A bar called the Voodoo Lounge was set on fire early Saturday in Lasalle, but what these brief reports omit mentioning is that the same establishment was shot at last month after being previously firebombed last April.
Updates from January, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Ordinary citizens wanting to skate indoors are finding that most arena hours are booked for hockey or for figure skating.
Either you can train local people up for the NHL and the Olympics, or you can let Joe Blow horse around on his old Bauers. You can’t have it both ways.
jeather
The reality is that there are too few non-work arena hours for everyone who wants access. I have no idea what the best balance would be — though I’m surprised that all the sports groups who get reserved time can sometimes get it for free
dwgs
So much to address here. The first part of the article talks about the lack of free figure skating time at local arenas, I guess it would be nice if there was another hour or two available at different rinks but is there a demand for more time dedicated to figure skating? All arenas have several slots per week open for free skate, which is what most people who want to go get some exercise would opt for. The artificially refrigerated rinks run by the city all have plenty of open skate times. The next issue is based on a three year old two week sample at one location. They found mostly white able bodied men used the ice during those times, well most people are able bodied so it makes sense that they would be a majority. As to the white men thing, those periods are open to the entire population, anyone can show up so I don’t think the rink can be held responsible for who chooses to use the facilities. In the next paragraph they note a more even gender and minority breakdown for public skating time. Did the previous study at Francis Bouillon arena not also take place during public skating time?
The vast majority of organized hockey that is played in city arenas is single letter house leagues. Other typical organizations would be for kids figure skating and ringuette. I would bet that practically no one goes on the the NHL or the Olympics from these groups. Those clubs pay for ice time. Yes, they get a preferential rate but in return they offer healthy and affordable exercise options for local youth, encouraging fitness and community. I don’t know of anyone who gets free ice time. Garage league hockey players get the late evening spots and pay market rates, in a sense subsidizing the kid’s ice time.
In general they system works very well and is actually pretty inclusive.Kate
dwgs, where do the serious training athletes find rink time, then? I know more about how tennis people train here (through living near Jarry Park, not because I care about the sport), but recent news that there isn’t a single Quebec‑born player on Canada’s Olympic team has made me wonder what’s become of serious hockey training in the city.
vasi
The arena nearest me has just two hours of open skating a week, at 10am on a workday. Everything else is training for youth figure skating or junior hockey.
jeather
If I read it right, they said most people who used the ice overall were able bodied white men, but if you only looked at free skate times, it was much more balanced, but there is so much more reserved time than free.
Meezly
With Arena St-Louis in the Mile End still under renovation (until late 2026!!), this may be a contributing factor to the popularity of Mont-Royal arena.
A bit more precision though: the article stated that users were overwhelmingly white males generally without disabilities AND with an advanced skating level, thus, not representative of the neighborhood’s demographics.
The article also recognized that rinks have a huge overhead and would of course favor organized clubs for ice time at the best times of day, It’s making a case that indoor rink schedules can be more equitable and accessible as a public service. And I agree there’s room for improvement.
I though Plateau-Mont-Royal city councillor Maeva Vilain stated this very well: In sports, what’s important isn’t that people who already do sports do even more, but that as many people as possible do some kind of sport.
Joey
Serious chutzpah from Maeva Vilain, whose administration stabbed us Jeanne Mance ballplayers in the back.
dwgs
@Kate, I can’t speak for all ice sports but for hockey from 12 year olds and up there are usually 2 AA and 1 AAA team per birth year. When my kid was involved our home base was Arena Michel Normandin, most practices and a lot of games were there. That team included kids from Pointe aux Trembles in the east to NDG in the west. Most kids do extra one on one or small group training as well but those aren’t in public arenas, they’re mostly in privately owned 3 on 3 rinks.
In single letter hockey these days there are a lot more recent immigrants, they’re still a minority but my kids played with kids from Haiti, China, India, Pakistan, Congo, north Africa, Iran. One of my kid’s ex teammates from Togo was drafted 21st overall to the Pittsburgh Penguins last June.@Meezly, that’s ridiculous, they closed that arena like years ago for renovations. It’s especially bad in a neighbourhood with a dense population.
Nicholas
Kate, certain rinks end up drawing specialized professional athletes. DDO has a short-track speed skating club, and 15 years ago at least Pierrefonds was the place to go for figure skating. I knew someone who went to Vancouver in 2010 and she was out there any chance she could get, often at 6 am.
