Preview of the 20th annual Nuits d'Afrique festival, which runs mid-July.
posted at 10:23

 
Couche-Tard is being criticized for a commercial promoting their new liposuction slush. I'd only seen the poster at my local C-T, showing a big pile of fat, and thought the idea kind of gross, but this campaign is clearly not pitched at me. C-T does seem to know how to appeal to the grossout sensibilities of the preadolescent set, and making fun of liposuction isn't up there with the candy packaging withdrawn earlier this year after charges of racism.
posted at 10:13

 
More details on the budgetary cutbacks Montreal has to introduce to meet its budget next year without increasing taxes. And yet it still makes no sense to me that a city that's boomed as much as Montreal has done for the last ten years is pulling out its empty pockets to show how broke it is.
posted at 10:00

 
Inevitably many of today's stories are about last night's coming into effect of a new law banning smoking in bars, workplaces, and other common indoor areas. Will Montrealers take to cigars or shisha, still legal in a few establishments?

I remember jobs in which I had to sit near people who were smoking constantly, and nights out which had to end with showering off the stink of innumerable cigarettes. Yes, I know the arguments about freedom and rights and bla bla bla, but my gut sympathies simply won't see the argument that it's okay for people to impose the consequences of their crappy habits on others.

One thing, though: I remember working in one shop which became non-smoking, and the effect was that smokers spent half their time outdoors "on break" while the nonsmokers got the work done. Nonsmokers should remember to take mental health breaks too.
posted at 09:49

 
The city's being forced to cut back on services in order to balance a tight budget.
posted at 18:30

 
Various cultural big shots are quoted here as bewailing Montreal's lack of cultural organization and unity. But what they dislike is that Montreal has been resisting taking top-down cultural marching orders from just such organizers: we didn't want the Peel basin turned into a mini-Vegas, and we didn't get it, and last summer's imposed new film festival was a flop. Meantime, there are dozens of small film fests, art events, music festivals, ethnic fairs, you name it, going on all the time – a simmering cultural world not at the behest of these top culture czars.
posted at 10:59

 
More on how the Norway maple is invading not only our mountain, but our money and stamps as well.

Are people still "introducing" alien species willy-nilly? Most of the familiar natural features in the city are not native here: the sparrow, the pigeon, the Lombardy poplar, the Norway maple, even dirt-common weeds like the plantain and the burdock. Jacques Cartier would've seen a very different natural landscape.
posted at 10:48

 
The suburbs are losing patience with the "agglo" after Mayor Tremblay got the upper hand. Mostly noting this because I like the expression "agglo" – but frankly, those suburban mayors have their nerve. Their towns would not exist if not for the city, but they like to forget that when the bills come in.
posted at 10:31

 
Two window washers on the IBM building were lucky to escape with injuries yesterday after their platform gave way. Firefighters brought them down to safety.

Firefighters have also been practising up to do water rescue, something which hadn't been well organized in Montreal till now.
posted at 10:04

 
McGill hires American hotshot to be dean of medicine.
posted at 10:38

 
A guide to the upcoming Mutek festival; a more general guide to the summer's concerts.
posted at 10:27

 
Police are increasing their efforts to catch the guy doing home invasions in the West Island, although this last one suggests his motive isn't so much theft as control and fear.
posted at 09:59

 
The fire department must think of everything, so it's pondering how to handle the effects of a serious earthquake in Montreal. The last serious quake here was in 1732, but we're on a fault line so it's always a possibility.
posted at 09:44

 
The 20th annual museums day is called a big success; the gorgeous weather can't have hurt.
posted at 22:49

 
Hmm, copper's being stolen from church roofs in Quebec. Of a piece with the sewer lid thefts and the stolen markers in Old Montreal?
posted at 13:31

 
The Féria du vélo opens today with the Défi métropolitain, a fairly serious circuit outside town, and culminating in next weekend's Tour de l'île.
posted at 11:06

 
You can only read the first page of this article on Montreal as a UNESCO City of Design unless you've bought access to the Globe and Mail, but it has some interesting bits nonetheless. What amuses me is how the writer airily dismisses the UNESCO thing, but you can be sure if it had been accorded to Toronto it would be taken very seriously and we'd never hear the end of it.
posted at 10:28

 
Plateau residents held a protest asking for help in keeping motorists down to posted speeds. I wish them good luck, but I don't think there's the political will (yet) to hold back the primacy of the car.

