Justin Trudeau got the better of his Tory boxing opponent in a charity fight Saturday night. Good description of the fight and its resonance. Photos.
Patrick Brazeau, the opponent, is a Conservative senator and only 37 years old. I always thought senators were almost by definition the elders of our society. How does someone who hasn’t reached 40 get into the upper house?
Was looking up something else and found this article on the novelty of espresso bars in Montreal… in 1980? Didn’t we have an espresso culture long before that?
Still, it’s interesting, because most of the places mentioned are gone, except for Café Union – now on Jean-Talon rather than downtown – and the place the article calls “Cafe Melias” which has also moved, both down the street and up the scale.
(I should add that I was never a fan of Van Houtte, even when it was the only choice. Thus my wish for something else/better.)
I was away for most of the ’80s, so I can’t speak to the coffee culture of those days, but I can’t help posting to recommend the good folks at Cafe Depot. It’s damned hard to get a bad espresso allongé from them, no matter which outlet you’re talking about. And they’re always, always, hot, hot, hot, which is super great if you’re one of those weirdos (like me) that puts cream in their espresso.
When I came to Montréal in 1962 there were a number of coffee bars, La Paloma on Clarke and Pam Pams for example. Similar ones had spread throughout Europe, even to Ireland, in the late ’50′s, where even drinkable coffee was exotic. The Montréal ones were on the European model, expressos and cappuchinos at reasonable prices. I suppose the American ones started coming in in 1980, Starbucks etc, overpriced and oversized. They are not coffee bars at all, in my opinion. I wonder are there any of the old style left
There’s much better espresso now in Montreal than there used to be 30 years ago. Go to Café Neve on Rachel for just one example.
I was chatting with Blork about this last night. I think Montreal must have had some Italian espresso bars for a long time, but not downtown. From what I can gather, after the mid-1950s we had an influx of Mitteleuropa migrants who opened places like the Pam-Pam and the Coffee Mill and offered real coffee and excellent desserts. Those places have pretty much all disappeared although some might remember Café Toman on Mackay, a late lingering example of the genre. It’s still found in some listings on the web, but I think it must have closed around 2004.
I guess the second wave was Second Cup, Starbucks and the like – espresso drinks but often very indifferent espresso and not much quality control. (A friend laughed once when I described the table of old dudes at Caffè Italia as the QA department, but it’s true.)
Now we have some examples of what’s sometimes called “third wave” coffee places – Caffe in Gamba on Park, the Pikolo on Bleury and Café Myriade, not far from where Café Toman used to be. Also Café Neve, I guess – haven’t tried it yet. The format is a little slavishly U.S. west coast but it’s undeniable the standards are high and that’s a good thing for all espresso fiends, like yours truly.
No decent coffee in Montreal in the late ’80′s? Van Houtte the only option? You obviously didn’t live in the neighbourhood. Off the top of my head, walking North from Prince Arthur in 1989 on the main you had Euro Deli, the Bifteck, Cabane, Bar St. Laurent, Cafe du Poete, all before hitting Duluth. On the side streets there was also Kachina on Roy and Cafe Portugal on Duluth.
Mile End had Open da Night and Romolo’s at the very least.
Just to get one thing straight, I like the more traditional Italian and european places too. But I think when they were established in the post-war period there wasn’t much of a network of distributors of high quality artisanal coffee. A lot of what was sold was packaged, imported european stuff.
When I say the 3rd wave places or overall better, I’m talking about the fact that they pay really close attention to the quality of the roast and train their barristas really well. The atmosphere of the older Italian cafés is probably more authentic and overall less pretentious, but they are often less interested in bringing in high quality coffee. I particularly like the one that’s near the corner of Beaubien and St-Dominique.
I know the cafés I’ve been to in Italy resemble the Italian cafés here in appearance, but on the continent they seem to have a better grasp of the distribution and produce a better cup of joe.
But hey, prove me wrong. I’d love to discover a new place…
Glad that someone (david commented above) remembers old Cafe Kachina on Roy St. in Montreal back in the late 80′s…I worked there pulling allonge’s non-stop, and met some amazing folks who came in for coffee very regularly. It was a great vibe in the hood back then..even Leonard Cohen stopped in…
I’m so happy that the Quebec government is thawing a bit of its hiring freeze to take on 43 new language inspectors and telling them to be aggressive and not wait for citizen complaints. Maybe I should apply.
Incidentally, great headline/image combo here on the Global TV website:
I’d lament the fact that my taxes go towards paying these salaries but I’m sure someone would tell me that if I don’t like it I should move to Toronto. Just sad.
Given the linguistic tensions that are afoot these days, Taylor Noakes has a good piece on his blog that I think every Montrealer ought to read:
Thanks for the link, mdblog.
I find the language laws much more humane than smallpox blankets, for example.
