Alex Panetta tweets: “Many arrests. Some injuries. Hit/run on protester. Projectiles. Riot squad.” The 100th consecutive demo for the first day of the election campaign brought thousands out.
Updates from August, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Tuesday morning, Richard Bergeron held a presser in which he pointed out that in the pre-campaign chatter, Montreal was hardly mentioned at all. He asked for a “Plan Sud” to rejuvenate aspects of the city, especially public transit, and he more or less challenged Tremblay and Harel to speak up. Which they then did, chiming in with their own wish lists.
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Matt
Hmm. Wouldn’t it be a better idea for the three of them to get together and decide what they should beg the provincial government for? I think a common front might be more effective, politically. Then again, I’m pretty sure the rest of the province would rather watch the evil, vile city go up in flames than have to share precious tax money with Montréal.
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I can hear rain pattering down, as the 100th night of tuition protest marches toward what the Gazette has called “Emelie Gammelin Park” in one of its recent brilliant copyediting coups.
I don’t want to be mean, but yesterday in that gluten-free bakery piece the caption reads: [...]share a laugh in the kitchen of their store Mi & Stu, were their make gluten-free baked goods in Montreal. Ayoye.
Later note: a motorist got impatient with the demo walking down Saint-Denis and drove into the crowd, injuring a young man who had to be taken away by ambulance.
It’s not just the Gazette. La Presse calls it Emile-Gamelin in that piece. Can’t we just revert to calling it Berri Square?
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Ian
The students are calling it place Emile-Gamelin, too, and have been since the beginning of the protests. I too am unsure of when that nomenclature shifted. I find it curious that the Gazoo article spells it “Gammelin”, though.
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Michel
Correct me if I’m wrong, but by calling it a park rather than a square allows the city to enforce the 12am to 6am curfew. Again, I might be wrong, but I think it was the ex-mayor of Ville-Marie (can’t remember name, was powerful but then got caught in some wheeling-dealing bs) who made the change.
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Kate
It’s Émilie, not Émile, there’s a statue of her in the metro entrance on the square.
Michel, you’re thinking of Benoit Labonté? I think you’re right, he was big on cracking down on itinerants.
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Michel
Yeah, that’s it. Outta sight, outta mind.
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The SPCA has put itself back on a sounder financial footing after several years of bad management were turned around.
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walkerp
Very good to hear. They perform a crucial service in the vacuum of animal management that the city offers.
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A brand-new six-lane “urban boulevard” may be linking Gouin Blvd. to Highway 40 as campaign promises fly. If you look at the map you’ll see the route is relatively innocuous, but the worrying thing is the MTQ’s idea of eventually turning it into a highway and hooking it onto Laval’s Autoroute 440. This was floated a few years ago as a plan to pave right across Île Bizard (presumably erasing its wetland parks – I doubt they’d go near the hallowed golf courses that take up half the island).
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Jack
Wow that didn’t take long extending the 440 is the ultimate goal of this project, which again increases traffic capacity in the 450. Until Montreal becomes politically more coherent and tells off islanders that the saturation point has been reached, we are going to have these urban boulevards extended through our working class residential neighbourhoods. Take a look at this corner besides a school and a Park and know thats the future.
https://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&q=Christophe+Colomb+and+Villeray&ie=UTF-8&ei=GFYZUICKCPK10QH8xoC4BA&ved=0CEQQ_AUoAg
I ride past this corner to go to work and it never fails to amaze me. -
cheese
The road/highway planning in Quebec is about 50 years out of date, we are still making the same mistakes that other places are already putting in measures to try to fix. This is really discouraging news. Maybe us “socialists” should “move to Sweden” as was jokingly suggested in a recent comment.
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Jack
Sorry about that link I am tech challenged and type with two fingers.
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Matt
How can this government be taken seriously? One day they’re all green public transit, tolls, higher gas taxes and the next, more roads! Plus, I hate the words “urban boulevard”. I’ll never see a congestion charge or tolls in my lifetime.
