The city is promising a new bylaw on commercial wood ovens by the end of the year. So enjoy your bagels and wood‑fired pizzas while you can.
Updates from April, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
If it’s true that 95% of the cases that come to a nurse practitioner clinic don’t need to see a doctor, then it’s good news that people waiting to get a doctor will now be sent to nurses instead.
Can we be sure of this or is it a politically convenient fiction? And is the next round of news stories going to be that it’s become difficult to see a nurse practitioner?
And would Christian Dubé be pleased to be told that he couldn’t have a doctor, but could see a nurse instead?
I mean no shade to nurse practitioners. I know it’s a valuable role. I’m not so sure about the CAQ using them to patch up holes in the Quebec medical system.
carswell
A modest proposal: Instead of giving politicians — especially ministers and, ahem, members of their family (see Legault’s mother or Boubou’s late wife for that matter) — access to gold-plated medical care, force them to rely only on the worst services available to to the general public.
As long as large portions of the populace have to wait up to seven years to get a general practitioner, no politician is allowed to have a general practitioner. All politicians, irrespective of rank, are prohibited from being moved to the top of the waiting lists. Ban politicians from using the private system too (actually, let’s ban the private system altogether.) Etcetera.
I can guarantee that politicians’ focus on solving the health care crisis would immediately become laser-like and solutions would be put in place far faster than will happen otherwise if they happen at all.
dwgs
Our GP retired several years ago. After a wait of three years or so we were contacted by a NP, who invited us to become her patients. I was hesitant at first but decided to agree and I’m very happy with the decision. She’s far better and more involved than our GP ever was.
I second Carswell’s proposal.Ian
@carswell a similar intiative was undertaken at one place I worked where corporate decided VPs and lower management would not have a separate bathroom than the other employees – to ensure that all bathrooms were equally well-kept and laid out. Nicest bathrooms anywhere I ever worked.
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Kate
Plaza St-Hubert will be pedestrianized for the first time this summer. This item has a list at the bottom of all the pedestrianized streets and their dates, which vary.
carswell
Great news about the Plaza. Too bad, with all the new trees, it’s short on shade.
Very little for boroughs not east and south of Mount Royal, however. Nothing other than the occasional weekend street fair in CDN-NDG (the city’s largest borough), St-Laurent, Ahuntsic, Lachine, Sud-ouest, LaSalle and I could go on. Typical of Projet, sorry to say.
Kate
I wonder if it’s that their SDCs aren’t on board.
nau
One imagines that is an important factor. Plus the fact that neither LaSalle nor Saint Laurent have any Projet representatives calls into question how seriously one should take that list as proof that it’s Projet that’s the common element.
carswell
That may be part of the issue, Kate, but the city’s relative neglect of (roughly) non-Plateau/Plateau-adjacent boroughs is an ongoing trend. Look at the bike path network, for example. Not only is it far more built up in P/PA boroughs, that’s also where innovations are introduced (REV, year-round BIXI, hell, even BIXI) before slowly being extended to other hoods. And the Plateau gets a REV but cyclists in CDN-NDG and SL don’t get even a feeble attempt at a safe path across the deadly Décarie autoroute/service road corridor. And even if the city comes through and builds the promised Jean Talon West REV in the next decade, that’s one safe crossing between Villa-Maria and the Metropolitan; someone biking on Côte-St-Luc, Queen Mary or Édouard-Montpetit isn’t going to detour all the way up to Jean Talon and back to get across the death trap. Similarly, the De Maisonneuve-Décarie intersection is an unsafe mess, especially for cyclists, a known fact for decades; betting that if it were in the Plateau, it would have been remedied years ago.
Speaking as a resident of CDN, my impression is that, having quashed and booted Sue Montgomery and parachuted in an outsider chosen, one suspects, because she’s photogenic, order-following and not a white male as the new borough mayor, CDN-NDG has returned to being a backwater as far as city hall is concerned. About the only positive municipal initiatives we see and hear about in my neck of the woods are city-wide projects like improvements to the (few) bike paths and the pending introduction of composting for apartment blocks.
For the past few months, I’ve been asking locals — neighbours, friends in NDG, etc. — if they can name the borough mayor. Tellingly, no one has to date. Some didn’t even know she’s a black woman. Obviously, part of that is their apathetic fault but it also says something about the borough administration’s pathetic presence.
Touché, @nau, though as the ruling party, Projet is responsible for the entire city, not just Projet-controlled boroughs. But instead of nitpicking, how about addressing the actual point of possible Plateau/Plateau-adjacent favouritism at city hall?
Kate
A shoe just dropped over here. Hasn’t rue St‑Paul been pedestrianized now for several summers? But it’s not on the list.
Another street that has had a pedestrianized moment in the past is Masson, but it’s not listed either. And yet Rosemont’s a Projet borough.
Not that I’m defending Projet, but it seems to me to pedestrianize a street effectively it has to be both commercial yet narrow enough, and the city doesn’t have suitable streets evenly distributed by borough. It’s why the only part of St‑Denis that gets pedestrianized is south of Sherbrooke. North from there it’s too wide and carries too much traffic, a situation common to many of our commercial streets.
All that said, I agree that CDN-NDG is suffering neglect. I don’t know what kind of political leverage it would take to break that borough in half, but it really needs to be two entities, with the attention and financing it would get if NDG and Côte‑des‑Neiges were separated. But that isn’t going to happen.
Joey
@carswell after the Terrebonne bike lane fiasco, it will be a long time before Project tries to bring major cycling infrastructure to NDG.
carswell
@Joey Last I heard, the Terrebonne path is finally happening. And there are unspecified plans to upgrade the Édouard-Montpetit path from Côte-St-Cathérine to Côté-des-Neiges (expecting the existing lanes will be moved from between the parked cars and the road to between the curb and the parked cars, as has been done west of CDN.
Unfortunately, the plans do not include the obvious, natural and necessary linking up of the E-MP and Fielding paths, because that would mean having to make the Décarie crossing safe for people not wrapped in speeding tons of steel, clearly not a priority for any level of government.
carswell
@Kate When asking friends and neighbours for the CDN-NDG mayor’s name, I also asked several if they felt any connection with the other half of the borough, the part they didn’t live in. None of the respondents did and several wondered why it isn’t two separate boroughs. That’s definitely a development I’d favour but am not holding my breath.
nau
Well, @carswell, if what you were going for in your first post was Plateau and alentours favouritism, I’m disinclined to address it since I suspect that it does exist. You’ll excuse me if I didn’t manage to infer your focus immediately as I live within striking distance of Rue Wellington and so pedestrianization isn’t an issue that screams Plateau-centrism to me.
It does seem fair to note that Projet was first elected in the Plateau and may well still have its most supportive public there (or not, as certain other posters may well take the opportunity to remind us yet again), so it’s not entirely surprising that its initiatives are most advanced there.
I agree that the De Maisonneuve-Décarie intersection is bad for cyclists, but in that case one does have to keep in mind CP’s role in blocking the obvious solution of routing the bike path above Decarie beside the rail bridge.
Ian
Many have said, for years, that it’s just straight-up elitism. The highly educated, mostly white, mostly Francophone wine bar crowd that makes up most of the PM elect doesn’t really care about places like CDN/NDG except insofar as they want ot be in control. That said they didn’t manage to hold Outremont because they were perceived as too elitist, so who knows.
