Montreal City Weblog

Updates from February, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• Kate 20:22 on 2026-02-09 Permalink | Reply  

  A bridge between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit has been under construction for years, and is set to open sometime this year, but Donald Trump says he’s going to block the opening until Canada pays the United States for… everything they’ve given us.

  Canada paid for the whole bridge project, by the way. It wasn’t a gift. It was supposed to be the Gordie Howe International Bridge. I bet if Canada agreed to rename it the Donald Trump Massively Huge Internationally Important Bridge, he’d be sated, at least for a day or two.

  Someone online had the winning name: Donald J. Trump Nobel Peace Prize Bridge.

  Nicholas, Kate, and Chris are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Chris 21:49 on 2026-02-09 Permalink

    Sure, why not. And when he finally dies, which should only be a few more years, we can rename it the Orange Man Bad Bridge, as a reminder to future generations of how not to be.

  • Kate 21:57 on 2026-02-09 Permalink

    Maybe we could give him a retrospective Governor-General’s Award for The Art of the Deal?

  • Nicholas 00:06 on 2026-02-10 Permalink

    The First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Achievement in the Field of Excellence

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• Kate 16:26 on 2026-02-09 Permalink | Reply  

  Trains have been cancelled on Via Rail’s Ottawa-Montreal-Toronto corridor because of “operational constraints.”

  So far Monday: problems with the metro, the REM, one of the Exo lines, and now Via Rail. Also, if you were thinking of fleeing to Cuba, that’s not happening either.

   

• Kate 14:16 on 2026-02-09 Permalink | Reply  

  Journalist Franco Nuovo died on the weekend. Nuovo mostly covered cultural affairs for Radio‑Canada. He’s “below the fold” on the Gazette site, because he wasn’t a presence on the anglo side.

   

• Kate 14:06 on 2026-02-09 Permalink | Reply  

  In Villeray, there’s a project to build a new library to adjoin the Patro Villeray building on Christophe‑Colomb. But it’s going to pave over some green space that includes a baseball diamond, and that’s not universally popular.

  The resident quoted as saying they could have both things in the same space is kidding herself. It can’t be done.

  DavidH, Joey, Kate, and 1 other are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • DavidH 16:00 on 2026-02-09 Permalink

    Those games will either have to move across the street into the small diamond in de Normanville park or, if the players usually hit very far, one street corner north in the huge Villeray park. Neither option is unreasonable.

  • Joey 16:19 on 2026-02-09 Permalink

    @DavidH except those fields are already at capacity – and the number of kids signing up for baseball (especially girls) in Villeray keeps growing. You could also say that the library on Rosemont adequately serves the neighbourhood, right?

  • Kate 16:35 on 2026-02-09 Permalink

    I don’t know how overall library decisions are made, but in recent years I’ve seen St‑Laurent, Rosemont‑LaPP, NDG and Hochelaga‑Maisonneuve get sparkly new libraries, while in Villeray‑SMPE we have an old high school in Park Ex, a building that’s more of a community centre (the Patro) mid borough, and a building in the far eastern end, in the old city of St‑Michel. Respect for anyone working in or using those libraries, but the borough does need something more modern on this side of Papineau.

  • Nicholas 01:28 on 2026-02-10 Permalink

    The Patro library already seems like a decent size. What I gather is the new (nicer) library will be built on top of the diamond at a similar size to the old one (though if it’s taking the baseball diamond and soccer field I guess it must be bigger), and then the space with the current library will be turned into something else TBD (more multipurpose rooms, more gyms, etc). In a sense it’s trading outdoor sports fields for, potentially, indoor gyms (which are also always busy). I can see arguments for indoor vs outdoor sports here.

    It’s an interesting setup: there are a bunch of buildings like this that the city owns but they lease out long term to a non-profit who then runs the activities and rents out the spaces. So instead of signing up for swim classes or badminton at the city recreation site you sign up at the Patro site. But the city makes all decisions on capital expenditures and changes.

  • DavidH 11:20 on 2026-02-11 Permalink

    @Joey, If those specific diamonds are used at capacity, there will be a domino effect that will push some games towards other fields further away. As a parent in the neighbourhood, I can say we are not short of baseball diamonds and the one at Patro is in the worst condition of them all. There are three on that stretch, but also a bunch at Jarry park, Pere-Marquette, Claude-Robillard, etc. The lady interviewed mentioned that what is at stake is playing baseball in the borough. I don’t see how playing three streets over in Rosemont or Ahuntsic is an issue worth sacrificing the project.

    My qualms with the new Patro project are more about costs. They are budgeting a lot more to expand the existing library than what was needed to create the Marc-Favreau library. And that project included renovating and expanding patrimonial buildings (the brutalist Patro has no protection or status), creating a park with waterworks, a promenade with the LNI rink and link to the subway station and acquiring a complete book collection from scratch, plus all the computers and equipment needed. The Patro project amounts to an annex to the building and a new park layout but costs way more than any previous projects.

    @Nicholas, I think the new building footprint is not that big but the reorganizing of the park won’t include team sports. I see it as you do as a partial trade between outdoor equipment for indoors. But also, I think we are trading sports equipment that is mostly used in the evenings/weekends for a strolling space that functions all day with more greenery to fight heat islands. It fits with the other park makeovers done in recent years.

  • Kate 11:41 on 2026-02-11 Permalink

    DavidH, is the Marc-Favreau library really connected to the metro inside?

  • Joey 12:00 on 2026-02-11 Permalink

    @DavidH Ahuntsic and Rosemont have their own baseball associations and I understand that demand is growing there as well. Patro is indeed the dumpiest of the Villeray fields but is kind of perfect for younger kids.

  • DavidH 19:41 on 2026-02-11 Permalink

    @Kate, not connected indoors. I meant the pedestrian link they built between the library, the u-shaped back street and the station. It’s the type of planing and design the new project evokes as reasons for its bigger budget. But Marc-Favreau required a mix of architecture, conservation, city planning and landscaping expertise as well and they kept it much lower.

• Kate 13:52 on 2026-02-09 Permalink | Reply  

  CBC prods the sleeping dragon with the question whether Montreal should consider hosting the Olympics again (video). Please no.

   

• Kate 10:29 on 2026-02-09 Permalink | Reply  

  An Environment Canada climatologist warns us that we still have a lot of winter to go and it’s likely to be cold till the bitter end.

  Kate, DeWolf, and patatrio are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • patatrio 13:05 on 2026-02-09 Permalink

    the cold has been quite intense, but I am certainly enjoying the consistency of the snow cover. Makes it bearable when you can wander around on the mountain or in the parks around the city in a snowy wonderland – I would not swap that for a rainy and damp Vancouver spring.

  • DeWolf 12:53 on 2026-02-11 Permalink

    Funny you should say that because I’m in Vancouver for a week and aside from one day of rain, it’s been generally warm and sunny, everything is green, the daffodils are about to bloom, people are sitting in terraces in the afternoon. For me the problem with Vancouver is the fall. Dark and rainy. But springtime that begins in February and lasts until May is pretty nice, I gotta say.

  • Kate 13:27 on 2026-02-11 Permalink

    A friend who visited relatives in B.C. earlier this month texted me photos of flowers growing, it didn’t look like Canada to me at all.

• Kate 10:25 on 2026-02-09 Permalink | Reply  

  A leak in the tunnel between Jean‑Drapeau and Berri‑UQAM has meant the closure of the yellow line. Replacement buses are running.

  Latest, 9:26 am, is that the yellow line is back up.

  The REM also had a ralentissement de service and there was trouble on the Vaudreuil‑Hudson Exo line as well.