Everyone who was anyone, my dear, was at SAT yesterday to protest Conservative cuts in arts grants, cuts that some say stray close to being cultural censorship. But it's obvious that the Conservatives would be edgy about a bunch of scruffy bohemians representing Canada abroad; living in Montreal it's also easy to forget that cutting arts funding plays well to some of the Conservatives' core support demographic in the hinterlands. posted at 09:36

 
The Impact won their first-round CONCACAF qualification game last night against Real Esteli FC from Nicaragua. posted at 09:11

 
Interesting notes on how savvy advertisers leverage the distinct society. posted at 08:09

 
Another piece on the controversy about the origins of poutine, an issue that seems to have been given new life by this weekend's Drummondville poutine festival. posted at 23:57

 
Coolopolis has some great images of the original homes of several Montreal institutions; Spacing has an ongoing wonderful series of then-and-now scenes of the city by the tireless Guillaume Saint-Jean. posted at 18:34

 
Most residents of the city want to see Mount Royal saved from development; the expansion of the Montreal General Hospital has been questioned due to its inevitable impact on its side of the mountain. posted at 15:14

 
The city has launched a service to collect garden waste for compost starting next week. I found a city notice on my front door this morning. posted at 12:29

 
Fright yesterday as an Air France 747 skidded off the runway on landing at Trudeau at 17:44. None of the 508 people on board were hurt as the plane stopped on the grass. It's international news when these big birds make a misstep. posted at 11:24

 
Nice piece on rural excursions not too far from town, in an area that was once the site of battles during the War of 1812. posted at 11:04

 
STM bus services will be tweaked starting next week despite shortages of rolling stock: another fare increase may be in the cards for next year. Fagstein has an exhaustive list of the changes in bus schedules and routes. posted at 10:54

 
Sad incident yesterday as a seven-year-old girl was killed on her bike under the eyes of her mother on Saint-Laurent near Crémazie, where the street goes into a curve to meet the highway service road. Reports suggest the two cyclists were on the sidewalk but the girl veered into traffic and was killed on the spot by a transport truck. Due sympathy to the mother, but it's a dicey place to take a kid cycling. posted at 10:45

 
The SQ is to investigate irregularities in UQÀM's real estate developments. posted at 09:56

 
Mayor Tremblay has rejected Benoit Labonté's request for a special commission to discuss the troubles in Montreal North; Claude Dauphin, head of the public security committee, says Labonté is just playing politics. Oh, and Stockwell Day says that federal funding for gang prevention is having an obvious impact, which is certainly an interesting conclusion. posted at 08:57

 
It wouldn't be a poutine festival without a little controversy. posted at 08:39

 
The STM's chronic shortage of buses will pinch users this season, especially at rush hour. posted at 08:34

 
Another tourism bit on Canada's Paris (sigh) suffers from the 48-hour restriction of the format. posted at 11:18

 
Montreal is the online porn capital of Canada. posted at 11:02

 
The impending rentrée will involve an obstacle course of road repair sites. The Journal has a table of major repair sites and an annotated map. posted at 02:39

 
More than a thousand claims have been filed against the city for flood damage stemming from the downpour on August 2, mostly in Anjou and Saint-Léonard. posted at 02:30

 
A lurid killing on a quiet Snowdon street this weekend as a wheelchair-bound victim was shot on his front step by an unknown assailant. The victim's disability was due to a police bullet he took in 1990 while helping steal a car. It was the 14th murder of the year in the city. posted at 02:23

 
Near skirmishes between police and residents show that Montreal North is still feeling the tension from the recent riot. This while chiefs of police from across Canada meet here this week to have discussions on diversity. posted at 02:17

 
Gas price websites come and go with surges in oil prices, this being the current incarnation of the idea (although I suspect they oughtn't to be using the city's curlicue logo). posted at 21:37

 
U.S. journo discovers foie gras poutine. (The description of the air turning "seasonably chilly" suggests this was originally run awhile ago, apparently in the Washington Post, where I can't find it. Oh well – for what it's worth.) posted at 20:59

 
A bit of satire on what Montreal will do for its 400th anniversary in 2042. posted at 20:51

 
There's going to be a new bike path added along Côte-Ste-Catherine from the Plateau over to Côte-des-Neiges. posted at 20:49

 
Interesting commentary here on how the conflict between local transit authorities is doing nobody any favours. Background on the AMT's two new bus routes that are the hot potato. posted at 11:28

 
A radiothon yesterday by Radio Centre-Ville collected $8,400 to cover the funeral expenses for Fredy Villanueva. posted at 11:25

 
A slab of slightly overwrought prose about our wrought-iron balconies. posted at 10:59

