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• 22:55 on 2012/08/27 Permalink | Reply  

  The PQ has a big promise to revive Montreal by appointing a minister and enforcing the use of French in a more draconian fashion here. I rather enjoyed listening to Jean-François Lisée on CBC radio this afternoon explaining, in his quite admirable English, why making Montreal more uniformly French would be a huge benefit to the city.

  Even Jean Charest promised on Monday to extend the reach of Bill 101, suggesting both that he’s desperately trying to appeal to “soft nationalists” and yet so confident he’s frightened the anglos into voting lockstep for the Liberals that even this won’t change their minds.

  I did a bit more earlier Monday on the campaign for OpenFile, summarizing the weekend’s campaign news and the chess moves of the day.

  david m, Marc, Kate, and 6 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Jack 06:36 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    When was Montreal a uniformly French speaking city? Because I have never found an historical epoch when Montreal was uniformly French speaking. The PQ’s campaign has been its worst in many election cycles at othering Montreal’s anglophone and allophone communities, yet when I bring it up with French origin friends they don’t see it.Radio Canada is superb at deconstructing some of the same political idiocy of the Harper Conservatives and Bush Republicans, yet in their own backyard silence.

  • Ian 07:33 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    While I recognize the need to preserve Québécois culture, I don’t understand why separatists insist on arguing about identity politics when talking about bring Quebec together as a nation. 3 of the 7 leaders of the Patriotes of 1837 were Anglos. We’re not a hostile force, and we do have an identity as Quebeckers historically, even within the context of sovereignty. Surely our political convictions are more important than what kind of hat or medallion our respective religions require, or what language we speak at home… One might almost think that the real point of all this political sabre-rattling isn’t really sovereignty but a much uglier form of nationalism that is all too familiar.

  • Kevin 07:41 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    @Ian
    One might almost think?

    I’d laugh if it didn’t hurt so much.

  • Tux 08:20 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    Yeah I’m really tired of hearing about the language issue. We speak both languages here. That’s the reality for Montreal. People of my generation know this. When we meet people our age that grew up here who aren’t bilingual we wonder what’s wrong with them. It’s just common sense – being bilingual opens many French-and-English speaking parts of the world to the Québecois traveller, it gives you many more job opportunities, and is the secret sauce for fully and completely enjoying the culture here. Our culture is so cool BECAUSE of the mix of people and language (I mean where on Earth else could Sugar Sammy have come from?) so when I hear politicians that aim to restrict how we speak and write I think “Could you get any more blind?” There is NOBODY good to vote for this election. Bloc Pot or Marxists/Leninists for me!

  • Marc 08:36 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    Isn’t a monoculture what a loud persistent minority of people are longing for? I’m sure you’ve seen those stickers plastered around town from the Mouvement Montréal Français that say… ” À Montréal, tout en français. Et en français seulement. “

  • walkerp 09:31 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    Well said everybody.

    I think a lot of this is the result of the political process and doesn’t reflect the strong feelings of most people. The Liberals attack Marois on sovereignty because they believe it weakens her and the PQ talk up french nationalism as an aggressive defense, their own internal politics and because they believe it appeals to a solid voting base. The media plays it up and the people get shrill.

  • Ephraim 10:25 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    Always reminds me of the Ministry of Education, telling the anglos we have to learn French when young so that we will be bilingual, but telling the francophones that if they learn English too early they will ruin their French.

    It’s all nonsense. Economically, speaking anything but both means you likely won’t earn as much as you could and frankly, that’s the most important part.

  • Kate 11:43 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    Ephraim, that’s what gets me about people from the Québécois elite who speak English fluently supporting the purging of English. They benefit from having more than one language, while arrogantly wanting to deny that advantage to others – but it’s not perceived that way.

    I always enjoyed Jacques Parizeau’s old-worldy “By Jove!” English, particularly. He’s like something out of Wodehouse.

  • Marc 12:10 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    I’ve always noticed that the most pur-et-dur separatists are those who speak the best English. Lisée comes to mind.

