I know PSPP has a lot of supporters for the idea, but I can’t imagine a worse time for Quebec to secede from Canada and invite Trump to pick up the pieces. But with the CAQ crashing and the PQ set to return, we’re headed that way.
Updates from January, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Allison Hanes blights this piece on the new administration’s take on the Camillien-Houde with the bold opening lede “Camillien-Houde Way is one of Montreal’s most unique thoroughfares.”
Tim S.
But it is, though. Maybe the most unique?
dhomas
I don’t think “unique” is the bold qualifier here. Calling it a “thoroughfare” is.
Kate
Things are unique or they are not. You can’t have something which is more unique than something else, or something that stands out in a collection of other unique items. The word becomes meaningless.
You could write “Camillien-Houde is a unique case in Montreal, crossing as it does the city’s eponymous mountain.”
But then I’m not editing the Gazette…
Tim S.
I see Kate, good catch about unique. Most distinctive?
Kate
We don’t usually rate streets by their distinctiveness, so it’s not a useful ploy as an opening statement.
“C-H holds a unique status in Montreal, cutting across its eponymous mountain with a nod to its resident dead and its living environment.” Etc.
Unique is fine. It’s turning it into a relative value that’s bad writing.
GC
Yeah, that annoyed me, too. I didn’t think a journalist would write that. But, I heard one say “anyways” a couple of weeks ago…so I guess anything goes.
Ian
ANYwhoodle
CE
Is anyone editing the Gazette these days?
Hamza
I have become so hyper-conscious of what I post , and a lot of it is due to @Kate’s astute editorial eye
Joey
“Most unique” is one of those things that upsets my inner copy editor (aka my inner Kate). However! It may be linguistically incorrect, but the meaning is legit – lots of things make the city unique, some of them are streets, and Camillien-Houde stands out even among this group. Would it really be more effective to write “among Montreal’s unique thoroughfares, Camillien-Houde Way is perhaps the most distinctive”? If you removed “most” from the original sentence, it doesn’t really make sense: “Camillien-Houde Way is one of Montreal’s unique thoroughfares.” So: the syntax is bad but the idea of distinctions within the concept of ‘unique’ is IMO justifiable.
Anton
Isn’t every street unique, in that no two streets are exactly the same?
Kate
It needed Anton’s logical brain!
MarcG
The last definition of the word in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “very special or notable : unusual” and the examples include “comparatively unique”, “very unique”, “most unique”. Don’t shoot the messenger.
CE
Dictionaries are generally willing to change their definitions to reflect popular usage, even when the newer definitions are objectively wrong usages of the word (see “literally”). Copy editors, because they think so much about the meanings of words and want to create as little ambiguity as possible, tend to be very conservative. Nobody uses “decimate” to mean something has been reduced or killed by ten percent anymore but many copy editors shy away from the modern usage of the word (kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of) because they can’t help but believe that someone out there will think it means the historical meaning of the word (this is an extreme example btw).
GC
I was also thinking about “literally”, CE. You might hear someone in a bar say “Camillien-Houde is literally the only way to cross Montreal”. But many of us would scratch our heads if we saw that written in mainstream media.
MarcG
I guess it depends on what is considered new, one of their examples is from 1853 (Charlotte Brontë’s Villette). This etymology site says (without reference) ‘The erroneous sense of “remarkable, uncommon” is attested from mid-19c’.
MarcG
Forgot to add the link https://www.etymonline.com/word/unique
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Kate
Radio-Canada reports that the city arts council wants the arts to have a more prominent voice in the city’s culture. For some reason the first project mentioned is a junket to South Korea, but I know arts administrators have their little ways.
Meantime, Le Devoir reports on budget cuts in education mean that, as of next year, the budget for school field trips and artist visits has been halved. But even before this is to happen, schools have been limiting such extra elements to save money.
Sonia LeBel, who’s been mentioned as a possible successor to François Legault, had someone intone that “Quebec culture will always remain an important element of the school curriculum.” How’s that going to work?
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Kate
Since there’s essentially a fictional bottomless budget for the proposed TGV, a new tunnel under Mount Royal is proposed (as DeWolf suggested in an earlier comment here). The train approaches from the northwest, plunges underground beneath the Mille‑Îles river, all of Laval, the Back River and eventually under the mountain to emerge at Central Station. Or possibly some other, newly built station? Will Montreal finally get the grand train station it deserves?
GC
It seems like the only way it can rapidly go through the city, without a bunch of expropriation.
