Updates from February, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Quebec’s human rights commission is ordering the payment of $23,000 in damages to a black man who was roughed up by the STM’s security goons for no good reason whatsoever.
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In all the time I’ve been doing this blog – more than 10 years – I’ve never been subscribed to any paper. I always figured the main point was to link to interesting stuff on line, not to give a précis of what’s in the printed media. But I stopped by today at a café that had all three French-language dailies piled up to read, and on flipping through them I realized there were a few interesting stories I somehow hadn’t noticed online, and that this probably happens all the time. Paper media simply prioritizes different things, visually.
I have no budget to subscribe with and although I like the idea of going to the library to read the papers every day I don’t have the leisure to devote that much time to it. So I’m floating this to ask for free subs, given I direct a number of people to local media sites daily. If you’re a journalist and you read this blog, and think you can help out, drop me a line and maybe we can work something out.
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Chris
They visually prioritize the exact same thing in print and on the web: advertising.
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Susan
Ooh! All 3 French papers! Could I ask where so I might go peruse them as well?!
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Ian
There’s always the public library…
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Kate
Chris: yes, in some sense, but there’s still a difference between the two, besides that.
Susan: This is a small neighbourhood café in Villeray. It’s pleasant but unless you happen to live near Jarry or Crémazie metros, it’s likely to be more hassle for you to go there than to buy the papers yourself or, as Ian suggests, go to the library. You can read all the local papers and many more in the Grande Bibliothèque’s ground-floor periodicals area.
(I used to read papers occasionally in a Plateau café which kept them on wooden rods, does anyone remember this? Where was that?)
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Patrick
I was going to answer the same thing as Ian. You have access to Le Journal, The Gazette, Métro, 24 Heures and all the weeklys on Press Display via your library card membership right here : http://bibliomontreal.com/rel/bd.php#resume11
La Presse and Le Devoir are trickier because they impose an embargo before showing up in Eureka.cc which you’ll also have access. :) -
Bill Binns
You should consider placing a Paypal “Donate” button on the site. I don’t have any problem making small donations to the content I use every day. This blog is pretty much my only connection to the French language media in this town.
Even Wikipedia solicits donations.
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Kate
Patrick, you remind me that I should get a city library card again, in addition to my Grande Bibliothèque card. I don’t have a library close by or I would’ve thought of it sooner.
Bill Binns: it’s an idea, but I’d rather not until I have to.
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Patrick
Kate, considering you mentioned Crémazie and Jarry metros, the 3 best options are : Parc-Extention, Le Prévost or the Ahuntsic libraries. (The list of 43 libraries http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=4276,6695558&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL)
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Kate
Thank you!
I gather that a city library card is good for all of them?
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Mudar
J’appuie l’idée de Bill pour un bouton “Donate” !
I think the café that had papers on wooden rods was Le porté disparu on Mont-Royal, facing the gaz station (now Maison de café). -
Susan
Thanks for the tips! I used to frequent a Second Cup every morning to read the major local dailies and have my tea but then I moved..
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The Fête des Neiges was a big hit this year with more than 100,000 visitors over the three weekends of the event.
Meantime the Toronto Star sent someone to have a look at the snow village, which might be a bit melty today (3°C as I post) but is meant to stay open till mid-March. The writer says it’s on a “reclaimed island” but if it is, as I think, on St. Helen’s, that’s not true. Île Notre-Dame is the one that was built for Expo 67.
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Charles
Ile Sainte-Helene use to be three islands: Ile Ste-Helene, Ile Ronde (where La Ronde is) and Ile aux Fraises (or Ile aux framboises… not sure). It’s mentioned in the french version of wikipedia: “Pour la préparer à sa vocation, l’île fut massivement agrandie et consolidée avec plusieurs îles avoisinantes (dont l’île Ronde)…”.
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Ian Davidson, accused of being a mole in the Montreal police service, lived in a high-tech bunker in Laval and encrypted his data so hard that investigators haven’t broken into it yet. And his son went out with the daughter of a Hells.
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Some construction firms are barred from government contracts because of collusion or tax irregularities, but a full third have put themselves beyond the pale because of drug charges.
