As requested, an ice cream link: Lesley Chesterman looks at the small cremeries making their own product and what they’re doing, with ratings of the top eight in her estimation.
So far this summer the only ice cream news I’m finding in French is a Journal piece on the health impact of various frozen treats.
France’s L’Express looks at the choice between city and suburb in the Montreal area. They take the view that while our suburbs are growing, they’re stunted because public transit is limited: La région montréalaise n’est desservie que par six lignes ferroviaires de banlieue. Et si, aux heures de pointe, les trains passent toutes les 20 à 30 minutes, le reste de la journée, c’est plutôt toutes les heures ou moins. Sans parler des fins de semaine où il peut n’y avoir aucun train au départ!
Also, the observation that, unlike Paris, Montreal’s suburbs don’t include slums, and are usually middle class, so that vivre en banlieue, c’est plutôt un choix de vie.
One of the features i appreciate the most about my “downtown” neighbourhood of Little Burgundy is the well-achieved integration of social housing and “gentrified” condos and townhouses. I hope Montreal keeps growing with this kind of model, and not one of segregated neighbourhoods, because I believe it keeps us all safer and in touch with the reality of our communities in the long and the short run.
Montreal’s suburbs may not include slums (projects in Paris are built out of town presumably because there aren’t many places to develop in the city), but they still tend to be cheaper than downtown. If you need a lot of space for a family, the suburbs can offer that. And the transit ain’t really so bad – it’s easier to get from Brossard to downtown (often without transfer!) than from many places in Montreal.
Montreal compares much better to other North American cities than to Paris. Here cities tend to be approximately donut shaped – gentrified center, slummy inner suburbs, middle class suburbs. So its Montreal Nord and etc. that are the closest to being ‘slums’, and part of the problem is actually inaccessibility by transit. So I wish people would focus more on getting better transit connections into the farther areas of the city, rather than always focussing on the far-flung suburbs.
Makes me wonder what the on-island real estate market will look like ten years from now.
There are some fascinating trends going on. For one, there is a rising on-island population, expected to soon break the 2 million mark. That said, there’s a lot of off-island development going on as young families search for cheap land and inexpensive houses. A good chunk of the kids who grew up in the West Island in the 70s and 80s have moved to Vaudreuil, Pincourt, Deux-Montagnes etc. Keeping that in mind, I can imagine at some point in the future, the value of land in the on-island suburbs, (second, third and fourth rings let’s say) may one-day exceed the value of the house atop it, meaning the inevitable – land will be re-developed from suburban housing into multi-unit buildings, whether as row houses (triplexes and such), condos or apartments. I think this trend has already begun in earnest along the Deux-Montagnes train corridor. Moreover, the city seems pretty damned interested in converting open lots and parking spaces into condo towers. Can’t say I’m entirely disappointed, though I’d prefer some slightly more epic looking buildings.
But it isn’t just public transit which needs to be improved so as to increase density on-island (and, in turn, push the low-density zone further away from the city, where it arguably belongs and could provide the greatest economic stimulus) but services as well. There are apparently plenty of people who would prefer to live in the city and have their kids grow up there, but this can’t happen with a measured improvement in available public schools, new libraries, community centres, daycares, parks and playgrounds. Without those, forget it, the city won’t be able to secure long-term property investment.
Whatever we do, we need to ensure we don’t suffer the indignities of White Flight. It’s wrecked cities like Cleveland, Baltimore and Detroit.
@ Taylor I raised two kids in an urban setting (Petite Patrie and Villeray) and do not share your sense that infrastructure was in any way wanting. The schools and daycare were in old buildings staffed by dynamic and dedicated people. Jarry Park, the Mountain, and a reclaimed “ruelle” were and are part of my kids lives. In terms of long term investment my property “value” has increased 400% percent in a decade.I don’t think this is a valid construct in relation to why people leave the city.
I think your last sentence is more relevant, white flight is a huge motivator in getting people to the second and third crowns. It is a taboo subject in our media but a walk or sorry drive in Mascouche, Blainville, Terrebonne and Hudson reveal almost totally monolithic racial enclaves. Tropes such as “Anglicization” and “Les accommodements raisonnables” are used to fuel ethnic insecurity and drive this phenomenon. In Toronto “gun crime” fuels it. White flight is already here.
@Jack, having grown up in Chicago during the last gasps of White Flight, exacerbated by the G.I. bill’s low mortgages, the FHA, and bank redlining schemes, I have found that there’s nothing in Canada that quite resembles the contemporary American burg. If Montreal were an American city, population loss would probably have ended up with the Plateau criss-crossed by highways with little else left but a few housing projects and modernist complexes scattered in-between. We’re talking about entire quarters of these cities that were virtually abandoned.
@MB thanks and I understand the context is different, but don’t you think the largest internal migration in US history ( African Americans migrating North) had more to do with it than bank redefining schemes. i am arguing racial insecurity is a major part of the decision that makes suburbia’s expansion more complex than a bigger yard.
@MB & @Jack – when I use the term White Flight, I mean it within a very specific local context. It isn’t fueled by the same factors, and cannot be directly compared. We’ll have to coin a more apropos term. Montreal is far too complex to be so easily reducible.
