Spotted on social media the announcement that the Craig Klinkhoff gallery has put online an archive of John Little’s photos taken as studies towards his paintings.
The individual images are not tagged by year, unfortunately, but there’s still a lot to look at.
The STM plans to rejig bus routes this spring to adapt them to the opening of the Anse‑à‑l’Orme branch of the REM later this year.
I saw a detailed complaint on reddit about overcrowding on the 51 bus, but nobody related it to the opening of Édouard‑Montpetit REM station, although mustn’t it be a factor?
No sooner announced, the new route layouts are getting pushback.
Long lines for the 51 at Snowdon pre-date the REM by decades… Anyway, the 51 is an amazing bus – yes it’s crowded at rush hour but it’s a great route and has good frequency throughout the day. Is it our best route? There should be a contest.
I was surprised to see a suggested FB post from the Mayor of Beaconsfield, very politely telling the NIMBYs in his town who opposed the addition of some bus lines to a residential street (to serve the REM) to pound sand.
I took the 51 as a teenager and it was crowded then.
The 51 is a great route, not least becasue you can get all the way from the Plateau out to Loyola campus. It was way faster than going downtown and catching the shuttle bus when I was a student.
So these new buses…
instead of walking 10 minutes from the EXO station in town students & staff of the high school, McGill, and John Abbott will have to take the 212 from Anse-à-l’Orme or if they stick to the bus, 210 from Kirkland, but you still have to take the 211 from Lionel Groulx to Kirkland, so adding a transfer to what is currently a direct route?
Wow. Just wow.
I will be intrigued to learn how long the 212 bus from the Anse-à-l’Orme to Ste Anne will take, and with what regularity it will run. I am guessing the trip will take somewhat longer than the currnet walk from the EXO station.
FWIW there are 8500 students just at John Abbott. They don’t all take the bus, but many of them do. And the high school, and McGill campus. And faculty and support staff. This is not just a small demographic that can be hand-waved, it’s well over 10 000 people.
And no, Joey, not everyone can take the McGill shuttle bus from downtown haha
This isn’t super helpful for us Jarry folks. I was really hoping they’d do something with the 193, currently it just gets to the VMR border and stops.
The 51 has been one of the busiest STM routes for a long time, as have the gripes about crowding.
My partner absolutely would vote for it as the best route, while my feeling is that “Nobody goes there any more. It’s too crowded.”
The 51 is great but I wish the 27 overlapped with it, at least into Mile End. I live east of Laurier metro and if I want to get to Mile End via St-Joseph, I have to take the 27 then transfer to the 51. That direction isn’t too bad because the 51 is so frequent but the 27 often departs every 30 minutes so they don’t always line up so well. One bus I’ve never really understood is the 46 – Casgrain. I’ve taken it a few times from Laurier metro but it’s a strange, short, and very infrequent route. I assume it’s a holdover from when a lot of workers would be going up to the factories but those days are long gone.
The 46 really does feel like a relic. In my neighbourhood, the 135 de l’Esplanade and the 52 de Liège have a similar vibe. Now and then I spot a bus drifting past with nobody aboard.
The 13 on Christophe-Colomb and 14 on Atateken aren’t much better, although as north‑south routes, if they ran a little more often they might not always be so empty.
vasi, it had not occurred to me till now, but it would be great if the 193 could cross l’Acadie and continue on to the TMR stop of the REM.
The STM must agree about the 46, as it’s being eliminated.
Do you have a link for that, R T?
All the changes can be viewed here:
https://refontebus2026-en.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/index.html
There’s a “New network”/”Current network” toggle on the “Explore the network” tab, and after selecting a route, it will not only show a map of the route but provide an infobox briefly describing what’s changing (if anything).
Excellent. Thank you.
(The 46 has been “Replaced by line 119”, which has been significantly rerouted to go east from Outremont to Laurier station, rather than west to Côte-des-Neiges station.)
The 14 could be a great bus! It’s a good north-south route where there’s really nothing between the orange line and the 45 and gives direct access between the Plateau and downtown/Old Montreal. The frequency is terrible though. I think it could be one of those lines that’s underused not because there isn’t demand, but because it’s so hard to work into a schedule considering it often only comes once an hour. It’s also a good bus for people who live in the northern part of the Plateau (or downtown) and want to go to Parc La Fontaine; I often see families with skates on that bus.
I lived on Christophe-Colombe many years ago and the 13 was one of the strangest bus routes. I rode it maybe twice. It has, I think, eight departures a day and only at rush hours. It was probably useful before the Metro opened but is usually pretty empty. Maybe they use it for training new drivers?
RIP 46 but this new 119 will be pretty useful. I’m looking at the 13 and it looks like they’re extending the route north and adding more departures.
There’s a simulator to test and compare the new routes available here. Ian, it looks like the 405 & 411 express busses between LG and Lakeshore/Macdonald will remain, at least?
R T you’re killing my productivity with this tool! An interesting change is the eastern orange line buses (30, 31, 56).
Thanks, R T. That tool is interesting to play around with. The new 119 might be useful to me, for getting to the REM or TMR.
Looks like the STM is not de-Americanizing, judging from the AWS link. Sigh.
