The city is getting ready to process the extra mounds of garbage produced around Moving Day, including furniture and other oversized items thrown away, like this large industrial barrel of Saran I saw on a Villeray street.
posted at 13:37

 
Clotheslines are making a comeback as people realize they're environmentally sound. And of course you need to use the correct technique.
posted at 12:03

 
Old-timers remember "when a dollar was worth a dollar" – but it wasn't a huard then.
posted at 11:41

 
An interesting, detailed look at the neighbourhood of Saint-Michel, its biggest shmatte business and its circus school.
posted at 04:30

 
Another in the Gazette's "Montreal A to Z" series (are they all listed online anywhere?) looks at food, with a profile of the folks running MetroBoulotResto.
posted at 04:20

 
The basic Canada Day page for Quebec is still called Célafête and plays down the whole embarrassing Canada thing (worse, its coy design and programming make it nearly impossible to find a simple listing of events); an Old Montreal Sir George Etienne Cartier museum is marking Canada's 140th birthday this Sunday.
posted at 16:32

 
More bits and pieces about the Turcot Interchange project; folks who live or do business on the margins of the existing behemoth are worried about how the change will affect their lives; a detailed look at the NDG escarpment and the journalist's blog on the subject, and of course the existing blog on walking Turcot Yards.
posted at 14:59

 
This is the last time the jazz festival will be using the Spectrum as a venue. A French musician ponders this, saying the Spectrum has a soul and une âme, ça ne se construit pas.
posted at 13:09

 
A very cool idea here: commuter train links for McGill and Édouard Montpetit stations, basically connecting them to the existing subterranean tunnel of the Deux-Montagnes line. Not only would two major universities be served by this idea, it would create a much more direct public transit link for thousands of people.
posted at 12:25

 
The city says air quality is improving here, crediting itself with the change, although the east end still suffers from high sulfur dioxide because of the petroleum industry out that way.
posted at 19:23

 
This week's muggy heat wave broke last night, thankfully, but it's a perfectly normal weather variation for the season.
posted at 11:25

 
The 28th annual jazz festival opens today despite the feds having been stingy with promised festival money. Some picks.

Also, Montreal is going to participate in Live Earth this July 7 with a concert at the Old Port.
posted at 11:23

 
Apparently the Montreal metropolitan community needs (?) branding and is willing to spend big bucks on a new logo. A sour Toronto view on the idea, and a good explainer, and here's the official site.

If you teach people marketing in school as if it were one of the great human endeavours, this is what you will get.
posted at 11:16

 
Quebec wants to start from scratch in the Turcot Yards, rebuilding a whole new highway interchange to replace the increasingly decrepit 40-year-old system of concrete flyovers. The existing interchange was built high to pass over ships on the Lachine Canal, a need that became obsolete almost immediately when the Seaway was opened. Work will take ten years (any bets it'll be obsolete too by the end?).
posted at 11:08

 
The STM is very satisfied with the success of the Laval metro stations among the populace.
posted at 23:58

 
A new garden show is opening this week down by the Old Port, till Labour Day; a gay pride parade will take place in town at the end of July; details about the Fantasia fest, which opens next week and runs till July 23.
posted at 23:17

 
After relentlessly plugging the coolness of the Plateau for years, the Gazette is now calling eastern NDG the new Plateau in an urban metaphor that's a stretch even for them.
posted at 23:03

 
The plan for a central cultural agency for Montreal is called disquieting, but by an unnamed municipal source in this item. (And guess who's behind this scheme of centralization? Benoit Labonté, mayor of Ville-Marie. Here's an offhand prediction: Mr. Labonté will run for mayor of Montreal sometime in the next decade.)
posted at 10:55

 
Seven taxi drivers have been attacked in similar circumstances this month and police are asking for a hand in identifying one of the perpetrators, although I don't see the key video on the police site. Drivers want to change a law forbidding GPS units in taxis. (This is puzzling, because GPS units help you find your way, they don't act as panic buttons, and in addition I don't see why on earth they should be forbidden.)
posted at 10:51

 
The death of Montreal-born wrestler Chris Benoit and his family is called a murder-suicide: the local connection's pretty tenuous so if you want more on the story, it's all over the place.
posted at 10:44

