Are you braced for four years of Soraya? Because it’s going that way.
Updates from November, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A man was killed in a stabbing in St‑Henri early Sunday, the 29th homicide of the year.
Ian
A brawl of two? Odd that the CBC article was coy about which metro station but gave the streets…
Kate
Charlebois is an obscure street that’s more a kind of alley running beside the tracks, linking the Ste‑Marguerite underpass to the metro station. That’s why the accounts mention a wooded area – it’s mostly some fairly shaggy trees beside the tracks.
Two people can’t brawl? I guess not…
Ian
I used to live at Ste Marge by the canal, I know Charlebois well. That underpass used to be a good spot to get mugged circa 93. That whole area has gentrifiied so much since then, though, that I’m kind of surprised.
bob
The stories are disingenuous. The “boisé, entre le métro et le chemin de fer” is the site of a recurring homeless favella. It was wooded until several months ago, when the trees and bushes were cut down and an encampment therein was removed. It was scrub for a while, until a new encampment went up in about the same spot. RC’s first photo shows the side of Pizza St. Henri, so I guess they taped off St Ferdinand. The second shows the railway fence west of the encampment. The third shows the parking lot west of that. There are also usually people camped out against the walls of the station on the St. Ferdinand side. Also inside, but at this happened in the wee hours the station would have been closed. You can clearly see the favella in Google Maps satellite view.
Or, maybe something spilled out of Pub Epoxy, around the corner, at closing time.
The traditional absence of information from police fertilizes speculation.
Ian
That tracks. THere’s lots of mini encampments all throughout St Henri along the tracks.
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Kate
Halloween is a reliable spark for cartoonists. This week Côté drew two front door scenes, one with a doctor and one evoking political nostalgia, while Godin also married the idea with doctors, as well as a new referendum. Ygreck shows us the many ghouls around the tombstone of the CAQ and Côté’s rough sketch of the week also shows a Halloween scene.The government’s fight with doctors took a dangerous turn from Chapleau, while Godin’s angry little man wanted to vote. Chapleau’s sly observation of Soraya was superb. Ygreck used the doctor exodus in two different cartoons this week, also evoking the possible new referendum.
And if you disguise yourself as François Legault, you can’t expect to collect much candy!
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Kate
CBC has a what you need to know about election day. Here’s a general look at the election from La Presse.
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Kate
La Presse has the best guide to managing through the transit strike. We’re back to rush hour service only on Sunday, a schedule that will continue through November unless the maintenance union comes to an agreement with the STM.
Some articles have mentioned that the drivers are considering another strike on the weekend of November 15 and 16 but I don’t think that’s definite yet.
La Presse also reported on Saturday’s total transit blackout, the first in 38 years, with conflicting headlines: Des usagers résignés face aux perturbations vs Des usagers à bout de nerfs.
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Kate
TVA says there have been three fires in homeless camps over the last week.
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Kate
Once again, the case against changing the clock, this piece specifically arguing to abolish daylight saving time.
DeWolf
I don’t think many people are keen on having the sun rise at 4am in the summer while losing out on an hour of daylight in the evening when people can actually enjoy it.
MarcG
The current scientific consensus us that permanent standard time is better for human health and safety. I don’t think this is something that belongs in the court of public opinion. Eat your broccoli, climate change is real, vaccines are good, etc.
Kate
Staying on permanent EST or EDT both have downsides.
Ian
We could always go back to sundials haha
I will meet you at half past perihelion, 45° 30′ 31.9968” N, 73° 33′ 42.0048” W
Kevin
I don’t care as long as we never switch again.
Nicholas
Scientific consensus is not a thing here. Time is artificial, as are time zones. We can all choose to get up or go to sleep whenever we want, and schedules (work, school, etc) are set by humans, not science, not the sun. (We could stay on DST and start things and hour later in the winter, or vice versa.) There are benefits and harms from each situation, some of which can be scientifically measured, but we as humans can weigh them and decide which are more or less important. That is exactly what politics is for. There is so much in the world that is scientific consensus that we are not doing, let’s not add in fake stuff and discredit the real stuff.