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Robert J
Lol. I’m not a fan of the war on drugs, but I gotta say the kind of guy who decides to start a grow op should not be building highways.
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The Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste is marking the Queen’s diamond jubilee with a campaign entitled On ne jubile pas, on s’en fout royalement. Although you can’t blame the Queen – it’s the Harper Tories that are fiddling around minting medals while Rome, so to speak, burns.
Isn’t “foutre” still considered pretty rude?
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Anto
“On s’en fout” is about as rude as “who cares?”.
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Kate
Parmi les principaux verbes de la quatrième conjugaison, il est inutile de citer foutre, je fous, je foutais, je foutrai, que je foutisse, foutant, foutu. La conjugaison de ce verbe est intéressante mais on vous grondera plutôt de la connaître que de l’ignorer. – Pierre Louÿs
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Tux
I just find it funny that they need a media campaign to tell us they don’t care. Also, I fail to see how foaming at the mouth about the royals is any more useful to our society than spending ~7million to honour some accomplished Canadians. They could at least have criticized constructively and made some suggestions as to what to do with the money instead.
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Josh
Yeah, this feels a little bit like the New York baseball star (Mike Piazza) who, some years back, called a press conference to announce that he was *not* gay.
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Alex L
You’re citing a french guy there, Kate. Foutre doesn’t mean much in québécois, even kids say it all the time.
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Kate
Ah OK. I guess I remembered being told (probably in a whisper) by a French teacher in high school that it was a word we’d better not use. Also, Pierre Louÿs wrote that about 100 years ago.
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Susana Machado
foutre .. as a verb or noun, is a “nasty” word. The verb has the same root, I believe, as fuck. The noun is the “mostest” rude word I can think of for sperm. OTOH, “je m’en fous”,”on s’en fout” has become an “expression figée” and is more acceptable. Not totally nice, but acceptable. Like I don’t give a dam(n) or something like that. As for the SSJB , my mom always said if you have nothing nice to say about something/one, just stay quiet. So I’ll shut up now.
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Le Mur Mitoyen has put up a handy citizen participation calendar useful for anyone wanting to know when their borough council is in session.
A new Tumblr blog called The Main gives February concert listings.
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Some Montreal programmers have devised a terminal that will allow people to better manage their waiting times at clinics.
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A look back at Saint-Michel’s years as Montreal’s garbage bin may explain why its residents are less than thrilled at news of a new composting plant to be built in the old Miron quarry. Dorval’s projected plant has been rejected by the airport, which pointed out that attracting seagulls is bad for aviation, leaving Saint-Michel’s as the only project on the board.
Composting does sound innocent and green, but when you think of it as the entire city’s kitchen scraps, every day, year in year out, especially in the middle of summer, the whole idea gets ripe pretty fast.
La Presse also looks at rats in Montreal, work on the city’s sewers having disturbed rat colonies in various parts of town and made them evident to residents who wouldn’t normally see them. Interesting factoid: in a well managed city there will be two rats per person.
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Charles
What’s the name of the other quarry next to the Miron’s (the the east of St-Michel). Are there plans for that one (I remember a group wanted to convert it into an urban camping ground).
They should put those plants in Montreal-East, it’s smelly enough already, it would probably improve the air… -
Kate
The other one is usually called the Francon quarry. I have a feeling it’s privately owned – there was talk about building a huge shopping mall in it, a few years ago – don’t know what happened with that.
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Robert J
Well, the rats are probably saying the human infestation is getting worse.
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Scott Gomez reached a year without a single goal for the Canadiens Sunday as the team shut out the Jets 3-0 (Le Devoir subhead: “Gomez a presque marqué”).
Meanwhile 1500 people showed up at Uniprix Stadium to watch the Super Bowl on the big screen.
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Examining the numbers, a La Presse writer says the exodus from the 514 to the 450 hasn’t let up, with a net loss of 22,000 people in 2011, mostly toward the northern or southern suburbs.
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Bill Binns
The 450 is the place people disappear to after having children. Never to be seen or heard from again.
The lucky ones end up in leafy homes in Hudson or St Lazare. The unlucky ones live in condos built in the parking lots of Renot Depot or Wal-Mart in Laval or Longueuil.