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Chris
I love how they always sell it: “ease overburdened traffic”. It may do that in the short term, in the immediate area, but when will people get it into their heads that adding roads just encourages more cars, which just adds more traffic to adjoining streets!
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Kate
Yes, studies show that you build it and they will come. That road will be crowded as soon as it’s opened for business, and it’ll be gridlock once it’s extended to Laval.
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cheese
I think the major issue with this particular road is that is will add more cars to the 40 which is already a parking lot most days (or so I’m told, I try to avoid it). So cars will be able to more efficiently reach the parking lot known as the 40. For that reason I’m not sure that this will actually shorten the commute times as much as hoped.
@Matt has the right idea. The traffic should be reduced not encouraged to increase. Let’s put this money into public transport instead.
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Jean Naimard
One has to admit that the Waste-Island is pretty much urbanistically retarded, with only 4 north-south roads from Dorval to Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue… Building that boulevard is kinda 50 years overdue…
But, again, the Waste-Island is the kingdom of NIMBYes.
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I have never seen an election so foreshadowed, but now it’s official: Quebec will vote on September 4.
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cheese
If only there were a viable party/candidate to vote *for*.
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Jack
Who does a bloke progressive vote for? I have spent 50 years listening to the Fed-Sov “debate” and am exhausted by its vacuousness, and am praying that QS doesn’t invest a lot there. However it seems thats where they have turned. I am proud to say I have never voted Liberal but does anyone else feel a drift.If not can somebody give some compelling reasons to vote for somebody.
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walkerp
My justification for voting for Quebec Solidaire is that there sovereignty stance is basically something they just throw out to appease the leftie Quebecois, because you kind of have to speak to it here, but that they are pretty much cosmopolitan Montrealers who keep their eye on the big picture.
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Dhomas
My problem is that we have 5 parties currently holding seats in the National Assembly: 1 which is federalist but, in my opinion, is corrupt beyond repair; 4 which are sovereigntist. There is no option for someone like me who would like to vote for a party which would like to remain part of Canada, without compromising my other beliefs.
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david m
forget canada, it’s just not a relevant issue this time around. anyway, if you live in central montreal, not voting solidaire – essentially, the montreal party – is sort of crazy. especially since the election could result in a minority, where even 2-4 seats (doable for solidaire in montreal) could be enough to clinch vastly outsized influence.
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Marc R
Let’s not forget that a ‘sovereigntist party’ can only do so much to advance the project- I know that if a referendum comes up, I’ll be voting no, and will be campaigning hard to convince others. Therefore, I feel I can vote for QS (which presents the only real alternative to the neo-liberal complex) without any hesitation
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Ian
True that. I’m going for the party with the best social policy, a referendum is another vote altogether.
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Adam
People who vote for QS fascinate me. Can anyone really be that economically illiterate? Can anyone really be so blind to history’s lessons? It’s amazing.
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ant6n
Cuz they are socialists? Doesn’t matter, even if they get 5 seats they won’t install a communist socialist dictatorship hitler-stalin state. The only thing they could do, if anything, is pushing through a program here or there when collaborating with a minority government. Sort of like the NDP did during the minority-conservative governments. And if they get to grow in the next couple of elections, they’ll move close to the center, just like the ndp.
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Raymond
CS are socialists? Now that is illiteracy. Too much Fox News, maybe?
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Chris
People who vote PLQ fascinate me. Can anyone really be that economically illiterate? Can anyone really be so blind to history’s lessons? It’s amazing.
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Ian
“communist socialist dictatorship hitler-stalin state”…the mind boggles. Tongue in cheek, surely?
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qatzelok
@ Adam, commenting on QS voters: “Can anyone really be so blind to history’s lessons”
We’re heading for extinction with corrupt governments that are exacerbating the problem by ignoring reality in order to continue feeding at the corporate trough. What historical lessons are YOU referring to?
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Kate
^^ See, this is why I keep qatzelok around. ^^
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Ian
…except that he thinks they’re corrupt because they cater to the interests of Anglo/Zionist conspiracy. Just because he says things that sound like the same conclusions you might reach doesn’t mean he got there using the same rationale. In fact, I’m pretty sure you can count on it.