Also @Jack – no question Villeray, Petit Patrie have the required infrastructure, I was referring more directly to Downtown Montreal, Griffintown, Little Burgundy, the Centre-Sud, Shaughnessy Village, the Ghettoes, the Old Quarter & Old Port. This seems to be where a lot of new high-density residential housing is being constructed, and where it will likely be built moving forward. It’s this area which could stand to use ‘community anchors’ – from schools and community centres to mom & pop shops, small local business etc. Otherwise, you end up with nothing but condos and starbucks, and that’s not a sustainable mix. We would be very wise to learn from Toronto’s recent mistakes.
The idea that “young families need an acre of lawn” isn’t rational: the city has many more services and activities within walking/biking distance for kids. Lawn fetish is probably the result of all those happy sitcoms from the 60s and 70s that portrayed happy families having potato sack races on private lawns. Brainwashing.
Whereas in the US, car/oil/land salesmen also used racism to drive people into the arms of capital, in Canada, all we needed were happy representations of bungalow life on our TVs.
FWIW, development in Longueuil seems to be mixed. There are still some pods of McMansions going up here and there (and when you find them they’re all “cheek by jowl,” which indicates the land is, indeed, a significant part of the cost).But there are also a lot of condo developments and townhouses, etc., with an emphasis on creating dense population clusters that can presumably be linked by public transit. Unfortunately there are other areas, like Brossard, where the emphasis still seems to be large developments of mid-size houses replacing forests and farmlands, sort of like Scarborough in the 1970-80s.
Blork, all those mid-density developments in the south shore are “linked by transit” only in theory. The problem is zoning: there are so few activities on the streets (other than lawn-mowing) that every drives – no matter what the density. This will continue to be a problem until we stop allowing lobbyists to talk our governments (brown envelopes) into separating compatible functions like shopping, schools, recreation and housing.
The Haitian radio station CPAM 1610 was damaged by an arson attack early Monday. La Presse says it was heavily damaged but the Journal says légers dommages.
It’s not just a Haitian station.
No, but it’s preponderantly Haitian. I write brief bulletins to news stories here and don’t always include all the details. For example, the Journal’s front headline on this says “La radio Haïtienne incendiée” and La Presse’s says “Incendie criminel à la radio haïtienne CPAM”. La Presse waits till its final paragraph before elaborating that CPAM has 50% Haitian programming, 35% Latino and 15% African francophone.
Taking a cab the other night, a few months ago, the driver had the radio turned to this station. I was surprised, but not really, that the DJs aren’t allowed to speak Creole. I find that somewhat sad.
Not allowed by who? The CRTC?
I think it’s an Office de la langue française thing. Don’t quote me on that. I asked the cab driver, and he said they weren’t allowed.
That is odd. There are exception clauses in the French language charter for cultural productions – e.g. the Gazette is not obliged to also publish in French and if you’re publishing books in some language that isn’t French you’re not obliged to also publish a French version in parallel. I would’ve thought a radio station would fall under providing cultural content.
Maybe it has to do with terms of a grant they get, though.
It has nothing to do with the office lange francaise, lol. Approved ethnic radios can produce in their original languages. The language chosen by the programming staff can alternate if they wish. All of this is determined in advance by CRTC permits.
Sunday’s Euro 2012 triumph by the Spanish national team brought happy supporters into the streets. Canoë photo gallery.
Hochelaga-Maisonneuve’s Très-Saint-Nom-de-Jésus church is on Heritage Canada’s Top Ten (PDf file) endangered sites. It’s a huge church with two Casavant organs, one of which is said to be among the grandest in North America. The church was closed in 2009 and needs a fair bit of maintenance and upkeep money just to keep it stable.
This church has been in the news periodically over the last two years, as the Roman Catholic diocese wants to wash its hands of responsibility for the building – two years ago there was talk about demolishing it and putting up social housing or an old folks’ home, while a preservation group would like to save it as a cultural centre including the massive organ. But governments are not handing out much money these days for either cultural goodies or social housing, and with a new symphony hall in town I doubt there’s the demand for an additional classical performance hall in the east end.
Clément 14:55 on 2012/07/02 Permalink
Yeah! Thanks Kate. And on a perfect day as well!
walkerp 23:02 on 2012/07/02 Permalink
Wow, she is a real ice cream pro! And damn 30 scoops in two days! That’s even too much for me, which is saying something.
Dhomas 17:18 on 2012/07/03 Permalink
Too bad for the “no gelato” policy in that article. I just discovered a new place near my office called FCO Fiumicino (like the airport in Rome). They serve “real” Italian pizza (the rectangular kind, not the round) and really awesome gelato. I got the lowdown from the employees there. Everything from the equipment, to the ingredients (with the exception of the milk, of course) is imported directly from Italy. Even the employees are recent arrivals (I had to speak to them in Italian!). They change up the gelato flavours, but I’ve already been a number of times and can tell you that my current favourite is the Ricotta and Cinnamon gelato. I highly recommend it.