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Mathieu
It’s not a net loss since immigrants come and fill the gap! Not sure it’s a good thing though.
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Steve Quilliam
Not only are immigrants filling the gap but the natural increase (births and deaths) is also contributing to a bigger population for Montreal.
Then, the inter provincial migration comes in. While in the past Montreal has seen an exodus of it’s citizen, things have started to change and could even be on the plus side. I dont have the latest numbers on that but things looked relatively good compared to 10 ir 20 years ago.
It is a good thing that families are able to find more affordable housing in the suburbs. It definitively seems better to raise a family in the suburbs then in the city but rest assure that when the kids reach a certain age they all want to live on the island and as close as possible to the center city. The same now seems to apply to retired (or near retirement) folks. They are back in town.
We can say that the Montreal phenomena is the same as elsewhere. I am sure it is better to raise a family in Queens, Long Island or New jersey then in Manhattan….but is Manhattan suffering because of that ?
Overall, the population of Montreal is growing, the population of the Island is also growing and the population of the greater Montreal is also growing.
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Kate
It definitively seems better to raise a family in the suburbs then in the city.
See, I don’t buy that. I buy that the majority of people think it’s true, but is it really better for kids to grow up in a setting where they can’t go anywhere unless a parent drives them?
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boomer bill
That study only tracks intra-provincial migrations, it doesn’t take into account people coming and going from elsewhere, so yeah, it’s not really indicative of much except that francophones don’t like living on the island too much, you’re to blame mainly.
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Steve Quilliam
I’m not saying it is better for kids but as a family it is probably better in getting a bigger house and bigger land at a more affordable price and that is the main reason for them moving to the burbs. As for is it better for kids or not ? That is obviously debatable and like you i am not sure.
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Jack
Steve I totally disagree. Bigger house, bigger land, have zero to do with raising kids. My two kids are thankful for having been raised in Montreal, especially when they visit their cousins in Blainville. When my daughter was 12 she started calling it “Blancville”.
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Ian
According to the VdeM portal, owning a car costs about 10k a year. I have a nice apartment in the heart of the Plateau for considerably less than the cost of a mortgage, let alone taxes and repairs. OK, in the burbs there are more rooms and a backyard – but both my children have their own rooms, we have a back deck, side balcony, and enclosed front porch, and are minutes away from either the mountain or parc lafontaine. And the range of experiences and diversity in this neighbourhood is worth mentioning – there are many bookstores, libraries, a wide variety of restaurants, grocery stores, et cetera – all within walking distance. My eldest daughter goes to a great school downtown, my youngest will be in the same CPE right around the corner my eldest went to. And what to do with that 10k a year we save by not having (only one) car? Sweet vacations, education funds, and the ability to go out for dinner more often. Don’t try to convince me the quality of life for families in the city isn’t fantastic!
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ant6n
openfile had something about this as well. They actually put up the report, and it shows (page 6, figure 7) that the emigration of the 0-14 year olds is as high as the emigration of 25-44 year olds, about 2%. I’d venture the guess that 0-14 year olds don’t move by themselves, so these are probably all families. Among the 15-25 year olds, there is a net immigration into the city.
So it seems that most of the migration away from Montreal is due to young families. And you can argue that living in Montreal as a family ain’t so bad, but is the city really doing everything they can to keep families here? Are they helping to provide large enough apartments/condos? Are they investing in helpful things like elevators in metro stations? Or enough green spaces/playgrounds? I’m not sure.
Note that when a family moves away, we loose the kids (many of whom may come back); but we also loose the parents, who probably won’t come back.
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Ian
I don’t know about a lack of green space, but there is definitely a dearth of anything bigger than 2 bedroom units. In old buildings that’s just how they were built 100 years ago, and in new developments the perception is that… wait for it…. families don’t want to live in the city, so why build units to accommodate them? It a catch-22 scenario. I am sure a lot more people would stay in town if it were as easy to find a 7.5 or even a 6.5 as it is to find a 5.5. Even in condos there are few places with 3 closed bedrooms, all those jokers that list a 5.5 as a 3-bed notwithstanding.
As far as the metros, even (working) escalators to all platforms would be nice.
