The SPCA is receiving dozens of cats daily in advance of moving day, and today the dismantling of an animal-hoarding situation brought 80 more cats to the shelter. The shelter is offering reduced fees for cat adoptions this weekend.
Updates from June, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Players who were on the Expos 1981 team are in town for an accolade at an Alouettes game Thursday night and other events this weekend.
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Lantic, Molson and Saputo are the top water users in the city although of course the consumers of the Molson product also return most of it to the river, one way or another.
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Marc
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The teacher who allegedly showed the video to his students of Luka Magnotta allegedly killing Jun Lin has been given the sack.
The Mirror’s Matthew Hays talks about watching the video and why he did.
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Another water main break on Peel has closed the downtown street indefinitely.
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The New York Times has a new 36 hours in Montreal feature: “a portal to a much wider world.”
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qatzelok
“Saul Bellow, Arcade Fire and the irrepressible William Shatner” lol
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In January 2010 a man killed his lover and put body parts into a suitcase that was later found on rue Charlotte. He later pleaded guilty to involuntary homicide, and is being sentenced Thursday in a case that prefigured in some ways the more lurid and notorious death of Jun Lin.
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Marie-Claude Lortie talks about the benefits of street food, while on Canoe there’s a reminder that permission won’t come this summer – we have to wait for results of a study, which may take long enough for enthusiasm to safely die down again.
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Bill Binns
The city should fund a study to measure the effectiveness of city funded studies.
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paul
No joke…do they really need to do a study??
Has this not been studied before?Just print-off the guidelines for street food from the City of Portland, translate them, and you are ready to go! Much cheaper and likely more effective than anything we could come up with.
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Ephraim
@Bill But after that, they would need to study the effectiveness of studies of studies.
While I love the idea of street food, how fair is this to the restaurants in the neighbourhood that pay rent and taxes? Something should be done to equalize this as part of the permit and licence.
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William
Honestly, the debate over this minor question has to be the most #firstworldproblems issue in the media at the moment. Why not just have proper kiosks installed that can be used as needed in the areas involved and that can be used by approved traders on application? It would be a lot more attractive to look at and a hell of a lot less stinky.
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Charles
I still don’t get the whole street food thing… Isn’t it better to sit down and eat and take the time to taste the food. The whole eating on the go doesn’t seem very Montreal in my opinion. There are so many restaurants around, wouldn’t it force other places to close down. The city could encourage existing restaurants to open windows to the street and accept orders…
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Bill Binns
I like the idea of street food but I have trouble seeing it here, at least in the downtown core. The streets have been widened to the point that our sidewalks are already too narrow to comfortably handle the pedestrian flow. Especially on St Catherine. And where do you go with your slice of pizza or taco once you have it? Other cities have lots of little plazas and such where you could sit for five minutes to take a bite. St Catherine is pretty much a solid unbroken wall of shops. Maybe they could designate a section of maisonneuve as a food truck area.
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paul
@William – aside from tuition hikes, yes. ;-)
Food carts would need to pay taxes just like anywhere else. Local businesses should encourage them as they can bring new street traffic to areas (or vacant lots) that are under visited. If I was enacting the policy, I would limit their location to such areas specifically.
I would hope that the reduced business costs are passed onto the consumer (Grumann is not a good example of this) – bringing a major benefit for those that wish to eat-out with healthy and local food but perhaps can’t afford a restaurant. The reduced costs and easy mobility also allow chefs to take more risks and experiments (I’m looking at you Korean-creperie place) rather than serving pizza-getti as a staple.
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Adam
“how fair is this to the restaurants in the neighbourhood that pay rent and taxes”
Fair? Why is it supposed to be fair? The purpose of selling things is for consumers to enjoy them, not to be fair to other sellers. Anyway, if food trucks are such a great racket and so much better than restaurants for the operators, then we’ll see a flood of restaurant owners closing up shop and opening on the street. Which is obviously not going to happen since last I checked places like Toronto and New York still have a few restaurants open.
What boggles my mind is that people are talking about this like it’s some kind of wacky experiment, the consequences of which are impossible to foresee. When in reality this is pretty standard everywhere else on planet Earth. Just stop banning street food and let the entrepreneurs get on with it.
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Ephraim
Yes, fair. You are looking only at consumers, there are many factors involved, landlords, city taxes, parking. Heck, even the trucks have fights over the available locations. In some city you can’t reserve the spots until 11:30 for example, and you can’t be in the same location on a schedule or twice during a week, to give all operators a chance at the best spots. And yes, they pay city taxes and pay a fee for parking as well as city inspections, etc.
Part of the problem in this city with our bureaucrats is that everything doesn’t have a value, for accounting purposes. For example, the STM doesn’t pay for all the spaces it uses on the road because there is no value. Stationment Montreal doesn’t pay the city for the parking spaces. Bixi doesn’t pay for the street and sidewalk that they use. Contracts to repair roads don’t have a cost associated with the time the street is closed. No parking permits don’t have to post the permit number and don’t post what the permit allows, what dates, how much of the street, doesn’t explain to citizens displaced by the permit any information. Scaffolding sits on the sidewalk for free when other cities charge a daily fee that increases over time so that you are encouraged to do the work faster. If you don’t put a value to things they have no value and are squandered.