 
Yesterday came very close to the temperature record for that date, but didn't quite make it. Today promises to be as hot.
posted at 10:41

 
From criminal to celeb: Montreal street artist Roadsworth is bidden to London to do some road decorations before the Tour de France start, which unusually, is in London this year.
posted at 10:39

 
A green patrol of 76 summer student workers are going to be going about like good fairies, stopping unnecessary motor idling and making sure people recycle. They're only legally allowed to hand out courtesy tickets, though.
posted at 10:35

 
Mohawks at the Tyendinaga reserve near Kingston are planning a Montreal-Toronto blockade on Friday, the eve of a holiday weekend, to bring into the public eye their dissatisfaction with aboriginal poverty and land claims issues. It might be the highway and it might be the rail line that are blocked off.
posted at 10:32

 
More unashamed self-promotion: I have a piece on Urbanphoto today about the new Laval metro stations.
posted at 11:29

 
Today and tomorrow promise to be hot, hot, hot.
posted at 11:10

 
Montreal-born wrestler Chris Benoit, aka the Canadian Crippler, was found dead this weekend. This is bigger news than I might've expected but since the guy left Montreal at 12 I don't think I'll follow the story in great detail.
posted at 11:08

 
Outremont's Catholics want the same parking privileges as its Hasidim and others on special holy days. Unfortunately for them, Talmudic subtlety is way ahead at determining the inner meaning of Montreal's parking restrictions. The Pope is said to be sending in a detachment of Vatican scholars to debate the issue.

Montreal's Anglicans are unhappy with the outcome of a weekend vote which denied their dioceses the right to decide whether to bless same-sex marriages. This is apparently big news, possibly even schismatic news, in the Anglican world, but Anglicans are not even the biggest Protestant sect in Canada so it probably won't have major social consequences here.
posted at 11:04

 
La Ronde is shamed into providing recycling bins, which is probably a good thing but which leaves aside the whole question whether amusement parks as we know them aren't a huge waste of wattage and ingenuity anyway.
posted at 10:43

 
Ville-Marie is on the verge of approving a giant advertising screen to be constructed on a building at 1200 McGill College, overlooking Ste-Catherine.

You know, there's no point in fussing over a bit of street litter and then dumping trash on people's heads like this.
posted at 00:20

 
The lockout at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges shows no sign of resolving as unburied bodies continue to be stockpiled.
posted at 20:46

 
Here's a fascinating Flickr photoset of Place Ville-Marie as it looked when it opened in 1962. It seems to have lost the stark modern edge in recent years.
posted at 15:16

 
The Centre d'histoire de Montréal has a free exhibit on the history of maternity and childbirth in Montreal, at the Marché Bonsecours all summer. A sketch of the local history of infant mortality gives a sense of how things used to be.
posted at 14:08

 
I think it's kind of a positive attitude shift when the fact that La Ronde doesn't recycle is regarded as scandalous.
posted at 14:03

 
McGill students have launched a landlord-rating site called munzer.ca.
posted at 13:58

 
The celebrations of the Fête nationale are called a success, and only eight people were arrested. But some found the parade short and disappointing.
posted at 13:38

 
The Fête nationale seems to spread out a bit when it falls on a weekend. The parade was today but the big party is this evening at Maisonneuve Park.
posted at 18:58

 
We had this sad bit about how the Washington Nationals are forgetting their Montreal origin, and now we have this piece (an AP piece being reprinted all over) about how the city is also forgetting the Expos, and the Nationals aren't even respecting the old team's retired numbers.
posted at 13:51

 
A consideration of how Expo 67 livened up the local cuisine.
posted at 13:31

 
Nguyens are nearly as numerous as Tremblays in the city. Of course Nguyen is hugely common among Vietnamese, whereas Tremblay, although the most common surname in Quebec, still only belongs to .43% of the population. What's also interesting is that Patel is now the fifth commonest name in Montreal, being the second commonest surname in India.