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boomer bill
Cars cost about $2,000 a year to own (ie: buy a car for $20,000 and it lasts 10 years, or a used car for $4,000 and it lasts 2 years, etc) and then license, insurance and repairs. Gas depends how much you drive, maybe it’s $5,000 total or so. So the $10 k sounds way too high. … and interprovincial migration had a good year or two around the millennium but it’s back on the negative side since I believe.
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Ian
The VdeM page doesn’t give a breakdown, but a bit of googling brought me to what I suspect is a very similar idea – this article from the Globe & Mail gives a good breakdown for you based on about 18k of driving per year (which you could easily do commuting from say, Blainville or Vaudreuil to downtown) – http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/new-cars/auto-news/the-real-cost-of-car-ownership/article1692912/
tl;dr – you need to take depreciation into consideration.
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Steamboat Willie
If you live in Ahuntsick versus say, just over the bridge in Laval, you will pay around $100,000 more for your house. That’s a lot of money for the priv of living on the right side of a little bridge. I guess it’s justifiable if you’re scared of trolls. So yeah, if you live in Laval you might pay a bit more for gas but you’ve still got that $100 k in pocket to blow, plus a bigger backyard and less noise from next door as well. It’s also closer to Le Fuzzy.
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Bill Binns
I am a bit baffled by parents leaving the city as well but I’m all for it just the same. My building and most of my neighborhood are blissfully free of anyone under the age of 25 or so.
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Blork
It’s always annoying to me to see these clichéd ideas of what constitutes “suburb” and “city” (or in this case, “suburb” and “island”). Different people want different things out of life, and different people have different values. Who are we to judge?
But what really bugs me is this idea that idea that the entire island of Montreal is like the Plateau or Mile-end, and that all of the 450 is like the far end of Brossard. That’s so not true. For example, large parts of saint-Lambert and Vieux Longueuil are almost indistinguishable from NDG. They’re just residential neighbourhoods close to the city. And the kids that grow up there don’t have to be driven around any more than kids growing up in Montreal West, Ahunsic, or any other non-Plateau neighbourhood of Montreal. But because it’s across the river it’s seen as some sort of soul sucking “suburb.”
In my case I live in Longueuil, but a bit farther out than the NDG-like part. It’s more like Ahunsic where I live, except there’s a huge park five minutes away that’s full of deer and birds and even foxes. I’m walking distance from a dep that specializes in Quebec microbrews, several large grocery stores, an SAQ that would make most 514s die with envy (a “Sélection” store that’s open until 9:00 PM seven days a week!), plus that large park I mentioned. For a slightly longer walk (15 minutes) you can get to a boulangerie, noodle joints, and a hospital that is not over-crowded and has friendly efficient service.
I don’t have kids, but if I did, the elementary schools, high schools, and even a huge CEGEP are all within walking distance. If they ever go ahead with the plan to extend the yellow line of the Metro, I’ll even have a Metro station within walking distance of my house!
And the house is bigger than anything I could afford on the island, even when you factor in the cost of the car that we have (and barely use). We both work from home, so we need two home offices, plus a bedroom and a place for guests. And it is blissfully quiet here, something we both need and never had when we were living in the city. How much does a four bedroom, sound insulated apartment go for these days in Mile-end?
It’s not perfect, and there are things that I miss. But I go to the Jean-Talon market way more now than I ever did in the 15 years I lived on the Plateau. I spent more time in St-Henri and along the canals now than I did then too. My world has gotten bigger because I’m not self-cloistered into a single neighbourhood.
Not a week goes by that we don’t contemplate moving back to the island, but the numbers just don’t add up. I can’t see paying more to have 1/3 of the space, no yard, no park, noisy neighbours, higher taxes, and having my office be a folding shelf in a closet instead of a whole room. But that’s where I am in my life right now. 10 years ago it was unthinkable for me to live in “the suburbs.” But back then I probably thought the suburbs were all like the far end of Brossard.
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Ian
A boulangerie and some noodle joints? Ha ha ha ha ha. You have learned to settle. I’m not in the Plateau most of the time because I’m cloistered, it’s because everything I want is here. I lived in St.-Henri for years and do love the place, but it’s just too isolated form the variety areas like the Plateau offer. You sound like someone from Brooklyn trying to explain why it’s just as good if not better than Manhattan. There’s a reason rent is cheaper where you are.