MarcG
Dunno, I have a weird habit of deferring to associations of people who dedicate their lives to studying specific subjects, rather than how I think and feel after spending 5 minutes pondering them.
CE
With some time zones (like ours) being so big across, it doesn’t really matter whether we chose standard time or DST. It’ll be an earlier sunset on one side and “standard” on the other. It will be reversed if you chose the other option. It doesn’t matter which you choose, the problem is the change (as a night person, I’d rather keep DST, my girlfriend who is an early riser would rather permanent standard time).
Ian
@MarcG you live outside time? Impressive! Me, I just have opinions about time becasue I’ve lived within its constraints my whole life, and I’m stuck within this damn limited perception of time as linear. 5 space must be awesome.
DeWolf
Here’s the reason for switching permanently to standard time rather than daylight savings time, according to a CBC article:
// “This is the natural profile of sun exposure that we should be getting,” said Robillard, who is co-chair of the Canadian Sleep Research Consortium. “Permanent DST would be an artificial, skewed kind of way of trafficking our clocks that might be socially fun, but not biologically founded.” (…) Patricia Lakin-Thomas, a York University professor who runs the school’s clock lab, says adopting permanent DST would also cause trouble during fall and winter. “The problem with DST in a place like Toronto is that if we were on DST year round, you wouldn’t see the sunrise until 9 a.m. in the middle of the winter,” she said. //
It seems to me like there’s a logical fallacy here because time zones are artificial. Not only that, but the way they were drawn is pretty crude. What makes ST more natural than DST, when there’s up to an hour of variation within a single time zone?
Ian
Linear time is only an artifact of our limited perceptual capacities and any attempt to measure it reflects the need for a taxonomic security blanket but hey, here we are. If we have to share a weird made up convention of time measurement let’s at least try to make one up that is mentally healthy instead of flip flopping between two.
MarcG
Assuming it’s agreed that switching time is bad, and we should pick one or the other, the arguments against permanent DST from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine are:
“DST is less well-aligned with intrinsic human circadian physiology, and it disrupts the natural seasonal adjustment of the human clock due to the effect of late-evening light on the circadian rhythm. DST results in more darkness in the morning hours, and more light in the evening hours. Both early morning darkness and light in the evening have a similar effect on circadian phase, causing the endogenous rhythm to shift to later in the day. There is evidence that the body clock does not adjust to DST even after several months. Permanent DST could therefore result in permanent phase delay, a condition that can also lead to a perpetual discrepancy between the innate biological clock and the extrinsic environmental clock, as well as chronic sleep loss due to early morning social demands that truncate the opportunity to sleep. The chronic misalignment between the timing of demands of work, school, or other obligations against the innate circadian rhythm is called “social jet lag.” Studies show that social jet lag is associated with an increased risk of obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and depression. One study found that in the fall, during the shift from DST back to standard time, there was a reduction in the rate of cardiovascular events, suggesting that the risk of myocardial infarction may be elevated because of chronic effects of DST. Social jet lag associated with DST may be worse in the western-most areas within a given time zone, where sunset occurs at a later clock time. Adopting permanent DST also would undo the benefits of delaying start times for middle schools and high schools.”
MarcG
I wonder if anyone has proposed an optimised re-drawing of timezones to match a switch to fixed time. It’s interesting that timezone standardization was a project of transportation agencies because it was motivated by problems with train scheduling.
MarcG
@DeWolf: I think the idea of “natural” here is for people to be exposed to daylight in the mornings since that’s been shown to set our internal clocks in motion, assuming that all current “unnatural” timezones and typical school & work schedules remain as they are.
CE
Considering we can’t get rid of DST despite talking about it twice a year, every single year, I doubt we’re going to be redrawing time zones any time soon.
EmilyG 23:12 on 2025-11-02 Permalink
Darn. I don’t like that result.
At least I got out and voted today, I suppose. The worker at the polls asked to see my voter card, and I told them I’d never gotten it. But I had checked a day or two before to see if I was on the list, and I was. I brought my medicare card and some mail with my address on it.