One thing I'll mention, though: drivers in Villeray are amazingly calmer and more polite and considerate than in the Plateau. It surprised me too, as I was expecting to encounter drivers revved up and crazy from driving on the Met, but it's not so. Now: why is this, and can the effect be duplicated elsewhere in town?
posted at 10:13

 
A report on the Catholics' cuss word campaign and its success.
posted at 20:01

 
The complicated history and politicking behind Montreal's flirtation with the NASCAR scene.
posted at 10:52

 
I don't usually cover crime stories, but the current wave of home invasions could be a troubling trend.

More details and ponderings here and here.
posted at 10:23

 
Someone is making off with sewer lids all over the Sud-Ouest, and the resulting gaping holes can be dangerous. (Could this be related to the historic marker thefts in Old Montreal?)
posted at 09:48

 
Brazilian soccer star Romario and his team, FC Miami, are to face the Impact on Sunday, which is also Museums Day in town.
posted at 00:01

 
The first World Outgames will open with a splash with performances by various stars as well as the Cirque du Soleil, and the organizers expect to turn a profit as well.
posted at 23:32

 
Some bar owners are refusing to impose the new smoking law themselves when it comes into force next week. Some are even looking into illegal means of creating a kind of blind pig for smokers.
posted at 22:40

 
Neighbours of Molson stadium cringe from the noise and damage of a possibly enlarged stadium.
posted at 22:39

 
The raccoons of Mount Royal are getting their shots, against rabies and canine distemper, which they can apparently get. Anyone who's been up to the eastern lookout in recent years has probably seen these guys, who come out fearlessly looking for scraps.
posted at 17:42

 
The smoking law threatens the closure of charitable bingo halls all across Quebec.

Meantime, cigarette machines are being junked by bars, even though a Montreal man has plans to recycle them into art vending machines.
posted at 10:03

 
The homeless are still being fruitlessly and pointlessly ticketed and jailed, but at least some folks are trying to work out alternatives.
posted at 09:55

 
Quebec forks over a few cool million to help the city preserve Mount Royal, but nothing's said about sports stadia.
posted at 22:39

 
The city auditor also criticizes Montreal's environmental plans in his report: we don't recycle nearly enough, and graffiti is out of control in some boroughs.
posted at 22:32

 
The Gazette fired a longtime columnist recently for lifting pieces of text from other writers without credit. Seems a bit harsh for someone writing about word origins, when they made no such example of a similar lapse by another writer last year.
posted at 18:17

 
Apropos the issue of Wal-Mart wanting a piece of St-Michel's quarry, here's an American story about a town using eminent domain to keep the vast retailer from setting up shop. (Via Metafilter.) And Montréal urbain links to this piece on the energy hunger of urban sprawl.
posted at 18:01

 
Today's the public consultation on the plan to hack down trees and lay more concrete to enlarge Molson Stadium for the Alouettes, who are pulling a fairly stock "fix this or we'll go away" blackmail on the city.
posted at 09:50

 
Folks living in the Plateau will be able to give their two cents on budget priorities in a scheme new to the Montreal area.
posted at 09:45

 
Observations on the many confusing names of the May 24 holiday in Quebec.
posted at 09:42

 
Apparently Montreal neglects the 1400 buildings it owns and doesn't keep good track of them.
posted at 09:40

 
The Olympic stadium remains a hot potato: it belongs to all Quebecers, says a member of the city's executive committee.
posted at 12:30

 
City Hall is pondering remerging Ville-Marie with downtown and managing it directly. I'd wondered when the decentralization to boroughs with "mayors" would begin to reverse...
posted at 10:32

 
The city's criticized for its taste in concrete parks, but that's nothing new – look at Viger Square. Concrete's better than turf – it wears better!
posted at 10:23

 
A new report from the Montreal public health agency says that the growing use of cars is killing us and that the city should try to cut back car usage by half by 2020.
posted at 10:06

 
This piece describes how cigar bars are exempt from the May 31 smoking law. I've heard that shisha bars are also exempt, but it isn't mentioned here.
posted at 09:59

 
I'm a fan of the Grande Bibliothèque, and often consult its Iris catalogue. But here's a weird thing: that link goes 404 at night. I'm not sure what their closing time is, but this is the only internet resource I've ever encountered that closes at night, and they don't even put up a page saying so. It just disappears off the web, plain old 404 Not Found.

