Updates from February, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 22:04 on 2026-02-27 Permalink | Reply  

    Not sure why this is news, but it’s in the Journal as well as on CTV that a bakery got a letter from the OQLF warning them to put all their TikToks up in French.

    Doesn’t this kind of thing happen all the time? I mean, isn’t that mostly what the OQLF is for? Is this news?

    Not that I want to minimize the impact on a small business. Lahmajoune Villeray is a terrific bakery. And I’ve never spoken anything but French with the nice people working there.

    Saturday, CBC and the Gazette also have the story.

     

    • JP 22:36 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      Well, being in the news for this has given them some publicity.. maybe that was the idea behind sharing this with the media; although I can believe that they’re genuinely confused and have tried to get in touch with the OQLF but haven’t been successful in getting adequate help. In any case, I’d never heard of them before and might check them out next time I’m there.

    • Nicholas 23:17 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      A former colleague told me about two friends from another province who started an instagram-based florist as a side gig and got fined $400.

      I was confused why people would think this wouldn’t be necessary, but a friend mentioned that you can air a TV or radio ad in one language without needing to air one in French.

    • Kate 23:18 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      The thing to do is to go to Lahmajoune Villeray, buy some pita, baba ghannouj and muhammara, then walk along Faillon to Jarry Park and have a picnic.

      It helps to have it be summer, though.

    • Kate 23:20 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      Really, Nicholas? It sounded like the OQLF told these bakery guys that there was no law against doing Tiktoks or other social media stuff in English, but they had to post French versions of the same content simultaneously. This was what I heard on CBC radio, at any rate.

    • Tim S. 23:26 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      It makes sense that the OQLF is a world-leader in demonstrating that governments can indeed regulate social media. Not quite the first case use that many were pushing for, but hey, it’s a precedent.

    • Kevin 23:34 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      The only use for the OQLF is that it acts as an outlet for the most petty and xenophobic members of our province.

    • Annette 01:53 on 2026-02-28 Permalink

      Of all shops to target! Reflecting on the land where lahmajoun originates, and the atrocity of ethnonationalism taken to its extremes: stamping out natural multilingualism whatever the cost. For these bakers to hear echos of that same mindset in the modern age must be so dispiriting.

      v. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen,_speak_Turkish!

    • steph 10:34 on 2026-02-28 Permalink

      It’s time for Charbel to make the business tictok a personal one where he can share information about a “cool local business”.

    • JP 13:17 on 2026-02-28 Permalink

      @Kate…thanks for the tip! I’ll add that to my Montreal summer to-do list.

    • Kate 14:38 on 2026-02-28 Permalink

      JP. they also have other dips, little meat pies like sfiha and kibbe, and of course lahmajounes, and lots more things I’m not thinking of. Also baklava, although I tend to find those too sticky for a picnic.

      I should also add: I’ve never tried anything from Lahmajoune Villeray that wasn’t good.

  • Kate 21:23 on 2026-02-27 Permalink | Reply  

    McGill and Concordia are giving up on the fight against Quebec’s out‑of‑province tuition hikes.

     

    • Nicholas 23:22 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      The government raised prices, lost in court, then said they’ll just raise prices another way. Sounds familiar…like when they gerrymandered the electoral map, lost in court, then said they’ll just gerrymander a different way. Oh, were you thinking of something else?

  • Kate 13:09 on 2026-02-27 Permalink | Reply  

    Gilles Deguire, who used to be mayor of Montreal North, has been acquitted of harassment of an older woman to whom he was delivering food as part of a Meals on Wheels thing. The woman alleged that Deguire had offered her money to take her clothes off.

    La Presse also notes that Deguire did jail time for sexual aggression against a teenager, which makes the story a little weirder.

     

    • Tee Owe 18:11 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      Don’t see why this would make it ‘weirder’ – sexual aggression is sexual aggression, why does age of the victim matter?

    • Kate 19:31 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      It could have sounded like the complaint was baseless – as the judge seems to have decided – till you read that Deguire had done jail time for a previous transgression. Yikes.

  • Kate 13:03 on 2026-02-27 Permalink | Reply  

    A new study suggests that Greater Montreal should have a green belt to limit sprawl.