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Kate
Ian, you give me to think. Thank you.
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Jack
I think you guys are missing qatzeloks evident steel edged satire, it has to be that, doesn’t it.
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A class action suit against the city has been brought on behalf of people rounded up in a mass arrest and held in unnecessarily punitive conditions during a student protest on May 23.
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Radio-Canada went and looked at two community gardens and their enthusiasts. A multimedia format thingy.
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Not big news, but saved these tabs: a new gluten-free bakery – they have a website not linked in the article, of course – and a new nut-free bakery (video).
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Ian
As it happens it was my wife’s 40th birthday this last weekend and I got a gluten-free, vegan, soy-free 2-layer chocolate cake from Almond Butterfly in NDG (they deliver, too) that was absolutely stunning. It tasted like a really good chocolate cake – not a hint of compromise in flavour or texture. http://www.almondbutterfly.com/en/
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Kate
I had a brownie from Almond Butterfly at Café Pikolo the other day. A little crumbly, but very tasty.
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Dhomas
It’s always nice to know of new gluten-free spots. I usually get my GF cakes for big occasions from Patisserie San Marco (www.sanmarcocakes.com), but perhaps I’ll try Mi & Stu or Almond Butterfly next time. Also, you might think that the cakes at San Marco are not GF since they have so much flour flying around everywhere, but they’ve assured me that the GF cakes are made off-site (at the home of one of the workers).
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Kevin
Prohibition on Monkland does gluten-free brunch and lunch.
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Propos Montréal looks at the new Parc Linéaire de la Commune in the eastern end of the Old Port.
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Doobious
Nice little spot, but talk about your “out of the way” places.
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ProposMontreal.com
@Doobious, That’S exactly what we thought when we saw this project was finish and waiting for it’s first guests.
Thanks for the link
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Doobious
You should check it out, Kate. The font used for engraving the benches is quite nice.
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Kate
Doobious, I will check it out soon and let you know what I think.
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Ian 05:50 on 2012/08/02 Permalink
It’s incredible how much more vague, dismissive and unsympathetic the cbc.ca article is than the radio-canada.ca one. The English media really is dropping the ball on this one issue consistently. The ctv article seems to focus on the violence like they always do, cjad is very just-the-facts (but terse). The one glimmer of hope? The Gazette’s article was surprisingly student-focused and positive.
Jean Naimard 21:41 on 2012/08/02 Permalink
The english media simply reflects the views of it’s market, who overwhelmingly votes liberal (that’s the famed “ethnic vote”), and since the tuition hike is the brainchild of the liberals, it is perfectly normal that the english are for it and therefore are dismissive of the “red squares”.
Really, it’s the same old fights from time immemorial where the english simply do not want the french to improve their lives.
Kate 00:00 on 2012/08/03 Permalink
Hi Jean Naimard! Hold still, I’m loading up my longbow.
Ian 13:04 on 2012/08/03 Permalink
And all this time I thought qatzelok was jeannaimard.
Domenico Cotugno 08:49 on 2012/08/04 Permalink
I don’t get the longbow reference. Should I know who Jean Naimard is?
Ian 15:03 on 2012/08/05 Permalink
It’s a reference to the Norman invasion. Jean Naimard is a famous reddit troll whose political views strongly resemble those of our resident jew-and-anglo hater, qatzelok, particularly in the notion of anglos being evil colonialists who have no culture of their own.
Kate 15:25 on 2012/08/05 Permalink
During the battle of Agincourt, the English force defeated the more numerous French army by strategic use of their longbows.
I never thought Jean Naimard and qatzelok were the same person, partly because qatzelok keeps a blog in English, which surely Jean Naimard would not.
Ian 19:32 on 2012/08/05 Permalink
Nice, I was wondering if you were referring to the victory at Agincourt or the loss at Hastings. Either way it’s comical to think of the French as benefactors to the English if you know any history at all. After all, the whole dilemma of Quebec was founded in the French defeat at the Plains of Abraham…