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Blork
Ian, I’m not saying it’s “just as good,” I’m saying it suits my needs, and more importantly I’m saying that “the suburbs” are not all the souless tracts of banality that many people think they are.
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Jack
“Different people want different things out of life, and different people have different values. Who are we to judge?” Blork I totally agree with you except for one thing. Your neighbors drive their cars through my neighborhood twice a day.They cut my neighborhood with large urban highways, St.Laurent-St.Denis-Christope Columbe-Papineau. They contribute pollution,noise and insecurity to my neighborhood. Those values have an impact on my life, my values have no impact on the quality of life in your neighborhood.
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Kevin
I grew up in Kirkland back before it started to get really developed, and I wouldn’t wish a suburban childhood on anyone.
As a small child it’s okay, but when you hit puberty and want to roam — and you can’t because there’s no public transit and you’re too young to drive — it grates.I mean, when it’s easy to score drugs or beer than to go to a bookstore or a movie theatre, something’s wrong.
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blork
Jack, that’s just silly. It sounds like you want to live in a Balkanized world where everyone is labeled according to where they live, and barriers are set up to keep each “type” on their own side of the fence. It sounds like you’re saying if someone from Pt-St-Charles drives through your ‘hood that’s fine. NDGers are welcome to shop in your stores at any time. Thugs from Montreal North or Saint-Henri can deal all the drugs they want on your street corners. But if someone from Longueuil or Laval comes near? They’re POLLUTERS and NOISE MAKERS and cause INSECURITY!
Cities don’t just serve their citizens; they serve their larger communities as well as tourists and other visitors. If you have through-traffic in your neighbourhood that’s just the way it is. It’s how cities are built. And the people driving on those streets come from all over, not just the ‘burbs.
Should I complain about all those Americans and Maritimers that dare to drive on the Trans-Canada? Should people in Saint-Sauveur condemn all Montrealers because those city people jam up their streets and lakes and hiking trails in the summer?
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blork
(Sorry Kate, but I’m on a roll…)
For the record, most of my neighbours barely ever leave Longueuil. They live and work here, and they entertain themselves here too. Most of the people around here see Montreal as a big annoying traffic jam on the other side of the river, so they never go there. (And for what it’s worth, I’m here for the real estate and the solitude, not the neighbours, so I’m the one that’s coming into town and “impacting the quality” of your life by shopping on the Main and drinking in downtown bars.)
We can choose to all get along, or we can choose to be filled with knee-jerk 450-phobia. I choose the former.
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blork
One more: Kevin, I hear you. And that brings me back to my original point. There are bleak and souless suburbs, and I tend to count some of those far-flung west island places among them, as well as most of Brossard and Laval, etc. My point was that not all 450s are like that.
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Jack
Blork wow you really were on a roll! A couple of things, people from the Point and most of NDG don’t drive through my neighbourhood,because like Villeray where I live, a vast majority of them do not use a car to commute.My neighbourhood was organized as a throughway because it is was working class, a little to the West of us is tree lined and car unfriendly TMR.Take a hard look at Google Earth and check out how Hampstead,Westmount,Outremont and TMR made driving through their neighbourhoods impossible ie cities were not just built that way . I have no problem with your life style choice other than this fact,urban sprawl has a direct impact on my families life. By the way your drug corner thug reference reminded me a lot of watching Archie Bunker when I was a kid, that discourse is really old.
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Philippe
Somehow I doubt a vast majority of NDG residents don’t commute by car. Are there resources that give statistics on car usage in the various arrondissements on the island?
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ant6n
Census canada info is available online. Plus there’s information from the origin-destination study. I took a quick look at it; and I didn’t find a map relating mode of transportation with place of residence, although there’s one relating place of work with sustainable transportation.
The closest is the table at:
http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/hlt/97-561/T603-eng.cfm?Lang=E&T=603&GH=2&GF=462&G5=0&SC=1&S=1&O=AYou have to select “% distribution (2006)” instead of counts.
