Vi Trung Ngo, whom we’ve discussed here before, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison this week, plus a seven‑year ban on driving.
In May 2023, drunk and speeding, Ngo crashed into an SUV at the corner of St‑Laurent and Jean‑Talon, provoking a richochet that killed 31‑year‑old Fabienne Houde‑Bastien. Her family is making a plea against drunk driving.
A plan to convert the old Van Horne warehouse into artist studios and a hotel has been given the nod by the OCPM. With a diagram showing how the space will be allotted. Video report from CBC.
Friday morning, La Presse has some negative reactions, particularly to the hotel plan.
50 parking spaces? I know it’s a hotel, and the 55 has degraded in service quality, but come on.
Looks great. And yes, the restaurant is likely only for the ones that can afford it, and the parking for VIPs, or the ones that have the right connections. Still way better than leaving it as is.
The last thing this neighbourhood needs is real estate development profiteering and spillover gentrification.
I hope it does as well as the luxury hotel on Laurier where the Glatt butcher used to be.
I always thought this was the best solution for the building. It can’t be turned into housing because it’s too close to the tracks and keeping it as a warehouse is very much underutilizing the space (the rail yard was removed decades ago and there’s very little industry in the area anymore). This part of town needs hotels; people want to be able to stay in the neighbourhood. That’s why there are so many Airbnbs in “hip” residential areas. There is also a lot of office space in the area and I’m sure people visiting those offices from out of town would prefer a short walk to the office over having to stay downtown and make their way up to Mile End every day.
The best use would be studios and community spaces, but there’s no profit in that.
Who are all these people looking for luxury hotels that don’t want to stay downtown? Are these the same kind of people that were supposed to fill hotels at Royalmount?
That Laurier building is finally back in construction. Ian, you gotta pick a lane. You can have tourists staying in Airbnbs in Mile-End or you can have hotels that cater to those tourists. You can’t have both and you can’t have neither.
Some of it will be turned into studios and community space according to the plan. Considering how little the city is willing to spend on those types of spaces, I think this is the best we can hope for. Realistically, the other option is to let the building continue to rot away. A positive is that it will hopefully take market share from Airbnb which should free up some of the rentals in the neighbourhood.
Royalmount, Downtown, and Mile End are very different hotel markets. You’d be surprised by how many people are completely uninterested in staying at a big hotel downtown or in Old Montreal. That’s why Airbnb is so popular in residential neighbourhoods. People will come to Montreal and explore the Plateau and Little Italy and other neighbourhoods and never step foot Downtown or in Old Montreal. These are the same people who go to New York, stay at a boutique hotel in Brooklyn and never go to Manhattan. There are also the many offices in Mile End. If Ubisoft brings in a client or a developer from another office, they’re definitely going to put them up in a Mile End hotel over a hotel downtown (and many companies will put people up in Airbnbs close to the office over getting them a room Downtown).
Joey, we had neither for decades.
AirBnb is a tax dodge and property speculation is exactly what screwed up Mile End in the first place. Bes8des, there are already hotels on Parc…. or at least there were before AurBnb sprang up like cystic acne. We don’t ‘need’ luxury developments. Even the gentrifiers are mostly just yuppies, this isn’t a ‘luxury’ neighbourhood. Look how many luxury places on Laurier closed over the last 2 decades.
Interesting that the hotel on Laurier has started up again. I wonder who Shiller Lavy tricked into taking that white elephant off their hands.
@Ian, the neighbourhood in those decades was very different from how it is now. I don’t see it looking like The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz again any time soon. Mile End isn’t a luxury neighbourhood but it’s a very desirable neighbourhood (with the rents to match). I don’t see this hotel as a luxury development anyway, it’s probably going to be a mid-range boutique hotel catering to people who like to stay out of city centres and have a enough of a budget to not have to stay in hostels (or the crappy hotels on Parc).