Anton
If you wanna build 1000km for 100B, spending 10B on 5km in Montreal on a tunnel and station may still be out of the budget.
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Kate
The Rover has put up a Youtube video of soi‑disant gonzo journalist Isaac Peltz’s investigation into homelessnessness.
MarcG
Is “homelessnessness” a typo or a joke I don’t understand?
Kate
It was a screwed-up edit due to my doing three or four things at a time. I will fix in a bit.
nau
If only we could get to homelessnessless.
Ian
@nau agreed
@Kate Sometimes you can really see the influence of German on English.
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Kate
A passenger with measles came in on January 8 at Trudeau. There’s more detail about the flight (AC 835 from Madrid) and other places they are known to have been.
Cases of tuberculosis are also on the rise here.
Are you feeling a little feverish?
su
“In addition to this, an outbreak is underway with a total of nine other cases confirmed in the Lanaudière, Laurentians, Laval and Montreal regions.”. !!!
Kate
If enough people don’t immunize, measles is bound to recur like this.
Ian
Even if you did immunize as a child and are over 50, you may now be at risk.
Kate
I may have asked this before, but what if I had measles and am over 50?
MarcG
This isn’t anything about risk, just Quebec government policy: If you’re born before 1970 you’re considered protected. If you’re born between 1970 and 79 you can get one dose. 1980 and later two doses. More details here: https://msss.gouv.qc.ca/professionnels/vaccination/piq-vaccins/rro-vaccin-contre-la-rougeole-la-rubeole-et-les-oreillons/.
jeather
Unless you are traveling outside Canada, when you can sometimes get the missing doses.
jeather 19:22 on 2026-01-17 Permalink
I don’t think there’s been a real change in support for separation, though.
GC 19:49 on 2026-01-17 Permalink
“failed to yield the necessary improvements in areas such as immigration and health” Do we really think that all the problems with our healthcare system are Ottawa’s fault, and that will magically get better if we separate?
Hamza 02:40 on 2026-01-18 Permalink
3rd time since 80 – they’ll lose harder than 95. you heard it here first.
Hamza 02:43 on 2026-01-18 Permalink
whatever happened to <> ?
Hamza 02:43 on 2026-01-18 Permalink
”winning conditions”
Annette 02:55 on 2026-01-18 Permalink
It’s funny how ‘populist movements’ make no actual demands of public consensus.
Tim S. 11:41 on 2026-01-18 Permalink
I am slightly worried about the lack of any federalist leadership in Quebec. Melanie Joly anyone?
Ian 21:10 on 2026-01-18 Permalink
Oh great, another failed mayoral candidate? Shades of Coderre, no thanks,.
Even if PSPP PSPP PSPP (cats come running) gets in there is no more appetite for separation now than there was in 95, as jeather & Hamza point out – probably even less. Mulcair was openly laughing about it on CJAD last week.
It’s a perfect opportunity for PSPP but even if he does get in, he’s going to be clutching a stiff rum and coke while bitterly ruminating on money and the ethnic vote before long. Hopefully he has the grace not to do so on camera.
Joey 06:40 on 2026-01-19 Permalink
I don’t disagree that the odds are against a successful referendum campaign, for all sorts of reasons. That said, the odds were stacked against Brexit and against Trump and on and on.
Margaret Black 07:50 on 2026-01-19 Permalink
I’m with Joey on this one.
Kate 12:24 on 2026-01-19 Permalink
A referendum campaign would be subject to unexpected political incidents from either side of the question, and Donald Trump makes the chances of random weird political incidents higher than they’ve ever been. He’d love to see Canada break up, so interference in our politics is also to be expected. I don’t think a Yes vote in this political climate is as unlikely as some people do.
Joey 13:34 on 2026-01-19 Permalink
So (a) Trump is crazy but more importantly unpredictable and (b) Trump has no issue weighing in out of the blue on some other country’s internal question regardless of his complete ignorance of any details and reporters love to ask him about random stuff in the news to elicit a crazy answer – what this means is that the odds of Trump weighing in on a referendum question during the campaign are pretty high. Then you add in (c) Quebecers hate Trump and you wonder if his engagement would actually change the result – if he came out for the no side (he seems to consider Carney one of ‘his guys’), would that not swing a lot of votes the other way? And if he came out for the yes side (Trump loves chaos, but he also loves things that destabilize democratic governments), presumably lots of undecided and soft yes voters might not want to be voting for his desired outcome.