Two American men were found guilty in Dominica this week of the murders of Daniel Langlois and his partner Dominique Marchand.
Later, the defence said they would appeal the verdict.
Updates from July, 2026 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The water main down Atwater that needed emergency repairs still needs five weeks of work so we’re still asked to refrain from wasting tap water.
Or so Metro says in that link, but Radio‑Canada reports the city is being a little more vague about both the time frame and the cost of the work.
Nicholas
Great example of construction that is super inconvenient for buses, because they have to go right next to there and cars are always backed up. But lots of people can just drive on a different street.
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Kate
The sailing ship Amerigo Vespucci has arrived in the Old Port and will be here till August 3.
CE
The Old Port area is currently full of handsome Italian sailors in ceremonial uniform if that interests anyone. The boat itself is very beautiful. I didn’t get a chance to check it out for long but I saw a lot of people up on the upper portion of the cruise ship terminal taking a look. I imagine you can get a good view from up there.
RE
I saw one sailor, close to the basilica. The ship itself was cool to see from the Quay.
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Kate
The contaminated construction site in Point St‑Charles was intended for a daycare.
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Kate
While other media do pieces of varying interest looking back at the 1976 Games – Radio‑Canada profiling a Russian wrestler who now lives in Montreal, for example, as part of its ongoing series of offshoots of the Games – the Gazette trots out Jack Todd for another gripe about the stadium. Allison Hanes as well. What’s the editorial policy there?
Taylor C. Noakes has a piece on the destruction of Corridart on the Canada’s History site. That’s as much part of the epic of the 1976 Games as any athletic endeavour.
He also has a piece on Maisonneuve about the Olympic legacy in the city.
Taylor C. Noakes
Thanks for posting, Kate!
Kevin
The Big O is a textbook example* not just of failure, but of Quebec’s continued refusal to learn how to plan and build something on time and on budget.
This province always chooses to build something bold and unique instead of going with something that has already had the bugs eliminated.
*Assuming [How Big Things Get Done]( https://dangardner.ca/publication/how-big-things-get-done) is used in a classroom somewhere.
Taylor C. Noakes
@Kevin – I’m not convinced
While choosing an architect who was used to working in France (and who continued to manage the construction site from his Paris office) wasn’t a smart idea, there were, as I explain in the article, many other factors that contributed to cost overruns and delays that couldn’t have been anticipated.
Namely: the inflationnary effect of the 1973-74 oil crisis, strike actions by construction workers (who were at the time being investigated publicly by the Cliche Commission), and the IOC deciding (after the Munich Massacre) that Drapeau’s plan for a deecentralized athletes village (which would have become social housing after the games) was no longer viable.
As to whether the stadium was bold and unique, yes certainly – especially by local standards. Unheard of? No. Taillibert wasn’t a rookie, he was well-known and established.
The tower is arguably the most distinct feature, but it wasn’t completed for the Games, and as such its cost is separate.
The thing I think we should be paying attention to – especially after 50 years – is that we have a massive stadium that’s bought and paid for, that the government (which owns it outright) is committed to, and which may soon be hosting large-capacity crowds for CFL and MLS games.
If that happens, what have we to complain about? We’ll have beaten the major leagues on stadiums. Every other city has had its arm twisted into building new stadiums for every team, seemingly every 20-30 years. Montreal/Quebec said no.
With every passing year the Big O makes more and more financial sense, its costs paling in comparison to other stadiums, its architecture that much more striking (and emblematic).
To say nothing of the fact that the entire Olympic park site is in and of itself a major attraction, quite unloike practically every other Olympic host city.
There are many good reasons to be critical of Drapeau, even on the Olympics, but I think history may ultimately vindicate him on this one, especially if we ever pitch another Olympics (something we’re uniquely well-suited to do, at a comparatively low cost).
There’s just a portion of the population that came of age in the 1970s that watched Montreal go through some hard times, and for which the Olympics, separatism, constitutional issues, and Montreal’s economic decline relative to Toronto got all mixed up together into a psychology of defeat and failure. We need to move past that and see our city for what it is.
Joey
@Taylor for a fraction of what we are spending *now* on the stadium, we could’ve had a downtown, purpose-built stadium that would have kept our Major League Baseball team from leaving – and lots of cash left over. Instead we’ll spend in excess of $1 billion to host a handful of soccer and football games per year (or, I suppose, quite a few soccer games featuring ~16K fans in a giant empty stadium in winter, thanks to the MLS schedule change, all so multibillionaire Joey Saputo gets to keep his major league team).
So far Quebec has spent nearly $3 billion on the stadium; how it can be considered anything other than, as Kevin described, “a textbook example not just of failure, but of Quebec’s continued refusal to learn how to plan and build something on time and on budget” is beyond me. We are spending hundreds of millions of dollars *this year* on the stadium – how is that “bought and paid for”?