If there's some arcane update that has to be done nightly, they could at least put up a page explaining this and saying when the service isn't available. But it's the nature of web resources to be open 24/7 and it should ideally be available all the time.
posted at 20:57

 
The botanical garden holds a gardening weekend festival next week. The theme of "drought-tolerant plants" must have been picked long before this recent bout of wet weather. (The entrance fee of $12.75 seems a mite steep for what's basically a plant sale.)
posted at 12:01

 
A speakers' corner in Parc Lafontaine was launched in the rain yesterday, with the aim of giving a platform to those who feel they've received any sort of unjust treatment.
posted at 11:56

 
More than 15,000 motorcyclists, some from quite remote regions of Quebec, held a demo yesterday downtown against insurance rate hikes. Good photo here from Eric Baillargeon.
posted at 11:43

 
Yet more marvelling at Quebec's impending smoking law, although this article points out that smoking in Quebec has been in decline now for awhile.
posted at 11:39

 
The interminable rain has changed many folks' plans for the long weekend (not least the people who've been dodging floods in the Eastern Townships, and farmers fearing for their crops). The Environment Canada weather page only shows the sun returning Thursday.
posted at 11:16

 
Review of My Fair Lady, being staged in translation at the Rideau Vert; review of the Opéra de Montréal production of Aïda; notes on the Montreal Chamber Music Festival, opening in June, and other high-culture stuff; apparently it's news that Prince Charles likes Leonard Cohen.
posted at 11:02

 
Motorcyclists are planning a big protest Sunday downtown.
posted at 15:33

 
Breakdown in union negotiations interferes with the local foreign-film production biz.
posted at 13:03

 
More marvelling at the May 31 smoking law event horizon; the Journal de Montréal has tested the health of several barmen working in smoky bars, with plans to test them again after a period of smokelessness: one tavern waiter turned out to be inhaling the equivalent of 20 cigarettes a day although he never smoked in his life.

Furthermore: investigations of the progress of smoking laws in New York, where the rules are still bent in a few places, and Toronto, where smoking has become deeply unfashionable.
posted at 12:24

 
The Château Ramezay has a show on the history of formal French gardens and the Centre d'histoire de Montréal is doing an exhibit on the parks of Montreal which, added to the Japan show at the Pointe-à-Callière museum makes for quite a cultural day in Old Montreal.
posted at 12:15

 
What with the city mergers, demergers and other organizational squabbles, fire response times in Montreal are not so good these days, so a reorganization and upgrades as well as new hiring are being considered by the powers that be.
posted at 12:28

 
The FrancoFolies, which used to run later in the summer, are opening on June 8 this year; thoughts on unavailable men in Montreal; the Plateau takes up arms against graffiti – again; Mont-Royal Avenue Verte is still plugging away at changing the avenue, only this time it's using the new magical word, tramway.
posted at 21:07

 
More on Alstom's anger at Quebec over the Bombardier metro deal: it's pondering raking the issue over the coals at various international trade bodies, including the WTO.
posted at 10:20

 
The rain is being blamed on two stationary weather systems and it isn't going to change before Sunday, if then.
posted at 10:13

 
The city turns its beady eye on Habitations Jeanne-Mance, the closest Montreal has to "the projects" that haunt some American cities, but not (for anyone who's seen anything of the world) describably a ghetto. The area is worth a potential fortune but has been vowed to social housing, although these articles hint heavily that the vow could be bent or broken.
posted at 10:11

 
UNESCO dubs Montreal a city of design although the benefits are uncertain. Maybe the mayor should buy me a latte.
posted at 10:06

 
As might have been foreseen, Alstom is angry about Bombardier being given the billion-dollar metro car contract without open tender, and may fight it in international court.
posted at 10:21

 
Tobacco inspectors will work bars incognito to check whether any establishment is allowing smoking after May 31.
posted at 10:17

 
A coalition of community groups is fighting the arrival of Wal-Mart, demanding that the city reopen the Saint-Michel issue.

