Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois has quit as co-spokesperson for CLASSE. He explains why.
Updates from August, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Students marched to Hydro-Quebec Wednesday, seeing it as a symbol of provincial government power, but then police moved in claiming somebody had thrown a projectile. There were no arrests. Photos in Metro.
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geoff
(I remember you asking for feedback recently about Gazette links that post the mobile version… Not sure if you reached resolution on that, but the Gazoo link above is an example… Note that the URL includes a “/touch” If you delete that, it posts the web version properly.)
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Blork
Frankly, I prefer the mobile pages in this case (a rare thing; I usually don’t want mobile versions). The Gazette’s regular pages are so filled with crap and load all sorts of scripts and things that make it unbearable. Particularly if using an old iPad like I often do when reading through Twitter, etc. Much slower to load and half the time it crashes the browser.
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Kate
Actually, geoff, no. I usually post the Gazette mobile links for the reason Blork describes. That’s not the issue.
I was concerned about this blog. This template is supposed to automagically detect what platform a reader is using and send either the regular version for computer browsers or a simpler, stripped-down version for mobile devices. Usually it works for me, but I’ve had reports of the full-size version opening on small devices, and once of the wee version popping up on someone’s full-size screen.
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Bill Binns
I was on the site yesterday using my Android phone and I got the mobil version. Looked and worked great but the one comment I made with the phone never appeared.
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geoff
Ahh, I see.
Très good!
A Greek family that ran a Saint-Henri resto for 92 years has finally sold it to a new owner, who’ll undoubtedly change the formula. But the neighbourhood has changed a lot during those years too.
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Ian
I used to live down the street from there in the mid-90s. I worked nights, so would go there for breakfast before going home to bed. They actually changed their formula not long after that, trying to become more upscale, but were a real classic diner back in the day.
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willie granger
Working nights, living in St. Henri, you really were livin’ the dream Ian!
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Kate
How many patients did you operate on today, willie granger?
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Ian
I took it as good-natured ribbing. Actually my life was pretty sweet, come down to it: I had just moved to Montreal, I was in my early 20′s, living in an interesting neighbourhood, and even in the economically depressed early-to-mid-90s I managed to find a night job to help pay my way through art school… and pay for breakfasts. Salad days & all that.
We chiz and moan and drone so much that it’s refreshing to read this thoughtful blog piece about Montreal’s urban triumphs, with many photos.
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Ian
That’s really refreshing. Thanks for that.
Add a project to basically rebuild the Mercier bridge piece by piece to the growing list of major road infrastructure projects impending around the city. The transport ministry won’t even make public the most recent report on the state of the Mercier.
As summarized here, Saint-Michel residents were happy when the old Miron Quarry stopped being a landfill, and were less than happy when it was later decided part of it would be used for city composting. The city has tempered this by promising electronic sniffing devices that should sound an alarm if things become too rank again in the area.
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walkerp
If properly managed (and that’s a big if when you’re working with the mafia), large-scale compost sites don’t smell at all. That’s the whole point. It’s not like garbage which is just sitting there festering. The nitrogen (which is what smells) that is released from the organic matter should be properly mixed with carbon-based materials. When bound together, there is no odour.
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Faiz Imam
Yeah. There is a 50 ton composter at Loyola run by Sustainable concordia, and almost no one knows it exists.
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Kate
That’s good news. I suspect these electronic sniffers are going in more to appease residents than because the authorities expect a big stink. (If I were feeling cynical, I’d suggest the city could put in technical-looking boxes with nothing inside them…)
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John B
So, what are they going to do if the sniffers detect a stench? It’s not like they’ll be able to say “hold on to your compost for a couple of weeks, city, while we work this out.”
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walkerp
There was more on this story on the news yesterday and I guess it’s not just about the smell, but also about all the trucks coming and going, which is a reasonable complaint. Also, from what it sounds like (and I should really be better informed here), this site is just for the seasonal pickup of yard waste in the spring and fall and not one of the sites where the regular household compost pick-up will happen (if it ever does).
John B, I guess if the smell does reach a certain “level” on the smell-o-meter, they can just truck in a bunch of carbon matter (straw, sawdust, dried leaves) and dump it on the site. That’s what you do with a home compost or composting toilet.
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John B
@walkerp Wouldn’t that require having an emergency stash of carbon matter on hand, (yes, I’m being a pain in the a** ;). Of course, that’s totally Montreal Government-style, wait until the stink gets too much to handle, then sort of try to do something about it, instead of properly managing the situation so it doesn’t stink, (literally, or metaphorically), in the first place.
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Kate
walkerp, you’ve amended my post excellently. Yes, it’s also about the endless trucks, which that area dealt with for years when the quarry was a dump. I checked to see whether the composting area is currently being used for the Rosemont pilot project as well as the yard waste stuff, but this item from April says in passing that the borough is sending the compost off-island until the city builds its own facilities.
Not sure what you mean by “nitrogen (which is what smells)” because N has no smell. I’m guessing it’s shorthand for how the breakdown of nitrogen-rich materials might be a bit stinky?
John B, I can only hope that there’s knowledge to be had about how to compost properly on a grand scale, because although the city’s been doing its own yard waste, Christmas tree and municipal gardening scraps composting for a long time, doing curbside composting for the whole city’s got to be a much more major deal.
