La Presse went and talked to owners of small businesses in Montreal North about their responses to Fady Dagher’s presser of a week ago, and the ensuing fallout.
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Kate
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Kate
A man showed up at Jean-Talon Hospital ER Friday afternoon with a bullet in the leg. As it turns out, medical confidentiality stops where gunfire begins, so the medics called the cops. But the patient isn’t talking about who shot him, or where.
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Kate
Last winter was the most expensive in ten years in terms of snow removal costs and overtime for police – but the city also collected a record number of fines as well.
La Presse’s Maxime Bergeron also discusses the effect of inflation on municipal expenses generally.
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Kate
The SPVM is to discuss the racism accusations on Monday, but only behind closed doors to the mayor and other elected officials. A promised session allowing the public to quiz the police has been put off till later.
Ian
Good explainer article from the CBC, too.
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Kate
A cosmetic chain from France with several stores in Quebec has been fined $3000 for having its receipts in English.
Nicholas
Maybe they can go after the checkout machines at Intermarché, which tell you the price is “deux dollars et 50 centimes” and say “n’oubliez pas votre ticket.”
Kate
Ian
I’m surprised they didn’t also get nailed for signage – after all, “Prédiré Paris” doesn’t clearly state what kind of business it is. Prédiré Paris Soins de la Beauté Maquillage et Cosmetiques, SVP! On parle Français icitte!
I couldn’t help but notice in the photo there is another sign for a business called “Austria”, not “Autriche”. I can feel the culture of Quebec crumbling like sand under our very feet.Nicholas
Kate, the link I posted has the official explanation from the Quebec government: ticket is from an old French word that went through English back to French, and is adopted in France but disliked here because it hurts francisation efforts. I could understand ticket being allowed here even if disliked (France taking over the Plateau!), but at a minimum centime is for Euros, not dollars. If they said pence or kopecks or öre there would have been a complaint years ago.
Uatu
If QC survived the Parisian assault on French by Old River then it’ll survive this as well lol
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Kate
SMF says her husband is Black and was stopped by police last year at least five or six times for nothing.
Ian
Do we have reason to doubt her husband is Black?
J/K I know what you meant hahaKate
It occurred to me as I posted that I’ve never knowingly seen a picture of SMF with a partner, or seen his name or anything about his background mentioned anywhere.
Ian
I’ve never met her IRL, what if she isn’t real?
Kate
An AI mayor?!
qatzelok
If PSPP is correct, than a Liberal Party member that criticizes law enforcement might just be supporting immunity for organized crime in general.
I hope he’s incorrect, but Canada’s horrible finances over the last 50 years of non-stop deficits sure looks like “an inside job” by high-up organized crime.
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Kate
Weekend notes from Le Devoir, CityCrunch, Journal de Montréal, CultMTL, the Gazette.The Samuel-de-Champlain bridge will not be closed all weekend. However, here are the actual road closures for the weekend.
Advance notice: the Jacques-Cartier bridge will be closed on certain evenings for fireworks from July 2 to August 6.
MarcG
The Champlain bridge article has been updated to say the work is pushed to August.
Kate
Great, we can all flee the island now!
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Kate
Ted Rutland, who’s been studying and critiquing the relationship between police, public and politicians for a long time, writes about the recent action by Fady Dagher in Le Devoir.
Excellent piece by Christopher Curtis describing the protest at Station 39 on Monday. No other journalist has even attempted to explain how things went down that night.
jeather
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but what we’ve heard so far does feel like it would normally lead to an emergency 10 pm press conference, and I believe there is more, and worse, yet to come out.
CBC This is Montreal podcast covered this, interviewing Rutland and a number of Black activists, this week.
Kate
I think this is the podcast jeather mentions.
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Kate
Some Black officers of the SPVM have written a letter saying they fear reprisals if they are blamed for blowing the whistle on racist and hateful actions by some of their white colleagues, causing a team at Station 39 to be disbanded, and bringing about criticism and possibly an inquiry into institutional racism in the force.
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Kate
Ismaël Koné, Quebec’s biggest star on the Canada soccer team, has suffered a broken leg after a tackle by Qatar’s Assim Madibo. Canada got its first World Cup win ever, but at the expense of losing one of its top players.
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Kate
A worker was impaled by a steel rod at a Kirkland construction site on Thursday morning. TVA has photos of the man being lifted from the depths of the site on a stretcher with the help of rescue workers from the fire department.
Ian
I can only guess it was probably rebar, not some kind of post as it was framework. Rebar punctures are really bad, that’s awful.
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Kate
The city is investing in a project of 350 housing units in the Îlot Angus, currently projected to be “affordable” at $1100 to $1400 per month, but by the time the project is completed, probably more.
Chris
Are those sneering quotes? 🙂 How low would it have to be to not add quotes? What would a reasonable/fair “affordable” rent be in this city? Would it have to be “affordable” to an unemployed person? Minimum wage earner?
Kate
I am not sneering, I’m just according the word a certain distance, because it’s always reported as if it has a clear well-defined meaning, but it’s always going to be relative and subject to change.
Ian
@Chris the rule of thumb for a reasonable rent is 25% of the household take-home income, so 1100/m for a 1 bedroom apartment would “reasonably” require a 75k salary (about 53k net). The average salary in Montreal was $50,120 in 2025… I doubt it’s gone up 24k in 2 years. I think we can “reasonably” say that a rent that requires a person to earn 150% of the average is not “reasonable”.
I know you weren’t being serious but for comparison, a full-time minimum wage earner makes about 31k per year.
Chris
I was being serious in that I was curious where Kate’s lines were.
It’s an interesting thought exercise I think.
Your 50k and 75k numbers are individual, not household, right?
Is it “reasonable” that maybe people that need subsidized housing maybe need a roommate too? Two 31k salaries per year is 62k per year. 1.1k a month is 13.2k a year. 13.2k / 62k is 21% of household income. But yeah you’d have to split a bedroom. All very back of envelope, but it’s not horribly far from “affordable” perhaps.
Ian
The article said 1100 dollars is for a one bedroom apartment.
Basically the only way any of these units are “affordable” or “reasonable” is for a childless couple.MarcG
Anyone who suggests that sharing a bedroom with a roommate is reasonable should be forced to live that way and see if they continue to hold that opinion.
Kate
An adult having to share a bedroom with an unrelated adult who is not a romantic partner reduces the place to a dormitory, not an apartment.
Ian
Also I would like to note, Chris, that your “back of envelope” calculation is predicated on an error, which is that your rent should reasonably be 25% of your net, not your gross. A person making 31k in QC would have about 26k take-home according to 2025 rates, so with 2 people that is only $52k, not $62k.
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Kate
The OQLF has received a record number of complaints over the last year. Are some of you blokes still dreaming in English?
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Kate
There’s little local news Thursday morning except for the rain and thunderstorm watch.
Ian
Hey now weather can be a big news. Why, that brief thunderstorm we had yesterday knocked out the REM for four hours.
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Kate
The Resilience Centre has moved down Atwater into 780, a newly renovated building which will offer space and services to the homeless.
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