 
A festival to celebrate Griffintown is being planned for next month, although what point there is in describing the area as "the spirit of Plateau Montreal [sic] without the pricetags and the fresh paint" is beyond me. The fest organizers have a minimal website. And Coolopolis has two amazing pictures of Griffintown skies. posted at 10:52

 
Motorcycle gang members are about to finish their sentences and leave prison, and there's fear that, once they're on the street, they'll make a play to take territory back from the street gangs that have flourished since they were locked up. posted at 10:19

 
Rima Elkouri looks, not so much at the underground city, as why visitors go there, where Montrealers "live all winter eating Tiki-Ming and never see the light of day." posted at 14:43

 
Interview with award-winning Montreal writer Rawi Hage only left me with one question: was that the Club Social or the Café Olimpico? posted at 14:37

 
It's mostly items on gangs today, thanks to the event of the summer in Montreal North.

After police quashed the biker gangs that thrived here in the 1990s, how long did it take them to realize they'd opened up an excellent opportunity for other crime gangs to gain territory?

Gangs are learning to do identity theft in growing numbers. They're also making a profit on the recycling of old electronic equipment in the third world, although this sounds more like stepping into an obvious business void: nothing in either of these articles suggests they're doing anything worse in this area than big corporations have done for decades.

La Presse looks at how Toronto handles its gang neighbourhoods and how it separates the sheep from the goats where there are angry young black people too. They're going to examine the phenomenon in Paris, London and L.A. tomorrow.

Contrary to some impressions, the mayor of Montreal North has lived there for 40 years, but some of what he says in this interview sounds like the excuses of an aggrieved old man. Where's Yves Ryan when you need him? posted at 14:06

 
Tony Curtis is being honoured today at the World Film fest; this item isn't about A-listers at the fest, as suggested by the headline, but is actually an OK piece on the director of Faubourg 36; fest picks from le Devoir. posted at 10:27

 
Drummondville, the original home of poutine (at least according to one story), is hosting its first Festival de la poutine next weekend. Ironically, the website Montreal Poutine says that Le Roy Jucep has pretty lousy poutine these days. (And what's Orange Jucep anyway? It sounds strangely familiar.) posted at 10:11

 
Well done backgrounder on the Selwyn House scandal reveals the lengths to which the tony school went to cover up various teachers' pedophiliac activities. What amazes me most is not so much that the offenders and the school thought they could get away with flimflamming upper-crust families – people not normally cowed by petty authorities like schoolmasters – but that they indeed did get away with it for so long. posted at 09:53

 
The police brotherhood is trying to block a public inquiry into the police shooting of Mohammed Anas Bennis in 2005. If they think this is a good way to minimize the public gaze on their activities, they might be wise to think again. posted at 20:01

 
Montreal is painted as a hotspot of criminality by a federal report, alongside southern Ontario and the lower mainland of B.C. – but these loci are simply where the Canadian population is densest. You can't rustle up a street gang out on the tundra. posted at 19:35

 
It's nice to have good news for a change: our markets are overflowing with the abundance of a good harvest. posted at 19:32

 
The summer tourism season, after a rocky start, seems to be recovering gradually and people in the business sound hopeful about autumn travellers. posted at 09:31

 
Another sign of the pendulum moving back to centralization of power: the organization of snow removal depots will now be done centrally by the city, after some amount of decentralized chaos was experienced during last winter's exceptional storms. posted at 09:26

 
I've been asked to announce this Saturday outdoor event at Meadowbrook, a golf course on the boundary between Montreal West and Cote St. Luc. People in the area want to save the course as a green space for that part of the city, whereas there's the inevitable pressure to pave it over and build. posted at 09:03

 
You can still vote to name the city's bicycle system although you have to choose between BIXI, Bycik, MontVélo, VélO₂ and VillaVélo. posted at 08:47

 
The prime minister is backpedalling on plans to scrap the Champlain Bridge and build another in its place. posted at 06:55

 
Two Vision Montreal bigwigs have quit Benoit Labonté's party, citing differences in ideas. posted at 06:54

 
The plans drawn up to reshape the Blumenthal Building into a headquarters for the jazz festival go too far and actually destroy the heritage value of the building they're meant to be saving, according to one report. posted at 06:49

 
The city's going to consult the public on what it would like to see done with the old CN railyards south of Point St. Charles. Let's hope this isn't just a dog and pony show smokescreen for plans that are already a fait accompli. posted at 06:44

 
An item on whether the Guaranteed Pure Milk bottle can be saved overlooks a couple of questions: can it even be taken down in one piece, or taken apart and reassembled at all? And where could it be placed to put it out of the reach of taggers?

(When I was small, my father told me that the company kept its milk supply in the bottle, and I saw no reason to disbelieve him.) posted at 06:29