(This isn't the first time I've read this Nguyen/Tremblay news. It was mentioned in local media at least ten years ago, but I can't cite a reference. I think that story was based on a count of phone book column inches.)
posted at 13:23

 
Fête nationale celebrations large and small are in the offing as the eve of the Fête approaches and as we prepare to enjoy a long hot summer. Forgotten symbols of the fête are also remembered and the state of the sovereignty movement looked at.
posted at 15:38

 

Beginning next week, this city will be one of the six Canadian hosts of the FIFA U-20 World Cup, the second most important football (soccer) championship in the world after the main World Cup championship. The Olympic Stadium is already sold out for the opening game.
posted at 15:20

 
Bob Gainey has provoked some criticism for passing over local boys to pick two American players for his lineup for the new NHL season.
posted at 14:55

 
The new agglomeration law remains a tug of war with the Quebec minister for the metropolis saying the new secretariat won't change anything about the decision-making process at the agglo. If true, then why impose it?
posted at 13:21

 
Even though things have eased since the apartment crunch of a few years ago, affordable places are still thin in the ground.
posted at 13:10

 
A U.S. business is about to buy out a major Canadian film distribution business, meaning that they would be able to profit by selling back to Canadians the material our taxes paid for in the first place.
posted at 13:07

 
Details of the summer art installations along boulevard Mont-Royal, in the same series that gave us those giant chairs at the metro station two years ago.
posted at 12:53

 

The blue manga girl that's been part of the scenery on Duluth Street for years, gazing soulfully over at the patrons of Chez José, has been replaced by a rather blander image as the building's been repainted. Photos from flickr: left, by joelmann; right, by bopuc.
posted at 19:43

 
Mile End has the most environmentally sound house in North America.
posted at 14:22

 
Another Expo 67 retrospective, this time of the many pop music concerts and festivals that took place that summer as part of the festivities.

It's probably glaringly obvious to external observers, but is it possible that Expo 67 bequeathed to Montreal its lingering festival fever?
posted at 13:06

 
Graduating Dawson College students hear an emotional speech from a man whose life was also touched by violence.
posted at 13:03

 
Details on this weekend's Fête nationale blowout; how supermarkets get around Fête closure laws; Piknic Électronik (n.b. music on site load) does a special Saint-Jean event.
posted at 12:37

 
The STM tells its security guards to intervene if they see incidents like this week's notorious beating at Berri-UQÀM.

(Older posts on this blog have reminded me that the original idea was for metro security to merge into the police force. Hints were dropped now and then that neither side was very happy with this idea, and now we have police sending in a metro detachment but with metro security guards still in existence as a separate force. I wonder if there's a story to be told to clarify what's gone on here.)
posted at 11:34

 

Mayor Tremblay does not want the new Quebec law that changes the structure of the urban agglomeration and gives island suburbs a disproportionately ruling voice. Thoughts on Quebec's treatment of Montreal.

Likewise, cultural groups do not want the return of a municipal amusement tax as also written into this new Quebec law.
posted at 11:21

 
A report on the movement to save the Ben's Delicatessen building.
posted at 10:54

 
If the new municipal taxes are being seen as a carrot for the city (although not welcome to everyone), the new agglomeration secretariat is being seen as the stick.
posted at 10:49

 
Old Montreal's calèche horses are getting a better deal, but the number of calèche permits is being cut from 35 (or 31, depending on your source) to 20, even though riding in a calèche is called one of the top three tourist draws in Old Montreal.
posted at 10:39

 
A San Francisco rave about Montreal and its jazz festival.
posted at 10:29

 
The hostess uniforms of Expo 67 and what they reveal about the 40-year gap in style and attitude. They also have a little video retrospective.

There's also an urban sculpture event installed on Île Ste-Hélène this summer in some kind of homage to the 40-year-old fair: official site here.
posted at 10:19

 

More Expo 67 retrospective stuff: a detailed piece on the architecture and the fate of most of the pavilions; the history of the logo (Diefenbaker wanted a beaver or a maple leaf?!); the role of women in the Expo workforce.
posted at 23:46

 
The city has been given permission to collect new taxes on parking spaces and entertainment tickets.

