As La Presse says here, for the third time in a year the city has bought a building for more than twice its assessed value, with the aim of creating affordable housing units – this time in Verdun.
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Kate
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Kate
A body was found in an apartment in the Village on Saturday morning. The man had been shot. Investigations continue.
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Kate
All indicators suggest that moving day will be a challenge this year for anyone seeking a new place to live.
The Journal talked to some of the people evacuated from their coop at the Bon‑Pasteur, who are finding it difficult to get new places to live. In addition, some of those folks have also had their apartments robbed since the fire.
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Kate
A man was shot in his car in the east end on Friday night, not fatally.
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Kate
A 69-year-old man has been charged in the 1996 death of Patricia Ferguson in Pointe‑aux‑Trembles. At the time it seemed Ferguson had mysteriously vanished, and I see no mention in these accounts whether any physical traces have ever been found.
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Kate
From the BAnQ:
Daniel
This makes me wonder: What about the books themselves? Aren’t they a government service? Does having checked out a book in English before a certain date secure my future access?
(This is all so ridiculous. I’ve always been pretty happy with the BANQ’s book selection in English, btw.)
Kate
This page says “Individuals who corresponded solely in English with the civil administration prior to May 13, 2021” may continue to receive communications in English.
Nice philosophical point. Does a book (which the BAnQ always refers to as a “document”) count as a communication, when it comes from a government‑run library?
jeather
If I haven’t communicated solely in English but I am eligible to attend English schools, I assume I’m ok?
Uatu
Show me your papers…. so you can read our papers? 😛
Blork
Oh, the irony. As an historical-ass motherf*cking anglo, I have the right to read that forbidden content in either English or French, but my Francophone spouse is only allowed to read it in French. That’s what they call progress.
Mozai
Didn’t see a ‘chosir langue’ on the BANQ website, but I don’t remember if it was there before last week since I go to the catalogue right-away. Bits and pieces of the BaNQ website are still in English, like the “mon dossier” login form, and the “rechercher” feature flips between “Recherche” and “Search” when I summon it. Maybe ‘mon dossier’ is hosted by a third-party service, and that service picked up that my browser sends a language-preference header ‘en-CA,en,fr’
If the civil servants knew about webbrowsers sending language preferences, will they block webbrowsers that say ‘en’ before ‘fr’ ?
Kate
Mozai, on the BAnQ site you now have to scroll down to the footer for English. I think it used to be at the top where language switchers usually are.
Kevin
Blork
That’s why they call us the best-treated minority :/
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Kate
Police have found the body of Feng Tian, the teenage boy missing from NDG since last October.
Reports say that police have “no reason to suspect foul play” but Feng Tian’s body was found in Contrecœur, a long way from where he was living. The kid was 17, had been here a short time and only spoke Chinese, and there was no indication he had a car. He was last seen on foot in St‑Henri. So how did he end up in Contrecœur?
Kevin
Police said they believe his body had been in the water for some time.
Kate
Jeez. I suppose the assumption is he walked from NDG down through St‑Henri and then into the river?
That’s a sad story.
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Kate
We’re under a severe thunderstorm watch on Friday afternoon.
Mozai
Promises, promises.
Kate
I know. It hardly even rained at all.
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Kate
Côte St-Luc has added a sarcastic remark to its municipal phone tree: “…And by the way, you don’t need to show us your Grade 3 report card…”
La Presse reports on the Montreal’s 311 message plus thoughts from one of their columnists.
Shawn Goldwater
Oh my goodness. The nationalists are gonna flip out on CSL.
Blork
Everything around this issue is just so ridiculous. That said, I have some thoughts on the thoughts from the columnist:
“Cet enregistrement maladroit de la Ville de Montréal – qui inflige un long message en anglais aux francophones…”
Well, not really because if you’re Johnny on the spot …er, Jean sur place… then you’ll hit “1” right away and will continue on your way en Français without having to listen to that ridiculous missive.
“Si on demandait aux francophones représentant 22,8 % de la population canadienne de s’autodécrire comme des « exceptions » lors d’un appel au gouvernement fédéral, plusieurs pousseraient les hauts cris.”
Oh wow, people are going to have a field day with that one. People who have never actually called the Feds will balk at that, and complain about how they are never able to get served in French when they call the Feds. People will go on and on about how the Eaton’s anglo lady still works in every shop in Ottawa and Toronto even though they’ve never been to Ottawa or Toronto. On and on it goes.