Big-box malls have been the death of local commercial areas all over North America. It would be really stupid if greed got the better of the Tremblay administration and led them to ignore this and gut St-Michel to create another one. Anyone with a car can easily go to Decarie Square or the Marché du Nord or some other mall, but without a car – and a lot of Montrealers do without one – we need lively neighbourhood commercial strips too, to keep the fabric of the city vibrant.
posted at 10:14

 
The city planted Norway maples all over because they're hardy and pollution-resistant, and now they're wresting Mount Royal from the native sugar maple. Problem? Norway maples don't turn red in autumn. They turn yellow, and if they continue to invade, the spectacular colours of the season will gradually fade away.
posted at 09:59

 
A labour relations prof says Montreal blue-collar workers are victims of chronic psychological harassment, and depression and suicidal thoughts are common with them. It would be easy here to make a wisecrack about how maybe this is why they have a pothole-fixing block, so I won't, because the professor may well be right.
posted at 09:54

 
Item here on the lineup for Mutek 2006, which starts on May 31.
posted at 13:49

 
The Pointe-à-Callière museum is launching its summer exhibit, a collection of rare Japanese antiquities.
posted at 13:44

 
Maybe you have to be a font geek to appreciate this: a gallery of signs around Montreal that use the font Mistral. The same people went further and added another gallery of signs using other fonts by the same designer.

Another photo site I think I've linked before, but which has since been added to and improved, is this site about Saint-Henri with rollover then-and-now effects.

A site mostly dedicated to genealogy has a page on 19th-century Montreal photographer Alexander Henderson with some nice early views of the city, and stereo views by J.G. Parks and Oliver Buell.

The city's official site has some interesting vintage photos of the Plateau, and added modern shots to some of them for comparison.

There are lots more Montreal photo sites, but these are ones I've found recently, mostly while looking for other things.

A slow news day, you say?
posted at 10:18

 
City taxes are likely to rise in 2007 to meet expenses; the STM is also looking at a growing deficit. With Montreal's obvious boom over the last decade it seems bizarre that money's still so tight at this level of government.
posted at 12:22

 
Loto-Quebec, deprived of its mega-plans for a new Montreal casino, is now going ahead with another scheme to build salons de jeu in several old racetracks and at Mont Tremblant. A salon de jeu isn't exactly James Bond at Monte Carlo stuff. It's a large bank of video lottery terminals.
posted at 12:00

 
A terrible waiter shortage is imminent. Students seem not to be so hard up as they've been in the past.

(My apologies to anyone who clicked on a couple of links I used earlier today and found themselves stymied at a La Presse Affaires login. The links now go to Radio-Canada summaries of the same news.)
posted at 11:53

 
Montreal is getting hotter, especially in areas with dense concentration of buildings and lots of asphalt, says the director of UQÀM's geography dept. And suburbs are getting hotter too.
posted at 11:20

 
La Ronde now has the highest roller coaster in Canada, the Goliath; the park's new policy of using children's height (instead of age) as the cutoff point for adult pricing is making people angry.
posted at 10:54

 
Worth reading a passage toward the end of this article for a quick look at what the World Cup is going to bring next month – here's a taste:

In Montreal, the aim will be to get beyond ethnic rivalries. A festival of films about soccer will end in a public viewing of the final World Cup match on July 9 on giant screens at Jean Drapeau Park. The film festival will begin June 5 and include screenings of movies and documentaries from 20 countries at the Montreal Cinémathèque québécoise and the Goethe Institut.

posted at 10:40

 
The city may have to cut back to make up a $400-million deficit foreseen in its 2007 budget unless Quebec accords it some special considerations as a metropolis.
posted at 10:27

 
The Catholics are doing their yearly donation drive with a clever billboard campaign showing proper definitions of hostie, tabernacle and ciboire.
posted at 10:19

 
A bit more on Museums Day May 28; the seventh annual Anarchist Book Fair is next Saturday; launches and shows in the Montreal Buzz column; Parc Lafontaine is to welcome a kind of speakers' corner next Sunday, with the accent on injustice; preview of theatre performances and festivals from events next week well into next year.
posted at 12:22

