The Mount Royal cross is to go dark starting later this summer for extensive repairs.
Updates from June, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A third man has been convicted in the murder of Andrei Petuhov in the parking lot of the Orange Julep, three years ago. Video shows Nedjem Eddine Khirat kicking the man when he was already down.
Khirat will be sentenced later.
It was over a matter of road rage.
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Kate
Five murders remain unsolved on SPVM territory from 2025. The city had 31 homicides last year.
Nicholas
That’s a great clearance rate! And to be at nine homicides this year so far, as of today, is also great news, could be a drop of one-third.
Tim S.
I think you jinxed it, Nicholas.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-tenth-homicide-9.7223015
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Kate
Rosemont borough is planning to tweak street directions to reduce traffic around grade schools.
DeWolf
This will have much wider (and in my opinion, very positive) impacts than just around the schools. Many of the streets being targeted are known for rat running, so this will help improve safety and comfort in the entire neighbourhoods around the different schools.
I’ll be interested to see the reaction because many people seem to want traffic to flow freely more than they want children to be safe (see opposition to the plan to close 40 metres of Coloniale to traffic in front of Saint-Enfant-Jésus elementary school).
Incidentally, to see the effect that modal filters can have, just look at the reconstructed portion of Gilford around Saint-Stanislas church and Paul-Bruchési elementary. It’s blissfully calm. By contrast, Gilford east of Papineau (which was left untouched) is becoming a real nightmare as people look for alternatives to the constant traffic jams on Papineau — or to be more accurate, as people follow their GPS apps, which take them on dodgy detours down residential streets in order to shave a hypothetical 30 seconds off the commute.
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Kate
The REM blamed Wednesday’s morning service delay on the morning dew, before retracting the statement and saying otherwise was a problem with lubrication.
Taylor C. Noakes
It’s probably far closer to the truth than anyone cares to admit.
Kate
Morning dew does sound more poetic.
Ian
Maybe they meant it as a euphemism for moonshine.
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Kate
A young man was stabbed in a Walmart in Montreal North on Tuesday afternoon during an altercation, and died in the night. There have been no arrests yet.
It’s the ninth homicide of the year. There were no homicides in May.
jeather 07:17 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
Ah good, lots of provincial money for the giant, secular cross to be repaired, representing a secular vow to the secular Virgin Mary.
Kate 09:24 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
Not sure what I think about this. Like most Montrealers, I’m accustomed to seeing the cross there, but if taken down, should something replace it, and if so, what?
Here’s a suggestion: one of the elements of the Expo 67 logo. It was meant to express human solidarity, after all.
jeather 09:37 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
It’s not that I necessarily want it to be removed in a vacuum but in the current political climate it’s just more hypocrisy.
Ephraim 10:36 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
Time to put up the M and the L amd make it MtL
Joey 10:52 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
Unlike a lot of the ‘leftover’ Catholic symbols that populate this city (e.g., schools named after parishes), the cross on the mountain is IMO actually a legitimate part of the city’s heritage.
jeather 11:04 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
Right, if the government weren’t playing stupid games about no visible religion anywhere, the cross wouldn’t actually bother me. But they are, so it does, especially when they are paying for repairs (which also wouldn’t bother me).
MarcG 11:18 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
I was going to suggest throwing some rainbow bulbs on it and calling it a day, but I can’t help thinking about all the victims of the Catholic church having to view that symbol all the time.
Taylor C. Noakes 11:21 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
I’m working on something about Drapeau and discovered his plan from 1986 to build a 100-storey broadcast/observation tower atop Mnt Royal, in the shape of a cross.
It’s literally what led to the creation of Les Amis de la Montagne
Apparently it wasn’t some off the cuff idea, Drapeau was talking to SNC and a bunch of architects. Was supposed to be the city’s 350th anniversary ‘gift’. Completely self-financing!
We dodged a bullet.
That said, I’d advocate for repalcing the cross with the Expo twin rune logo, same height/consistent dimensions. The cross could be moved either to the cemetery or the grounds of the oratory. No harm no foul.
Kate 13:07 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
Let us know when that piece is done and posted, TCN. I want to read it.
I remember hearing that the tower was supposed to include a restaurant as well. It may have been the requirement to raze a lot of the park for parking that got Les Amis going. (If Drapeau was planning a resto on a tower, I bet it was a rotating one.)
Drapeau also wanted to persuade the French to dismantle the Eiffel Tower so he could borrow it for Expo 67. The man had a thing for towers.
GC 13:47 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
I’m pretty much with jeather on this. I’m fond of the cross, in isolation, but keeping it while making “secular” laws to dump on ever other religion smacks of hypocrisy. (Like the cross in the AssNat..which I believe was eventually removed?)
Kate 14:20 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
GC: yes, the AssNat cross was taken down in 2019, but is apparently still on display somewhere in the building, in a case, as an historical artifact, as it’s obviously “cultural”.
Nicholas 19:56 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
There are lots of things that are part of our heritage. It doesn’t mean we should keep them all. We all know why it was put up, and by whom. It’s not a holy site, of which we have many. If it fell down would we rebuild it as a cross or just a tower? Or maybe we’d take out the concrete base and let trees grow over the space. Us continuing to spend public money on this is a choice, even without the hypocrisy.
Taylor C. Noakes 11:43 on 2026-06-05 Permalink
@Kate will do – it’s supposed to be in the 100th issue of Maisonneuve this summer. I’m also writing about Corridart for Canada’s History.
And yes I do believe there was a rotating restaurant and a discotheque planned as well.
I mention the Eiffel Tower/ Tour Paris-Montreal plan in an upcoming column for Cult.
I find it interesting that, for all of Drapeau’s Montreal boosterism, he couldn’t help himself from entertaining schemes that would rob Montrealers of everything Mount Royal is. The tower was but one of his various efforts to ‘make use’ of the mountain, and that’s after the morality cuts.