You’re carrying a lot of water for proeprty developers, citing such great examples , “fI Ubisoft brings in a client or a developer from another office, they’re definitely going to put them up in a Mile End hotel “…. you do realize that it’s since Ubisoft opened that Saint Viateur turned into their extended cafeteria? That they are notorious union busters, and just shut down their Halifax office laying off 71 people for trying to unionize? Don’t even get me started how all those American and European developers getting parachuted into the neighbourhood directly affected rents… there used ot eb a lot of students in this area, but not anymore. It used to be a lot more ethnically diverse, too… Anyway I digress, if you think the only two options are the 1960s or the posst-hipster 2010s, I have news for you about what the neighbourhood used to be like… and I’ve only lived here since the 90s.
If you judge a neighbourhood’s value by the kind of business it attracts and think of neighbourhoods in terms of business opportunities over local needs, well then yeah, you’re part of the problem.
Mile End’s rents went up so fast largely becasue of the embourgeoisement I am describing that you seem to think somehow improved the neighbourhood. In one year we lost 3 deps on Saint Viateur because they were in walking distance of Ubisoft – all of them are chain lunch counters that are jsut small enough to fly under the radar of zoning laws forbidding too many restaurants from opening. That’s not even counting the tragic loss of Boulangerie Clarke (now a clothign store after many failed food coutners), le Cagibi (now vacant), S.W. Welch (now the second French chain eyeglasses store on the street), etc … Van Horne is one of the last few strips with affordable artist spaces in the whole neighbourhood, even the old garment district has gone through 3 distinct phases of gentrification.
Van Horne is an opportunity. Let’s not Griffintown it.
A new level crossing for pedestrians and cyclists links Outremont and Park Extension, going from de l’Épée on the Park Ex side over to avenue de la Gare‑de‑triage on the Outremont side.
Very close to me and a new dog walk route for the little guy. I’m very pleased about this as it provides a new link link between MIL / Mile Ex and Acadie metro that doesn’t already exist at the elevated crossing.
I was kind of surprised they didn’t connect to Hutchison as that’s been.a fence cut fir decades but I’m glad to this. We need more.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada has given its OK to a container port terminal downriver in Contrecœur, in the zone of the endangered copper redhorse – see the photo in the Radio‑Canada story. But in the current socioeconomic climate, can we afford to be tenderhearted about fish species?
Indeed, I would suggest to Mark Carney that we should put on our money the images of animal species which have been killed off to prop up our economy. Make them heroes!
Meantime, the decision may be contested in court by an environmental group.
I wonder if the dredging mentioned in the article will be an annual maintenance event. The huge Cacouna project in the St Lawrence estuary will be requiring yearly maintenance dredging.
The value of a species is priceless yet our capitalistic mindset places price tags on nature. When you consider the millions of years it takes for a species to evolve and how interconnected things are in the ecosystem. What are the container ports for? To bolster consumerism? To import/export more materials so real estate developers can continue razing forests? We see how logging in the Amazon rainforest can impact climate change in other parts of the world. The question should be, can we afford to keep wreaking havoc on nature as future generations will pay the ultimate price?
Mohamed Abdullah Warsame, who made threats to bomb Montreal’s transit system last summer, is facing new charges after recent threats to burn down passport offices. Whether Warsame is a credible threat is not clear. The CBC item says he was recently diagnosed with schizophrenia; he may be locked up for awhile.
Tangential comment, but there’s a common misunderstanding of schizophrenia, at least for my generation, as meaning someone who experiences multiple personalities, when that’s actually more descriptive of dissociative identity disorder (FKA multiple personality disorder or split personality disorder). “The two disorders have symptoms and causes that may overlap, including a disconnection from reality. However, while people with schizophrenia have false ideas and delusions, they do not experience different personality states.” linko
Either way, whether this man is organized enough to carry out a mass public attack is in doubt, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe to have wandering around.
The main threat from him would seem to be to his own safety.