 
The city implores you to dispose of your gum tidily. If I were mayor I'd make gum popping a capital offence too, but there you go.
posted at 11:59

 
The upcoming resto-bar smoking ban has inspired the Gazette to get very wordy indeed about the sentimental value of smoking and the difficulty of quitting; Josh Freed, in the Toronto Star, employs his usual exaggerations for effect to emphasize the difficulty of getting Montrealers to comply. But I've been saying it for a year: if New York City can do it, so can we.
posted at 11:52

 
The mayor has called for hearings into plans to turn the Francon quarry into a big-box mall, which people in Saint-Michel fear as a death knell to their commercial streets.
posted at 11:41

 
Hundreds of long-term care beds are to close in Montreal, turning responsibility for this kind of care onto families and other health care providers.
posted at 11:32

 
The new metro cars being promised by Bombardier (to replace the MR-63s that date back to the the original system) will run faster and be more spacious inside, and may not even be blue, but have a silvery metallic finish. The renovation of the MR-73 cars, promised for last winter, is taking longer than expected. (More details on the metro's cars on a fan site.)

And a cartoon commentary on recent news that the STM may sell off metro station naming rights.
posted at 14:06

 
Montreal doesn't want to take over responsibility for the Olympic Stadium as the provincial government had intended, once the initial bill is paid up, which should happen this summer. But the ongoing cost of maintaining and operating the installations is also huge.
posted at 13:35

 
It's with a certain sense of déjà voodoo that we hear that the reconstruction of the Park-Pine interchange will cost more and take longer than originally estimated.
posted at 13:23

 
We're coming up to the 20th annual Museums Day fest; a new sketch comedy fest takes place next weekend; Montreal will host the Grey Cup game in 2008 at the Big O.
posted at 13:20

 
Thanks to my readers, this blog has been named best blog in Montreal in the Mirror's yearly poll.
posted at 17:43

 
A court is to rule on the surprisingly complicated issue when, and whether, the borough has the right to ban cars from the Jean-Talon market.
posted at 10:30

 
The STM is considering selling naming rights to metro stations in order to raise money. More TV screens showing commercials are also planned.
posted at 10:21

 
Statistics Canada wants a true picture of multicultural Montreal from the May 16 census, and is enlisting the help of the various cultural communities to do it.
posted at 10:00

 
Mario Morin, the billboard protester, came down this morning at 4 a.m., after having tied up traffic on the bridge for an entire day as police tried to reason with him.
posted at 09:57

 
A piece about grubs that are eating lawns actually gets radical enough to suggest that the perfectly manicured monoculture lawn is a thing of the past.
posted at 17:41

 
With the anti-smoking laws looming on May 31, the city's going to tighten up littering laws to avoid drifts of cigarette butts taking over the city.

Meanwhile, the Gazette series continues focusing on the poor old smokers and their hard times.
posted at 17:29

 
Notes on eating local produce as it comes into season.
posted at 17:22

 
Traffic has been tied up for 14 hours as the billboard percher stays in place on the Longueuil side of the Jacques-Cartier bridge; a group that's been behind similar stunts is disavowing the perpetrator of this incident.
posted at 17:20

 
Quebec is going to Bombardier for the billion-dollar contract to make new cars for Montreal's metro system; that the decision was made without tenders is likely to remain a bone of contention for a long time.
posted at 17:16

 
Glimpse of the multicultural grade school in Parc Extension where the CSDM launched its multiculturalism program yesterday.

It won't always be easy. A concurrent story about Muslim girls being accorded separate swimming tests at a South Shore school is an example of difficulties that can arise.
posted at 09:53

 
A man has scaled a billboard on the Longueuil side of the Jacques-Cartier bridge, slowing or stopping traffic, and posting a picture of his daughter whom he claims he is not allowed to see.