Tim S. 23:17 on 2025-11-02 Permalink
If it ends up being Craig Sauvé splitting the vote, then credit whichever oppo researcher dug up the allegations back in 2017. Talk about playing the long game.
Tim S. 23:21 on 2025-11-02 Permalink
Oops, 2021. Point still stands!
walkerp 23:31 on 2025-11-02 Permalink
You fucking idiots.
I hope all of you who were so critical of Projet are happy today. We just had the best administration in the history of the city and you voted it out because it wasn’t perfect enough.
We just gave the city to the developers, landlords and car lobbies (not to mention the CAQ).
Just astounding privilege in action.
PatrickC 00:24 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
CBC news is giving Soraya’s victory a “progressive” spin by describing her as the “first racialized person” to become Montreal’s mayor. I wonder if she (or other people of Latin American origin) sees herself that way.
maggie rose 00:28 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
We’re going backwards now as a city. Feels like we’re for sale. When I hear that voters wanted a change, I despair.
DeWolf 01:05 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Any bets on how long we have before the first corruption scandal?
Annette 02:28 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Is it really a ‘scandal’ if Montrealers just grumble and tolerate it, and anything less than a federal commission commences? Then it’s gonna be a long, dark ride.
Annette 02:29 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
…And not in a bike lane.
Chris 04:31 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
>…giving Soraya’s victory a “progressive” spin…
Why the quotes? Progressives have been all about categorizing and promoting things like race and skin colour over actual ideas and opinions. So there’s some delicious irony here if you ask me.
Su 07:08 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Yeah. Soraya herself has been giving herself a progressive spin in various speeches – She is a progressive liberal economic growth capitalist after all.
dhomas 07:23 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
I guess folks will see that Ensemble was not the answer when all Montreal’s problems don’t immediately disappear. Unfortunately, we will all pay the price for 4 years.
My favourite nickname for her, as seen on Reddit: “MaireBNB”. At least I got a chuckle out of these results.
MarcG 08:08 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Not sure if it’s a final tally but the voter turnout is listed at 35,58% here.
Ian 08:34 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Don’t worry, walkerp, Wong still won the Plateau & PM won all the brough seats, even Alex Norris. We’ll still get a years-long construction project on Parc & accompanying hand-waving of concerns.
Rabouin even won Ville-Marie so it’s not liek he has to leave political life. Good of him to take responsibility for the mayorlty loss, though.
Tim S. 08:37 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
She ran a vague campaign under “listen and act,” so I guess it’s up to us to keep telling her what we want.
Kate 10:08 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Tim S.: today it’s been nothing but “you voted for change” which means Montreal as a big, car‑oriented suburb. And don’t forget she promised a mass firing at city hall, too.
Ian, I don’t know where you saw that Rabouin won Ville‑Marie but he did not. Leslie Roberts won a seat there, as did one other Ensemble and one Projet councillor. Rabouin is not on the list.
CE 10:12 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
@walkerp I’m not pleased with the result but Soraya won decisively. If you took Craig’s total and added it to Luc’s, he would have just barely beat Soraya and it’s unlikely that every person who voted for Transition would have moved their vote over to Projet. Also, it’s likely that a good portion of Action voters would have had Ensemble as their second choice and they got more votes than Transition did. As a long time supporter, I’m hoping the party can rebuild and learn from its mistakes.
CE 10:13 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
@Kate, I think he meant that Luc got the most votes to be mayor in Ville-Marie.
Kate 10:45 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
CE, thanks. There’s a page on Elections Montreal that lists mayoral returns by borough, and it says Luc Rabouin had 7801 votes in VM, Soraya had 7700. So, close but no help for Rabouin, and he’s already stepped down as head of Projet.
Tim S. 11:38 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Kate, my point is that democracy is more than voting, and if there are specific issues I feel strongly about I’ll have to speak up.
Here in NDG-CDN I never went to borough council meetings under Projet because I figured they had everything in hand. Now, I’ll have to make a point of paying attention and showing up.