Ordered by total sustainable transport, the table may start like this:Montréal—-45.8%
Westmount—-41.0%
Montréal-Est—-35.3%
Saint-Lambert—-32.8%
Montréal-Ouest—-32.1%
Brossard—-30.5%
Dorval—-29.2%
Longueuil—-28.0%
Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue—-25.3%
Deux-Montagnes—-24.7%
Mont-Royal—-24.6%
Pointe-Claire—-24.6%
Côte-Saint-Luc—-22.9%
Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville—-20.1%
Dollard-Des Ormeaux—-18.9%
Boucherville—-18.5%
Beaconsfield—-18.4%So generally the farther you go, the less sustainable the transport is – although there are som on-island communities that are worse than south shore communities.
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Blork
I swear this will be my last word on the subject. First, Jack, you’re right that the Mtl North crack was out of line. I wanted to add a negative thing to my list of what “on-islanders” might do in your neighbourhood and that popped to mind because I was in Montreal North the day before and it was about the bleakest urban landscape I’ve ever seen, so my view was distorted.
On topic, nobody’s arguing against the idea that the farther out you go the less sustainable the transportation is. That has nothing to do with what I’m complaining about. I’m complaining about this very smug and entirely false dichotomy between 514 (on-island) and 450 (off island)!
For example, I live in Longueuil, and I’m closer to downtown than are people who live in Lasalle or TMR. Saint Lambert is closer to downtown than is Verdun. People who live in the south-east of Laval are closer to Mile-end than people who live in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. Yet according to that false dichotomy, those people in Lasalle, Verdun, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, and TMR are beatified and holy, beyond reproach, sanctified by their 514, yet someone who lives in Vieux Longueuil (literally walking distance to downtown Montreal) are demonic despots who should require a visa should they dare wish to cross the bridge, due to the villiainous nature of their area code.
What a bunch of crap.
Let’s look at Ant6n’s list again, with area codes added:
514 Montréal—-45.8%
514 Westmount—-41.0%
514 Montréal-Est—-35.3%
450 Saint-Lambert—-32.8%
514 Montréal-Ouest—-32.1%
450 Brossard—-30.5%
514 Dorval—-29.2%
450 Longueuil—-28.0%
514 Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue—-25.3%
450 Deux-Montagnes—-24.7%
514 Mont-Royal—-24.6%
514 Pointe-Claire—-24.6%
514 Côte-Saint-Luc—-22.9%
450 Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville—-20.1%
514 Dollard-Des Ormeaux—-18.9%
450 Boucherville—-18.5%
514 Beaconsfield—-18.4%Ergo, area code means nothing.
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ant6n
Well, area code may mean not much. There is not a perfect match between urban/suburban and 514/450. I don’t think that’s the point. When we talk about migraiton from 514 to 450; we mean a net migration from urban to suburban. The suburban communities with less sustainable transportation are growing, not Vieux-Longueil; and that’s what some commenters are concerned about here. Just because they approximate urban/suburban areas with area codes, doesn’t mean their point is meaningless.
Note that I only showed the first third of the list or so; note also that only 4 off-island communities have more than half the sustainable transportation of Montreal proper. So the 450, together with a bunch of on-island suburbs, are driving into the city.
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Faiz Imam 00:26 on 2012/02/07 Permalink
Storify is a great addition to the type of reporting that you do!
I approve of this experiment.
Ian 05:58 on 2012/02/07 Permalink
It sounds like a narrative describing the antics of the Keystone Kops. First the cops are arresting some guy for telling his sales team to “blow away the competition” and now the metro is shut down because of suspiciously lost hand luggage.
Tux 09:20 on 2012/02/07 Permalink
Just this morning there was an announced delay (pour un temps indéterminé) on the Green line, but my orange line metro sat unmoving for 10 minutes. Missed my bus and was late for work again. So many metro delays the past few weeks…
Kate 09:31 on 2012/02/07 Permalink
Yes, for the first time the other day I saw a metro train sitting dark in a station. Some kind of power failure. We’re not getting those new trains soon enough.
Dhomas 10:42 on 2012/02/07 Permalink
I had to wait for 3 trains today at Pie-IX metro! So very annoying! Can’t wait for the new trains, though I’m sure there will be some growing pains, as with any new technology.