photo in that article?
Benoit 08:26 on 2025-10-12 Permalink
@MarcG it’s René-Lévesque Park in Lachine
MarcG 08:43 on 2025-10-12 Permalink
Thanks Benoit. I don’t recall there being all of those docks on the left side, I guess they’ve not surprisingly made some changes since the last time I was there 100 years ago.
CE 08:53 on 2025-10-12 Permalink
It’s actually probably an older photo, the marina was removed a few years ago.
MarcG 09:45 on 2025-10-12 Permalink
As if we needed more proof that memory is an unreliable witness.
It’s great to have access to the river but in terms of swimming, if the water quality sucks, it’s not worth much. I’m not sure on the stats but it seems like half the summer days Verdun beach is closed for swimming because of poopy water and the neighbouring pool is jammed. Can anything be done about that?
Kate 11:55 on 2025-10-12 Permalink
I’m afraid the answer to any question now about public needs and requirements has to be “will it make somebody a lot of money?” and if the answer is “no” – as it will be to cleaning up the river – nothing can be done about it.
We put it in the memory hole that the river going past Montreal has already taken in sewage from the Great Lakes, from Toronto, Oshawa, Kingston, and – via the Ottawa river – Gatineau and Ottawa itself.
Montreal is in the process of building a vastly expensive sewage processing plant on its far eastern end so it doesn’t ship too much of its own crap downriver to Trois‑Rivières, Quebec City and the sea, but that’s of limited use when any heavy downpour means the city has to open some of its sewers directly into the river because the sewer system was originally built for a much smaller population than we have now.
CE 14:13 on 2025-10-12 Permalink
It’s worth noting that the water quality in the river is much, much better than it was in decades past and will likely only get better. It’s also considerably cleaner than most other rivers that pass by urbanized areas.
Orr 14:29 on 2025-10-12 Permalink
There are many riverside parks, dozens and dozens, all around the island of Montreal.
A bicycle is an excellent way to visit them, as bike paths more-or-less follow the outside edge of our Island.
The fact people who don’t live near the water’s edge don’t seem to know very about them, or that they exist at all, is a very good reason to get outside in this nice October weather and explore our beautiful city, our beautiful island.
Ian 23:26 on 2025-10-12 Permalink
You can get to many of them by metro and/or bus as well, but what does that have to do wtih water quality?
MarcG 07:32 on 2025-10-13 Permalink
The point of access isn’t only to swim. Here are some things I’ve seen people doing by the river in Verdun: Walking, jogging, biking, skateboarding, mobility scootering, smoking weed, camping, learning to play trumpet, singing Sacred Harp songs, breaking the no-feeding-ducks bylaw, fishing, yogaing, teaching kids wild survival techniques, drinking alcohol, eating sandwiches, staring at the water thoughtfully, observing beavers, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, walking on the ice.
I’m patiently waiting for a certain someone to suggest the bulldozing of Beaconsfield. (Although the water level is so low right now that there’s a short beach in some places allowing you to walk along the edge of the private property.)
Tim S. 09:54 on 2025-10-13 Permalink
Yes, yes, but the problem is none of these waterfront spots are in the Plateau. Turning De Lormier into a canal really is the obvious next step for Projet, if you think about it. What other city has kayak as a major transportation mode?
Ian 10:10 on 2025-10-13 Permalink
As a Plateau resident I demand reserved paddleboat lanes