“Est-ce que les quelque 15 000 Longueuillois qui ont l’anglais comme seule langue maternelle…”
Wait…what? I thought I was the only one!
Kate
You need to open a café over there, Blork – the Tête Carrée.
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Kate
Weekend notes from CityCrunch, Metro, CultMTL, Sarah’s Weekend List.
The Journal has the traffic horrors in store including the annual moan about roads closed for the cycling events.
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Kate
The city will see 51 major road construction sites this summer. Of these, 21 were ordained by the transport ministry, whose minister said Thursday that it could do a better job coordinating this stuff.
TVA says that roadwork started in 2021 on Ste‑Catherine East is still not finished and this is annoying people.
Shawn Goldwater
Hate to say this but the section of Sainte-Catherine that has been redone downtown is not wearing well.
Those flagstones that they use are already chipping and broken in places and what I notice is that they show every stain that they have ever had. It’s weird. Every spilled beverage or whatever seems to be absorbed into the whiteish material, permanently. It’s ugly.
Kate
We need some balance added to the law that mandates the city always has to take the lowest bid. As individuals we know that in some situations buying cheap is good, but often it leads to getting inferior products that don’t last and soon have to be replaced. It’s common sense, but we’re forced to accept that the city will do it, leading to messed‑up roads and, as Shawn says here, work that doesn’t wear well.
Spi
@Shawn that’s a feature of new stone though, they eventually dirty/wear down to an even shade of gray given enough time. I do agree about the durability of the material, especially given how carelessly snow clearing operation are conducted.
Meezly
You see media reports about politicians visiting other cities to study their public transport systems, why can’t our transport ministers visit other cities who have similar winters to see if how their pavement and roads handle harsh winters? Are Winnipeg, Inuvik or Yakutsk riddled with potholes with never ending road construction like ours?
DeWolf
It’s not harsh winters that damage the pavement and street furniture, it’s snow clearance. Yes, the freeze-thaw cycle is rough on asphalt in particular, which is why roads in other cold cities are horrible (ever driven down a side street in Burlington, VT? RIP your car). But the chipped granite curbs and damaged flagstones are the result of being scraped clear of snow by countless machines.
Kate
Meezly, seriously. City needs to get together a posse of engineers and send them to those cities, and to cities in Asia and Europe too, and see what they do. How does Reykjavik manage? Or Harbin?
It isn’t really the time to inquire into how they do things in Russia, though…
jeather
“She promised to improve transparency by offering more comprehensive updates to residents about ongoing work.”
Well they could hardly offer LESS comprehensive updates.shawn
Spi, that’s interesting. I was wondering about that, if eventually it will just all get stained to a new shade. Be pretty long process. It does seem like regular ciment sidewalks absorb less. These flagstones (if that’s the right word) do seem more porous.
And yes, re the damage, it’s the scraping. Shawn Micallef of Toronto recently travelled to Brazil and shared all these marvellous photos of cities… and everywhere the sidewalks had these stunning mosaics. It made me sad that we can never have that, ever. Oh well.
thomas
Accepting the lowest bid isn’t inherently problematic. However, it necessitates that the city carefully crafts detailed and accurate project specifications for the bidding process. Rigorous, ongoing inspections of the work progress are also essential. Additionally, the financial stability of the bidding company should be confirmed to guarantee its capacity to accommodate potential cost overruns.
shawn
BTW I just got this from the borough. Did anyone else know that that little stub of greenspace above Leo Pariseau at the foothills of Mount Royal Park has a name? It’s parc Lucia-Kowaluk and it’s being refurbished, again, and properly this time, I hope. There was work done to it during the Coderre admin. and it always seemed like a missed opportunity. Here’s some info: https://montreal.ca/articles/reamenagement-du-parc-lucia-kowaluk-45086
Joey
Occam’s Razor says that the reason we overpay for poor-quality construction is organized crime and corruption within the municipal government, no? To us lowly citizens, the fact that we never seem to benefit from technological improvements, that the typical construction project is poorly planned, executed and communicated (and doesn’t last its expected lifetime), and that innovative ideas that would reduce long-term maintenance costs (i.e., gravy for the construction sector – think of the decision *not* to do heated sidewalks on Ste-Catherine, leading to relying on the same shitty snow removal that @DeWolf describes) are always abandoned all suggests that the *actual* powers that be have us right where they want us.