I just love the NIMBY comments:
“Is this something that citizens need? It doesn’t fall in line with suburban living,” he said.
Lebel fears that by the time the STM determines the changes were a mistake, the impact on the neighbourhood may already be irreversible.
Wow…
Some bus routes around the southwestern boroughs were changed in summer 2024 (item from August that year) and there was a brief rending of garments about it – and then nothing. That will happen again this time. People use Google maps or a transit application and figure things out, and the hassle of changing a habit goes away.
@MarcG looking at the old routes/ new routes planner on the STM site from my location in Mile End to the MacDonald Campus…
the travel time with bus>metro>bus (current) is almost exactly the same amount of time as bus>metro>rem>bus (planned)… so literally no improvement or decline, really – although having an extra moving part in there worries me as transfer time and waiting around is always the wild card in a transit schedule…
SO basically it’s the same amount of travel time but a more complex set of connections. At least if the REM goes down it will still be the same amount of time to take the bus.
Has anyone found a map of the new proposed network? As in a pdf like the plan du réseau, but what it would like if this was implemented. It’s annoying to have to click every route you want to see, especially as you may not know what’s there; I’d love to look at an area and see what is served and where the transfers and gaps are.
I believe that the interactive map allows you to see that if you go to the “Explore the network” tab and then enter an address or click on the map and choose “Yes” to the popup.
MarcG, thanks, that worked.
Oh no, they canceled the 30 bus, the line I use the most.
vasi, check what they’ve done with the 31, though.
Lunar new year starts on February 17. CTV has some notes on events around town.
The owners of La Tulipe are asking for help in reopening the venue, an error by the borough – allowing an adjoining building to be zoned residential – having been the cause of the 2024 closure. They’re also not thrilled at the cash paid to the owner of that building, to make the problem go away.
Developers have better lawyers than promoters. The city has already tipped its hand in the past, we know they are more scared of lawsuits than being perceived as unsympathetic.
Christopher Curtis covers McGill’s expensive fight against unionization.
When I was at Concordia there was an irrational, almost psychotic hatred of the unions emanating from the Board, and their minions in HR and sprinkled throughout the administrations were duplicitous and petty in the extreme.
If Concordia was like this, imagine how much more the entrenched establishment power base of McGill gets het up.
You’d be surprised, historically Concordia has not been any better than McGill in regards to union relations.
More recent institutions are not necessarily more liberal. For instance, in the CEGEP reseau, Dawson has notoriously bad labour relations and they only opened their doors in 1969.
I look forward to the Rover’s look at how much in legal fees the law professor’s union has spent. I have some knowledge of this, and my bet is that they have spent even more than McGill. I also know that they have tried to do some truly ugly things, like convince regulators not to accept the degrees issued to law students during their strike, thereby trying to sabotage the start of these students careers. I think there are serious questions to be asked about whether a union is appropriate for a workforce that makes over $150K per year and only has to be at work 6 to 10 hours per week.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’ve never been a teacher. There’s lots of demand, go for it if you think it’s such a cushy job.
As far as the issue of awarding diplomas in the midst of a strike, well, I find it interesting that your concern is careers and presumably money, not the validity of the certification process… or do you think it doesn’t matter? Maybe you don’t think being a lawyer is a “real” job either, just an elaborate scam to draw a salary?
What a cynical worldview.
The profs drew their full salaries during the strike. In fact, they got raises, because the union had such a big war chest that they paid the profs their regular salaries plus the raises they are asking for. So to do that while trying to torpedo the beginning of young lawyers’ careers is the definition of punching down.
And I am a lawyer.
Taylor C. Noakes 20:55 on 2026-02-05 Permalink
Phenomenal, thanks for posting this
GC 22:02 on 2026-02-05 Permalink
Yeah, thanks. Browsing that might suck up some of my free time!
Ian 09:46 on 2026-02-06 Permalink
It’s too bad that so few of them have notes as to where they are but it’s interesting to see them just as a collection of what caught his eye around town. Very cool collection.
Ian 11:53 on 2026-02-06 Permalink
//addendum: I signed up for a (free) account and can now see locations for many of the photos, and any other archival information the collection has on the individual items.
GC 15:04 on 2026-02-06 Permalink
Thanks for the tip, Ian.
Craig Klinkhoff 13:53 on 2026-02-07 Permalink
Hi Kate, thank you very much for posting about the archive project. I will be making an adjustment shortly so that users can sort by year, at least for the images that are dated. That’s a great idea and an obvious improvement. We’re still working through thousands of undated photographs and are always looking for help to try to date and identify locations whenever possible. If anyone has any input or feedback, please feel free to share it with us at the archive.
Kate 14:05 on 2026-02-07 Permalink
Thank you for dropping by, Mr Klinkhoff. I was delighted to see the archive and I’m sorry if my comment above came off as unnecessarily critical. I realize now it’s a work in progress.
Craig Klinkhoff 16:07 on 2026-02-07 Permalink
Kate, I only interpreted your comment as encouraging and positive. I actually already implemented the date filter you suggested. Thank you very much for mentioning the archive, for the support by sharing it in this forum, and for the idea. Please feel free share any further ideas or comments you have. – Craig