Kate
I’m glad we haven’t devoted a slab of downtown to a stadium for a baseball team that the city failed to support first time around. But I know that’s an unpopular view.
Taylor C. Noakes
@joey
Think of it as a house. You still own your house even if you have to pay for a sump pump or a new roof.
Those costs don’t change the fact that you own the building, and the Big O is owned by the taxpayers of Quebec. We have paid for it, we all pay for the ongoing maintenance any large building requires.
If you own a house and you don’t spend any money maintaining it, it will fall apart around you, and ultimately be worthless.
Consider as well that it’s a 50 year old stadium, the current round of renovations will permit decades more use, including the potential of more MLS and CFL games with larger crowds, as well as large concerts. All of this increases the revenue generated by the stadium, which is reinvested back into it and the rest of the Olympic Park complex. That complex is a major tourist attraction and provides countless public functions, all of which enrich our lives and add to the city’s cultural offering (pool, athletics ctr, Olympic training facilities, Biodome, Planetarium etc etc etc)
You may not use any of this, but that doesn’t matter, because millions of other people do, each and every year. The stadium generates dependable revenue, the park complex regularly draws over a million people per annum. This puts Montreal in a league of its own compared with other Olympic host cities and their Olympic infrastructure.
That $3 bil CAD figure is spread out over 50 years, and guarantees maybe another 20. The avg North American sports stadium costs between $1.5 and $2.5 billion USD, and lasts 20-30 years. By those measures, ours is increasingly looking like a bargain.
But wait, there’s more!
Most of those stadiums are purpose-built and have much lower capacities. We have an exceptionally large stadium that can do many things, something the new renovation will guarantee moving forward. We’ve also gotten a lot of great use out of it already – from the Olympics to 27 years of MLB baseball, to Grey Cup games and major concerts.
And with the current renovations, the Big O is well suited to potentially go another 30 years of doing all of that all over again.
But whereas most North American sports stadiums are located away from city centres, and surrounded by an ocean of parking spaces, ours is in the middle of a major collection of tourist attractions, connected directly to the Metro, and surrounded by some of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in the city.
There’s a certain irony to those pining for the Labatt Stadium of the 1990s, in that the area it was slated to go had almost no residential population whatsoever. South of Rene-Levesque, after 5pm, between Guy and University, in the mid-1990s? And that was supposed to be superior to the Big O?
I think we dodged a bullet. That would have been the real white elephant.
Now – was the Big O’s construction poorly managed? Absolutely. Is it a crime to spend a billion dollars fixing its roof and not spend at least as much on social/affordable housing? Yes again. Is it a shame the Expos left? Sure, no question.
But none of this makes a case for deferring maintenance and improvements that have the potential of increasing revenue generated for decades to come. We own it, its ours, we all pay for it. The alternatively is either tearing it down or letting it fall apart, which is neither practical nor realistic, but would absolutely be a colossal waste of money.
Taylor C. Noakes
@ Kate – it was supported for 35 years, I think that’s pretty good given how many major league teams fold after just a few.
I interviewed an economist a few years ago about this. He said the avg person has a fixed annual budget for entertainment, and Montrealers have plenty of options competing for their attention. Now granted, there are 4 million people in the metro region, so we can host many events and expect most will be relatively well attended, and we more or less accomplish this already, but still. Not everything is going to work forever. There were also demographic changes too.
I think the smart investment is in the sports that are still accessible. In my lifetime the Habs went from a working class team (with working class prices), to the Yankees of Hockey (with prices to match). There are enough wealthy people here to sustain that, but only just, and a prolonged stretch of bad seasons may see firesales and 2-for-1 nights if the Molsons aren’t careful.
Consider the rise of interest in the QMJHL or the PWHL as an inexpensive alternative. I think the CFL and MLS fall into the same category. We want accessible pro or semi-pro sports that people can actually bring their families to, since that has the greatest potential for follow on economic activitity.
I think we should just accept that the Expos existed for 35 years, that tastes changed, and that there are new teams who are potentially willing to pay to use the Big O. Baseball fans shouldn’t stand in the way of progress.
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Kate
Richard Martineau drew the short straw Tuesday at QMI to generate a Montreal, we hates it column.
R T
“%20rel=” at the end of the link causes a 404 for me; removing it fixes it.
(In a way, they even have a “Montreal, we hates it” 404 page.)
R T
Also, I will say that while I think our neighbourhood smells like garbage right now, we had a guest from East Asia last weekend, and he commented on how much cleaner Montreal is compared to other North American cities he’s visited, especially their downtowns.
Kate
Thank you, R T
Major Annoyance 18:24 on 2026-07-30 Permalink
A few more details about the trial here:
https://archive.ph/ztVvt
This must come as a huge relief to their friends and families and to the people of Dominica as their legal system is hardly up to snuff. What a tremendous waste.