The REM is already bracing for the ice storm forecast for Wednesday.
Updates from March, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
I just stepped out and heard gulls for the first time this season.
It feels like summer out there.
EmilyG
I think the local ring-billed gulls go to the ocean during the winter, and return in spring. I think they (and the turkey vultures) are more of a sign of spring than robins, some of which stay here throughout the winter.
Janet
When I opened my window yesterday, I was so pleased to smell the petrichor as the earth re-emerged from under the snow. I hadn’t realized it could come from melting snow too.
MarcG
Let’s not forget to also enjoy the lovely wafting aroma of liquefied pig shit
Kate
Are they already fertilizing the fields south of town?
MarcG
I smelled some of that gruesome funk in Verdun earlier. I pulled over to stretch my legs at a rest stop in Drummondville once and nearly tossed my cookies it was so putrid.
Ian
Currently in fool’s spring, waiting for second winter
Blork
Geese spotted overhead this morning!
MarcG
Heard my first red-winged blackbirds today
Kate
I just heard a party of high school kids laughing in the back alley. Spring is here.
bob
This reminds me of a time a fellow student from out west was making the same kind of “Spring is sprung” comments early one April, and I told him “It’s Montreal – wait”. And a week later we got a few cm of snow.
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Kate
From time to time the media will glance at the STM’s lost and found department, but this Le Devoir piece excels in the variety of photos of different categories of objects, and glimpses of the people working to identify and return missing items.
Blork
Oh wow, that’s fantastic. What a great story and great photos. Somebody lost a toaster on the Metro! Ha ha ha!
I’m amazed at the unclaimed things, like the trumpets and the mandolin. Do the people who lost those simply give up, assuming someone kept the object when they found it? Maybe it didn’t occur to them that the STM has a lost and found department.
Last summer I lost my sunglasses at Provigo. They were brand new and expensive. Stupid me, I just stuck one of the arms into a loop in my satchel thinking it would stay, but after a few minutes I looked down and they were gone. I retraced my steps but there was no sign of them. I was reluctant to go to the customer service desk because I figured I would either be ignored or there would be a bunch of incomprehensible forms to fill out, but finally I decided to give it a shot. As I walked up to the desk I saw my sunglasses sitting there; somebody had already found them and turned them in. The woman behind the desk was busy on the phone so I just grabbed them, made a sort of “thank you” nod, and walked away.
steph
You can always find a black umbrella at the lost and found. “it’s about this long with a curly handle”.
not quite a lost story, but I dropped an airpod headphone onto the tracks. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was down there. I didn’t jump down but I took a picture of the rail number in the area it fell. I obviously wasn’t going to jump down but I gave the customer service a try. I managed to get it back after the overnight cleaning crew picked it up. A+ service.
Kate
Impressive, steph. Lucky it wasn’t flattened!
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Kate
Metro describes the appearance of Angine de poitrine on Tout le monde en parle, Sunday night. I’m mostly posting this here because I started seeing references to them here and there and assume you have too.
EmilyG
I first heard about them on the radio this past week I think it was, and I’ve heard more about them since.
Also, it’s nice to see an article in Journal Metro that wasn’t written by AI.CE
I saw them last year at an M pour Montreal show. They were interesting.
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Kate
Westmount Library is closed because of a bedbug infestation. I wonder how people are handling any books they’ve recently borrowed.
EmilyG
I’ve also heard of other local libraries recently having bedbug infestations (and not just the Grand Bibliotheque.)
At least with Westmount Library, they’re actually treating the place. I don’t know if they do that elsewhere.Nicholas
I saw a notice the other day they had closed the adult computer section, but I guess they travelled elsewhere. Maybe they’ll use the opportunity to change the carpets. But I hope they can’t find their way into book spines or something.
bob
Unfortunately book spines are and ideal place for bedbugs to hang out. They evolved flatness to thrive in such spaces.
EmilyG
I’ve heard about how it’s difficult for libraries to get rid of bedbugs because they can hide themselves in books.
Kate
I like libraries, but I’ve heard enough stories that I no longer feel comfortable hanging out in them.
I know we banished DDT for good reasons, but it was DDT that made bedbugs feel like a problem of the past for a long time.
