montreal city weblog

Gauthier to keep Plekanec, both goalies

2010-02-08T21:40:00.000-05:00

New Canadiens GM Pierre Gauthier has already announced plans to try to keep Tomas Plekanec and also to keep both Halak and Price on the team.

Disappearance mystery deepens

2010-02-08T21:36:00.001-05:00

The disappearance of two young men continues to puzzle police, who are looking for leads on where they went in the wee hours of Wednesday after they left the Diable Vert bar on Saint-Denis. The car they were using has also vanished.

Zhuzhou eyes Lachine land for plant

2010-02-08T20:11:00.003-05:00

Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive has its eye on the old Dominion Bridge site in Lachine in hopes that it will somehow get to build cars for the Montreal metro.

Let's see: undercuts the Bombardier-Alstom offer, changes the system over to the cheaper and more flexible steel wheel model, and creates a thousand new jobs in the city. I'm beginning to wonder what arguments there are against this, unless pneumatic tires are seen as emblematic of the distinct society.

Yet the STM remains adamant that the Chinese offer is not acceptable.

Photo set of the Franciscan convent

2010-02-08T18:06:00.002-05:00

Guillaume Saint-Jean has a terrific Flickr photo set of the abandoned Franciscan church both as it looked before it burned down on the weekend, and as it looks now, accompanied by a chronology of its beginning and end.

Slayer of nun called not responsible

2010-02-08T17:36:00.000-05:00

A man who beat an elderly nun to death in 2007 has been declared not criminally responsible and will not stand trial for the incident.

Bob Gainey steps down

2010-02-08T16:59:00.000-05:00

Bob Gainey has stepped down as general manager of the Canadiens, and Pierre Gauthier will replace him.

PPP given final outing for hospitals

2010-02-08T09:05:00.001-05:00

Quebec is giving several construction consortiums a final chance to submit acceptable bids to build the superhospitals under the provincial government's pet PPP system. If that doesn't work, it may revert to building them as a conventional public works project.

Haitian exiles continue to arrive

2010-02-08T08:55:00.000-05:00

A steady stream of Haitian exiles continues to arrive in town; the other side of this coin is the story of a Haitian-Canadian nurse who went back to do what she could to help out.

$305M renovation at the Casino

2010-02-08T08:44:00.002-05:00

The Casino is closing its cabaret for four years so a massive $305-million renovation can be done.

Speeding tickets may have been illegal

2010-02-08T08:39:00.000-05:00

A man hit with a speeding ticket has not only challenged his own ticket for having no police signature, but also put in legal doubt millions of dollars worth of tickets issued in this way. A judge has to rule on the case soon.

Gazette site down

2010-02-08T08:35:00.001-05:00

I hope it's not permanent, but the Gazette site is dead this morning.

Later note: Back. But it's not exactly zippy.

Mile Endings: hat man closes up shop

2010-02-07T20:34:00.000-05:00

Mile Endings blog on the end of an era as the Maple Leaf Hat and Cap Co. closes up shop and goes away. Her original piece on the hat-maker, from November 2008, is here.

Two young men are missing

2010-02-07T13:04:00.002-05:00

Two young men have been missing since Wednesday; they were last seen at a bar on Saint-Denis. Photos of both here; I looked for them on the police site but it's down!

Later note: Police site is back again Monday morning.

Franciscan chapel: some more detail

2010-02-07T12:25:00.001-05:00

Some more detail on the Franciscan chapel destroyed by fire yesterday. The arson squad is investigating.

Rima Elkouri on the Lapointe testimony

2010-02-07T12:17:00.000-05:00

Rima Elkouri gives us a perceptive critique of the testimony of Jean-Loup Lapointe.

Jones victims turn eye on Royal Bank

2010-02-06T17:39:00.000-05:00

Victims of Earl Jones are hoping to sue the Royal Bank for not acting on its presumed knowledge of his unconventional management of their money. A court may have to decide whose due diligence was at fault.

