Homicides in Montreal are half what they were this time last year – 13 vs 24. Various explanations are proposed but I think it’s just random variation.
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Kate
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Kate
There was a fire at one of the camps on Notre‑Dame East overnight; luckily nobody got hurt.
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Kate
SMF’s administration plans public consultations on four bike paths, presumably with a view to getting consensus on removing them.
DeWolf
Their goal is probably to remove the path on Meilleur.
There is currently no path on de la Commune (only the Old Port one on federal land that suddenly stops at St-Laurent), so that would be a way to create a path and say “Hey, look, we’re not anti-bike!”
It would be difficult to imagine removing the path on Côte-Saint-Catherine because doing so would eliminate a crucial east-west link that is used by a lot of schoolchildren. There would be an enormous uproar.
Rachel is the wild card. There’s no way SMF would dare remove one of the busiest and oldest bike paths. It’s currently very problematic and congested could use expansion and improvement. But doing so would mean taking space away from cars.
My theory is that SMF and her administration has absolutely no idea what they’re doing and they don’t actually have a clear outcome in mind for this audit. There’s no grand plan — just petty politics.
DeWolf
The consultations are actually online right now. I just responded to the one about Rachel.
75% of respondents want the current bidirectional path replaced by uni-directional paths on either side of Rachel (ie, like on Pine or St-Denis).
If SMF wants to “écouter et agir” she knows what to do…
Joey
Not surprised to see at least two bidirectional paths on this list, given that’s it’s based largely on data about collisions. The Rachel path is really anachronistic – far too many variables at play (cars turning left and right off of Rachel, though traffic with no lights, no bike-only traffic signals, cyclists turning left and right off Rachel, etc). Fixing that should be a layup for SMF, since she can legitimately critique Projet for never improving it.
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Kate
Weekend notes from CityCrunch, Le Devoir, free and cheap events in the Journal. But Osheaga is the big event this weekend.Work being done on both the Mercier and the Victoria bridges means leaving the island may be tricky.
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Kate
Three people in the Montérégie were treated for rabies exposure after a stray domestic cat attacked them; the cat was understood to have acquired rabies from a raccoon. How did different media illustrate the story? Radio‑Canada: a hostile‑looking raccoon despite the mention of a cat in the headline. CBC, a tabby cat in underbrush, with a caption beginning “A stray cat, not pictured here, tested positive for rabies…”. CTV also shows us a tabby cat but explains it’s a picture taken in Buenos Aires; La Presse also goes for a tabby cat in one report, but a raccoon in another.
TVA goes more into the response to the rabies situation with a report on distribution of vaccine baits in the area, and a reminder that anyone who sees a dead raccoon should report it.
Nicholas
Love to learn we still have weird town names like Godmanchester with weird little websites and names that, in a form, have existed for nearly if not more than a millennium and also have nothing to do with religion.
Kate
Not many Quebec towns are named directly from a town in England but that one is. The 2021 census numbers in the Wikipedia article show it’s still nearly 40% anglophone, too.
R T
In addition to all the 1-3 word links on the top of the page, they have one that’s 13 words long to remind you that it’s 40% and not 50%:
https://godmanchester.ca/loi-96-loi-sur-la-langue-officielle-et-commune-du-quebec-le-francais/
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Kate
I mostly put “suspicious fire” items on the incident map now, but I noticed that this fire reported early Friday in St‑Michel, described as happening to an empty building on Jean‑Talon near Pie‑IX, is at the same location as a fire in an empty building in that general location in March. Neither current piece mentions the previous incident or says whether it’s the same building, but it seems likely.
Neither the Gazette nor CityNews notes the previous incident either. Am I the only person running a traditional newsroom in this joint now?
Nicholas
Given the blue line extension that would be a desirable place to redevelop. I’m sure it was just an accident….
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Kate
The Walrus has a detailed profile of the superhuman weirdo called The Great Antonio.