Police fired Thursday morning on a man armed with a knife – TVA says two knives – and seemingly out of control near UQÀM. Rubber bullets and pepper spray were also tried, to no effect. Seems he was eventually subdued with tasers and brought to hospital. Two or three police were injured, none seriously.
The key take away… “”three officers were taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries after two police cruisers collided while responding to the call.”
https://montrealgazette.com/news/crime/montreal-armed-person-police-response-injuries-uqam
The police weren’t injured by the man, they were injured with their clown plan to crash cop cars into each other. They should just wear their red noses that come at graduating from Nicolet.
Following the grim bar fire in Switzerland that killed 40 people on New Year’s, La Presse looked into the nonchalant use of sparklers in Montreal bars, despite a ban.
They should also crackdown on fireworks initiated in backyards etc. Give me a fright every time I hear them…
How would you propose executing such a crackdown?
I’ve never had to call it in, but if I heard fireworks being let off in the back alley, I might consider reporting it to 911 and asking for the fire department to come by. I imagine it’s probably in their area to make sure nobody is landing roman candle stars on someone’s roof or balcony.
Kate, sure, and that’s what I would do to. But that isn’t “them” doing a crackdown, is it? That’s just ordinary citizens reporting crime as they see fit. How would “they” cracking down on it work?
I don’t know what JP envisioned, but some neighbourhoods tend to have fireworks at predictable times, and the strategy could involve something as simple as distributing brochures explaining why amateur fireworks are not safe, and may not be legal. Educate before you bring in the heavy manners.
It used to be simple enough to make it illegal to sell fireworks, but when anything can be ordered online that law becomes an empty threat.
I kind of like how Diwali turns into impromptu street fireworks everywhere.
Mayor Martinez Ferrada will be presenting her party’s first budget next Monday.
Nicholas 20:33 on 2026-01-08 Permalink
This surprises me, but I guess when you use the car someone entrusted you to repair to speed drunk and kill someone, you hit the bingo and actually serve time.
jeather 21:04 on 2026-01-08 Permalink
Ontario just went stricter on impaired driving laws, though obviously Legault who won’t even change the blood alcohol limit won’t be doing that either.
Nicholas 21:26 on 2026-01-08 Permalink
Well after midnight this morning a CAQ MNA in Saguenay apparently hit an inanimate object with his car and then was found a short distance away prone in a snowbank and blew twice the legal limit, and the whip is aware of the situation but has suspended him from caucus yet. So no, I don’t think that will be changed soon.
To be fair, Ontario just banned speed cameras province wide, so good luck to school children everywhere.
Kate 21:42 on 2026-01-08 Permalink
At this point, the CAQ may simply want François Tremblay to fade away and not run again. World news is so conceptually loud right now that the peccadllloes of local dignitaries will soon be forgotten.
Nicholas 23:51 on 2026-01-08 Permalink
Fair enough. And obviously I meant the whip hasn’t suspended him yet.
I guess unlike when they gave the dead homeless man the breathalyzer while the politician was in the car (with his mistress), here they couldn’t give the snowbank a breathalyzer.
jeather 11:40 on 2026-01-09 Permalink
I’m not saying Ford is right about speed cameras, but I do agree with stricter drunk driving laws. I still do not get why Legault refuses to make this change.
Joey 15:27 on 2026-01-09 Permalink
@jeather nothing more ‘mononc’ than a little drunk driving…
Five and a half years seems like a lot in our system – I don’t have an issue with the sentence. I think a big part of the anger about this case was the fact that this asshole wasn’t locked up during his trial.
jeather 16:38 on 2026-01-09 Permalink
Let’s say it was me — I only once got points on my license, I’ve never driven drunk, etc. If I had driven drunk and murdered someone, 5 1/2 years might be reasonable. This was not even slightly the case here.
angenoir 23:56 on 2026-01-16 Permalink
Il sera libérer au tiers. Les gens se réjouisse parfois de certaine peine de prison sans comprendre notre système de justice. Se qui es assez drôle.