Twitter sounds like there’s some pretty violent scenes along Ste-Catherine near Crescent on Saturday evening – follow the usual tags #ggi and #manifencours.
Many reports say merely wearing a red square tonight in certain parts of town can get you arrested, or at least attract unfavourable attention from police. Please be careful out there.
Recent tweets say police cars are destroyed and the SQ’s riot squad has arrived on the scene. CUTV’s live feed is now up again after a short outage.
Pierre Foglia defends La Presse against recent charges its editors are at the beck and call of the Desmarais.
I love when people who see the world quite differently can speak well of each other. M. Foglia does this so well here and, apparently, M. Desmarais does likewise of M. Foglia. We need more people who disagree without taking up arms. Excellent.
I find his texts provide an innoculation against more violent forms of protest. In other words, in their muted call-to-surrealism, they protect the powers that be against sharper, more stinging criticism. Like Colbert. An insider always gets to play the role of court jester.
Montreal’s tourism economy has been badly shaken by repeated demonstrations. Reports such as this one in the International Herald Tribune emphasize the civil unrest apparent in recent weeks.
Yup, a lot of people are laid off because of it. If the people who normally work are laid off, then the students who need summer jobs must be waylaid as well. It’s a bad situation made worse.
not that there’s jobs out there for anybody under 30 anyway {o hai goldman sachs-angela merkel-baby boomer-authouritarian hypercapitalists}
That NYTimes article is hardly scathing. It’s interesting to see the difference between a local article vs international one. Maybe part of the problem is that modern Canadians really don’t understand much about social unrest?
I think the estimates are off, June is likely down around 15% occupancy wise (don’t confuse that with income) But that means 15% less staff needed.
Is it the protests, or the French signs? Or are we too socialist here? Maybe it’s all the support for Islamism in Quebec. Or the anti-Semitism.
The business community can always find someone to point the finger at when they fail.
It’s the protests. Nothing else is stopping people. I’ve never heard any of those other excuses used.
Ephraim, you can’t deny U.S. tourism is down since the loonie’s been up. Americans used to regard coming here as a bonanza, their money was worth so much more than ours for a few years they could shop and eat and live it up for a week or two – a bit of pseudo-Europe without leaving the continent. Now we’re close to parity, and since the banking crisis of 2008, there’s just less fluidity altogether.
Archives de Montréal has a feature on the Jardin des Merveilles, the kiddy zoo that used to occupy part of Lafontaine Park. With a link to a Flickr set of colour pix from 1965.
Wasn’t there also a small petting zoo? I remember my parents talking about a summer zoo and a winter zoo (Angrinon park). Maybe this is what they were talking about. Anyone know what year they closed this?
I sort of remember a petting zoo, too, but I was very small. Angrignon farm only closed a few years ago, and is not officially closed down for good but it kind of looks that way. According to wikipedia the Lafontaine zoo was 57-89.
I was taken to Lafontaine a couple of times as a kid. There were machines, like gumball machines, where you’d put in a nickel or a dime and get a handful of things that looked like Shreddies (and probably were) that you could feed to the animals through the bars. I think I’d remember if we’d been allowed to actually pet them, though.
François Cardinal maintains on Quel Avenir that Montreal doesn’t fund Bixi – there was a loan, but it’s being paid back. He was responding to the urban affairs minister’s perhaps reasonable view that Bixi is a wasteful system unwillingly supported by taxpayers.
We need to stop thinking of Bixi as something that needs to make a profit and instead think of it as more of an integral part of the public transit system, and something that can be subsidized, like the STM. In Montreal, Bixi has been shown to complement public transit with many riders using Bixi to get to and from the metro, or taking Bixi one-way and the STM the other. (some info: http://www.montrealgazette.com/pdf/cycling-public-transit.pdf)
Bixi has also helped free up room on overcrowded bus and metro lines (or at least prevented the overcrowding from getting worse as STM ridership continues to grow), saving the City some money by not having to increase service as much as they would have if Bixi had never been implemented.
Having said that, Bixi is expected to break even for the first time in 2012 as per: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05/27/bixi-bike-share/ and with operations in Montreal not running at a loss, Bixi will increasingly be able to pay off its debt with sales to other cities (provided the rumoured sale to international buyers doesn’t go through).
A naked bike ride took place Saturday morning down the east end. Careful camera work means the accompanying photos, while showing a fair bit of skin, are not technically indecent.
Euro 2012 is now under way. Some Montrealers are very keen fans of some of the teams. But where will they watch? The Gazette has a feature on ethnic communities linked to each team and where they might watch the matches.
Reddit also has a list of venues for watching. (Seriously, there’s a West Island place called Kelly’s Pub where they support England? Both the Gazette and Reddit list it this way…)
Thanks for this link! I was afraid that I’d have to cheer for Germany in a Portuguese cafe this afternoon…
Luckily while we have some enthusiastic national football supporters here, it has never gotten nasty. We’ve seen street celebrations after many wins, but it’s pretty inclusive here.
Sunday afternoon’s Spain-Italy match is bound to create some noise either way unless it’s a tie. On Monday, France plays England, a match you might expect to have historical overtones here…
Vision Montreal is to push for a debate on street food at city hall.
Finally, Vision lands on an issue that I can get behind! Let me tell you, the food truck revolution going on in American cities is awesome! Here in SF you can get such good food for decent prices all over town and on special days all the trucks gather together and it becomes a little foodie party. Montreal would make so much sense for this kind of thing, given our outdoor party street culture in the summer.
My only concern would be the material waste and garbage production. In SF, styrofoam is illegal and there is a citywide composting system, so most of the garbage produced from the food trucks here gets dealt with in a relatively sustainable manner (plastic cutlery being the main exception).
The sinkhole that opened on Sherbrooke Street has been already repaired by the city, two weeks sooner than expected – and more cheaply, too.
Tu me niaises!
The Journal has a report today on how real fast food doesn’t live up to the beauty shots used in their publicity.
I am shocked. Shocked!
Howdy!
They nicked the idea, lock, stock and barrel from the website A Hamburger Today which has long had a section called “reality check“
It’s an idea that suggests itself when you see the contrast between the crisp, bright, fresh item on the sign and the soggy brown thing inside the wax paper or foam box. The interesting thing is the fast food chains have clearly come to rely on the fatalism and cynicism of the customer.
If you take the metro this weekend expect a massive police presence in the system.
Anyone want to take a stab at the legality of these searches? .,.. the cops cannot legally search you without your consent, unless they say that you actually broke the law. So unless i am missing something here, the cops “searching anyone with a red square” are grossly out of line. Profiling is alive and well.
It appears those rights have been suspended. There are reports of anyone wearing a red square being searched, and anyone dressed in black (I assume they let elderly widows pass) can be refused access.
I am briefly quoted in this Sarah Gilbert piece in the Gazette about change afoot in Villeray.
jeather 21:38 on 2012/06/09 Permalink
It must be recent, because I just left there an hour or so ago, and there were lots of cops and lots of tourists, but nothing much different from the usual Crescent Grand Prix weekend. They were really restricting entrances and exits to Crescent, though.
Kate 22:10 on 2012/06/09 Permalink
It’s recent, but the CUTV feed seems to suggest that right this minute things have calmed a little, although Ste-Catherine’s still full of people.
Doobious 23:44 on 2012/06/09 Permalink
It’s after midnight and the cops are still at it with their buzz-harshening helicopter. Cops and protesters alike all seemed to be well behaved enough earlier this evening, but holy crap it smells like the pot’s going to boil over sooner rather than later.