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Kate
Two police officers faced resistance early Monday during a routine traffic stop in Villeray. A suspect even tried to disarm one of the policewomen. All told, four people were arrested. TVA tries to link the story to June’s shooting of a police officer in Côte‑des‑Neiges, but although these officers work from the same station, there’s little else to tie the incidents together.
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Kate
Nadia Comăneci returned to the Olympic stadium, the site of her outstanding teenage success, this week.
David
She did it at the Forum. not the stadium
Kate
What the hell even remains of the Forum?
Kevin
Kate,
I’m pretty sure some red seats remainMarcG
According to this reddit thread from 2 years ago it seems like they removed the seats from the atrium but have some upstairs in a hidden memory lane area.
dhomas
I’ve been to the forum recently. The seats have indeed been removed from the atrium, as MarcG mentioned. They put tables and chairs, for the food food shops, instead. I couldn’t spot the statue of the yelling fan that used to sit in the stands, either. There are a couple of red seats left on the upper floors, near the Comedy Nest and/or Dawson classrooms, but they are cordoned off so no one can get near them.
Tim S.
I will give them credit, they have succeeded in turning it into a nice hangout for Dawson students and other random passersby. The heritage aspects were nice, but at some point it’s better to provide for existing users than to be a perpetual memorial.
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Kate
La Presse reports on the progress of the water main repair, including the reasons why the city can’t be more definite about the time frame.
It’s good to know that, as a community, we’ve actually managed to reduce our consumption a little.
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Kate
TVA notes the appearance of a new homeless camp in Cartierville – near, they report, two daycare centres.
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Kate
SMF may not be prepared for the response she’s going to get by announcing she wants to evaluate the performance of the city’s blue collar workers.
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Kate
La Presse sent a journalist and a photographer to ride along with an Urgences‑Santé ambulance as they dealt with a night’s work, including eight opioid overdoses; in a sidebar, an interview with a young woman who has emerged damaged from one of her many overdoses.
The Gazette finds that rehab options for anglos in Montreal have been reduced after a bureaucratic change.
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Kate
A man was found injured in the Sud-Ouest borough late Wednesday, and later died in hospital. He’s the city’s 13th homicide of the year. The Journal makes the location Ville‑Émard.
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Kate
There’s a link in the right sidebar (on the desktop version of the blog) to my Patreon account. Some of you are kind enough to chip in a little every month. The take has been hovering around $80 USD a month for awhile now, which covers web hosting and domain charges, and allows me to pass along support to a few other folks doing local news coverage and commentary.
Patreon is going to force us to change how it works before November. I will have to bill people who’ve been contributing, not something I ever planned or hoped to do. Who wants to get another bill? Also, Patreon’s really pushing people to establish tiers of membership and produce extra content to lure people into higher‑paying tiers. I don’t think this blog lends itself to that.
I’m not sure exactly when I will switch to this system, but if you get a little invoice asking for your habitual $5 or whatever, that’s why. I apologize, but they’re not leaving members any choice.
Also: I’m considering switching to ko-fi.com. So if anyone has opinions, please comment and let me know.
MarcG
I’m not really versed in this realm but just did a little reading and it seems to me like you’re already using the subscription billing model, so nothing big will change for you or your patrons. At worst, the cycle of automatic payments and payouts will change a ltitle bit. I could be wrong but that’s what I understand from reading this.
jeather
FWIW I have in the past subscribed to an author who had tiers: free self pubbed ebooks / free self pubbed ebooks + gratitude / free self pubbed ebooks + gratitude + guilt (I stopped once she went wholly trad pub), so you can make tiers with intangible rewards.
Kate
Oh I know, but I’d have to generate intangible content just as much as any tangibles. I would find it far easier to come up with Montreal City Weblog merch – hats, tote bags, t‑shirts – than to generate a constant feed of extra text or visual content for my special readers.
Anyway, I don’t know how journalists face the paywall. You’re writing, you want to be paid – of course – but you also want your writing to be read. A paywall blocks most potential readers from seeing your work. Long term that isn’t good for journalism or for your career, surely?
I don’t see doing it, in other words. Unless I can think about it a different way.
Blork
I would wear the shit out of one of those t-shirts.
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