Montreal drivers moan and groan but we’re not having such a bad time commuting on a world scale.
Updates from September, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Some thoughts on urban agriculture and its uncomfortable relationship with the official city. Zeke has a piece on foraging in Montreal mostly pondering a garden at UQÀM.
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OpenFile has a timeline of Montreal’s crumbling infrastructure. Can we add the glass panels that have recommenced pinging off the façade of the Grande Bibliothèque?
A few minutes later, I spotted this posting from @William with a video showing a flood pouring down out of the McTavish reservoir above McGill University. It’s being blamed on a malfunctioning pump.
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The Kinzo casino that opened on Crémazie a year ago is going to be closed as Loto-Quebec tinkers with the format for this new method of squeezing money out of the populace.
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A woman was stabbed on Thursday in DDO, making her the 25th homicide of the year. Witnesses said the incident followed a fight between the woman and the janitor of her apartment building, over dog shit.
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Plateau merchants are kicking at the idea of higher parking rates as the borough tries to make ends meet for next year. A special tax is also a possibility.
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Chris
News at 11: merchants don’t like taxes! :)
Man, the media is really against Projet Montreal, aren’t they… I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised, really.
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Kate
You know, I’ll bet you the individual journalists aren’t against Projet, but the editors know they can more readily muster fear of the kind of changes Ferrandez wants to make, so they go that route because it’s easiest. That’s the side of journalism I like least.
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Jack
It is why people are abandoning print media in droves….remember count the car ads in any newspaper. it says everything you need to know about editors decision making.
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William
Media loves a David vs Goliath story…
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Chris
I was going to mention car ads too. Not just in print tho, there are many car web ads on media sites too. More broadly, the auto industry is everywhere: major fractions of steel, rubber, electronics, etc. manufactures sell to the auto industry. It’s tentacles are everywhere, which is why it’s so hard to fight.
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OpenFile is now doing a daily news resumé for Montreal, in French – best way to follow it is probably watching the Twitter hashtag #MorningFile. But they also have a “news curator” who’s writing in English. On va voir…
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The Maison symphonique was opened Wednesday night as planned, with a gala and external projections. The building is holding an open house till Saturday – details here.
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walkerp
Kent Nagano really needs to get a haircut. How can he conduct with all that hair in his eyes!
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Tim
@walkerp: As long as the muscians can see the baton, and Kent can see the sheet music, it’s fine! and even then, after all that rehearsing, he probably knows all the tempos and cues for instruments by heart!
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TC
Will they offer tours of the building? It would be interesting to get a sense of how the entire hall is supposed to work, and hear why certain choices and compromises were made.
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Kate
I don’t know, @TC. I hadn’t heard of any structured tours but it sounds like a good idea.
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The city’s white-collar workers have okayed a contract extension that lasts till the end of the year.
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The Dalai Lama was in town Wednesday addressing a crowd at the tennis stadium, with the message that religions should not be portrayed in terms of their most fanatic members, a timely reminder on the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I’d love to see him debate this with Richard Dawkins, who’s prone to pointing out that even the most mild-mannered religious adherent is in some sense defending irrational ground for the fanatic.
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no\deli
I’m not sure that a deposed theocrat is the best person to be delivering that message anyway…
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Kate
Neither of those words is correct. His own people did not depose the Dalai Lama – he, along with a group of other Tibetans, fled for their lives as the Chinese army approached Lhasa in 1959. And he can’t have been a theocrat, because Buddhists don’t believe in God.
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qatzelok
I side with Richard Dawkins and no\deli. The Japanese are Buddhists, and yet they tried to create a Modern “heaven on earth” in Manchuria a half century ago. Imagine if Lama had gotten hold of Western weapons and air support.
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Kate
qatzelok, that’s a somewhat confused argument. I believe it would’ve been impossible for Tibet to resist the Chinese incursion even if the west had given them help. Even with today’s weaponry and communications it would be impossible, but imagine pre-Vietnam. There are solid reasons not to get involved in a land war in Asia.
I think one of the reasons the Dalai Lama fled was that he did not want to kill anyone. He’s a monk, he has very serious vows against killing. I’m not saying this to defend the whole old regime there, but I think he actually would not do it.
In addition, Tibetan culture and Japanese culture are very different. I don’t know a lot about the history of Manchukuo but I somehow doubt religion was on the mind of the Japanese when they decided to invade that area. From a quick skim of the Wikipedia it appears to have been a pretty standard economic expansionist deal.
Anyway, his surname is not Lama, that’s a title. Officially he’s His Holiness but if that sticks in your throat he’s the Dalai Lama or, if you want to get fancy, Kundun.
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no\deli
A reincarnate ghost vs. a deity; okay – have it your way.
We’ll never know what kind of High Muckamuck Mr. Lama would have become. Safe to say: he has certainly fared better as an celeb-in-exile than he ever would’ve as the regional monastic tyrant his predecessors were.
I refer anyone interested in the conditions of Tibetans under the young Mr. Lama (and his forebears) to the works of Dr. Michael Parenti. When Chinese rule even stands a chance of being the lesser of two evils, you know things were pretty bad before.
As for his ‘message’, it’s too diffuse to even properly respond to – except to say that some people regard him as a fanatic too. So.
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Quebec has given the nod to the enlargement of the Heart Institute.
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OpenFile has a map of how many trees were cut down by boroughs vs. how many planted in 2010.
Martin 07:56 on 2011/09/09 Permalink
30 trillions $ in car infrastructure worldwide for the next years…. Sad, very sad…