I think pedestrianizing Mont-Royal made perfect sense, and pedestrianizing St-Hubert makes perfect sense, too. Monkland seems like a possible candidate for it in NDG. For bike paths the path along DeMaisonneuve connects all the way from Atwater through Westmount then jogs through Upper Lachine for NDG… no small feat to get Westmount on board. A Decarie path would be nice but that trench was a stupid idea for pedestrians, bicyclists, drivers, and even delivery traffic flow. It’s a travesty of bad urban planning that we will have to endure until it is either covered or backfilled. I’m not sure the city is even allowed to change traffic flow around it much, isn’t that provincial jurisdiction as part of the highway system?
dhomas
Could it be that we’re looking at the causality backwards? Maybe it’s not that areas that elect Projet get more bike/pedestrian infrastructure, but areas that are more open to this type of infrastructure are also more likely to vote Projet?
Kate
dhomas, that idea was creeping up on me too.
Chris
>the city’s relative neglect of (roughly) non-Plateau/Plateau-adjacent boroughs is an ongoing trend
Perhaps they have simply gauged that the population outside Plateau are just not as in favour of those things. See for example Terrebonne bike path. They may figure it would cost too much political capital. Perhaps they think better to test these ideas/policies/infrastructures in Plateau first, to show by example that it’s a good idea, then they can expand it elsewhere in time.
Tim S.
I’d love a pedestrianized street in NDG, but I don’t think there are any reasonable candidates. Monkland is too major of an artery, I think, with not many other east-west streets (NDG blocks are very long, plus they re-did Somerland last year and will be doing NDG avenue this year.). We can argue about the role of cars etc, but even people on buses and bikes have to get around somehow. What they are doing though is closing off streets adjacent to small parks to make them bigger, which is something.
Nicholas
I’m really confused. Last year CDN/NDG put in a two-way protected bike lane on Bourret, from almost the Hampstead border, crossing Decarie, to Légaré. Almost immediately local residents and even the mayor of Hampstead were demanding its removal. (I gather Hampsteaders use it as a cut through to get to Cote-Saint-Catherine and the NB entrance to Decarie at Edouard-Montpetit while avoiding Van Horne and Isabella.) A few years ago they put in a lane on Terrebonne, and there were incessant complaints to remove it, which finally happened, and they are only replacing it this year. Last year they also added protected lanes on Walkley, EM, Barclay, Fielding, Plamondon, Lacombe and Goyer, all totalling 11.4 km with Bourret. I’ve noticed some significant changes in the last 5 years or so, though obviously it’s nowhere close to the Plateau. (Also note PM did not have a majority on the borough council for half of its first mandate, due to the Montgomery issue I’m not going to get into.)
Jurisdiction fights really get in the way. Streets are either borough, city or province roads. If a proposed route even crosses another’s roads, you need their approval. Someone at MTQ, likely with soft political oversight, is going to have to approve taking away car space from whichever road you want to put a bike lane on across Decarie, which is probably why they put it on the Bourret pedestrian bridge. The city can do projects on medium-importance roads, but not local borough ones, which is why you see way more lanes on smaller streets in Rosemont than St Laurent. Want to change this, or split CDN-NDG in two (a good idea, imho)? Talk to Quebec, who wrote the new megacity charter. I know there were some great potential corridors specifically blocked by Quebec on one side and certain boroughs on the other.
As for Decarie and de Maisonneuve, having gone through there thousands of times in my life, it is better than ever before. For people going east-west, I really have nothing to complain about, it’s fully protected and allow people to cross before cars can move. For going to and from the hospital it is not great because there’s nowhere to wait safely. However that intersection is not easy to deal with, with tons of buses making multiple turning movements, lots of trucks, emergency access and traffic coming from and to 5 directions with tight turns and grade changes, with a lot of throughput requested and long light cycles. I can think of lots of other similarly unpleasant intersections in PM areas, like St Joseph and D’Iberville, Rosemont and St Denis, anywhere and Sherbrooke. Would it be great if we could reduce motor vehicle by half and fill in the Decarie with a park and lake, sure, but if it took four years to get a protected lane back on Terrebonne, I’m not sure how this is going to happen.
If you made me benevolent overlord, you’d see a lot of changes, but in a democracy the people in charge are responsive to public opinion, even if the public doesn’t have a referendum on an issue. Just like a lot of the bike lanes, pedestrian streets are subject to popular support. If you don’t get the SDCs, or at least a good portion of shopkeepers on board, you are going to hear about it every day until the next election. Monkland would be great as a pedestrian street, but besides parking (which is often store owners who want to park there themselves rather than customers who live nearby) Monkland has a major bus route, the 103, as well as the less important 162. (My former 99-year old neighbour who lives near Mont-Royal Ave said he had to walk much farther to the bus on St Joseph, and also can’t stop in a shop on the way to the Metro, or bus to the grocery store.) You could move the buses onto Terrebonne, but now that will be one-way with the new bike project. Put them on NDG/CSA and that’s a big transit gap to the north. Allow only buses on Monkland and Sherbooke? Great idea, but without a benevolent overlord, get ready to fight, because they’re not there yet.
I won’t go on longer, but lots of correct points already said: projects are easier where support already exists, control is not solely at the municipal level, and, well, lots of Montrealers still like driving, and if you do too much too fast where people don’t want it you’ll hear about it on CJAD, in the Suburban and on TVA, as well as on Facebook and in council meetings. 11 km in one year, well, could be much worse!
Kevin
I know it’s been a few years, but the last time Monkland was closed on a weekday for a street festival ended up with lots of yelling at councillors and the ouster of the head of the SDC.
Doing it again when the closest east-west street has been changed to one way (a move that many people are unaware will be happening) would likely generate more anger.
James
Linking up Edouard-Montpetit with Fielding requires the cooperation of Hampstead which is not too likely to occur. Perhaps the Edouard-Montpetit or Isabella crossings at Décarie could be done with a safer configuration for cyclists to link up with Earnscliffe/Clanranald. The crossing at Bourret (done in 2023 I believe) is a good improvement.
Terrebonne will be a big change for NDG this summer. Making it one way for cars and adding 2 one-way bike paths. Expect a lot of complaints about this in the typical anti-bike sources (The Suburban / The Gazette).
I received two home-made flyers from affected residents that tried to mobilize opposition to the Terrebonne changes (my house is on Terrebonne)..Kevin
James
It’s not a dichotomy. There are people who bike and who walk and who drive cars.bumper carz
@Ian: “…straight-up elitism. The highly educated, mostly white, mostly Francophone wine bar crowd… ”
And the Plateau welcomes bike paths and pedestrian zones.
Ville St-Laurent barely has sidewalks, let alone bike paths or pedestrianized streets. It’s new towers have zero commerce at ground floor.
To blame their lack of ped-zones on Projet… is to not understand why suburban towns got to be independent entities in the first place: they “split off” from central cities in order to allow very car-centered urbanism that doesn’t respect the 5000-year history of place-making. Ville St-Laurent is a car-heaven, and that’s why it doesn’t have any high quality streets to pedestrianize.
Ian
Who siad anything about VSL? Weren’t we talking about CDN/NDG?
bumper carz
The article is about Plaza St-Hubert, and the comments rotate about how unfair it is that West Island areas like VSL and NDG-CDN don’t have any.