Mark Côté 11:44 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
The counting is still going on for the CDN city councillor. When I checked just now, the Projet candidate, Emilie Brière, was leading by just two votes.
Kevin 12:03 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
I think the election was lost early on, when Rabouin and his crew made two appearances at Blue Bonnets, and at Place des Montrealaises
It drew attention to the fact that Projet hadn’t been very good at finishing what they set out to do unless it involved a bike path.
Launching your campaign at a plaza your party created as a giant tripping hazard, and promoting a solution to homelessness at the place where it took you a full year to set up some trailers? Astoundingly bad ideas.
Those are concrete examples of Projet Montreal’s weaknesses as a party — and they were too blind to see it.
Kate 12:35 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Tim S.: Good point. I was wondering what I could do by way of social justice work in VSMPE, but we’re mostly Projet here still. And as an anglo I know my voice doesn’t count for much.
…Just after posting this comment I received email from Piétons Québec about their annual meeting – and I think they will now need more support.
Kevin: Good analysis. There was too much focus on what Projet hadn’t got done in eight years, and not enough focus on what Rabouin thought he could do better.
Joey 12:43 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
I’m a lot less pessimistic about Soraya – there’s a tendency to perhaps exaggerate her political leanings, no? I mean, she was a minister in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet – not Francois Legault’s or Pierre Pollievre’s shadow cabinet, right? It does feel like some of her campaign positions have been perhaps deliberately misinterpreted do be extreme version of them. For instance, CBC reported that her short-term rental proposal consists of forbidding “companies from operating short-term rentals like Airbnbs, but allow residents to rent out their primary home for up to 90 days a year” not necessarily in summer, and she wants to add inspectors – I don’t think that really earns you the nickname “MaireBNB,” no? (Not to mention Projet’s trouble being entirely truthful about how it can enforce short-term rental rules or the fact that terrible Airbnb tragedies happened on its watch.)
I also would expect the bike lane audit not to amount much – the REV is a success and I doubt it will keep growing at the current pace, but I’m not ready to assume Ensemble will ditch it all. Projet, I think, did its best to govern the city as if it would only have a mandate or two to effect real change, and I suspect that most of that change will be hard to undo.
Ideologically, I’d rather have a Luc Rabouin tackling the problems of homelessness, inadequate housing construction, and transit – but as we’ve seen, having the best urbanist POV is hardly sufficient to tackle the kinds of challenges common to big cities all over the world, especially in a political climate where the more senior levels of government have no real interest in helping lefty mayors make progress.
I hope the folks in charge at Projet take this timeout the way they should – by ending the pretty squabbles that led to Sauve not-quite-but-almost spoiling Rabouin’s chances (per CE’s analysis above), being a little less dogmatic about anything and everything, and focusing a little more deeply on a smaller range of issues that matter. Beyond the natural dissatisfaction that comes with being in power for eight (very difficult) years, there’s a sense that PM really dug in its heels on niche issues without seeming to make progress on the things that ordinary voters care about. You can agree that the underground infrastructure everywhere needs urgent upgrading and still be annoyed that the city is incapable of managing its construction projects in a way that reduces idle time and doesn’t deliberately make congestion and circulation (pedestrian, bike, car and bus) awful. I’m not so optimistic that PM will do what’s necessary to return in full force in four years, if only because a lot of the fresher faces lost. Put it another way – PM can absolutely bounce back if it figures out how to be pro-bike without being anti-car.
Last, @Ian, I doubt that Parc Ave project will ever see the light of day – I’m pretty sure the central city controls major streets like Parc (just like it controls major parks). Then again, something’s gotta give and it’s possible Cathy Wong makes it a priority in her dealigns with Soraya (though to be honest I have no idea what she stands for or campaigned on – and I live in her borough. I guess that sums up the problem…).
DeWolf 12:54 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Soraya is an opportunist and a career politician so she will do whatever’s best for her own image. The best thing about her is that she isn’t an ideologue so in theory she can be convinced to do the right thing.
But I’m worried about Ensemble having a majority on council. For every competent person like Alan DeSousa, there are five wackos and/or slimeballs. Having somebody like Leslie Roberts in a position of influence is pretty scary.