  • david m 20:26 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    actually, a lot of quebec is like something out of wodehouse. i just wish i could speak french the way daniel turp speaks french. i was glad to see amir show him the door (oh, was i glad), but it’s undeniable that he and girard and lisée and even martin lemay – basically, the central montreal, separatist intellectual, solidaire bait – are all incredibly refined individuals whose english is often impeccable. contrasting these with the relatively rube-like marois or the parizeau-like drainville and curzi (none of whom have good english) shocks into relief a clear clivage in the montreal vs. roq pq.

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• 08:53 on 2012/08/27 Permalink | Reply  

  News this morning from twitter and radio that protesters are at UQÀM disrupting the start of classes being held to make up for the shortened winter term.

  Kate, MB, ant6n, and 8 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Ephraim 14:55 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    Don’t have a problem with them striking…. do have a problem with preventing others who don’t want to strike from learning. Protest all you want, off campus.

  • Bill Binns 15:48 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    Agreed Ephraim but you will get nowhere with that argument around here. Let me see if I can remember how it goes…. Student actions to prevent people from going to school are legitimate because they voted on them. There seems to be a belief that any group of people can get together and vote on something and then enforce the results of that vote with physical action. Oh, also, the people trying to go to school are scabs. Their problems can be dismissed out of hand.

  • Kate 15:53 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    I am reporting these incidents because they are news. Ephraim, I know what you think about this. Bill Binns, don’t be a dick.

  • marco 17:38 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    Oh Kate… please!

  • ant6n 18:29 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    @Bill
    not sure what you’re talking about; I feel the anti-student voices have been a bit louder on this forum, even if readers are generally a bit more on the left.

  • Adam 18:48 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    I don’t know whose voices have been louder, but Bill is simply describing the position of the red square movement: we can disrupt people’s lives because we’ve decided that we have the right to do whatever we want to whomever we want for whatever reason we like.

    Go watch the videos of what happened on the website of The Gazette or La Presse. The loathsome cowards who think that they have a right to prevent other people from learning, graduating and earning a living don’t even have the courage to show their faces and have no problem blocking the media from documenting their behaviour.

    There are a lot of things in Bill 78 that go too far, but it would be nice to see the police actually enforce the provisions that prevent people from blocking access to universities. In the name of access to education, no less.

    How anyone can defend this thuggery and intimidation is beyond me.

  • Bill Binns 19:58 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    @ant6n – “the anti-student voices have been a bit louder on this forum” Are you serious?

    The discussion here (and a lot of the media coverage in town) regarding the student protests has reminded me of Fox New’s coverage of the Bush presidency. Nights when bonfires burned in the middle of St Denis, molatov cocktails were thrown at police and windows were smashed up and down Sherbrooke or St Catherine were described as “mostly peaceful”. The day of the metro smoke bombing, the most prevalent theory here was that it had been commited by “agents provocateurs” and then it was “fringe elements”. When the people caught were shown to be students heavily involved in the strike it was decided that it wasn’t a serious crime after all and they should be given a slap on the wrist and sent home.

    My comment above may have been delivered with some snark but everything there came from this forum. I remember several rather long threads where many people explained why students trying to go to school should be considered scabs for the first time anywhere on the planet. Several other threads where the justification for forcibly closing the schools was traced back to “but they voted!” again and again.

    This is all fine. There is no shortage of places online to speak to the “throw them all in jail” crowd but lets not pretend the anti-strike crowd had dominated the discourse here.

  • Alex L 20:51 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    Bah. Anyway, red square wearers are violent terrorists, it’s a fact (even that old lady I saw at the market). The Gazette and La Presse said it.

  • Kate 23:04 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    Bill Binns, Adam, please calm down. I am simply reporting a news story here. You’re both trying to escalate this thread, and presumably debate on this blog, into hysteria. Do not try to bait me or anyone else. (I said “don’t be a dick” earlier and meant it. This is what I meant by it.)

    Language like “violence” and “loathsome” and “thuggery” is not helpful – it isn’t going to convince me or anyone else to espouse your position. I am not going to allow your smokescreen of emotional rhetoric to take over this topic.