Meanwhile, the urbanism of these areas is car-suburbia extremis. Sherbrooke St in NDG was sacrificed as a quality street in order to create a highway that killed the commercial potential. VSL had the same post-war development pattern but started with fewer existing historic buildings, but the result is the same: improverished walkability and a low-quality public realm.
Kate
The old part of Ville St‑Laurent around du Collège metro is pleasant and walkable, but doesn’t offer any commercial street that could be pedestrianized in the same way as the ones on the list. That’s the problem with commercial streets outside the city core – they’re also highways. We simply don’t build streets like Wellington or Mont‑Royal any more.
Ian
All good points, Kate.
@qatzi CDN/NDG is not west island. The west island literally starts at the western border of NDG.DeWolf
I think a lot of people don’t understand that the pedestrianization projects are led by the SDCs. The city offers financial, logistical and political support, but it’s the SDC that decides whether they will happen and for how long – not the mayor’s office.
If NDG or Côte des Neiges want pedestrian streets, it’s up to their local SDCs. But here’s the thing: merchants in both neighbourhoods have historically been extremely resistant to the creation of SDCs in the first place. There’s one that was recently created in CDN, but that’s it. Monkland has a merchant’s association but it’s voluntary and doesn’t benefit from the municipal funding and full-time organizational support an SDC would have. There was a push to create an NDG SDC in 2022 but it was killed due to opposition.
On top of that, as others have noted, which streets would be good candidates for pedestrianization? I can’t think of any. All the commercial streets are too wide to be comfortable pedestrian spaces. The commercial intensity and volume of pedestrian traffic is generally lower than on streets like Wellington, Mont-Royal and St-Hubert, too.
One of the fundamental challenges of CDN/NDG is that as a borough, it’s generally quite car-oriented, even in areas that are relatively dense. This is a problem for pedestrian streets, but also for creating safe bike infrastructure. Even though you actually have more space than in other boroughs because the streets are wider, the car dominance creates strong political opposition. Even as a casual pedestrian or cyclist, you can feel the difference walking around CDN/NDG: drivers are that much more hostile.
@Kate – I’ve heard that St-Paul isn’t included on the list because there’s a plan to pedestrianize a chunk of Old Montreal and those plans will be announced later. Also, Masson has never been pedestrianized aside from the occasional street fair. The SDC has always been extremely resistant.
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Kate
Foreign investments fell 23% in greater Montreal in 2023.
Can someone give me a three-sentence explanation why it’s important to have foreign money invested here, as opposed to local money? We’re not a poor country. But I realize there may be subtleties I’m not getting.
Michael
GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Net Exports
So the more foreign investment there is, the more it boosts GDP.
If you want a real life example of foreign money “building” a country, look no further than China that used FDI and Exports to build its economy into #2 globally.
Kate
So why are these foreigners not investing in their own countries? What I’m not getting is why money has to cross a border to have value.
Blork
Isn’t it a bit like why do we have to work or run a business to get other people’s money instead of just circulating our own money from left hand to right hand?
Those foreigners will invest where ever they see an opportunity for a good return on the investment. For example, real estate in China is in the toilet right now, so if you want to invest in real estate you look elsewhere.
Chris
>why it’s important to have foreign money invested here, as opposed to local money?
They are not mutually exclusive. But more importantly, the former is of course much larger as Montreal is a tiny fraction of global population.
>So why are these foreigners not investing in their own countries?
They invest everywhere, for diversification of risk. But seems their mix is now less here.
Blork
It’s a while since I watched this, and I don’t remember how much it touches on this specific topic, but this 30-minute YouTube video is essentially a 4-year degree in economics distilled into one entertaining and informative tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0&t=200s
Jim Strankinga
Foreign investment is good for many reasons; it reduces local economic risk and it increases GDP, and can stimulate job creation and technology transfer. It also attracts more investors and boosts the local market’s international reputation.
It offers a broader economic boost than circulating the same money domestically. In Dutch we would say ‘ Niet alle eieren in één mand leggen’ (not putting all your eggs in one basket)
Ian
We have that exact same expression in English, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. It originally comes from Don Quixote by Cervantes so I’m sure it’s a stock phrase in most European languages at the very least.
Anyhow, there are negatives to foreign investment to be sure but diversification is the main advantage. It’s kind of the principle of global multinationalism. It becomes dangerous when the investors & business interests from one specific region own so much of something that it squeezes out locals, or if the foreign economy crashes and they all pull out at once, crashing the local economy. That’s why it’s important to have diversity amongst investors too, so if for instance the US decides to enact protectionist laws and US companies & investors pull out of Quebec, we have enough investment & business from European and Asian markets to offset it.
On a related note, I was listening to CBC this mornignn and apparently the new labelling laws under 96 are making a lot of American and even Canadian manufacturers nervous, but for European and Asian invesors it’s not such a big deal, I’d imagine. We might see some new brands on the shelves in the next few years. I can figure out how to use a stove with just pictograms but apparently some people find it all very alarming. Small appliance manufacturers in particular are in a tizzy about the new labelling requirements. Car manufacturers are also being told they have to have all the labelling in the car in French, too. If this makes market space for those <13k Chinese electric vehicles, I'm all for it.
Ian
DeWolf
The consumer labelling outcry that we’re seeing in the anglo media these days is a bit perplexing. It reminds me of the old chestnut about bilingual cereal boxes. There’s an assumption that everywhere in the world, all appliances have only English, and yet in Europe and Asia manufacturers seem to be able to tailor their products to the local languages.
Incidentally my Black and Decker toaster oven is perfectly bilingual.
MarcG
I bought a new microwave a few years ago and it came with 2 stickers to put over the buttons – one English, one French.
Blork
Apparently stickers aren’t good enough; the item must be available in French with its original embossed buttons and labels.
I think the anger is over the fact that if such labelling isn’t available then it will be illegal to sell the item here, even online.
There are plenty of products made in the US, for example, that do not have multilingual embossed buttons because they’re made primarily for the US market. They’re sold here with stickers for the safety instructions. The idea that people anywhere in Canada can buy those toaster ovens or dishwashers or specialized keyboards, etc., EXCEPT PEOPLE IN QUEBEC is sort of outrageous and it feels very authoritarian. The idea that the government won’t allow me to order something online to be shipped to my house because it doesn’t like the labels? That I can’t download the beta version of a new software program because it isn’t 100% translated to French? FFS! I don’t think there are any other places in the world with such restrictions.
The net result will be fewer products available, less choice to the consumer, and higher prices. It’s not the same as the cereal box complaint at all.
Joey
I still occasionally run into a commercial website that will load everywhere in Canada except Quebec because the corporation decided that it would be too complicated to run an entirely French-only operation just to sell to our market. Crate & Barrel comes to mind, though I gather they’ve finally decided to offer a French option.
Uatu
Time to start a black market! Pssst over here…. wanna buy a toaster oven? Just don’t tell anyone where you got it, capice? Lol
Kate
We all have to suffer to protect French.
Ian
Many of my Hassidic neighbours have Israeli-made fridges and stoves that work on timers so they can skirt the rules around turning things on and off during Shabbos. They do not have French labels, of course.