EmilyG
I also like libraries. They’re so useful in so many ways. But I also haven’t been to one in a while as I’ve heard about too many of them having bedbugs. Sanaaq, Grande Bibliotheque, a rumour about a library in Rosemont, and now Westmount.
I wonder if Grande Bibliotheque ever tried bedbug treatments for the whole library during any of their multiple infestations, or if they didn’t do much beyond getting plastic furniture. In a big library like that, I imagine it’s really hard to get rid of bedbugs, so I’ve just been avoiding that place altogether ever since their first infestation.EmilyG
Maybe relevant Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/1prhp00/bedbugs_at_the_library/
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Kate
A documentary filmmaker is investigating the history of immigrants – mostly Italians, during the mid 20th century – being refused access to French schools. Although some have tried to deny this happened, there’s too much evidence that it was standard procedure for many years.
Ephraim
How is this a surprise? I thought it was known that the Irish Catholic being refused was how the English Catholic school board was started. And the Italian Catholic being refused was how the St-Leonard School Board (originally the Saint-Léonard-de-Port-Maurice school board and at the end before abolition Jerome-Le Royer, often just called the Italian School Board colloquially) was started and the whole argument over if they should be taught in English or French. They were streamed in both languages, but there was a whole crisis over it, eventually leading to it becoming a French board with some of the students moving over to the English board.
DeWolf
“The percentage of Italian-Canadians enrolled in Quebec French public schools dropped steadily in the 20th century, according to a 1988 study of the community’s schooling history. It stood at just over 60 per cent in 1930, dropped below half by 1950 and had fallen to just eight per cent by 1975.”
Striking numbers.
jeather
There is a certain subgroup of people who insist that francophones in Canada have always and only ever been the beleaguered minority, so if a group of immigrants into Quebec chose English when they came speaking neither language, the only possible reason is a hatred of French and actively wanting English and not that the French schools and other groups rejected them. (Now, post WW2 Jews chose English, not because they spoke it or because they hated French, but because the community which had been there for many decades already was English speaking, because — well, see above.)
This is not dissimilar to the “well, the English were colonialist towards us therefore we could not have been colonizers ourselves, we were simply friends to the First Nations” argument.
Kevin
I’ve had a lot of discussions with francophones who were completely unaware that immigrants were removed from French schools, but this article is the first time I’ve ever heard of a historian (mentioned in the piece, Robert Gagnon, 1997) claiming that it never happened.
It’s one thing to document that the Roman Catholic School Commission (CECM) had created a committee to encourage allophones to attend French Catholic schools in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.
It’s shockingly lazy scholarship to think the creation of a committee actually led to schools admitting allophone children.
It’s insulting to posit that the existence of this committee is proof that anyone who says that children were removed from French Catholic schools is lying.
Kate
I blame the nuns.
Chris
>There is a certain subgroup of people who insist … only ever been the beleaguered minority
Yes, that’s been all the rage all over the place for decades now. If the topic interests you, see The Rise of Victimhood Culture by Manning and Campbell and The Age of Grievance by Bruni.
azrhey
Same with the Portuguese immigration. To the English schools they went. Even though who already had some very basic french because chances were they had family that emigrated to France. And If you speak Portuguese, French is that much easier to learn than English. I have an extended cousin that refuses to speak any French because she was forced into the English school system when she arrived in the 70s and now she says “you didn’t want me to learn french then, you’re not getting any now”
Bit pig headed, it’s a family trait, but I understand where she comes from.bob
Hey! Let’s talk about the deep Quebecois nationalist love of black francophones…
Ian
Or North African Arabs for that matter.
dwgs
“I blame the nuns.” We should print T-shirts
Kate
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Kate
The city has unveiled the list of eligible properties it’s willing to hand off to nonprofits for the development of affordable housing. As many as 5000 new housing units could be built, if this works out.
azrhey
Sooo, what comes first, High Speed Train to Toronto or 5000 new affordable housing units?
Holding my breath, I am not.
Joey 21:58 on 2026-03-09 Permalink
The Environment Canada warning is pretty stark. I assume they cast their net broadly, but still…
Kate 22:47 on 2026-03-09 Permalink
I know. I’m making sure everything’s charged up, just in case.