A wine collector who confided 219 priceless and irreplaceable bottles to the SAQ for storage will be drinking Notre Vin Maison for the foreseeable future as the corporation has destroyed them all. But the story delves into complications beyond a mere warehousing error.
Updates from June, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Lots of plaudits in the media for actress Sophie Faucher, who has died at 68.
As a bad anglo, I have to confess that I knew nothing of her career, but the second La Presse piece linked above gives a resumé of her stage and TV work.
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Kate
The city plans to repave the Camillien‑Houde, notoriously full of potholes, and in plenty of time for the international bike race to be held there in September.
Bert
A question I have wanted to ask for a while, has that strip of road between the Fleuve and the Seaway been paved? Streetview dates to 2022 and has it as gravel, as I have always remembered it. Are we in for a Parix-Roubais TT?
steph
The voie du Fleuve is all paved between the Ville de Sainte-Catherine locks and St-Lambert locks. Lots of bugs, but a very nice ride.
Blork
Yes, they paved it at the end of October last year. I rode on it a few days later when the paving was brand new and it was beautiful. Here’s a photo of it looking down from the Champlain Bridge bike path, taken on October 28, 2025, when it was brand new: https://www.flickr.com/photos/blork/54894734876/in/dateposted-public/
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Kate
A dozen people are living in a camp under the Van Horne viaduct, and a court injunction says they can stay there for the time being. The city had wanted to move the residents on, since it’s close to a skate park and a basketball court.
Homeless people hesitate to call emergency services even when it’s critically necessary, because they know they will not be treated the same as other people, an observation made by organizations working among them. Homeless also often carry an invisible weight of unpayable fines and other legal encumbrances that make them wary of engaging with the forces of order.
dhomas
I don’t understand the point of “démenteler” these encampments. These people will still be homeless. They’ll just be homeless elsewhere. The last time they dismantled the Notre-Dame encampment (2024? Early 2025?), it just sent the homeless population everywhere else. Shortly after, there were people living in the park close to my house near Radisson metro. Tents appeared on the banks of the 25 (they are still there to this day). It solves nothing and just causes more inconvenience and stress to the homeless population.
On the topic of emergency services, I recently spent a few long periods in the ER at the Glen and I can confirm that homeless people are definitely treated differently (indigenous people, as well). While I was there, a homeless person came in for triage. He needed help getting out of his wheelchair and into a waiting room chair. I’d seen other patients get this kind of help. No one wanted to help the homeless guy. I ended up helping him out of the chair myself.
Kate
I was thinking about your first point, dhomas, and I believe it comes down to this: the city can’t quite face the reality that if it wants to displace an encampment, it should be moving the residents to another encampment, because that would acknowledge both the permanence of some of the camps and the apparent impossibility of giving the displaced residents more proper and decent places to live.
We’re edging closer to permanent camps anyway, with recent discussions of adding toilets and showers to some of them, but we’re not quite there yet.
I hope whoever’s in your entourage that has needed the ER will recover. Good on you for helping the homeless man.
Chris
>I don’t understand the point of “démenteler” these encampments
Perhaps because you’re looking from their point of view.
From the point of view of one’s neighbourhood being ruined (not saying that’s my personal view, but it is a view held by many), moving them on solves the problem and shares it around.
Kate
It’s a knotty problem. I can’t deny that the presence of people with mental and/or drug problems is unsettling, unhealthy and occasionally dangerous. Solutions have to be found that are bigger than any of the stopgaps we’ve seen so far, but I don’t know what they are.
Blork
Dhomas, I think you’re only seeing homelessness as a single problem (“these people have nowhere to live”), but homelessness brings a cluster of problems, including that obvious one, but also problems of safety and security for the general public, issues around limited funding for social issues and the competition for those resources, and all sorts of other things. As such, not every solution can address the full cluster of problems. Some solutions only address one immediate problem.
In this case, moving the encampment is intended to address the problem of security for people who want to use the skate park and the adjoining social areas in relative safety. While some might take offence at the idea that the unhoused are somehow a security risk we have to be realistic. There are some among the unhoused who are potentially dangerous (mental health problems and/or drug problems). An absurd example is this: would the playground of a garderie be an acceptable place for a homeless encampment? Probably not. It’s a sliding scale, and arguably the skate park lies somewhere in between “garderie playground” and “remote field next to a river.”
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Kate
TVA says the number of Moving Day address changes are down this year, as they have been for the past two, although the supporting story is only an interview with one moving company owner.
Seems likely that people unsatisfied with their living space who would, in the past, have moved house on July 1 hoping for better, are now more likely to hang onto something they can afford, even if it’s sub par.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation says rents are falling in other Canadian cities because of new construction, but there’s little change in Montreal yet.
mb
I’ve been on the apartment hunt last 2 – 3 months, and I can see that rents appear to be dropping in mtl too. In fb marketplace once you’re chatting with a landlord or agent, you get a notification when the price drops. It hasn’t dropped on all apartments. But i’d say a solid 1/5 have dropped in price from the time I began talking to within a few weeks.
One weird thing I noticed, some landlords are keeping up the price of an apartment in the lease, but offering tenants a “rebate” in the annex of the lease. And they say it explicitly: “rents are dropping so we’re offering this rebate but for our bank we want to keep it at $X amount on the paperwork.” I suppose it has to do with getting approved for higher loans if they charge higher rent on the actual lease itself.
In any case, the rents are declining from totally obnoxious amounts to just moderately obnoxious amounts. So, nothing to celebrate much about just yet.
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