Longueuil metro clarification

2010-02-06T12:38:00.008-05:00

I think I understand the Longueuil metro problem better. Most folks taking the metro from the south shore already buy the TRAM 3 pass, which costs $111 and lets you use not only the metro, but the south shore bus system and commuter trains as well. A smaller group has been buying the $70 CAM grandfathered by the longtime understanding that Longueuil was in the same fare bracket as all the other older stations.

It's estimated that about 15% of the regular users of the Longueuil station are using a CAM, but that still means several thousand people who will be affected by the new requirement to pay more or buy a TRAM 3 pass to take the metro in Longueuil.

Fagstein also has a summary of the story.

There's talk of a new deal among the suburbs and the city over distribution of transit money and fares. The one outcome I'm certain of is that the ridership will likely be paying more to ride, not less.

Review of Dzama, other museum bits

2010-02-06T12:10:00.006-05:00

Review of the Marcel Dzama exhibit at the Musée d'art contemporain.

This is the last weekend of the John William Waterhouse show, last chance to see.

Review of Diabolique at Galerie de l'UQÀM till February 13.

It's also a free admission weekend at the Insectarium to mark its 20th anniversary.

More on the Villanueva inquest

2010-02-06T12:06:00.001-05:00

Blow-by-blow description of the shooting of Fredy Villanueva is now under the microscope as Jean-Loup Lapointe is grilled about each move he made that fateful evening. I don't think it's implausible he spotted a dice game from a distance – you don't have to see the actual dice to recognize the body language of a group around a craps game – but a nagging question remains how Jeffrey Sagor Metellus got shot in the back if Lapointe was only shooting at guys coming at him. Lapointe's testimony resumes next Thursday.

Franciscan chapel burns down

2010-02-06T11:33:00.002-05:00

The Franciscan chapel on René-Lévesque burned down this morning. It dated from 1893 and had not been in use for three years.

Later note: Guillaume Saint-Jean is quick off the mark with a then and now showing how the church used to look. He notes that the church had been emptied out so that no important works of art had been destroyed when it burned.

Fancy poubelles: a scandal?

2010-02-06T11:15:00.000-05:00

Rue Frontenac is making a mini-scandal of expensive trash bins for the part of Jean-Talon that goes through Saint-Léonard. The price tag does sound a bit high, but isn't it worse if the city installs cheap fittings that fall apart quickly?

CBC Fifth Estate sur Earl Jones

2010-02-05T14:00:00.002-05:00

Ce soir l'émission Fifth Estate de CBC va se pencher sur Earl Jones; on sait déjà que la Banque Royale était conscient que Jones avait l'habitude de faire des choses étranges avec ses comptes bancaires.

Lapointe a brisé les protocoles

2010-02-05T13:22:00.000-05:00

Jean-Loup Lapointe a brisé les protocoles policiers après avoir tué Fredy Villanueva.

Blogueur Rochefort toujours en prison

2010-02-05T12:22:00.000-05:00

Le blogueur Jean-Claude Rochefort, qui a fait un site en admiration de Marc Lépine, est toujours en prison. Son site reste disponible, la dernière date étant le 4 décembre, le jour de son arrestation. Le juge le trouve troublant.

Fare surge for Longueuil metro pass

2010-02-04T20:28:00.000-05:00

Longueuil metro users are getting a kick in the tush with a $41 hike in their monthly pass as of July. Their mayor responded by saying her city will, like Laval, now refuse to kick in its scheduled contribution towards Montreal's transit system.

The irony here is that Laval has been refusing to kick in because its users have been paying more than Longueuil's (even though they have three stations dating from this century, while Longueuil's single station is as old as the system itself). Now that Longueuil is facing higher fares, will Laval feel justice has been done, and write Montreal a cheque? I wouldn't hold my breath.

A number of honchos today signed a statement in Le Devoir saying the city needs more money for transit – but not via taxing parking lots, an unpopular item on the recent municipal budget.