There is celarly already some kind of provision for imports for personal use … I feel like this will affect retailers more thn anyone.I am pretty sure small appliance manufacturers won’t be lying awake at night over losing a market of 8.18 million total population out of a total North American market of 380,315,79. Like, would it even be worth it for them to bother? Or is Roberge really that high off his own fumes? Maybe he has shares in a Québecois houeshold appliance manufacturing consortium? I complain that it makes no sense but then again sense isn’t what’s on the menu with the CAQ.
carswell
@Joey US furniture retailer West Elm has one store in Quebec, in Griffintown. They also have a large, constantly changing catalogue that would cost a fortune to have and keep translated, a cost out of proportion to their small volume of sales in the province and possibly in Canada. So not only is West Elm’s Canadian website not viewable by people using Quebec-based servers, personnel in the Griffintown store suggest going to the US site, noting down the name and number of the model you’re interested in and then calling the store to inquire if it can be ordered in Canada and with which options and at what price.
Joey
@Ian I think most stoves come with a Sabbath mode built in (maybe ‘a lot of,’ not ‘most’).
@carswell this is actually a good use case for AI, assuming the onus is to have a more-or-less up-to-date French-language website (and not one that is, you know, grammatically correct)
dhomas
Canadian Appliance Source has pretty much every appliance available in Canada. Out of 700 ranges available, 403 of them have a Sabbath Mode. If the hassids are importing their ranges from Israel, there must be a different reason.
Ian
Maybe they’re getting a deal on the fridge/ stove combo? I dunno. I guess I could ask around, many of the Hassidic men on my street are quite happy to explain that kind of thing if asked, and are usually just surprised anyone who isn’t Hassidic would be interested to know.
jeather
Yeah, I know a lot of people who have that option because it just came with the appliance — for fridges too, where it turns off any timed defrost, ice makers and lights. (I don’t think I do but I’m not sure.) I do think that a Sabbath mode for an oven is scary — that’s the point of a crockpot.
I wonder what the rules are for induction cooktops.
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Kate
Fresh National Geographic guide to Montreal. A few nice photos but no surprises.
carswell
Have only got as far as the second sentence: “The capital of the French-speaking province of Quebec…” Yikes! That’s a surprise.
carswell
The author also claims American Airlines has direct flights between the UK and Montreal. Untrue.
Some of the recommendations — Qui lait cru over Hamel at the JTM, for example — are debatable too.
Ephraim
@carswell – Well…. AA sort of does. They are codeshare partners with BA (and Finnair). BA95 (AA6920 and AY5995) flies nonstop LHR to YUL.
carswell
That’s not what the article says, Ephraim. “Air Canada, British Airways, Air Transat and American Airlines fly between the UK and Montreal multiple times a week. Average flight time: 7h15m.”
There are no direct AA flights between the UK and Montreal. Yes, AA is a member of the OneWorld alliance. So are TAP and Iberia, among others; why not mention them? And Lufthansa and United are code-sharing members of Star Alliance, along with Air Canada. If it’s true for AA, why not for them? Because it’s not true.
Ian
They spelled “Fairmount” Bagel “Fairmont” … though thinking Montreal is th capital of Quebec is a way more egregious error. Maybe we need the descriptor “NOT THE NATIONAL CAPITAL OF QUEBEC” twice the size of the name of the city on signs at the airport 😀
Ephraim
TP and IB don’t codeshare that flight, just AA and AY. And only LH codeshares the AC flight. TS flights are codeshares with PD, but only if you fly via YYZ. I assume that the only reason that AA is mentioned is that either they are a sponsor of NatGeo or it’s needed for their ad server (which I can’t see because I’m not geolocated in the US and I have an ad blocking DNS in use.)
EmilyG
I wonder if National Geographic still doesn’t allow submissions of photos from Quebecers.
Blork
Arrrgh! Made it almost all the way through without a mention of the “underground city,” and there it was at the end. (I was near the Quartier des Spectacles one night during the holidays when a French family approached me asking how to find the underground city. I tried to explain that at 8:00PM on a Wednesday night there was nothing to see there except shuttered kiosks in tunnels connecting malls that aren’t open, but they just did not want to hear it.)
EmilyG, not sure what you mean. The article’s photos are by Jeff Frenette, who is a local.
Kate
Blork, shawn told an almost identical anecdote a year ago. I’ve also had people ask me, downtown, where the underground city is, and have told them “just go through that door” or “you’re standing on it” variously.
Mark Côté
One cold afternoon I tried to navigate the “underground city” from Square Victoria up to Peel & Ste-Catherine. I gave up after getting one building east of the metro. Surprisingly few resources online about getting around underground.
Mark Côté
Er, west of the metro I mean.
Annette
It’s kind of you not to crush their sense of wonder, Kate.
MarcG
The underground city isn’t a place, it’s a state of mind (filled with shuttered kiosks in tunnels connecting malls that aren’t open).
Joey
I know we have our unique underground city, but in Toronto last week I did a 20-minute underground walk from one part of Downtown Toronto to another (and the malls, kiosks and food courts were a lot nicer than the walk from, say, Bonaventure Metro to the Eaton Centre: https://www.toronto.ca/explore-enjoy/visitor-toronto/path-torontos-downtown-pedestrian-walkway/
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Kate
TVA looks at what it calls the revival of Laurier West – the whole stretch between Côte‑Ste‑Catherine and St‑Laurent.
The writer claims that the only chains present are Première Moisson and Columbus Café, but what are the SAQ, Multimags, Toi Moi et Café and Mandy’s, if not chains? But it’s true, there are a lot of independents along the stretch as well.
jeather
I haven’t been there in a while because the last time I went it was empty and dismal, but it would be nice if it revived.
Ian
There are still lots of empty places but it doesn’t seem to be actively struggling to survive like it has been. The half finished hotel is a real eyesore, though.
Ian
ps. the banks, the dope store and the glasses store would count as chains too, I would imagine? I don’t know if Toi Moi & Café would count though as I believe thaat’s the original location, and just as much a part of theneighbourhood as Arahova is on Saint Viateur.
carswell
There’s also L’Occitane, Orangetheory Fitness, Provi-Soir, Memoria funeral salon, Proxim drug store and a couple of clothing boutiques (e.g. Billie le kid, La Canadienne). Even Dieu du ciel, with its pub in St-Jérôme, is now arguably a chain.
DeWolf
There are plenty of chains along there. Along with the ones Kate mentioned, there’s La Canadienne, Au Pain Doré, Fiorellino and Siboire, just off the top of my head. Renaud-Bray is on Park but it’s part of the Laurier ecosystem.
I’d love to see a bit of a refresh for the Mile End side of the street. It’s very wide and there’s a painted median. Imagine if that was an actual median with trees.
I went to Toi Moi et Café for the first time in many years and was pleased to see it hasn’t changed a bit.
There are lots of good watering holes along there. Pelican is a bit gentrified but it still has a dive bar atmosphere, and it still has regulars who have been going there since the days when it was the Taverne de la Veuve Wilson, aka La Wil. It was a hangout for hardcore indépendantistes (eg actual FLQ members) in the 60s. They’d probably be shocked at how anglo it is today.
Dieu du Ciel has always been one of my favourite spots and while the renovation is a bit controversial, it still feels the same, except a little more relaxed because there’s more space. And the beer is just as good as ever.