It’s verging on the troll to compare an incident (which has never been conclusively proven – there’s evidence it was discussed but smallpox is quite capable of propagating on its own) from the 1760s with how people treat each other now.
mdblog, everyone’s taxes pay for things they don’t support. I wish mine didn’t pay for fossil fuel subsidizes and wars, but…
The Plateau has imposed a development moratorium in the Mile End east of the Main, where the old industrial/garment area is fast being snapped up by developers. But the moratorium’s only for a year and Radio-Canada helpfully also spoke to the czar of the Chamber of Commerce who helpfully said that developers deserve their chance too.
The city has closed or converted 19 of the roughly 30 illegal parking lots that it catalogued in 2007.
Ferrandez is anti-car! Oh wait, this is the central city… :)
Transport minister Pierre Moreau says transit needs to be more sexy, and he proposes ferry boats and cable cars to the South Shore. No, April Fool’s is not here yet.
Later: Thoughts on these ideas from Quel Avenir.
Cable cars sound fun!
I’ll take “less expensive” over sexy any day. While it’s true that it’s inexpensive if you get a monthly pass, it adds up very quickly if you’re an occasional pay-per-use rider.
Somebody in the comments linked to this monorail website. That looks amazing! Monorail FTW! http://www.trensquebec.qc.ca/
Did someone say monorail? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEZjzsnPhnw
I couldn’t help it…
He is doing a hell of a sexy job on Turcot.
Why are they wasting time with this? didnt they already perform a dozen studies to put an LRT on the champlain bridges’ estacade?
personally speaking, if busses and metros could run on time, they’d be sexy enough in my books :p
Blork, we’ve looked at that technology once or twice before on this blog (ant6n: “That’s just silly!”). But it would be fun, if not actually sexy.
mdblog: it was inevitable.
I’m doing a little news curating today on OpenFile: news bulletin morning file and additional reading. Back soon!
There’s one feeble gleam of light in the gloomy news from the federal budget: the string of new prisons promised to meet the Harper Tories’ desire for longer and stronger punishments isn’t going to be built this year.
Metro’s website has just undergone a redesign, with an agreeable serif font for headlines now and more white space generally. At the moment, however, every link I have ever made to a Metro article is broken. I hope this problem gets fixed, but it’s not unheard of for media sites to break with their own history sometimes.
Montreal’s Autumn Kelly has just given the Queen her second great-grandchild – although far be it from me to contradict the Ceeb, I don’t believe our Ms. Kelly is technically a princess, as the man she married is just called “Mr. Phillips”.
Saturday morning: I see the CBC changed their princess headline.
The feds may be trying to take the opportunity of the replacement of the Champlain bridge to shake off the responsibility of owning and managing the Mercier and the Jacques-Cartier as well, a change that might bring in tolls to support those bridges.
Here in France, many highways are private, and they are pristine. The tolls can be costly, but I don’t really see the disadvantage. Even the trucking industry will probably, in the long term, prefer to use fast, efficient highways that seldom break down then free, public highways that are dangerously neglected.
Of course I don’t know if there are other factors at play that would make this a less good option in Canada. I do know that the best highways in France are often very heavily used (more users = more revenue for the owner) so I presume privatizing the bridges would be a great start to generally improving the existing infrastructure on the island.
The Golden Gate Bridge is a fabulous example how why the bridges need tolls. They have a dedicated crew of folks who baby the thing. As soon as anything is wrong it fixed, properly, without delay.
The problem I perceive is that I’m not sure private bridges will behave like the rest of the free market.
In the private sector, an owner is motivated to maintain its property because if it is run down, client (revenue) will go to another vendor. For example, if a telephone company neglects its network and customers start loosing calls, they may want to take their business elsewhere.
I guess that model probably works on roads, because there’s usually an alternative road available nearby. In fact, that was part of the motivation for toll roads in the 70′s. Highway 15 was a toll road because 117 was an alternative and highway 10 was also a toll road because 112 was an alternative (there were other motivations, of course).
However, if Mercier, Champlain and Jacques-Cartier all become toll bridges, commuters are left with few alternatives and the bridge owners have little motivation to upkeep the bridges as they are dealing with a very captive customer base.
I’m not familiar enough with the Bay area. Are there alternatives to the Golden Gate bridge? If not, what’s the motivation for the operator to maintain the bridge?
Well the champlain and J-C had tolls for a long time. If thats what it takes to pay for a new bridge, why not? Its abit unnerving to be sitting on the RTL-45 and reading articles off your phone stating that engineers think the bridge is unsafe lol.
A law student at the UdeM tried to persuade a judge to impose an injunction to end the student strike, but the judge wasn’t having it.
Basically the judge sided with the strikers because he knows the law student has a future even if he has to repeat a term. lol.
I remember walking up The Main in the late ’80s wishing there was a place to sit down and read while sipping a nice coffee. At the time the only choice was the Van Houtte on St-Laurent just below Ave. du Pins. There might have been a handfull of places that had expresso machines but were otherwise not functioning as a café, but there was (from what I could tell) no coffee culture. (Little Italy notwithstanding…)