As news goes, this is a bit recherché, but UQAM is going to be giving space to the cold type from the Musée de l’imprimerie du Québec, creating a unique typographical workshop. I may have to go back to school!
Updates from October, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The concrete ring of the Olympic stadium has been removed as the expensive renovation of the structure continues. A new form of demolition had to be invented to safely dismantle the ring.
Kevin
I will just note that this is the exact procedure that would have had to be done to demolish the useless building.
Kate
Yes, I remember reading (possibly in a comment here, possibly from Kevin) that the whole structure is held together under tension, so that taking any part of it down would be a technical challenge not to send slabs of concrete flying.
Joey
The city could develop a really interesting neighbourhood if it had the stadium footprint to build on – lots of excellent attractions nearby, right on the Metro, etc.
maggie rose
At this point it’s starting to rival the Mayan ruins.
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Kate
ArchDaily has a piece on “transformed” row houses in Montreal’s older neighbourhoods. No discussion here about the lost living spaces when a duplex or triplex is turned into a single‑family dwelling.
Joey
I’d be curious to see a Venn diagram showing the overlap of people who oppose converting multi-plexes into single dwellings and people who oppose converting shoebox houses into multiplexes. I bet there’s quite a bit of overlap…
DeWolf
There have been a lot of conversions of duplexes into single-family houses on my block since I moved here at the beginning of 2022. The thing is, that’s supposed to be illegal — RPP banned the practice in 2019. But when I look at property records, I see that many of these conversions are still legally listed as two distinct apartments. Is there some loophole? Maybe if each unit remains self-contained (eg a bathroom and kitchen on each floor)?
That said, one of the projects in the ArchDaily story, Le Louis-Hébert, seems to have actually added three new rental units that weren’t there before.
Blork
To be fair, some of these conversions of duplexes into single-family units have been done on very tiny duplexes that are even small once converted. I’m thinking of two belonging to acquaintances of mine, where the downstairs is just a kitchen, dining room, and normal-size living room, and upstairs is two or three small bedrooms and a bathroom. I don’t know how a family could live in just one of those levels back in the day, although back then people were accustomed to discomfort. You might have had two or three children sleeping in the same bed, which you’d never see nowadays, plus grandma sleeping in the kitchen or whatever.
We look out one side of our faces and complain that new condo buildings are making too many tiny units that are only good for solo living; that to keep young families in the city we need larger units. Then we look out the other side of our faces and complain when someone turns two 600 square-foot apartments into a reasonable sized house with room for kids and a home office.
Obviously that’s not the case with all conversions, but it’s not uncommon for many of them.
Kate
In England, houses like that would have had outhouses, not bathrooms. I think people washed only sporadically, in tubs in the kitchen. I don’t know whether the same situations applied here, but I remember reading that the Schubert Baths, the St‑Michel Baths and other older indoor “pools” were originally conceived as facilities to allow people to get clean who couldn’t wash properly at home.
When I lived in the Plateau, it was in a row house dating from the 1880s. I think I’ve told before here of having an unexpected visit from a party of people – two very elderly women, a middle‑aged man and a very embarrassed teenager. The old ladies were from a family that had lived in my flat when they were kids. Their parents, possibly one or two grandparents, aunts or uncles, themselves and their siblings, had lived all packed into my tiny place, which I felt had just about enough room for me, some books, my computer and a couple of cats.
Blork
We definitely use more space now than then. I think back in the “old days” most of these places were “cold water” flats, meaning (I assume) that they had running water but cold water only. Water heaters were a luxury, and required much more plumbing. (When were water heaters as we know them even invented, I wonder…)
So yeah, cold water bathing, or the long process of boiling water on the stove and then everyone washes in the same washtub. Hence the appeal of the public baths; plentiful hot water, full-body bathing, etc. etc. as opposed to five minutes in a tub with four inches of water that was heated up in the kitchen. Particularly useful if someone in the house (typically the father, but could also be a lineup of sons) worked somewhere very dirty, like a foundry or factory or whatever.
DeWolf
Blork is right that some of the converted duplexes are really not that big — two 700-square-foot apartments combined into one is still not an enormous amount space.
But there are two problems. One is that many of these conversions aren’t just simple combinations of two existing units to create a reasonably-sized living space for a family. They’re often luxurious expansions that transform what was once an ordinary affordable duplex into a kind of secret mansion hidden behind a humble façade. The family right across the alley from me excavated an enormous basement and added a third floor to create a house that must be close to 4,000 square feet in size. There’s even an in-ground pool.
The other issue is that in places like Villeray and Rosemont, duplexes are being converted into single-family housing without much additional housing being built. If this was being done while 6-7 storey buildings are being built on top of vacant lots, autobody shops, gas stations, etc., that might be fine, but instead new buildings are limited to 2-3 storeys because anything larger is opposed by the neighbours. As a result not only are neighbourhoods gentrifying, they’re becoming less dense and less able to sustain good transit and local shops.
MarcG
There’s also the issue of the people being renovicted out of their apartments, possibly illegally. According to this site “As of June 6, 2024, and for a period of three years, landlords are generally forbidden to evict tenants to subdivide, enlarge or change the use of rental units.”
Tim S.
Just to be clear, the nineteenth/early twentieth centuries are generally held to have been awful for working people, with improvements coming with great struggle and near-revolution. We shouldn’t feel bad for expecting improved living situations!
Kevin
These crowded conditions were also prevalent in wartime housing in St. Laurent.
Until she was 16, my mum shared a tiny bedroom with her grandmother. Her brothers had an alcove off the kitchen; no door, just a curtain.
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Kate
Le Devoir says it costs up to $5 million per kilometre to remove a bike path. Soraya MF is quoted here as saying she doesn’t plan to do that, but in other pieces I’ve seen her quoted as suggesting she’ll “review” the bike infrastructure, which might mean she’d give the idea lip service to please the haters, while not actually doing it.
Kevin
There are times that I am absolutely gobsmacked by prices in this province.
$5 million to redo a kilometre of road in Montreal, and the OQLF budget is $50 million a year.At these prices the city should set up its own road-paving company, from crushing gravel to making asphalt to building trafic lights, and it would save money.
walkerp
Anybody know what the prices were for tearing up the bike paths in Toronto? I remember them seeming quite high as well.
DeWolf
The estimate for removing the three bike paths in Toronto (Bloor, University and Yonge) is $48 million.
The same report says they cost a total of $27 million to build.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/report-cost-removal-bike-lanes-toronto-1.7382626
DeWolf
Also on the topic of the Toronto bike paths… just a reminder that the Ford government passed a law to indemnify themselves against any legal action that results for people getting killed on the three streets they are targeting for bike path removal. A really sociopathic approach to governance.
Ian
What do you bet there’s some Sylvester McMonkey McBean type getting rich off these dumb Sneetches by installng and uninstalling bike paths over and over again
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Kate
Both La Presse and TVA have reports Wednesday on a growing crisis of homelessness in Centre‑Sud.
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Kate
CBC held a debate between the three main mayoral candidates Tuesday evening. There are links to the video and a comparison of their platforms.
Pivot examines the differences between the ideas of Projet and Transition.
Ian 19:47 on 2025-10-22 Permalink
In my program we are already talking field trip 🙂