DeWolf
We must have been writing our comments at the same time! There’s also Première Moisson.
I would argue that DDC isn’t a chain because its St-Jérôme location is mainly a production brewery that produces cans for the retail market, and it still brews a lot of beer on Laurier Street. So its second location is more of a natural outflow of the original rather than a replication.
Siboire, on the other hand, definitely has chain vibes. It has two locations in Sherbrooke, another on the way in Quebec City, and the vibe is a bit more corporate: you can tell everything is standardized and vetted by some sort of marketing team.
Ian
As much as Toi, Moi is, sure. I didn’t realize the gym was a chain. I still miss the bostok and abricotines at Gascogne – which was also a chain, to be fair.
That said the storefront that used to be Laurier BBQ is empty again, the former sushi place next to the Pelican is still empty, the place that was Mikado is still empty, the old Glatt butcher/ boutique hotel is still “under construciton”, there’s some kid’s clothing stores further west that have been empty for almost 20 years now …
That said I think that somehow the BMO moving to the corner of Parc really helped anchor that intersection, and the SQDC is a great fit for across the street form the park. Where Parc still seems to be perpetually struggling, Laurier has an air of having come through the worst of it. It’s hard to put a finger on it, but it seems like a neighbourhood in flux rather than on the brink of decline. I haven’t lived right on Laurier for over 10 years now but it’s still part of my immediate neighbourhood and I’ve seen its ups and downs first hand. Especially west of Jeanne-Mance it used to feel like a fussy street meant to cater to Outremont residents whose glory had faded – but it feels much more in-the-present now.
carswell
Haven’t spent time in St-Jérôme in years, DeWolf, so I’ll take your word for it while also noting that the DdC website makes it seem pretty pub-like, with an extensive food and beer menu, leather banquettes (to go by the pic) and talk about group reservations. https://dieuduciel.com/pub-stjerome/
Agree about Siboire, though it’s technically on Laurier Est.
Ian
Siboire’s address is on St Larry, not Laurier – as long as we’re being technical.
DeWolf
@carswell Yes, to be clear there’s always been a brewpub there, ever since they opened the production brewery. And the rebranding/renovation of recent years makes the whole business feel a little more corporate even if there’s been no change of ownership. But the St-Jérôme pub wasn’t opened as a branch so much as an adjunct to the production brewery.
I’m probably just splitting hairs.
Meezly
Thanks for that tidbit of history about the Pelican location, @DeWolf.
The Avenue SDC Laurier West merchant association has probably helped in the revival. It’s a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote Avenue Laurier West as a commercial destination. They also organize cultural events – I wanted to check out the Christmas festivities in December, but didn’t make it.
Ian
Whn it was still L’Autre Bar it was still very French, and a LOT more of those guys hung out there.
I’m just glad the owners of the Pelican got rid of the VLTs. Those things ruin any vibe.DeWolf
@Meezly, I went to their little Christmas shindig in front of the church and Engels & Völkers was giving out free sausages and baguettes, and DDC had a bar that was handing out free marshmallows for roasting over bonfires. It was a good time.
@Ian Yes, there are tons of good dive bars in this city that are ruined by VLTs. It always adds a sad edge to what could otherwise be a nice chill spot.
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Kate
The REM had problems Saturday because of ice falling from the Samuel‑de‑Champlain bridge.
Le Devoir talks to several frustrated users who are giving up on the REM and resuming use of their cars to get into town.
Ian
I remember when people were questioning whether the REM was the best design choice given our winters and the armchair engineers pooh-poohed those concerns.
Good thing our climate is such that we rarely get ice and snow I guess?
DisgruntledGoat
I’d be interested to know some statistics on total uptime % for the REM and how it compares with other LRT systems across a variety of climates.
carswell
How could this issue not have been foreseen?
Assuming CBC traffic reports were correct, both elevators at the Du Quartier station were out of service for days — days! — running. And, per Radio Canada, this fall there was at least one non-functional elevator in the system on 43 days.
What happens when both lifts — or even just one of them — at the Édouard-Montpetit station go on the fritz? Do they open the emergency staircases and force people to walk up/down 72 metres (the equivalent of 20 storeys per news reports)? Even the elderly, infirm, parents with buggies and small children, wheelchair users?! “That three-minute ride between EMP and McGill stations? Well, it’s more like 30 via the metro cause the lifts aren’t working. So sorry but enjoy the ride!”
Tim S.
@Disgruntled Goat: except the relevant comparison is with the old bus system.
Ian
Sure, but even the bus can still run if there’s 10 cm of snow. I have walked home from downtown in a snowstorm many times because the bus wasn’t coming – you can’t do that if you are stuck on a monorail platform in the midle of nowhere.
@carswell at least it’s not escalators, those things seem to be perpetually breaking down.
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Kate
The Rockland bridge over the
Mettrain tracks is one of the busiest in Montreal and gets busier all the time. It dates from 1966 and has to be rebuilt starting 2030, but a plan to sustain the level of motor traffic is meeting resistance from Outremont residents weary of so many vehicles transiting their residential streets daily.And yet, people still think opening up Cavendish to highway traffic would be beneficial.
Ian
The Rockland overpass goes over the Van Horne tracks, not the Met. Rockland ends at Côte de Liesse.
Ephraim
I find that the lack of connections in that area actually creates a sort of cut off feeling. And concentrates traffic. You have the Rockland bridge, Park Avenue and Wilderton. Like maybe there should be an underpass at Picard/Outremont avenue to Beaumont.
I wonder why we never required the train rails to actually be lowered about 10 feet so that neighbourhoods didn’t end up completely split by the rails. (Could the city tax property differently if streets can pass over them, vs if they block the city streets, so make it advantageous to have below grade railway lines financially.)
Ian
FWIW I’ve noticed houses on the first block of Davaar after the overpass heading south going up fir sale very regularly. It must be a real drag trying to use the space as a resident when it’s bumper to bumper for a couple of hours at evening rush every weekday.
Kate
Ian, thanks for the correction. I was thinking of l’Acadie, of course.
Joey
@Ian I’ve had the same impression over the years. Always lots of for-sale signs on Davaar (not so much McEachran).
Kevin
The limited number of ways north and south on the island are why places like Rockland and Decarie are overwhelmed by cars.
Imagine you were in Little Italy and wanted to head downtown, but had to go around the Olympic Stadium to get there. That’s what life is like west of the mountain.
Ian
When there is something like this that involves several boroughs and unamalgamated former boroughs, how is the jurisdiction figured out?
Serious question.
I was thinking about this the other day, thinking about Jean Talon getting turned into another REV + tramway as it passes through TMR …
carswell
@Ian Major thoroughfares on the island fall under the jurisdiction of the agglomeration.
All on-island municipalities have representatives on the agglomeration council but Montreal effectively controls the thing.
Ian
@carswell that makes sense, thank you.
Joey
@Ian that was a favourite talking point of the previous Plateau PM leadership when pressed on why they hadn’t improved the borough’s major streets (even minimally) – they could simply and credibly blame the city, which at the time was controlled by PM opponents.
Ian
Good point..
Now if they can explain away why parking permits in the Plateau east of St Denis are half the price, lol
CE
I think that could easily be explained with the laws of supply and demand.