    Maybe this blog has made me a cynic, because I can foresee that no sooner will the belt be named and declared, than exceptions will be made. Notably, the TGV will have to cut right through.

     

    • Nicholas 14:42 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      The feds can generally ignore provincial zoning and protection law. But also no definition of a greenbelt means literally zero development. We’re not turning ourselves into an island (you know), where no new power lines, transportation links etc. can go.

      Canada loves its greenbelts, but the problem in the past has been not enough building in the centre, meaning instead the sprawl just pops out the other side of the greenbelt and people drive even farther. You need to pair it with strong housing construction closer in, and that often means tearing down single family homes to build more densely. I hope the inner couronne is ready.

    • Tim 16:43 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      Building more density is not the silver bullet that we need in this country, where too much economic might is centralized in too few cities. I tend to agree with CD Howe: we need more large cities. The feds need to incentivize long term plans to build up other cities in Canada.

      https://cdhowe.org/publication/making-housing-more-affordable-in-canada-the-need-for-more-large-cities/

    • Kate 22:11 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      Can you do that? I know that some countries have just plunked a marker on a random spot on the map and ordained that their new capital city should exist there, but I’ve never gone to look at them. Wikipedia even has a list.

      Cities tend to grow organically where they’re needed and have resources nearby to support them. Montreal, and other cities we know in Quebec and eastern Ontario, grew up as ports on major rivers and lakes, in a part of Canada where you can readily grow food and cut timber. Makes logical sense. Maritime cities grow up in sheltered bays where you can harbour ships. And so on. The form of the resulting city relates to the reason it exists.

      But if you just make a street grid in a place, what do you get? A suburb on a grand scale.

    • Nicholas 23:31 on 2026-02-27 Permalink

      Canada seems to have a similar number of million+ cities compared to other countries its size, and similarly proportional number to larger and smaller countries. Many people just want to live in larger cities with more amenities, and you have to do a lot of work to beat the first-mover advantages of already big cities. Even if you build elsewhere, people will still want to move to the big cities, and there’s not much you can do about that, unless you institute something like a hukou.

    • Tim 01:02 on 2026-02-28 Permalink

      Which countries are you using for your comparison Nicholas? Do any of them have a land mass approaching ours?

      I am not suggesting that building up other large cities would be easy. Far from it. But overall, this country would be better off being more diversified and economically decentralized.

    • Kate 11:17 on 2026-02-28 Permalink

      In North America, often a new town got started because someone put an industrial facility in some random spot, attracting related businesses and bringing people in with offers of work. A railway line also helped.

      Does industry even work like this any more? Do jobs?

    • Nicholas 13:24 on 2026-02-28 Permalink

      Tim, Canada has six cities (measured by metro area population) of at least a million. Spain, France and Poland also have six. Italy has just four. Australia has five. UK and Germany have more but have more people. Countries of similar population with more such cities tend to be less developed than Canada, and developed countries with more such cities tend to be much more populated. All the countries with a land mass approaching ours are much, much more populous (also they don’t have a huge portion where nearly no one lives).

      We could certainly try to grow our mid-sized cities, like Winnipeg or Halifax. Whether the people want that, both locally and nationally, and whether it should be a national government priority, seems less certain.

    • DeWolf 13:27 on 2026-02-28 Permalink

      It’s already happening, Tim. Immigrants are increasingly moving to smaller cities, many of which are growing quickly. The second fastest growing city in Canada last year was Moncton, which grew by 2.9%.

      Winnipeg, Kitchener-Waterloo, Quebec City and Halifax are all growing faster than the big three cities. Toronto saw no population growth last year, for instance.

      That said, the big cities are still growing — Montreal grew by 0.3% and Vancouver grew by 0.93%. The scale is so much bigger that even small growth in the big cities means a lot more people, and you need to manage that growth in a sustainable way.

      https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260114/dq260114a-eng.htm

  • Kate 11:07 on 2026-02-27 Permalink | Reply  

    weekend notesWeekend notes from Journal de Montréal, Le Devoir, CityCrunch, La Presse, CultMTL.

    Nuit Blanche notes from Radio‑Canada. Official Nuit Blanche site; the STM’s plans, the REM overnight service.

    We also have celestial entertainments in store – a lineup of planets on the weekend followed by a lunar eclipse on Tuesday night.

     

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