If the city make the STM pay per parking space used, you want to bet that they would start to re-evaluate each space they used? How about the police, they have reserved spots, who’s paying for them? Shouldn’t someone pay for them? They have a value. Citizens pay for permits, so the street should have a value.
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elleanon
@billbines wrote: “Especially on St Catherine. And where do you go with your slice of pizza or taco once you have it? Other cities have lots of little plazas and such where you could sit for five minutes to take a bite.”
I think food trucks are handy for a lot of people: you want a snack in the park? hit the truck. City office tower worker? Maybe you want a change and want something a little cheaper than the food court, so they pop out to the truck to get a sandwich and take it back to your desk or lunch room. There are also many young people who eat on the streets at all hours of the night. Walk around the plateau on a Saturday morning and it’s littered with poutine, noodle and pizza containers. they find somewhere to eat, and it doesn’t appear to be inside the shops. The little Chinese food place at the corner of Pine and St Laurent was doing alright and they served food out of a window (disgusting food, might I add) with no available seating. Eating on the go is totally manageable and a very common part of life for a many Montrealers.
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Adam
Ephraim, I’m all for having people bid for spots on which they want to park their trucks. Otherwise, I’m not sure what your response has to do with the issue of restaurants vs. food trucks.
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walkerp
Food trucks can make specialized delicious foods at cheaper prices because of their smaller overhead.
I’m here in SF and there are freaking awesome food trucks all over the place. One morning, one happened to be parked right around the block from where I’m working. It turned out to specialize only in breakfast sandwiches and for $7 I got a Maple Glazed Pork Belly Sandwich which was seared pork belly glazed in maple syrup, pickled red onions, mustard aioli, organic arugula and a fried egg on rosemary focaccia and it was fricking delicious.
Do you not want that?
Oh yes and it was served to me in a compostable cardboard container which went into a city-wide composting bin whose contents will be taken and composted.
Montreal is really backwards at times. It’s sad, because it has such a great spirit and such a great public life. And then you see that typical Canadian negativity and pessimism and resentment and fear of change as we see in the comments above and you remember why we can’t have nice things here.
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Adam
walkerp: Agreed 100%. This is like arguing over whether if abortion is legalized, women will use it like birth control. Maybe you could fear that 50 years ago, but at this point anyone who makes that claim is just being obtuse. This is a lot less consequential, but the arguments you hear about why we can’t just go ahead and allow street food are just as ridiculous.
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Ephraim
@Adam – I’m simply pointing out that the system needs a way to account for the value of the spot, since it is the street and it has a value. So does the permit have a value. The value of the permit should go to the city to reduce the general bill and of course pay for such items as garbage collection.
I’m simply trying to point out that putting a value to everything within the system ensures that we cover costs properly. Do it, but not in a way that costs the taxpayer money, but that it either has no impact on taxes or lowers overall taxes.
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Adam
Ephraim: if the trucks have to bid for the spots (rather than paying a pre-determined price) then everyone will pay whatever they think the spot is actually worth.
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Tux
If you have to pay more to park your truck in a popular spot then food trucks that become famous and established will be the only ones who can afford the sweetest spots. Make it like the music spots in the metro, first person to reserve gets the time slot. (If they did this, and the reservations were online, I would totally write an eBay Sniper-esque software tool and sell it to food truck owners…)
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Adam
Tux: you mean, if we auction them off then the best trucks will get the best spots? That’s a feature, not a bug.
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Tux
Adam: No, it’s a bug. It creates a situation where only the most popular (not necessarily the best) get the spots with enough traffic to continue funding being able to have that spot. In a system like that, new food truck businesses will be forever relegated to the sidelines even if their food is better. Every truck should have a fair shot at the plum spots.
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Adam
Tux, if a cart is the most popular, then it is, by definition, the “best” as judged by most people. Obviously you or I might think it’s crap, but that doesn’t change the judgement of the majority. And there’s no reason to think that new trucks will never get good spots. Do new shops only open in bad locations? To do it by first-come-first-served is practically guaranteeing that a lot of bad businesses are going to get good spots. How, under that system, does a more successful truck get a better spot and a less successful one get relegated to a worse spot? Random chance?
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Kate
In a way, you guys are doing collectively wonderful job of explaining why the city has avoided this situation so far.
This is what I’d do: continue banning trucks (sorry, Grumman 78) and only allow those ambulant street-corner carts they have in New York. Whoever gets to a corner first can stay there for an hour; nobody’s allowed to be on any corner for more than an hour. (Time limit would be watched by passing cops and obviously not firmly to the minute, but it would be the target – nobody gets to squat on a spot and deny it to others.) No intersection can have more than 2 carts on it at a time. Voilà.
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François Cardinal compares Montreal to Chicago on Quel Avenir today, finding us lacking in monumental pieces of public art.
But art has to go with the city’s scale, and Chicago has areas of very big classic skyscrapers in a way we don’t. These things come about partly by intention, yes, but also partly as a result of a city’s particular history.