The men's group behind these actions (no free publicity here) says it seeks to "expose the injustice that the family-law industry has become in this country with a series of high-profile stunts and actions." Way to demonstrate your maturity and stability, guys.
posted at 09:50

 
The hoax kidnapping on the weekend was apparently an attempt to cover up an escape from a group home, and the girls will be charged with mischief; summer always brings more runaways to the city streets.
posted at 17:33

 
Pittsburgh paper looks to Montreal as a jaywalking capital (and namechecks our Chris DeWolf too).
posted at 17:32

 
Future of St-Michel may depend on what's done with the old Francon quarry: mixed community development, vs. another big-box Wal-Mart-based mall as at Decarie Square or Marché du Nord.
posted at 17:30

 
The first World Outgames is looking like a go.
posted at 10:53

 
La Presse is sponsoring Pour un Montréal qui marche!, a movement or initiative to make this city more welcoming to pedestrians and thus cut down on automobile traffic. Although I like the idea, I don't think any kind of persuasion will reduce car usage.
posted at 15:32

 
Odd to see that the 2006 fireworks festival has no participation at all from Asia.
posted at 12:06

 
Yesterday's tale of a kidnapped teenager in Pointe-aux-Trembles turns out to have been a total fabrication.
posted at 10:56

 
The STM maintenance workers' union says city buses are in poor shape, which may be true, but the point seems to be that maintenance has only declined since private management was brought in. In short, the kind of story in which the truth is probably distorted in different ways by union and management flimflam.
posted at 10:37

 
The issue of the discipline of the eating style of a seven-year-old Filipino boy attending a West Island school, and of words used in discussing him with his mother, has become an international scandal. The crime? He uses a fork and spoon, not a fork and knife.
posted at 10:34

 
The Vaugeois Report tells us what was already obvious about the New Montreal FilmFest: it was an ill-conceived, unregulated mess. (But they don't say outright it was all done in an attempt to create a festival with neither Serge Losique nor Claude Chamberlan involved, but it seems clear that was exactly what they were trying to do.)
posted at 10:20

 
Back in summer 2004 I took a series of archive photo reshoots and posted them here in the blog. All twenty are now gathered into a Flickr set.
posted at 15:15

 
Bob Gainey will spend the summer sorting out the Canadiens' player needs for next season; an uneven piece about views on the team's ethnic makeup; Saku Koivu's medical history seems to be making him stoical about his eye injury.
posted at 12:18

 
Toronto Star writer gives his Montreal restaurant list – no surprises.
posted at 12:09

 
Nobody is in a hurry to replace Pierre Bourque at the helm of Vision Montréal.
posted at 11:56

 
With only 25 days till smoking is banned in bars and restos, the difficulty of stopping smoking is described in detail.

My father smoked from age 11 (he said) till a couple of years before his death. He stopped because he was hospitalized for something only moderately serious, but he was connected to various devices so he couldn't get up and go out for a smoke. Between this, and being slightly out of it on medication, he was most surprised to come out of the hospital detoxed from smoking, almost effortlessly, after all those years. Maybe we could offer serious smokers a similar service: we'll valium you up, tie you to a bed, and two weeks later there you'll be – a nonsmoker.
posted at 11:54

 
More details on the lineup for this year's jazz festival.
posted at 10:36

 
Nicely done obit for Mercedes Palomino of the Théâtre Rideau Vert, who died last month
posted at 10:29

 
The Grand Prix will be run here till at least 2011.
posted at 10:11

 
The STM has begun to install the network of 1200 cameras that's meant to keep an eye on metro users.
posted at 10:02

 
Vision Montreal, now bereft of Pierre Bourque, has two councillors acting as temporary party chief and leader of the opposition, but its future is uncertain. The parties of Jean Drapeau and Jean Doré both crumbled after their departure from politics.
posted at 09:57

 
A tabular comparison of wait times at various major Montreal emergency wards shows nobody up in a very good light, and the city has the worst emergency waits in Quebec.
posted at 10:14

 
Pierre Bourque is said to be leaving politics, an announcement expected today.
posted at 09:55

 
All and any plans to build or demolish around Mount Royal will have to go through a public consultation process, and trees will be more protected, if this new system is effective; useful list of summer events on Mount Royal and the Old Port.
posted at 09:52

 
The Festival des films du monde will be celebrating its 30th anniversary this summer; the Jazz Festival will celebrate New Orleans; the Museum of Fine Arts will be looking at 20th-century Italian design; Just for Laughs has announced a lineup star-studded on both French and English sides.
posted at 10:25

 
The success of the Grande Bibliothèque in numbers.
posted at 09:59