  • marco 00:13 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    @Kate
    You can cut the BS about “simply reporting a news story”.
    You freely offer your opinions and then call somone a dick when they don’t agree with you.

  • Kate 00:45 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    Don’t be a dick, marco.

  • Ian 05:58 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    And so it begins again, teh right-wingers painting a portrait of a society in collapse. As i recall a few years ago people were complaining that the kids today had just lost the spirit of radicalism of the 60s… well, it’s back, and it’s not over until it’s over. Worth noting, while there were people in the streets over months with up to 10s of thousands at a time, there were relatively few arrests, even fewer charges laid, and in the end, most of them weren’t even students. I recall one demo of 5000 people with, if I remember correctly, only 6 charges laid, only 2 of them were students. None against the cops who were beating up the kids, but hey, par for the course. The government seems to think students won’t vote and continues its merry plan to weaken access to education and illegalize legitimate protest. Why anyone isn’t on the side of the students is beyond me… but in any case, it ain’t over ’til it’s over, whether westmount and the west island like it or not.

  • Bill Binns 06:36 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    @Kate – I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. Your post was about masked students taking over parts of UQAM (again). “escalating the debate on this blog into hysteria? Where did I do that? I can only assume that “don’t be a dick” means “if you don’t have anything nice to say about the student protesters, than just shut up”.

  • Alex L 07:19 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    I agree with Kate on that one. If I were to make a long emotional harangue talking about people against the red square movement and saying they were violent loathsome cowards and thugs intimidating people, you’d probably react fiercely. That’s exactly the kind of commentary that would normaly be moderated to prevent people from changing this blog into a place of personal attacks rather than discussion. Keep it cool.

  • ant6n 07:28 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    @Bill
    That sarcasm (and strawman) there about how some readers here interpret the strike, that’s trying to pick a fight with people here; sounds like you want to discredit people who you don’t agree with. And I did say your voices are louder, not that you dominate the discourse; although in this thread both is true.

  • dwgs 09:55 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    Am I the only one around here who is of a mixed mind on this topic? What’s a sociall progressive, fiscally conservative guy to do?

  • Ephraim 10:29 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    It’s now the minority that is striking, not the majority. And at some of the schools, the votes are going through without even quorums.

  • Josh 15:11 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    I don’t understand how it’s controversial to refer to the actions of the current strikers as “intimidation”. Are they not, factually speaking, trying to intimidate students away from school? “Thug” is a loaded word, so I understand the reaction to that, but what the strikers are up to right now is the very definition of intimidation!

  • Adam 17:45 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    I am just calling a spade a spade, and I didn’t mention names. I’m talking about the people who are engaging in this kind of behaviour. I find the people who are disrupting the classes vile beyond belief. They are self-appointed, unaccountable and violent. They don’t give a damn about the people whose lives they are disrupting. They are acting in the name of some abstraction – The People, The Students – but actual people and actual students are just irritating pests to be bullied into submission. The words I used have meanings and I chose them deliberately. There’s nothing wrong with passion as long as it doesn’t interfere with reason.

    And Ian, there is nothing “right wing” about being against intimidation and violence. I don’t have a right-wring bone in my body. I just believe in the rights of people to live their lives in peace and I’m repulsed by those who grant themselves the power to impose their will on others through whatever means necessary and whatever the cost to their victims. Their mentality makes me ill. The kinds of people who cheerfully volunteered for the blackshirts weren’t some peculiar species that’s been stamped out. They exist here, too – they just don’t have the same opportunities for destruction that they did in other contexts. But they’ll jump on any opportunity they can get to do what they love most. And no one is claiming that society is collapsing. Is that the bar that needs to be cleared before someone expresses concern?

    “We voted against this boycott, we paid our tuition, but each time there is a new obstacle put in our place, a new vote, another blockage,” he said. “Some of the protesters, say ‘Who cares, we’re giving up this semester.’ I saved five years for this. I’ll lose six months. This is my life.”