Ian
How convenient that it follows the traditional English/ French split of the Plateau. Utterly coincidental, I’m sure.
The population density east of St Denis isn’t half that of west of St Denis.
jeather
Are the yearly passes different, or the daily? Because the articles I read recently about the new permit costing in the Plateau didn’t have two prices per car weight. I know the daily/tourist parking costs differ east/west of St Denis though that does seem to fit supply and demand.
Ian
The daily pass for residential street parking. How do you figure? Is Hutchison really twice as “in demand” as Boyer?
carswell
“meeting resistance from Outremont residents weary of so many vehicles transiting their residential streets daily”
I wonder how many of the resisting residents own a car? How many own two or more vehicles? (In the late ’70s and early ’80s, I lived on McEachran north of Van Horne, so I know not everybody does. But most do.) And this has been an issue since at least the 1970s, so it’s not like these residents didn’t know what they’re getting into. To some degree, this smacks of NIMBYism: we want the convenient north and southbound access the overpass provides but we’re not happy about others having it.
On the other hand, even 40 years ago, McEachran was to be avoided during evening rush hour. And it’s true that there are lots of young students around at exactly that time due, among other things, to Collège Stanislas being on VanHorne and McEachran. Also, the number of cars has grown enormously in recent decades. Can’t cite the source (or the time frame, not that it matters but please provide it if you can) but a few months back I read, possibly here, that in the recent decades-long period during which Montreal’s population grew 22%, the number of on-island car registrations grew 60%.
So, I sympathize and I don’t. And, as someone who lives on Édouard-Montpetit, I worried about a similar uptick in vehicular traffic once Camillien Houde is closed, the EMP REM station opens and the huge luxury condo complex in the former convent is fully occupied. But society, in its collective
death wishwisdom, has decided to make personal vehicles the primary and, for most, preferred way of getting around and until that changes, we’re pretty much forced to accept the consequences. The best the residents of Outremont and EMP can hope for is traffic-calming measures and maybe, in a distant future, congestion pricing. Once again, ticketing traffic cameras could make a big difference, not that the car-addicted province and provincial government seem likely to make widespread use of them.And while electrification will make the streets quieter and eliminate most vehicular greenhouse gas emissions, it won’t eliminate vehicular air pollution. That grimy black dust that forms on street-facing windows (but not on backyard-facing windows) is largely tire dust. Maybe it is a good idea to wear a mask outdoors after all.
Ian
All good points. FWIW I suspect that it is precisely the cluster of schools around McEachran and Van Horne that prompted Lajoie being a 20 kmh street so it didn’t get turned into a “shortcut” for people trying to dodge congestion on Van Horne. Honestly I suspect the constant school buses and delivery vans generate more exhaust than personal vehicular traffic especially as they run at all times of the day, are constantly left idling. Many of them are in bad shape and clearly burning oil – but I digress.
Sadly the back of my apartment faces onto a commercial alley (amusingly dessignated a green alley by the borough but not closed off so I’m not sure what they mean by that) so it’s quite a bit dirtier than the street-facing side.
Tim
@carswell: the residents claimed in the article that some vehicles are going 60-70 km/hr on a 30 km/hr street: that does not sound like NIMBYism to me.
There has been a lot of changes to streets in this area in the past few years. The latest, which I really do not understand, was to change Pratt such that it has become a one way street in opposite directions that both empty out onto Van Horne. It is really weird (and IMO unsafe) when being forced to turn onto Van Horne and the car on the opposite side is also turning the same way. Who has right of way? I guess that the city is trying to prevent through traffic, but it just adds more traffic onto Van Horne for a block until the cars can turn up another side street.
carswell
Speeding is an issue on McEachran, especially in the block before the overpass. But it’s an issue on nearly every thoroughfare and semi-thoroughfare in the city, including Édouard-Montpetit, which has some very long blocks with no stop signs east of CDN and few stoplights. (The city recently installed a stoplight at McKenna and Édouard-Montpetit, which seems to be helping a little, especially with eastbound traffic.) Again, ticket-issuing traffic cameras would go a long way toward solving this problem but we have to assume, curb-bulges aside, it’s a problem the powers that be don’t appear to be very serious about solving.
However, most of comments in the article don’t pertain to speeding but to the number of vehicles. And for these affluent Outremont households, nearly all of which have a car and many of which have two or more and few of whose adult residents take public transit (to go by the passengers at the Outremont metro station and on the 160 and 161 buses), that smacks of NIMBYism.
Ian
Considering you haven’t lived on that strip for 40 years I’m going to make a wild guess that your insider knoweledge of Outremont demographics block-to-block is mostly speculation. For one, at least 35% of the population of Outremont is Hassidic and since they average 3-5 kids of course they all have minivans and SUVs. Your stereotype of the drivers of Outremont being mostly affluent older people is off the mark. You go ahead and try to take a twin stroller on a city bus with a couple more kids in tow or up a flight of stairs when the escalator is out in the metro.
carswell
Haven’t lived on the strip in years. But I’m back there almost every week. Frequent user of the Outremont metro. Shopping and diner at VanHorne boutiques and restaurants. My bike repair shop is at VH and McEachran. Regularly travel over the overpass on the 119 and occasionally, when I feel like living dangerously, on my bike. Also end up taking the 160 and 161 several times a year. And until recently I had friends who lived on Davaar and Rockland and still have others who live on nearby streets (like Lajoie, Stuart and Outremont, tho’ the last is trying to sell because he’s begun to feel like he’s living in a Hassidic ghetto). So, no, I don’t think I’m talking through my hat.
And, since you appear not to know, there are very few Hassidim living on McEachran, Davaar and Rockland, though they have begun venturing into the area.
Ian
The Hassidim do tend to live the other side of Ducharme, but I was talking about the population of Outremont as a whole – as were you before you started trying to flex at me about how well you know the area..
“… for these affluent Outremont households, nearly all of which have a car and many of which have two or more and few of whose adult residents take public transit (to go by the passengers at the Outremont metro station and on the 160 and 161 buses), that smacks of NIMBYism.”
I cross the Rockland overpass pretty much every day and yes, I do avoid it during rush hour, and yes, I drive the speed limit. I know precisely what it is like. I live on Hutchison between Lajoie and VH, this is my neighbourhood, not just an area I visit now and then. That you give taking the bus a couple of times a year as a bona fide for your insight into the neighbourhood’s transit use is high comedy – and if you do use the Outremont station regularly, you also know what an accessibility mess it is. You are making a lot of assumptions based on some pretty isolated observations – Outremont is not just the few blocks that you seem to frequent between Van Horne and Lajoie, Stuart to McEachran. Further, it would be remiss of me not to comment on your friend’s description of Outremont Avenue as a Hassidic “ghetto” – that is edging on racism. It’s also hilariously inaccurate, Ste Madeleine d’Outremont, the Catholic church the parish is named after & Justin Trudeau got married in takes up an entire block on Outremont, for one.
Again, at least 35% of the population of Outremont is Hassidic and since they average 3-5 kids of course they all have minivans and SUVs. Your stereotype of the drivers of Outremont being mostly affluent older people is off the mark.
carswell
Since this discussion appears to be devolving into name-calling and since you have such an obvious chip on your shoulders, I’m not going to continue bothering to reply other than to say I henceforward expect you to have nothing to say about any neighbourhood you don’t currently live in. insert eyeroll icon here.