We might even see a situation where Soraya is the level-headed one trying to keep her own party in check.
DeWolf 13:03 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Some prognostications regarding urban infrastructure:
As Joey mentioned, City Hall controls major arteries (and even some minor streets that Coderre had designated as arteries to undermine PM-controlled boroughs). So don’t expect any changes on Park Avenue in the next four years. This will be a status quo government at best.
Another project that will likely be cancelled include the reconstruction of Ste-Catherine East in the Village. Even though it’s the product of two years of consultations and collaboration between residents, the SDC and the city, Soraya dismissed it out of hand when it was announced. It will either be delayed indefinitely (at least until the water main disintegrates) or sent back to the drawing board and watered down.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if the plans for Ste-Catherine West are revised too, even though construction has already started. I would expect narrower sidewalks and more street parking than what’s currently planned for the stretch from Stanley to St-Marc.
Ensemble’s only promise with regards to public transit was to increase metro frequencies. No word about any improvements to the bus network.
With Ensemble now in control of Ahuntsic, I’d expect the bike paths on Prieur and Sauriol to be removed, even though they are heavily used by schoolchildren. Same with the bike paths on Terrebonne and Lacombe/Édouard-Montpetit in CDN. Luckily with PM still in control of VSP, some of the more contentious bike paths in that boroughs (eg Querbes and Villeray) will probably be saved and maybe even enhanced through the borough’s own initiative.
Blue Bonnets will probably be sold off to private developers with no requirement for social housing.
A big question will be the reconstruction of Berri that is meant to start next year and last for several years. It includes an upgrade of the narrow bidirectional bike path. The project has already been tendered so I don’t know if it can be postponed without the city paying big penalties. But will it be redesigned to eliminate the bike path upgrade? Keep in mind Ensemble promised an 18-month moratorium on any cycling investment. They evaded questions about what this would mean for projects already in the works.
DeWolf 13:11 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Oh and silver lining for anyone who has been enjoying winter cycling these past few years: the boroughs that clear bike paths in the winter are still controlled by PM, and boroughs control snow removal.
Whether Ensemble orders Bixi to cancel its winter service is another question, but I don’t see why they would given its success.
Tim S. 13:17 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
I largely agree with Joey and DeWolf here – all the more reason a little carefully-framed activism might go a long way.
That said, I did just make a point of going on a farewell jog along the Terrebonne path.
DeWolf 13:21 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Yeah, I think its days are numbered. Ensemble is unlikely to spend millions to dismantle paths with physical infrastructure, but the hundreds of thousands it would take to remove a path that is just paint and bollards — I can see them doing that in boroughs where they control all the levers of power.
One wrinkle to what I said regarding the paths in VSP is that any street with a bike path on it is considered an artery, which means it’s controlled by City Hall. So if Soraya really really wanted to get rid of bike paths, she very easily could, but that would very quickly put the lie to her promises to be a conciliatory mayor who listens to everyone.
Ian 14:17 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
@Joey I mentioned the Parc rebuild becasue Wong was on CBC radio this morning and that was one project she specifically mentioend wanting to do, as carrying on Rabouin’s legacy… I still think just changing the traffic lights to intentionally un-synched to slow things down, scramble crosswalks & making the east-west streets in Mile End one way would solve most of the traffic issues but whatever… it’s not as flashy as a full rebuild I guess.
DeWolf 18:31 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
SMF will have final say over anything that touches Park Avenue. If Wong makes it a priority to advocate for structural changes that make it safer, that’s great. But the borough can’t do anything alone.
Ian 19:56 on 2025-11-03 Permalink
Well, Wong thought it was worth bringing up. Maybe she doesn’t realize.
ottawaowl 20:10 on 2025-11-06 Permalink
We (Ottawa avid cyclists who LOVE all that Projet Montreal has accomplished) were VERY disappointed (in tears!) by the Montreal election results Bad enough that we have to deal with dickhead Doug Ford and crappy anti-cycling mayor Mark Sutcliffe.