    Doesn’t anyone care about him and those like him?

    http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Efficacy+Bill+depends+institutions/7157592/story.html

  • Ian 19:11 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    Did you seriously just compare the student movement to Mussolini’s blackshirts? Pardon me while I point and laugh. You need to calm down “by whatever means necessary” if you want to be taken seriously.

  • ant6n 21:06 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    As I said, loud voices.

  • MB 03:45 on 2012/08/29 Permalink

    Kate’s only re-asserted that she posted a news story (news it is) and not to be a dick. Am I missing some secret agenda between the lines? Or some place in this thread where she is “freely offering opinions on the story”? (Or why she should even be expected not to?) What rational person doesn’t look for food for thought, but why everyone being a dick about it I dunno. I’d hate to see comments closed and people banned for incivility, when so many interesting insights and opinions have been posted over time. Relax plz!

  • Kate 07:50 on 2012/08/29 Permalink

    Thank you, MB.

• 08:12 on 2012/08/27 Permalink | Reply  

  The city is watching construction contract costs fall between 20% to 33% at a time when they were expected to rise slightly with inflation. Is it sharper competition, or is it that the media have shone a bright light on previous dodgy bidding procedures?

  jeather, ant6n, Kate, and 7 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Taylor C. Noakes 08:30 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    I wonder if this means all those condo projects are actually going to be completed?

    After just coming back from Vancouver, I think we’ve fallen way behind in terms of urban high-rise luxury properties. More property owners in the urban core is beneficial to everyone, and our situation is ideal because the focus is exclusively on redeveloping parking lots.

    Even better – if construction costs are falling as a result of higher media scrutiny, then some of these projects will be able to market themselves as ‘Mafia Free’. They write that on packages of pasta in Sicily.

  • Kate 08:48 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    This is just public contract costs, TCN – contracts the city is signing, not private development costs. But there are a lot of new downtown high-rise condo projects going up now or soon that will remake our cityscape and, I suspect, eventually make Mount Royal invisible from the waterfront.

  • Marc 09:10 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    I thought the building height restrictions forbade blocking the mountain sight from the river?

  • Kate 09:23 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    In theory there’s a rule that no building can be taller than Mount Royal but that’s not quite the same issue as not blocking the view, as this item clarifies – buildings further up the hill would have to be shorter, for example, to preserve the view. I don’t know how clearly all of this is enshrined in zoning laws or if it’s just a general guideline.

  • Kevin 11:31 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    Ask and ye shall receive

  • Taylor C. Noakes 11:42 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    Kate –

    Thanks for the clarification. At least this means city construction costs associated with the new private developments will be reasonable, unless the city, in its infinite wisdom, plan to transfer lighting, paving, connecting and beautification to the private sector as well.

    Regarding sight-lines, I noticed that several of the major residential projects will be built in a straight line along de la Montagne (north to south I think it goes Icone (twin towers), Rocabella (twin towers), l’Avenue (single tower on a high base) and Tour des Habs (ditto). So it won’t obscure the view that badly, and of course the view from the street would remain the same, albeit with taller ‘frame’. The only views that will be obstructed, come to think of it, will be those of the lower-floor condo units.

    Oh well.

    If there’s a market, who am I to complain?

    That said, it would be nice if these weren’t exclusively designed for single & double occupancy, a few family-sized units would make for an excellent mix, though that would require a lot more input from the city in terms of planning and services.

  • Kate 14:45 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    The city has occasionally made noise about how it’s too bad that people feel they need to move to the burbs before having kids, but if they want to keep those people, or some of them, they’ll have to do exactly that – make sure there’s room for families, that places like Griffintown don’t get built up without daycares and schools and play parks.

  • Bill Binns 15:40 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    I’m not sure anything can be done to convince large numbers of people with kids to stay in the city. The vast majority of parents believe that kids require at least 500 sq ft of private grass to thrive. The housing that families are looking for isn’t just about “X number of bedrooms” it’s about having enough total square footage so that you may be able to hear yourself think from time to time. No three or four bedroom apartment in a high rise downtown can compete with a two story detached home in the burbs on this point.

  • C_Erb 17:44 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    People are starting to complain about their views.

