Six hundred people work for sports and leisure groups in the old parking areas under the Olympic stadium.
Updates from December, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Bars have been putting up New Year party posters in English only.
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Jack
Dear Quebecor and PKP,
Happy New Year!
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CTV has a solid list of Montreal’s top stories from 2011.
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Blog post with photos about Montreal’s approach to winter (fine coming from me, you may say, where it’s 5°C and raining outside…)
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Nice Urbanphoto piece on the nameless neighbourhood west of the Main and south of Jean-Talon.
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Shawn
A friend of mine is condo-hunting and tells me the real estate folks, at the very least, have a name for it: Mile Ex.
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Shawn
In fact there was even a La Presse article:
http://montoit.cyberpresse.ca/habitation/immobilier/201011/10/01-4341282-les-secrets-du-mile-ex.php -
Kate
I have to admit Mile Ex has an inevitable sound to it, and makes a reasonable parallel to Park Ex. (It doesn’t subtly irk me like HoMa.) Thanks for the data point!
People have tried to convince me that area is part of Little Italy, but I never thought it had a similar enough vibe.
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Shawn
I do think it deserves to be distinct. It’s a wonderful little annex. I’d hoped to find a place there, myself.
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Patrick
I agree with Shawn, but it’s used to be called Alexandra-Marconi before architects took advantage of the industrial zoning of that part of the city to experiment with their own houses : http://www.imtl.org/montreal/montreal.php?vsearch=1&expo=Mile_Ex&m=Alexandra-Marconi%20district
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Shawn
Oh is that it? Thanks Patrick. I wondered why there were so many interesting homes in that district. (A former colleague, married to an architect, lives there, in one of those great houses, I believe)
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Arjun Basu
If it was Alexandra Marconi, it should become AlMa. Catchy. Mile Ex sounds kind of wrong to me. Neither here nor there. Though anyone could situate it.
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Fon
The area on both sides of the St-Laurent directly south of Jean Talon is called Little Italy or Petite Italie or Piccola Italia.
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Guillaume St-Jean
Le numéro de novembre 2011 de la revue ARQ est justement sur ce quartier : Marconi Alexandra. Plusieurs nouveaux édifices y sont présentés.
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Kate
Alexandra Marconi vs Marconi Alexandra? That’s a long name for a small area, even compacted down to AlMa, which I feel should be deprecated: there’s already a rue Alma not far away, a few blocks east of the Main, so it could be confusing.
I simply don’t buy that those streets between Saint-Urbain and the tracks count as Little Italy. They have none of the features that mark that neighbourhood. In a flash you go from gelato bars, little sports cafés with soccer memorabilia, pizza and pasta and risotto, to small industrial installations (some now converted into condos), repair garages and undistinguished little houses. Even the rather depressed part of Jean-Talon that borders it on the north has no Italian vibe – at most, a couple of espresso machine repair places (both admittedly pull a nice shot, but they don’t offer places to sit while you drink it).
I used to work near the area just before it was discovered by developers. It wasn’t surprising then that it hadn’t been given a name of its own. But I admit to liking Mile Ex, even though it transparently tries to co-opt Mile End’s popularity.
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Despite nonoptimal climatic conditions, the snow village in Jean-Drapeau park is gradually taking shape.
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Voir on food in 2011, likewise from Hour; Mr. Lew on poutine.
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A car flipped off an overpass Wednesday afternoon in the southwestern part of town and blocked the Montreal-bound Via 056 train from Toronto. Nobody was hurt on the train (this info direct from a friend aboard) but people in the car were injured.
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joe
“[...] people in the car were injured”…?
They weren’t injured, they’re dead. The linked article’s title reads:”2 dead after truck flips off Montreal overpass”…
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Kate
The article was updated after I first linked it.
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SN86
Judging by Google Street View images it makes you wonder why concrete “Jersey” barriers were not lining this street with a cliff next to it. Lining a street with a single steel barrier doesn’t make sense when cars can go perpendicular, although 3 bands of steel stacked like on race tracks would.
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Kate
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Doobious
The Gazoo article implied that the woman managed to make a couple of phone calls in the time between when the truck went off the road and when the train struck. Cripes, what a way to go.
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The serveuses sexxxy at Les Princesses d’Hochelaga will no longer be topless, as a ruling has ordered that they have to cover up.
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Ian
They came for the topless hairdressers, and I said, “I don’t get my hair cut by topless hairdressers”
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Robert J
An epically stupid thing to right laws about. Puritanism at work again.
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Kate
A Colombian website marveled at the phenomenon of Les Princesses before the ruling.
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Lysiane Gagnon ponders the uncertain fate of Ogilvy’s which has been on Ste-Catherine for 145 years.
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Bill Binns
The sons and grandsons of the rich old ladies who shop at Holt’s run this city. They will put a stop to Holt’s moving off Sherbrooke. I believe Holt’s gets a lot of it’s business because it is on Sherbrooke. Who wants to mix with the commoners on St Catherine?
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Possibly useful list of New Year’s parties this weekend; the Mirror also has a list.
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A reader asked Openfile to find out why Belmont Park closed, and I researched and wrote a piece including a wee slideshow of artifacts from the park’s glory days. Look out for Part II soon in which I answer the same reader’s second question about why the city should or should not consider developing a new amusement park.
Later note: Part II.
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alanah
Thanks for this article. I had heard that Belmont park was owned by Margaret Trudeau’s family at some point – did that turn up in the research?
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Singlestar
I seem to remember it was Margaret’s husband’s family.
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Kate
Pierre Trudeau’s father was a businessman and, as one of his many interests, was part of a group of investors that owned the park for awhile. Charles-Émile Trudeau was not involved for long before he died, but some family money must have stayed in the pot because Pierre was on the board later himself, in the early 1960s, and apparently asked a few tricky questions then about how the funds had been managed.
Margaret Trudeau was only involved inasmuch as her first husband’s family had been part investors. As far as I know, her own family – the Sinclairs – had nothing to do with it.
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mare 06:20 on 2012/01/01 Permalink
Brilliantly used as the location of social services in “Les invasions barbares”.