Tim
There are 48,355 dwellings in Outremont according to the 2021 Census (https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&SearchText=Outremont&DGUIDlist=2013A000424054&GENDERlist=1,2,3&STATISTIClist=1&HEADERlist=0). Of these, only 820 are single family homes and 990 are semi-detached. There are ~ 42k apartments.
Ian
Let’s not forget that a good chunk of Outremont is upper Outremont where it’s safe to say everyone has cars as there isn’t any bus service.
Carswell, it’s one thing to have opinions or comments but quite another to make broad authoritative blanket statements, denigrating residents as NIMBYs. And yeah saying a neighbourhood with an increasingly Hassidic population is becoming a “ghetto” is racist.
I refer you to https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-camps/ghettos-an-overview
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Kate
Emergency wards in Quebec are over capacity with cases of respiratory viruses – respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), flu and Covid together.
carswell, your guy who waved a finger at you over your mask – that man is deluded, and also a snob. Maybe he can stay safely isolated in his Outremont digs and not have to mix with the hoi polloi, but not everyone can do that. With so many bugs around, a mask still makes sense.
jeather
After failing to get people to believe the teachers are in the wrong for their strikes, they move to blame the nurses for this problem.
Ian
@Kate there are apartment blocks in Outremont too, some even cheaper than adjacent Mile End.
That said, I have noticed a lot of similarities in the type of people that wag fingers at others for wearing a mask.
It’s that they are assholes.
carswell
Point taken, Ian, but this guy was definitely not an apartment block resident. Looked like he had just ambled out of brunch at Leméac and, while dressed casually, was in Burberry-type rags that could easily have cost several thousands of dollars.
MarcG
My wife and I spent all of Sunday and Monday at the Royal Vic emerg and it’s not pretty. The halls are filled with people on stretchers and the waits are very long (11hrs to see a doctor on Sunday, around 8 yesterday when we were promised 2-3). Obviously this varies depending on your case but we weren’t there for a stubbed toe.
A nurse came over to the man we’d been sitting next to for a few hours and said “Hey what are you doing here, you’re supposed to be in the isolation room!”. Wish us and our N95s luck.
Ian
@carswell Leméac is overrated and Burberry is SO 2014. Clearly just an asshole 😉
@MarcG Yikes, good luck!
Ian 12:57 on 2024-04-16 Permalink
If they get rid of real Montreal bagels …
Schwartz’s “smoked” meat is a travesty, I can only imagine how well electric oven bagels will play out.
Scratch that, I’m from Ontario, I know. Lead doughuts.
carswell 13:00 on 2024-04-16 Permalink
If the city were serious about reducing air pollution, they’d be doing things like introducing congestion pricing, charging tolls on bridges and expressways and making public transit free. Instead, they cave to the NIMBYists and target small businesses and dumb down their offer. Greenwashing run amok.
bob 13:18 on 2024-04-16 Permalink
FWIW when I worked, very briefly, at Fairmount decades ago most of the bagels for distribution to stores were baked in convection ovens upstairs.
Nicholas 14:58 on 2024-04-16 Permalink
carswell, the city does not have the power to introduce congestion pricing, nor toll expressways or bridges (which are owned by the province and in a few cases the feds). The city barely has the power to have speed and red light cameras (limited to a few dozen). Those solutions would really help, but there is no way this provincial government would allow this, and very little chance any other would too. (You may recall Harper assumed the new Champlain would be tolled to pay for it like the last one and the swing ridings were like “hahahahaha no”.)
As for making public transit free, the STM already has a huge deficit, is laying off employees and getting rid of buses. If the city got hundreds of millions of dollars (from higher taxes or cutting other things), I would rather it go into better bus service than making fares free, and I bet many others agree. But it doesn’t have this money, so that’s a moot point. I’d also ask which successful cities and transit have gone fair free? And given the answer is “Uhh, well Talinn, but only for residents, and a few places with fewer trips a year than Montreal has in a day”, why aren’t other places doing it?
Lastly, burning wood is really, really bad for public health, way worse than cars for the amount of activity, especially immediately surrounding the wood burning. I’m strongly in favour of vastly reducing car usage, but the wood burning needs to be remediated, and if they can filter the particulate matter out that would really help.
dhomas 15:02 on 2024-04-16 Permalink
I’m with carswell, 100%. NYC is doing it, why not us, too?
https://ny1.com/nyc/manhattan/transit/2023/10/02/what-to-know-about-congestion-pricing-in-new-york-city
Though I doubt the bridge tolls will ever return. It’s political suicide. Any politician who institutes the toll is pretty much guaranteed to not be relected.
Blork 15:07 on 2024-04-16 Permalink
Perhaps I’ll soon have a side hustle running wood-fired bagels in from the south shore. I’ve been going to Brossard Bagels lately, which was (AFAIK) founded by a former employee at Fairmount. My favorite is still St-Viateur, but I’d much rather have a freshly (wood-fire) baked Brossard bagel than a four-day-old St-V from Provigo that was baked in Laval.
The Brossard Bagels are a bit less dense than St-V and slightly crisper on the outside, which I actually like. I might even get over my “St-V is always best” prejudice and just start liking Brossard bagels better.
Odd side note: I was in a fruiterie on Mont-Royal last week (near Papineau) and they were selling Brossard bagels. This is like two blocks from the St-Viateur shop on Mont-Royal. Weird. (Or prescient?)
Uatu 16:47 on 2024-04-16 Permalink
Oze bagel plus on taschereau in Brossard is also good.
Blork 17:00 on 2024-04-16 Permalink
Another fun thing about Brossard Bagels is that instead of the Jewish/Italian vibe of St-V it has a Caribbean vibe. Along with your bagels you can get jerk chicken, chicken roti, Jamaican patties, etc.
carswell 17:12 on 2024-04-16 Permalink
@Nicholas — As was true in the pedestrianized street thread a few days ago, I’m fairly aware of the restrictions placed on the city’s powers (thanks, paranoid city-hating post-referendum PQ government!). And in both cases, I guess I should have been ultra clear and specified “advocating for”.
There’s lots that the city and the mayor can do on these fronts. They can publicly advocate for these changes and put pressure on the other levels of government and non-cooperating boroughs and municipalities. They can commission studies on and draw up plans for congestion pricing, bridge and expressway tolls and free public transit. To return to my pet peeve, they can build a bike path on Édouard-Montpetit right up to the Décarie east service road (or wherever their jurisdiction ends) and another on Ellerdale (or is it still Isabella?) from the west service road right up to the Hampstead border (there’s already one on Fielding from the western border, Côte-St-Luc Road) and then do everything in their power to pressure and embarrass and shame the provincial government and Hampstead to provide the missing links. Don’t see or hear of city officials doing any of that.
Obviously, free public transit would require more money from Quebec City, unlikely while the pro-car CAQ and transit-hating Legault are in power. But, again, the city and the STM could be laying the groundwork. They could announce plans for such a system contingent on funding, prepare budget estimates, drum up public support, etc. In a way, they’ve already started doing so with the free fares for seniors, though typically it has never been presented as such. And, as a beneficiary of the service, I can assure you it’s fantastic and a real inducement to use the bus and metro system.