As for hockey players, they’re getting their time. Youth rec leagues (single letter) are usually getting 2 hours a week of time, while double letter are getting 4 or 5. And once they get high and old enough level they’ll join the QJMHL, which is a feeder into the NHL, and they have their own rinks.
It’s certainly the case that we could have more ice time. I remember adult hockey players would find a $400 rental 40 km away at 11 pm on a weeknight and jump on it. There is basically infinite demand. But it’s very expensive to build a rink, and you need the land. For public rinks, who gets to use it is a balancing act, like for many resources, and there are reasonable arguments for different partitions of the time.
But one last data point on that. The old Westmount arena used to have an odd setup: they had one regular rink, plus one half sized rink, with no glass so no hockey, so it was always open for general skating, except a few hours a week where the termite hockey players basically learned how to skate (ages 3-5 or so, so they couldn’t lift the puck). For $3 anyone could come skate, about 100 hours a week, and it’s a 10 minute walk from the metro. Few people did. Not that it wasn’t a valuable setup, but there just isn’t a large demand for indoor general skating, while there is for hockey.
Kate
Thanks everyone for info on rinks and skating. I haven’t laced up a pair of blades since I was about 12 years old, so I’m fully out of that loop.
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Kate
Researchers at the École de technologie supérieure are going to reproduce the natural habitat of the pothole with a device that can change temperature quickly to test different formulations of asphalt.
dhomas
Or… they can just go outside? ;p
Kate
I think the comic aspect of this is why they put in a phrase like “habitat naturel” for the pothole, but if you want to do formal experimentation, under controlled conditions, a device like the one described would mean that critics couldn’t say the findings were the result of too much randomness on a real city street.
I was wondering how they’d reproduce things like the heavy rumbling of large trucks. Or the deleterious effects of the city accepting low bids for substandard product, either.
mare
The ravaging effects of a snow scraper are also hard to simulate in a lab. And the thousands of cracks in the concrete base layer that never get repaired because it would mean the street has to be dug up for months instead of weeks. So those cracks telegraph towards the surface after a few years, making for endemic potholes.
I saw a crew pour concrete last week, at temperatures of -10°C. That will never be strong concrete, because concrete needs much higher temperatures and at least a month to cure. But nobody cares and the city doesn’t seem to have inspectors with a spine.
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Kate
The Journal hid GPS trackers in some typical items of donated clothing in Montreal and found out where they ended up.
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Kate
Cold weather is the news of the day. CTV reports that some activities are cancelled (beware loud commercial autoplay) although I’ve seen indications that Igloofest will go on; the mayor is expressing concern for the homeless; notes on keeping your house warm.Saturday morning, Quebec pulled a record amount of current to face the arctic temperatures. (Or so the headline claims, but the text mentions the true record from February 2023.)
Mark Côté
Hydro outage in NDG going on 8.5 hours
Kate
Cold day for that to happen. Hydro-Quebec map right now shows patches of NDG and most of Côte St‑Luc is dark, and a patch of TMR as well, all with a vague promise of power being “gradually restored”.
Mark Côté
On FB Hydro said power might be out all night for some customers :_(
12 degrees Celsius in my lower duplex right now.
Mark Côté
Although to be fair that’s 36 degrees warmer than outside.
Kate
Yikes, Mark.
I’m flattered you’re using up a bit of your charge to come read the blog, though.
jeather
13,000 people in CSL and NDG without power, and on Reddit posts people say they hear not before noon tomorrow
https://montrealgazette.com/news/power-outage-hits-15000-homes-in-cote-st-luc-amid-arctic-cold-snapMark Côté
Around 9 pm last night the Hydro app changed the estimated time for restoration at my address from 10:15 pm to 2:15 pm Sunday. I booked a local pet-friendly hotel, packed up the cat and a few supplies, and headed over. Breakfast this morning seems to be mostly people in the same situation. I popped back home this morning to check on the taps and it was a crisp 5.5 degrees.
Kate
Glad to know you and your cat have a place to go, Mark.
Mark Côté
And updated to 8:15 am tomorrow.
Chris
Mark, leave your water running a small stream, so your pipes don’t freeze.
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Kate
The city’s blue collar workers are planning a one‑day strike on February 4. Salaries are the main issue.
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