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John B
There should be knowledge on how to compost properly on a large scale. Toronto’s been doing it for years. I believe both PEI and Nova Scotia have province-wide composting programs, (although it I’m not sure if PEI counts as “large-scale”).
Some teenagers jumped a fence into a municipal pool after hours Tuesday night and one of them drowned. An alternative story is that the boys were playing soccer, the ball went into the fenced area and he drowned while retrieving it.
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walkerp
I don’t get what happened here. How did he drown? Did he not know how to swim? Was he drunk? Did he hit is head in the dark or something? There is something missing from this story.
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Kate
I don’t know whether anyone has established any other facts yet. Maybe he jumped in to get the ball, found he was in the deep end and couldn’t swim? It’s not clear.
The Blue Bird Café burned down 40 years ago next month, killing 37 people, mostly young, and mostly anglo. A granite memorial is to be unveiled on August 31 at Phillips Square, near the site of the establishment torched that night.
Kristian has written about things that changed in Montreal as a result of the fire and posted some rather grim photos of the aftermath.
The Montreal transport plan, adopted in 2008 by the Tremblay administration, is flagging on its intentions with only three projects active out of the 21 that were outlined in the plan.
The rentrée seems likely to be mouvementée, and how.
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Ian
It ain’t over ’til it’s over.
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marco
“Of 638 members in their department, only 10 per cent voted in the general assembly.”
That’s a sad voter turnout but to the student union it’s a mandate so… game on. -
Kate
Well, only 33 percent of the city’s eligible voters voted in the election that gave Mayor Tremblay his current mandate, and I’ll bet only 10 percent of people under 25 bothered to vote in that election. It’s just the trend. Once again, if students want their will to be heard, they have to learn to vote – in any situation. Or they’ll find that decisions have been made for them.
Mathias Marchal has a list of subversive Montreal gift ideas and asks for more.
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Ephraim
A metro shaped like an ashtray, so smoke comes out the windows.
A six picture set of different pot holes. With a lovely seventh showing a street cave-in.
A bus stop 24 clock that flashes every ten minutes, but never sees a bus.
A beach umbrella with a price tag attached. (What were they? $58K each?)
Green paint, so you can paint your own “green park” like the Plateau.
A Bicycle green “walk your bicycle sign” that no one seem to understand.
A jaywalking ticket (rare).
A bicycle crossing on a red light ticket (rare).
A mouse trap, signed by all the members of Project Montreal.
Menus from all the defunct restaurants on St-Laurent, Park Avenue and Prince Arthur.
A keychain model of Pauline Marois’s mansion, for the key to your apartment.
A copy of Montreal’s budget, for heating homes in the winter. -
dcmontreal
A Bus that won’t melt when it rains…cuz when it rains STM buses seem to disappear
A “Driving in a city for Dummies” book – still in wrapping
A bicycle on the sidewalk ticket (really rare) -
Jack
@Ephraim living in Montreal seems like a terrible burden for you, why don’t you move?
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Ian
I dunno, I found Ephraim’s list pretty funny, myself. It’s a fine line between bitching & tongue-in-cheek communally self-deprecating humour I suppose.
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Ephraim
@Jack – I love Montreal. Think it could be run better, much better. Same thing with the education system. Could it be a better city? Absolutely. We don’t live in utopia. But nothing wrong with laughing at your failings either.
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ant6n
I would counter your walk-your-bycicle sign with a walk-your-car sign.
The upcoming world film festival has unveiled its program that includes 432 films from 80 countries.
Steph 00:12 on 2012/08/09 Permalink
I’ve been very impressed by him as a motivational spokesperson. Hopefully we’ll see more from him in the future, this province can use strong leaders.
paul 07:58 on 2012/08/09 Permalink
GND!! Coming soon to a union near you…
qatzelok 08:41 on 2012/08/09 Permalink
Steph, can you explain why this province needs strong leaders? I’ve heard many media pundits say something similar, but I’ve never seen this justified. Strong leaders to manipulate everyone else into doing something really violent and harsh? Is that what this means? Or do the banks prefer dictators to real democracy?
Marc R 12:22 on 2012/08/09 Permalink
Pretty sure a strong leader in this case refers to a leader with the courage of their convictions, and not one who changes their policy positions to suit the interests of their biggest donors
Bill Binns 12:25 on 2012/08/09 Permalink
@ Marc R – Ha! I think that type of politician is just a legend. Like unicorns or sasquatch.
Kate 13:11 on 2012/08/09 Permalink
GND has “it” but he may not be too sure yet how to focus it or what to do about the consequences yet. Also he was constantly railroaded into posing as a leader, rather than as one of several spokespeople of a large, unruly organization.
It’s possible he’s decided this brush with public life has been enough for a lifetime, but that would surprise me. GND radiates a sort of quiet steely determination that was more like Pierre Trudeau than anyone else I can think of in our time – the rare politician who is able to consult his inner judgment for guidance on the fly. I would be surprised if in five years’ time some journo stagiaire is given the job of “finding out whatever happened to Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois” as a slow-season filler.
qatzelok 16:21 on 2012/08/09 Permalink
@ Marc R: “Pretty sure a strong leader in this case refers to a leader with the courage of their convictions”
Yes, Stalin and Mussolini had this in spades. Rene Levesque, not so much. He depended on the advice of all the people around him. Dictators have strong convictions. I’m not sure if the world can handle any more of these.