Masson Street is to go fully pedestrian in spring 2011, although no announcement yet about how many blocks and whether it’ll be permanent or more like the Village summer arrangement.
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Dany Villanueva was closely questioned on his gang experiences today, although he stopped short of naming names. The point turns on whether Dany was in breach of probation by associating with gang members, or whether he was just hanging out with friends on a nice summer evening.
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The city’s half-million dollar deficit for 2009 doesn’t sound too bad, considering it’s 0.1% of the entire budget, but it shouldn’t strictly have a deficit at all. And there may be city tax increases in 2011, and a study group has further ideas how to squeeze the few remaining pennies from the taxpayer’s pocket, including metering water.
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Ingrid Peritz has a nice little introduction to Mile End in the Globe & Mail.
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The city’s going to make major changes in its plans for the Bonaventure autoroute conversion, and I suspect may put them on hold indefinitely.
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The public consultation office is unveiling its critique of the city’s Bonaventure plan today and is said to be recommending the removal of the Dalhousie bus corridor as being noxious to actual and potential housing.
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A study comparing 24 cities of roughly the same size as Montreal for their livability has put us near the end of the list because commuting takes too long here. Oddly, La Presse doesn’t mention the source of the study, so I’m not sure whether it’s the same one described here in Metro which emphasizes some odd things, like how easy it is to lay off your employees here.
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On Spacing, Emile Thomas wraps up his series on reimagining Saint-Viateur with a kind of manifesto: The car is our maid and yet we treat it like our king. If you want this to change, make it happen.
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There’s a reading Wednesday evening at the Grande Bibliothèque of pieces in praise of Montreal; a new web magazine called Montreal Mosaic has items about living in Montreal, written in English; a multicultural focus is also planned for next month’s Blue Metropolis festival.
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The mayor is pleased about the municipal gasoline tax allowed for in the Quebec budget with an intention it be spent on public transit. But news of health fees and hydro and tuition increases is bound to ruffle many.
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Le Devoir is hosting the project J’ai la mémoire qui tourne which consists of lots of home movies on various themes which will be released weekly for 20 weeks.
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Montreal is the top Canadian city for non-car commuting, with 29.5% of us getting to work without driving a car. But before we pat ourselves on the back, consider Hong Kong’s 89% or Paris’s 73.7%.
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The jazz festival announced some headliners yesterday, Lionel Richie opening the fest with a Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier concert, and a lot of other performers who sound more like pop standbys than jazz greats. But as someone points out in the CBC comments, these ticket sales support the real jazz concerts that will also be held during the festival.
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The Gazette looks at funding for the STM and its hopes of more revenue from the Quebec budget expected later today.
(Note to the Gazette: at the end of this article there are some tables from the print version which nobody has bothered to recode for html. This is the kind of thing you should be doing. It’s not rocket surgery.)
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A group of men tried to steal an ATM from a storefront on Centre St. in the Point in a scene Rue Frontenac describes as worthy of the Far West: they dragged it out of the wall using a stolen tow truck. It was not one of your quiet sneaky thefts. One man is in custody and the others are on the lam.
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The reappearance of Bixi stations is beginning today, although the bikes won’t be back till later.
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Montreal’s likely always to be enamoured of the possibility of world’s fairs, and is spending $4.5 million on a presence for the city at Expo 2010 in Shanghai. Mayor Tremblay hopes to attract more tourists from China.
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Metro lists a few Twitter feeds useful to Montrealers but it’s just a drop in the ocean.
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Nathalie Collard is curious about a small ad that has been placed in Le Devoir and La Presse by some unknown entity fronted by the amusingly named Smart & Biggar law firm. The ad’s here and it’s a good question: who would start a new daily paper now?
(Could it be Quebecor, testing to see whether the Rue Frontenac people would stampede to a new job?)
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After one of their boats sank during a training session last week on the Lachine Rapids, firemen are asking for better rescue equipment including boats better designed for choppy waters.
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The Verdun triplex fire may have been caused by kids playing with fire. At least the death toll has been rolled back to 3 as one of the people initially listed as dead is still in hospital.
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In the wake of the Moscow metro bombings, security’s on red alert in our metro system, although the authorities decline to be specific about exactly what this means.
Later note: Or maybe not.
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Three teenagers got into a Montreal North grade school on Sunday and wreaked havoc, destroying computers and books and killing a rabbit belonging to one of the classes. If school commissions send in grief counsellors to a school where a student died in a fire, what do they do when the school itself is the subject of an attack?
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Fagstein comments on the Quebec government’s new merci de me servir en français campaign – and Kristian puts his own spin on the idea.
(Incidentally, if you take apart that government page, you find filenames like headerPage2.jpg and bottomRightPage2.jpg – tsk!)
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The testimony of police officer Jean-Loup Lapointe wrapped up after eleven days and that of Dany Villanueva began at the inquest into the shooting death of Dany’s brother Fredy. Lapointe closed his testimony by emphasizing he doesn’t think he’s racist.