Two women were shot near closing time in a bar on the Main, Saturday morning. Both were brought to hospital and the attack was not fatal. One of the owners of the bar, Club École Privée, says he was shaken up by the incident: his bar was the target of arson attempts late last year.
La Presse says the shooting was a gang conflict but the young women were simply bystanders when shots rang out.
Heliomass has a nice visit to Glen LeMesurier’s sculpture garden on his blog currently, with plenty of photos.
The competition to land the NATO defence bank is percolating in the media, Quebec’s politicians saying Montreal is the logical choice and accusing Toronto of a fear campaign over a possible independence referendum should the PQ win in October.
I was under the impression that it was going to Gatineau, but I can’t remember why.
The fear is well-founded. Consequences follow from actions. If separatists do not like this looming outcome, they might want to reconsider their words and deeds.
Unless an independent Quebec stays in NATO, in which case it doesn’t matter.
The Defence, Security and Resilience Bank is a proposed multilateral defence bank for NATO countries and allied states.
I think the press is lazy and misleading calling it the NATO bank. It’s not formed by NATO. It’s not controlled by NATO. NATO members Germany and the UK have both at various times distanced themselves from it.
Thank you, H. John.
in which case it doesn’t matter.
I think it would matter, Tim S., because breaking up a country introduces unknown instabilities which are a thing you would not want in the place where you’re putting a big security headquarters.
H. John’s precision aside, I’ll point out that both NATO and the EU have their headquarters in Belgium. I’m not especially up-to-date on Belgian politics, but isn’t Flemish independence also a thing?
Tim, Brussels isn’t part of Flanders, though it is surrounded by it. There were many concerns about putting the UN in NYC, the largest city of a great power: would it block access to certain countries, would it be the site of bombing, etc. These things are like 30+-year commitments, you don’t want instability. It’s probably not a big concern, but it is a concern.
Some metro stations win and some lose in the latest data from the STM. It’s not surprising to find that more passengers pass through Édouard‑Montpetit since the REM station opened below, or that De la Savane – typically one of the least travelled stations for years – is busier since the opening of Royalmount with its footbridge over Decarie offering metro access.
Usage of some downtown stations has fallen slightly, this piece suggesting avoidance of the homeless who frequent them.
If we had tap-in and tap-out we’d have even more precise data that shows both origin and destination (something the TTC benefits from in Toronto), which would help with transit planning. Unfortunately, scanning your card twice seems like a step too far for most people here.
DeWolf, lots of countries don’t have that and yet still get pretty good data. Germany mostly has no taps at all, and they do surveys, just like we do. Also in the vast majority of cases people do return trips, so you can mostly fill that data in, and then also augment it with the surveys.
Germans don’t like being tracked, while the Dutch and English have no problem at all. No gates are more efficient, but you need more controllers, and some people really don’t want that. It’s a tradeoff.
The city has four expensive pothole repair machines but can’t give a clear explanation why they’re not in use.
CTV interviews Leisa Lee, a PR and production figure behind many big shows here on the anglo side.
Nicholas 13:37 on 2026-05-10 Permalink
Innocent bystanders getting harmed, and especially killed, is the kind of thing that sets off the public for a crackdown, as it mostly did for the 90s biker wars. It certainly sounds like there has been a rise of events in public the last few years, and if they don’t tamp down this will boil over.
Also they call this place a bar but it looks very much like a club.
Kate 14:58 on 2026-05-10 Permalink
Is there a legal distinction between bar and club? I always took it to be that a club is pretending to be more upmarket, and possibly has a dance floor, whereas any corner dive with a drink licence is a bar, but the licence is the same.
Nicholas 02:24 on 2026-05-11 Permalink
As we learned with Champs, if you’re a bar that has dancing you need a dancing licence from both the city and the RACJ. But I just mean this colloquially as the vibe: a club is a venue that exists to do a certain kind of dancing (e.g. to house music/EDM, not line dancing), and often has a DJ, coat check, bottle service, more expensive prices, a bouncer who doesn’t let people in first come, first served, but checks your clothes and vibe, etc. So yes more up-market, but there are lots of fancy bars without dancing, from some Irish pubs to French places to lounges. And there are bars with dancing that aren’t clubs, especially on the dive-y end (Copacabana on the Main RIP). There are definitely places that straddle the fence, but, to use two more examples from recent Plateau shootings, Fitzroy is a club and Mr. 250 is a bar.
Ian 20:44 on 2026-05-11 Permalink
And then there’s Club Social on Saint V that is more of a café that sells booze.