Updates from August, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • 23:14 on 2010/08/08 Permalink | Reply  

    Sadly, the man who died from being stabbed early Sunday was apparently trying to break up a fight.

    The Gazette, having got it right this morning that Jeanne-Mance between Liège and Guizot is in Park Ex, now puts it in Ahuntsic. But you can’t be south of the 40 and be in Ahuntsic.

    (Sorry to harp on about this, but if your journalists can’t even correctly place a location on the city map, how carefully are they nailing down other facts? Download the city’s borough maps. The borders of the boroughs are made quite clear.)

     

  • 23:04 on 2010/08/08 Permalink | Reply  

    More on the new Chinatown carnival meant to bring more people to the neighbourhood with displays of traditional Chinese performance arts.

     

  • 23:02 on 2010/08/08 Permalink | Reply  

    Hoodstock, the event organized to commemorate the death of Fredy Villanueva, is described as peaceful and the march was carried on under the eyes of the police and despite the rainstorm.

     

  • 22:58 on 2010/08/08 Permalink | Reply  

    Once romantically viewed as anarchist art, graffiti are now generally thought about mainly in terms of how much money per square metre is needed to efface them. Manufacture consent much? The Gazette gets its knickers into a twist about graffiti, and rubs its hands together about the joy of making apprehended graffiti artists pay.

     

    • Tux 08:14 on 2010/08/09 Permalink

      Murals and decent bombs add a little colour to the city, and that’s awesome, but lock the taggers and glass scratchers up and throw away the key, as far as I’m concerned.

    • qatzelok 10:35 on 2010/08/10 Permalink

      Rather than treating the symptoms of a dying civilization that no longer believes in the healing power of war memorials and billboards, perhaps the city ought to look into why so many people reject the environment that has been built for them for profit.

  • 22:35 on 2010/08/08 Permalink | Reply  


    While people ponder allowing hen coops back into the city, the Plateau is also going to bring beehives back next summer. Above: a Chantecler rooster and three hens on show at the Fête Éco-Bio-Paysanne on the weekend. The breed was created in Quebec in the early 20th century to be cold-resistant; it nearly died out but is being revived as people take more interest in produits du terroir. These big fluffy white chickens would be perfect for a coop in a Montreal back yard.

     

    • walkerp 23:28 on 2010/08/08 Permalink

      I stole this from someone’s tweet, but I thought it worth sharing here “Soon to be seen on resto windows in the Plateau: Apportez votre poulet!”

    • Kate 06:58 on 2010/08/09 Permalink

      That would make a good editorial cartoon.

  • 19:21 on 2010/08/08 Permalink | Reply  

    “I’d be lost without my blogger!” – Sherlock Holmes, to Watson

     

    • Pascal 20:30 on 2010/08/08 Permalink

      Oh what a good line it was! You do watch some good tv :-)

  • 09:06 on 2010/08/08 Permalink | Reply  

    A march and other events in Montreal North will commemorate the second anniversary of the death of Fredy Villanueva today.

     

  • 08:58 on 2010/08/08 Permalink | Reply  

    Gazette tech blog reviews the excellent iPhone app for STM bus times written by freelance hacker Ian Cloutier, although its sideswipe at the STM site isn’t warranted – it’s not as bad as he says (journalistic exaggeration again). The STM has a mobile site that works reasonably well too, for that matter.

     

    • Ian 14:47 on 2010/08/08 Permalink

      Actually, while this app is neato, the STM site is pretty awesome. By contrast, the Toronto website (TTC) only got schedules within the last couple of years and as far as I tell still doesn’t have a trip planner. Tous Azimuts is a pretty handy tool IMO. I mean yeah, it can use improvement, but it’s not exactly the clunky pile of useless Cloutier seems to imply. Pretty much every time I have to go to a part of the city I don’t know well I hit the STM site and I haven’t been led wrong yet, which is saying a lot because many routes are confusing as hell.

    • Mike 16:18 on 2010/08/08 Permalink

      Although the STM Mobile app is well-done, I prefer an alternative app, called ‘Mtl mobile’, that provides the same functionality OFFLINE as well as online.

      It downloads the STM’s schedules to your iPhone/iPod Touch’s memory and there is no internet connection required, which was needed by STM Mobile last time I used it.

    • Kate 18:08 on 2010/08/08 Permalink

      I used to use Tous Azimuts, but I find that the Google map site often gives a better result, and it’s certainly quicker.

    • Joey 12:52 on 2010/08/12 Permalink

      The reason he’s hard on the STM site is because the post is from two years ago (August 1, 2008), well before the STM created its mobile site. I don’t think it’s a “journalistic exaggeration” to call the STM’s old website basically useless on mobile devices. Maybe la bloggeuse was too eager to tut-tut the Gazette that she forgot to check the datestamp?

      As Mike points out, the MTL Mobile app is better than the STM Mobile app, in part because of its offline access (useful when you’re in the Metro planning to catch a bus), but also because it uses the iPhone’s location services to provide a list of nearby bus stops with an accompanying map. Very handy.

  • 08:43 on 2010/08/08 Permalink | Reply  

    A brawl last night killed one man and wounded three somewhere in central northern Montreal.

    The Gazette calls the corner of Jeanne-Mance and Crémazie Park Extension, CP is calling it Ahuntsic and CJAD calls it Villeray as does Radio-Canada. Some indecision is understandable: this small industrial area north of Jarry Park and south of the 40 is normally completely deserted at night – pretty much empty in the daytime too, not a neighbourhood most Montrealers will ever have set foot. But since Ahuntsic only stretches north of the 40, and the city extends Park Extension to a line two blocks east of the Main (which makes no sense at all – the real boundary is the railway line), technically the Gazette is right, although the area doesn’t have much in common with the dense residential area most of us think of as Park Ex.

    The detailed PDF map of the Villeray-Saint-Michel-Park-Ex borough is on the city website. (I’m speculating now what gerrymandering instinct made them displace the Park Ex boundary down Casgrain. A desire to include more white folks in the Park Ex voting bloc?)

    Also last night, a man got shot in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve but not killed.

     

    • Steve Quilliam 17:39 on 2010/08/10 Permalink

      Parc Jarry is obviously the dividing line beetwen Villeray, to the east, and Parc Ex, to the west, therefor anything above parc Jarry beetwen St-Laurent and the rail line is in some sort of a no man’s land !!!

      It is definitively not Ahuntsic which borders are north of the 40. And it may be the borders of the Ahuntsic borough but not necessarily the ones of the neighborhood called Ahuntsic. I tend to name the area above beetwen the 40, Sauvé, St-Laurent and the 15 Chabanel- Marché Central while i think the city calls it ”Cité de la mode”

    • Kate 18:19 on 2010/08/11 Permalink

      It can get pretty confusing. The residential area between the 40 and Chabanel doesn’t really have a distinctive name but it’s part of the Saint-Sulpice ward of the borough (although the parish in that area is called Saint-Simon-Apôtre). And then people talk about the garment district or Chabanel to mean the north side of Chabanel up to the freight tracks. That’s all west from Saint-Laurent over to the commuter train line at Meilleur; west of those tracks there’s a fair chunk of Marché Central.

      But it remains true that Ahuntsic never comes south of the 40.

  • 00:48 on 2010/08/08 Permalink | Reply  

    There will be weekend afternoon and evening carnivals in Chinatown till September 5.

     

  • 00:47 on 2010/08/08 Permalink | Reply  

    Inquiry into whether the Washington Nationals have any obligation to Expos history comes to no clear conclusion.

     

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