  • Taylor C. Noakes 21:33 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    @Bill

    I don’t disagree with you in principle, but consider how much of what we currently consider as urban was not that long ago semi-suburban. Proximity, rather than building type or style, define the layers of suburbia.

    I would argue there are many, many cities and parts of our own city wherein a nuclear family with children could be very happy living in the urban core if the appropriate services and green space were available. Perhaps not in a Modernist high-rise however.

    It seems to me that the ideal urban residential housing type is what we value highly anyways – Victorian row-houses, duplexes and triplexes. What defines the Plateau, the Mile End, Saint-Henri and NDG could easily be modernized and transfered back into the urban core. If we want to secure families for the city, perhaps mixing in such styles with towers is the happy medium we’re looking for.

    It would certainly make Griffintown more marketable if the building styles seemed more authentic and less imported.

    And of course, more parks and playgrounds and green spaces in the urban core is good for everyone, not families.

    But schools, libraries, cultural and community centres, daycares and a host of other family-oriented services will be required to compel families to purchase and own property in the city.

  • Kate 23:47 on 2012/08/27 Permalink

    Kevin, thanks for the facts on this. It’s a topic that comes up here periodically.

    C_Erb, I linked that views thing when it was first posted. It’s an inevitability with the proliferation of new condo towers.

    TCN, you’re right about the definition of suburbs changing, but Montreal has a factor most cities don’t, which is that as an island there will always be a psychological barrier defining city vs. suburb. But I’m sure 100 years ago that people who moved up to Mile End and past the tracks into Little Italy felt they were moving to a kind of suburb, and the development of Rosemont and Villeray along tram lines must’ve been felt to be a kind of sprawl too, and yet now these are all felt to be basic parts of the central city.

    Not sure where I’m going with this, mostly acknowledging your point that the psychological urban/suburban line changes over time.

  • dwgs 10:00 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    We’re raising two kids in NDG and it’s a great place to do it. Schools, libraries, green space, sports organizations, and my house is less than 5km to downtown. My plateau friends still refer to our place (jokingly I think) as the ‘burbs.

  • walkerp 10:04 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    I’m not so sure about this island boundary concept, Kate, because there is still a pretty strong distinction between all the communities that surround the mountain and the places far to the east and west, especially the west. I consider “The West Island” to be the suburbs, for sure. Everybody has to drive there, coming into the city for their kids is a big deal, they all have yards, etc.

  • Kate 11:46 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    True, walkerp. Where’s the boundary, though? Is Verdun a suburb? Lasalle? Lachine? Dorval? I’m not even sure. Maybe everything past the airport is a suburb?

    Going the other way – what about Saint-Léonard? Anjou?

  • walkerp 12:37 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    If you have to have a car to get there comfortably, then it’s the suburbs.

  • ant6n 13:07 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    I’d say suburban is defined by the urban form and density. And area that consists only of detached and semi-detached buildings is suburban (at least in this century). Skyscrapers in the park may also be suburban.
    Some call residential skyscrapers in downtown ‘vertical suburbs’, and I can’t completely disagree. Unlike some previous posters, I do think they can be problematic, and not just a win for everybody.

  • Kate 14:19 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    Montreal has kind of an interesting texture in some areas, like the old main street areas in places like Vieux-Longueuil, Saint-Lambert, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Pointe-Claire Village – places that were towns in their own right before falling into the inevitable gravity of the metropolis.

  • ant6n 14:39 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    Strong poly-central urban areas is something you can find in some European cities as well, especially where urban rail lines helped preserve secondary centers. I’d argue that such an urban structure has advantages over the North American ultra high density+sprawl structures (e.g. everybody gets to live close to a center, more shorter distributed trips etc.).

  • jeather 18:46 on 2012/08/28 Permalink

    Knowing people who grew up in the West Island, a lot of people who were teens there will do anything to avoid making their children grow up living there, especially once they have teenagers themselves. I wonder if there is some sort of cyclical thing.

• 08:01 on 2012/08/27 Permalink | Reply  

  Did a news sweep this morning on OpenFile with a bit more attention to the election campaign than I’ve been doing here.