As for the feasibility of a fare-free system, we won’t know until we try, maybe learning from other cities’ mistakes. And while there doesn’t appear to be any city quite of Montreal’s size that offers free transit, there are some (e.g. Tuscon, Kansas City, Albuquerque, etc.). New Delhi, an order of magnitude bigger than Montreal, offers free transit to women, circa half the population. Wikipedia has a convenient list, btw.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport
The fact of the matter is we simply cannot continue doing as we’ve done in the past and doing as little as we do now. Climate change and local population growth will soon leave us with no alternative, unless we’re prepared to inflict unimaginable horrors on succeeding generations. Ostrich-mode is no longer tenable. Pretending it is, throwing up our hands and saying, as some people on this blog do, that we won’t be inconvenienced in any way and we’ll vote out of office any politician who doesn’t act accordingly is tantamount to giving up the battle before it’s begun. You don’t want widespread famine or migration on an unprecedented level or the drought-stricken US invading Canada to take over our water reserves? You don’t want the Gulf Stream to die? You don’t want your children and grandchildren to have a hellish existence? Then change things because that’s where we’re headed: data don’t lie. Either we start taking drastic steps now or we make far more drastic ones in a decade or two after the planet gives us a much-deserved idiot slap that will make last — and probably this — summer of smoke seem like Disneyland.
Have never seen any figures but seriously doubt that bakery and resto wood-burning ovens are sources of more than a tiny, read insignificant fraction of overall air pollution, including particulate pollution. Admittedly, that figure will be higher in the immediate vicinity of the chimneys. But many of these ovens have been around far longer than the complainers, who shouldn’t have moved into the area if they weren’t prepared to live with them. And, if you eliminate wood ovens, you eliminate an important tradition even as you embrace an inferior product. (FWIW I have friends who have a rooftop deck within a hundred metres or two of the St-Viateur bagel shop chimney. Zero perceivable issues with smoke now or in years past.) But sure, put in filtering systems. Just don’t make these small businesses pay for them on their own — offer generous subsidies and loans amortized over decades. Otherwise, butt out.
Apologies for the screed and thread drift but it’s increasingly apparent we’re on an accelerating downward spiral and that our response to date and in the foreseeable future is wholly inadequate (and that’s before, dog forbid, Poilievre takes over). And while I’m never going to experience the worst of it — I’ll be leaving this vale of tears in a decade or two — that realization depresses me beyond words.
Chris 20:26 on 2024-04-16 Permalink
>Either we start taking drastic steps now or…
Drastic like settling for convection baked instead of wood-fired bagels? Or not *that* drastic? 🙂
Ian 21:13 on 2024-04-16 Permalink
Yeah Carswell I’m 100% with you on this. Bagel ovens are misdirection, go for the real goods. Even enforcing anti-idling laws for delivery trucks would have more impact than this “hey presto” act.
Kevin 22:37 on 2024-04-16 Permalink
I saw the figures a decade ago when the city banned wood fireplaces, and even then it was evident that the only time wood fires caused any alteration to air quality was when a chimney located in the same block as a monitor was broken.
The vast majority of PM comes from dust-covered roads, poorly tuned diesel engines, and brakes.
Temperature inversions cause smog days, as do forest fires. The very small number of wood stoves in the city do not.
Ian 07:57 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
Another possibility worth considering, there’s no fireplace or wood oven ban in Outremont …it’s in the adjacent borough after all, just a few blocks over…
I know Lester’s on Bernard has their smokers in Laval. By comparison, Schwartz’s is basically just pastrami with more cloves in the rub.
MarcG 08:18 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
@carswell: I think you’re being optimistic about how long we have before the climate disaster becomes critical. “Exponential” is a hard concept for humans to wrap their heads around.
D.A.D.’s Bagels in NDG was also awesome because you could grab some channa masala and a samosa with your half-dozen. I wonder what the fate of that oven was?
Kate 08:33 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
Lufa sources both bagels and Indian foods from an outfit called Bagel Henri-Bourassa in Ahuntsic, but I haven’t tried the bagels.
walkerp 08:37 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
We don`t even know what the restrictions will be and you all are already kvetching. You really think PM is going to kill the bagel industry in the mile-end?
Kate 09:05 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
Obviously most bakeries are not using wood, and bagels can go on being baked, but the tradition of wood‑fired ovens for bagels is likely to be lost.
Some people have been militating for the end of wood burning for awhile. And there’s definitely evidence that wood smoke is bad for us. But I have no sense of how the filtered smoke from a couple of bagel bakeries compares to all the transportation and industrial exhaust in the city’s air.
Kevin 09:12 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
@Kate
Henri Bourassa bagels has been my go-to since St. Viateur pulled out of NDG. They’re great!
The transportation and industrial exhaust causes something on the order of 80% of pollution. All wood burning together, year-round, is around one percent. But because our nostrils are attuned to wood smoke (what’s the burning equivalent of petrichor?) some people incorrectly blame it for their ills.
Kevin 09:37 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
*That would be my estimate of current figures, ever since Montreal banned fireplaces.
jeather 10:36 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
Another thumbs up for the bagels from Henri-Bourassa. Their Indian food is also pretty good. I, too, miss DAD’s Bagels.
Mark Côté 13:45 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
Isn’t Henri-Bourassa bagels super far from where DAD’s was? Curious what the connection is—just bagels & Indian food? My kingdom for a samosa source in NDG…
MarcG 13:58 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
@Mark: Bombay Mahal recently opened a location on Sherbrooke.
Mark Côté 15:01 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
Yeah, I don’t think you can get bulk samosas there, though, à la DAD’s or Pushap’s, can you? Samosas as an appetizer are like 3x more expensive than the places that sell them by the dozen.
MarcG 15:23 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
True nuff. I wonder if they’d do a deal for you if you asked. “Meet my nephew in the back alley at 9pm, cash only.”
jeather 18:43 on 2024-04-17 Permalink
Yeah, the connection is bagels + Indian, I don’t think there’s any relationship between them.
Ian 08:12 on 2024-04-18 Permalink
A few years back almost all the bakers at Fairmount were Indian … and a lot of the Hassidic businesses are staffed by Indians. I have no idea why or what the connection is. That said, if you know how to make bagels and samosas, it’s not that surprising your own business would make & sell both, right?
MarcG 10:29 on 2024-04-18 Permalink
I hypothesized a connection between the bagel oven and naan bread but I can’t find any evidence.
Chris 10:47 on 2024-04-18 Permalink
I always assumed the connection was simply cheap labour from nearby Parc Ex.
Francesco 22:45 on 2024-04-18 Permalink
A lot of kvetching that “Schwartz’s sucks since they switched to electric,” not realizing that Schwartz, Main, Lester’s et al haven’t smoked meat over wood *fires* for about 50 years… Because of the control, electric smokers – which still use wood (chips or chunks) – can actually make smokier food than wood-*fired* smokers, but with more consistency for high-volume establishments. The smoke still comes from wood, but electric smokers are more efficient to operate. If you don’t believe it, try a Schwartz’s (the “fat” for me, please) against a Carnegie or Katz’s (or any) pastrami and decide which is “smokier.” But it’s the dry brine and curing technique that makes Montreal Smoked Meat what it is, more than the amount of smoke or its source.