Guillaume continues to add to his fascinating photo set of churches in Quebec converted for other purposes

(I note in passing that the English researchers accepted the local electricity supply as unquestionably green, whereas we know there’s been serious environmental damage caused in the construction of hydro dams. That’s another argument.)

Meanwhile, the STM may have to modify a tender for new software to consider the possibility of open source options.

I think it’s going a bit far to say ragweed makes so many people sick. Am I “sick” because I occasionally get sneezy and sniffly this time of year? I’d rather put up with that than countenance the obliteration of a native plant that’s part of a whole ecology: “The seeds are an important winter food for many bird species. Ragweed plants are used as food by the larvae of a number of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths).” (Wikipedia)

This is really too bad, because the Plateau has plenty of quiet residential streets in between its major arteries, if you want the best of both worlds. But you shouldn’t move into an apartment on the Main or Mont-Royal or Saint-Denis expecting the silence of Pointe-Claire after 9 p.m., and it’s unfair to enforce that expectation on others.

The borough’s also going to crack down on public urination and other forms of “incivility.”

(This topic must be hot: I got more comments on a post about it four days ago than I usually get for this sort of thing.)

Christian Duperron sums up the arguments on both sides and the Gazette explains how the STM is in the midst of improving metro ventilation and that the new cars should generate less waste heat than the current ones.

I’m seeing here a parallel to the Metro car situation, in which an idée fixe – a fixed steel roof, a metro on rubber tires – can suddenly be shaken by a new idea, a different kind of roof, a metro on steel wheels. Of course the long entrenched businesses that expected the contracts will fight tooth and nail, even if the new idea is both better and cheaper.

I also spotted a link to this page of Expo 67 postcards, since we’re being elegiac.

The suspect whose name comes up most directly in connection with Montreal is Dr. Khurram Sher, who studied medicine at McGill and of whom journalists have found a lot of folks with nothing but good things to say.

It will be interesting to see what proofs CSIS has beyond the men tripping an internet alarm, but if I blog about this again it will be chiefly to follow angles directly connected with Montreal. Michael Ignatieff, for his part, stresses that they are innocent till proven guilty.