Yes, Mayor Plante can go to Europe to study transit (she could also go to Plattsburgh to look at the roads) and may genuinely want to improve how we do things – but it feels like any well-intentioned politician has the deck stacked against them. Meanwhile, the mob is literally torching cars and shooting up restaurants almost daily. Who exactly is supposed to stand up to OC in Quebec?
Shawn Goldwater
Except that our snow removal isn’t shitty. People from other places marvel at how we do it. True, the original plan called for heated sidewalks on Ste-Catherine as I recall, but that was abandoned. Maybe that’s what you are referring to.
Joey
@Shawn sorry I didn’t mean that the snow removal was shitty, only that we haven’t figured out a way to do it without removing painted lies, tearing up asphalt, dinging curbs, etc. It sounded for a while like part of the objectives for Ste-Catherine was to test out heated sidewalks/streets to see if (a) the tech would work and (b) whether we could gradually implement the concept at larger scale – maybe only on streets where the externalities of ‘classic’ snow removal are particularly burdensome, either in expense or inconvenience. Perhaps the city engineers decided it couldn’t be done, or at least not at anything close to a reasonable price. Perhaps the OC leadership decided that any potential hint of a threat to those fat snow removal contracts had to be cut off at the pass.
Kate
Joey, you seem to believe that city hall is as corrupt now as it was under Tremblay.
Blork
I suppose it’s nice that they’re fixing up Parc Lucia-Kowaluk, but you could also see this as a case of poor priority management. As green spaces go it’s grim; surrounded on two sides by wide traffic-filled boulevards, but more cogently it’s at the foot of the very nice Parc Jeanne-Mance and kitty-corner to the city’s flagship park, Mont-Royal. So who the heck is going to bring their kids to fly kites or picnic in that noisy patch of green when two fantastic parks are RIGHT THERE, spitting distance away?
Perhaps it would be more useful to put that money into a park in some other part of town that doesn’t have immediate access to the cream of the crop, park-wise. It’s a bit like putting a city-subsidized greengrocer across the street from the Jean-Talon Market instead of in some food-desert part of town.
CE
I really wish the city had have gone ahead with its original plan to build housing on that plot. It’s near useless as a park (especially considering how much other green space there is around) and would have been a great location for housing with its proximity to green space, transit, services, etc. They also probably could have gotten away with building at least a mid rise building there. Imagine how many public housing units could have been built in just one place!
Shawn Goldwater
What I see from the design is that it will be some sort of boundary area mixing greenspace and concrete to create a sort of transition between city and the parks.
I do think that’s a good idea, especially with Pine being redone.
Joey
@Kate not the Projet leadership… did you see that story the other day about a blue collar worker manager who was illegally growing and selling weed using his city email address?
Kate
Joey, yes, but it’s a bit of a stretch between a guy growing a little pot, and a universal assumption that any contract written by the city has corruption at its heart.
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Kate
Shots were fired through the window of a Crescent Street business early Friday morning. Nobody was hurt.
Blork
The CTV piece says it was several businesses that were shot at. If that’s true this is more likely some idiot showing off his off-brand 9 than any kind of targeted shooting.
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Kate
A new report says the Lakeshore Hospital ER is dangerous and horrible for patients and needs not only physical renovations but a change in attitudes and culture.
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Kate
Around 19,000 cyclists are expected in Friday night’s Tour la nuit, and 17,000 are signed up for Sunday’s Tour de l’île. I remember when the night ride was the smaller event. Item includes maps of the routes.
Meezly
For the first time in years, the event is happening in the east end at Parc Maisonneuve instead of the Plateau. So we’re not going – we live on the Plateau and don’t have a car – it’s just too far for kids to bike out there and back on top of doing the course.
It’s great as this allows residents who live further out east a better chance to participate, but I hope that they’ll at least alternate between east and west each year!
Blork
Meezly, to be precise, alternating between the Plateau and Parc Maisonneuve would be alternating between east and center, not east and west. 😉
Meezly
When it was held annually at Parc Jeanne-Mance, it was technically west. But yes, it was more of a central spot to converge.
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Kate
There are power outages here and there on the island because of the heat and the forest fires north of town.
jeather
My mother is currently in her third outage in three days.
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