Actually, I think people just stop seeing public art after awhile. It becomes part of the landscape, whereas if you visit a different city the art pops out at you because of its novelty to you. When OpenFile did a recent look at public art in Canada, I was asked informally to suggest some here, and came up with a long list just running through my visual memories. We have lots. We just don’t notice it any more.
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paul
I agree, I would argue that Montreal has significantly more public art than Chicago – but much of ours is in the form of historical sculptures.
The one piece that Montreal, and every city should try to emulate, is the ‘bean’ pictured in the article. It is rare that a piece of art can engage so many people and actually encourages interaction (with the street scape and with other people).
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Bill Binns
A lot of what we do have is pretty hideous as well. I particularly dislike that white statue of the fat person crouching down at the corner of Sherbrooke and St Laurent (or St Denis?). Not a big fan of the new bird man statue on Sherbrooke either but realize I’m in the minority. There is a statue of a monkey riding a horse on Sherbrooke just west of Guy that I would proudly display in my living room if I could afford it.
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Ephraim
@Bill – Sherbrooke @ St-Denis, it’s forever disfigured, usually with paint.
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Kate
Disfigured? It’s a big plaster statue. Paul recommends emulating the Chicago “bean” but a piece of art can reflect public feeling in other ways. The crouching guy has been around for decades, occasionally hosting statements or elements (he has a red square on him right now) that reflect how people feel. But he’s not a massively valuable piece of art, so in a way he just patiently exists to address our urban angst. I think it’s great.
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Ephraim
Okay, maybe not the right word. People are forever painting it. They keep on repainting it back to white. It has a sort of yellowish colour to it, now. It was originally shining white.
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Kate
Actually, Ephraim, it was originally matte grayish-white, and it was originally positioned further down the street at the little square called Place Pasteur. I think it was refinished with a glazed effect after somebody realized it was difficult to remove markings from the original finish.
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A drop in tourism numbers this summer is not all on the student demonstrations, but was expected because there are fewer big conventions scheduled here this year.
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Ephraim
That’s just the big hotels, the rest of the industry is seeing a hit directly from the student demos. And not all the hotels get conventioneers either. If they are going to Quebec and Ottawa, they usually go to Montreal… but people are skipping Montreal this year.
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Dany Villanueva may be up for a very long vacation in Honduras soon. He’s been arrested again and charged with possessing cannabis and breaking parole agreements.
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Two arrests followed the 51st nightly demo.
Anonymous has apparently been circulating a long list of police email addresses. (NB I’m finding TVA pages tend to start playing video without being told to, so watch out for sudden commercials playing with sound.)
Jean Charest has allowed the student strife to continue because it could help him get re-elected, according to Pauline Marois.
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Ephraim
So, why doesn’t she help the students… oh, she can’t. She’s too busy cleaning her $8 million dollar palace built on a land that she got in a shady deal from her confreres. She’s Quebec’s new hope, a real down to earth leader. And we all know that’s she’s trustworthy because after Boisclair won, she stepped down saying that she was done with politics forever.
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Anto
So who’s your choice Ephraim?
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Ephraim
@Anto – There is no choice, but I can tell you that of the three, she’s at the bottom of the three. Every once in a while a political party needs someone who is bold, brash and new and who has the gumption (read balls) to just say what isn’t working (separatism) and walk in with a brand new plan and a new direction.
What do we really need? We need a new party built on rationality that doesn’t expect to ever be reelected that is willing to walk in there, clean house and walk way. We need someone to bring in transparency to a level never seen. Someone to put the reins on RQ, the way that they did RC, so that they respect citizens. Someone to ensure that the Caisse remains independent and can’t be played with, like Parizeau did. Someone to send us all a lovely annual report, like a corporation that shows us where the government spends their money, so we all can better understand it, if we want to. An accounting system that will prevent people like Landry from cooking the books to hide deficits.
What we don’t need…. we don’t need to hide from our future and stop building. Really, 30 years to build Highway 30 and how many to build highway 35? We need separatism like we need a hole in the head, the rich take their money and move, along with their taxes. The companies take their jobs and move along with their taxes. We need a clear understanding of how to build our tax base. And frankly, enough with the xenophobia, let’s be realistic, the generation of “English” that were responsible for all the nonsense that most people talk about… are gone for the most part. Replaced by people who are bilingual. Maybe it’s time to stop blaming everything on the English and start working on a new future where we are all growing wealthier together.
And I’m still waiting for the government that will be strong enough to put down a 10 to 20 year plan to convert this province to organic. We really don’t need frankenfood on our farms in this province.
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Bill Binns
@Ephraim – Good luck with your waiting. I waited my whole voting-age life for moderate republicans in the states while I watched the party turn into something resembling a religous cult. Then I left. If a serious sepratist ever took power in Quebec again (seems unlikely but who knows?), we would likely be among the first to leave in an effort to get to Toronto before all the good jobs were taken by the rest of the Montreal refugees.
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Ephraim
@Bill – Not really waiting…. I have a lot of dreams, none will ever get fulfilled. Too many idiots around to do that. I mean, what chance do we really have on rational government.
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Yes, beer is rented… :P