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Updates from December, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• Kate 22:50 on 2025-12-16 Permalink | Reply  

  I should know by now that as the Christmas holidays approach, local news stories get sporadic and thin.

  So to recap Tuesday: a little girl was hit by her schoolbus in Laval; schools in Chateauguay and Kahnawake were locked down after threats were posted to social media but there’s been an arrest and the Peacekeepers say there was never a material threat; emergency rooms at children’s hospitals are overloaded as flu is peaking early; a garage in Mile Ex burned down on Tuesday morning; we now have size limits on how high snow piles can be for kids to play on.

  CE and EmilyG are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • EmilyG 13:44 on 2025-12-17 Permalink

    When I was an elementary school kid (early 1990s), at our school we just weren’t allowed to play on the snow piles at all.

  • CE 14:27 on 2025-12-17 Permalink

    There was a story on the CBC News today about the snow piles. It seems schools are reacting to insurance and over-protective parents. The guidelines (height and slope of piles, kids needing to wear helmets) are not required but they’re out there and will likely eventually be used in a lawsuit when a kid gets hurt playing outside.

    Some of my best memories from my childhood were playing on snow piles and building tunnels in the snow. My father has a split fingernail from being thrown down a pile while playing king of the hill in the 60s. He doesn’t begrudge the kid who did it because it was part of the game.

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• Kate 18:09 on 2025-12-16 Permalink | Reply  

  The city plans to demolish the ramp to the old incinerator on des Carrières, a job expected to start in the new year and take till sometime in spring.

  Dinu Bumbaru of Heritage Montreal says that removing the ramp is a mistake, making the whole old structure inaccessible in future.

  Ian, CE, Ian, and 2 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Nicholas 19:13 on 2025-12-16 Permalink

    One day we’re going to try to tear down the Met and fill in Decarie and the preservationists are going to say we need to preserve these mid century monuments.

  • bob 20:05 on 2025-12-16 Permalink

    The whole structure should be inaccessible. It should be gone altogether. Why is it still there, other than the cost involved in removing it? Not everything we’ve ever built is worth preserving.

  • Ian 23:11 on 2025-12-16 Permalink

    It’s still partially in use. Not just the site, but some parts of the infrastructure are connected, including hydro.

    The big concern in tearing it down is the massive amounts of contaminants. If you ever go up on the roof you can marvel at the asbestos insulators. Of course asbestos was mixed into the concrete too. Oh and the whole reason the place got shut down was dioxin contamination.

    For adventuresome types the site will still be accessible, the ramp just used to be the easy way in before the garage doors were welded over.

  • Ian 10:58 on 2025-12-18 Permalink

    addendum:
    Perhaps of interst, there is an incinerator almost exactly like ours in Berlin, but still in use as they were more careful about sorting their garbage. It appears in the Julian Rosenfeld art film/ installation, “Manifesto”, specifically Manifesto #9. If you’ve ever been in the des Carrieres incinerator the state of it is an amazing contrast.

    ARCHITECTURE – Worker in a garbage incineration plant

    Bruno Taut, Down with Seriousism! (1920)
    Bruno Taut, Daybreak (1921)
    Antonia Sant’Elia, Manifesto of Futurist Architecture (1914)
    Coop Himmelb(l)au, Architecture Must Blaze (1980)
    Robert Venturi, Non-Straightforward Architecture: A Gentle Manifesto (1966)

    https://www.julianrosefeldt.com/film-and-video-works/manifesto-_2014-2015/manifesto-architecture-/

  • CE 11:39 on 2025-12-18 Permalink

    What are they currently using the facility for now (other than parking municipal vehicles)?

    The incinerator features heavily in the movie C.R.A.Z.Y., it’s often in the background of different shots throughout the film

  • Ian 17:29 on 2025-12-18 Permalink

    I’m not sure about now but a couple of years back they were using part of the buolding for storage for the muncipal fleet. The ground floor area is still running hydro.

• Kate 10:46 on 2025-12-16 Permalink | Reply  

  The policy of collecting garbage every two weeks has ended in Hochelaga, at least between May and October.

  Westmount has also retreated on their two‑week garbage policy since the election.

   

• Kate 10:14 on 2025-12-16 Permalink | Reply  

  On winning the election, Ensemble sacked seven of the ten people on the STM’s board of directors. Aref Salem, now president of the STM, flexes and says it’s within their rights. Two of the sacked are Catherine Morency, mobility expert from the Polytechnique, and Suzanne Lareau, who used to be president of Vélo‑Québec.