The metro will stay open a few hours later than usual on New Year’s Eve, except for the blue line, which will be tucked in at the usual time.
Updates from December, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Police have located the headquarters of a car theft and fraud ring in a nondescript garage in St‑Michel. Charges have yet to be laid against the two men accused of directing the network. Lots of allegeds are sprinkled around this item.
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Kate
Starting first thing Wednesday, the overtime strike by the 770 professionals working for the STM will begin, and continue till January 11. The terms of their essential services have been approved by the Tribunal administratif du travail.
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Kate
The construction of two stations on the blue line has been held up because Quebec won’t authorize the construction of new projects connected to the stations. No particular reason is given for Quebec to drag its feet.
Can’t help noticing the reflexive “Césira‑Parisotto (Lacordaire) et Madeleine‑Parent (Langelier)” in this piece. We’ll be doing this all the time – shortcutting the ceremonial station names to explain where they are.
Nicholas
I do think we name too many places after people rather than neighbourhoods or streets (often named after people), but we will stop naming the streets soon enough, once the stations are opened, on the map and used. Namur is a tiny little street not even touching the station, but no one says Namur (Jean Talon/Decarie). There are many stations like this, in particular ones on the same major street as another station, so they get a different street, like Fabre (Papineau), de Castelnau (St Laurent), Namur and now these stations and ones at Pie IX and Viau, which all overlap with the Green Line. Would we want to do Viau Nord, akin to Toronto’s Eglinton West, or just have many stations with the same name, like Western in Chicago? Maybe de Pontoise and de Bellefeuille would have been better, but people will learn them soon enough.
Kate
I’d’ve been fine with Pie-IX, Viau and Langelier Nord, but I understand the resolution to name more things after women.
I think part of my problem here is the modern insistence on giving things the whole name of the person. I’m glad we have a Papineau station and not a Louis‑Joseph‑Papineau station, for example.
I just looked it up, and to my surprise the street, and therefore the station, is named for Joseph Papineau, the father of Louis‑Joseph. But the point stands. Rue Edwin‑Atwater, rue Étienne‑Guy, rue Sir‑Robert‑Peel – the green line alone would be bogged down with toponymy.
CE
The naming streets after people and using the full names bothers me too. The newer streets in the suburbs have some absurd names. The entrance to Place Bell in Laval is on the corner of rue Claude-Gagné and rue Lucien-Paiement for example.
dhomas
I think we’ll get used to it. We couldn’t name them Pie-IX, Lacordaire, and Langelier as these stations already exist on the Green Line.
We all got used to calling it “Lionel-Groulx” station, and that’s quite a mouthful. All throughout my youth, I would transit through “Berri – de Montigny”, also quite long.There are also a number of stations already named “first-lastname”: the aforementioned Lionel-Groulx, Jean-Talon, Honoré-Beaugrand, Lucien-L’Allier, Édouard-Montpetit, Georges-Vanier, Henri-Bourassa, Jean-Drapeau (though I still call this one Ile-Ste-Hélène). Many of these have had their names for a long time, so not really a “modern insistence”, I think.
Plus a bunch of others that are pretty long: Guy-Concordia, Place-des-Arts, Saint-Laurent, Côte-Sainte-Catherine, Place-Saint-Henri, Villa-Maria, Square-Victoria (though nobody uses ‘OACI’, which is officially part of the name), Place-d’Armes, Champ-de-Mars, Longueuil-Université-de-Sherbrooke, Côte-des-Neiges, Université-de-Montréal, etc.
Kate
Pie-IX Nord! Lacordaire Bleu! Langelier d’en haut!
OK, we have some long metro station names but they mostly refer to streets or nearby features. Césira‑Parisotto doesn’t tell me anything. There isn’t a street or park or square nearby that’s named after her. Just the station.
On another tangent, it sounds like Villa Maria school may not have long. So we may have a metro station named after a school that ceases to exist. But in a way that’s typical – ever try to find “de Montigny” on a map?
dhomas
I don’t want to belabour the point and/or be pedantic, but we have at least one example of a metro named before the adjacent street got the same name: Lucien-L’Allier metro was named in 1978; rue de l’Aqueduc was renamed to Lucien-L’Allier in 1979. But this was a bit of a special case, since it was named after Lucien L’Allier, the chief engineer of the metro, who had recently died.
Maybe they can name a park or a square near the new metro stations after their namesakes? I think the rule is that all public works projects need to have at least 1% allocated to a piece of public artwork; there’s an opportunity there. But I get it, generally, the metro names are reminiscent of something nearby and not the other way around.
Also, ‘de Montigny’ street still exists! In a few places, actually. There’s still a section of de Montigny street downtown between Clark and St-Urbain (small aside: my mom used to work on de Montigny, for a textile worker union that inexplicably had their brutalist concrete head office on prime real estate downtown. There is now a huge 19-story appartment building in that spot) .
But there’s also a really long stretch of de Montigny in Pointe-aux-Trembles, where street names mirrored the names downtown at around the same level. Between Sherbrooke and Notre-Dame, you can find Ontario street, de Montigny, Sainte-Catherine, René-Lévesque (which changes names to Dorchester as you enter the independent city of Montréal-Est, similar to how it changes when you enter Westmount), de la Gauchetière, etc.
Kate
I hassled the wrong guy about de Montigny!
Also, Lionel-Groulx street wasn’t called that before the metro, I believe. It was rue Albert. So that does happen.
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Kate
This has been the coldest first half of December in Montreal since 2007.
MarcG
My doomer prediction is for a short spell of freakishly warm weather sometime in the next 2 weeks.
Kate
According to the forecast, this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday will all be above freezing, with rain indicated all three days.
MarcG
Not freaky enough!
MarcG
Currently calling for a high of 7C on Friday then dropping to -10C overnight which is getting kinda weird but I was thinking more like beach shorts on Christmas day.
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Kate
Two grade schools in town are languishing for lack of resources to complete repairs to make them usable. According to this piece, as many as 5000 CSSDM students have been bussed to more remote schools over the last few years because their neighbourhood school has been too decrepit for use.
This is worth reporting but it’s not entirely new news. The condition of the Académie de Roberval building has been reported on twice in La Presse over the last two years, and there have been other reports of virtually abandoned school buildings – as if buildings remain in stasis when unoccupied, rather than falling into decay. But putting money into educational infrastructure doesn’t interest the CAQ much.
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Kate
The STM drivers and metro operators union have approved a tentative agreement.
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