Also, so far from dissolving the agglomeration, the Charest government is adding another level to the bureaucracy overseeing the agglo, and giving more weight to the 13% of the population that lives in demerged suburbs.
posted at 23:36

 
Quebec's public security minister has told police to sort out its problems with Metro security after the incident involving immobile security guards blogged earlier. An investigation is planned into the incident as blame gets hastily shifted around.
posted at 23:15

 
Helen Fotopulos, mayor of the Plateau, is trying to slow down drivers by putting down dos d'âne on some of the residential streets that drivers treat more as thoroughfares. (She could take a hard look at Saint-Urbain too, if you ask me.) Maybe she could arrange a distribution of the Vatican's new ten commandments for drivers as well...
posted at 11:20

 
City swimming pools are being closed for days because of all the sun block that washes off people and clogs the filters.
posted at 11:14

 
In a bizarre passive-aggressive move, old-school Metro security staff stood by and watched as a man beat up a woman at Berri-UQAM metro on Monday. The reason? They can no longer act, they said, because it's now up to the police to intervene in such matters.
posted at 11:12

 
A man has been charged in a plot to kidnap lottery jackpot winners in Montreal.
posted at 11:09

 
Expo 67 collectors talk about their passion in the ongoing La Presse retrospective.
posted at 11:35

 
Not much fresh news today (with a 32° high, everything's getting a bit wilted): more on the 132 police officers (and their dogs) now patrolling the metro (one blogger registers a dislike of the idea); more on the city program to help people find apartments by Moving Day; a bit more on the superhospital projects and the possible private partners that may build them, and a timeline of the development of the superhospital idea in Montreal.
posted at 10:54

 
The two superhospitals are to be built as public-private projects at a total cost of $3.6 billion, to be ready by 2013. One explanation of how PPPs work.
posted at 23:39

 
With Moving Day looming, the city reopens its apartment help line: this article has not only a number for potential tenants, but a second number for landlords who have vacancies to fill.

Which reminds me: the list for apartment-hunting, updated:

• craigslist Montreal which now works with housingmaps
  
• Concordia off-campus job and housing bank
  
• McGill housing classifieds
  
• Campus Montreal
  
• More Montreal / Tout Montréal
  
• Les petites annonces classées
  
• Kijiji
  
• louer.com
  
• La Presse classified
  
• The Gazette
  
• The Mirror and the Journal de Montréal ad system – can't point directly at the right section but it's not rocket science
  
• Voir's pay-to-see ads
  
• Top Annonces
  

posted at 22:52

 
If you have American friends, you're likely going to find yourself answering a few questions about the Canadian health care system after they see Michael Moore's latest movie, Sicko, about the shambles of health care coverage in the United States.

I found myself in this situation on the weekend, right in the midst of looking at the various stories about emergency ward overcrowding here. (One journalist tries to analyze the situation today, but only concludes it's a complex one. Fair enough.)

I haven't seen Sicko yet but, suspecting that Moore probably idealizes the Canadian system, I told my questioner that my impression is that in Quebec, at least, if you're really ill, or badly injured, you'll be looked after. It's day-to-day care that's gone to pieces. As I began to explain this to my friends, it dawned on me that the emergency ward problem is, as much as anything, an educational one. People are going to the ER with problems that should be taken to a GP or a clinic, but they simply don't know how to find these alternatives. The only place where medical services visibly reach the street is the ER, so to the ER they go. Who tells them not to?

Look, this is a place where you have to hold a march to remind men to get their prostates checked regularly. Time was, your GP would remind you, or just do it as a regular part of a checkup. But who has a GP or checkups any more? Outside of early childhood and extreme old age, we're pretty much on our own here. The CLSC system, which may have worked at one time, seems to be bogged down in some form of self-perpetuating bureaucratic busywork. My local CLSC doesn't even have clinic hours – they send you to ad hoc clinics in the area, which don't make appointments: the deal is you show up and hang around most of the day until someone – an overworked doctor whose name you don't know, who has no idea who you are and no record of your medical history – sees you for five minutes. No wonder people at least want to feel there's some urgency that their problem will be looked at and, if necessary, followed up – at the ER.

Basically, then, the government not only has to see to it that accessible health services are provided in addition to emergency rooms, it also must make a huge effort to educate everybody to be able to locate these services and discern which level of service they actually need.
posted at 11:29

 
City police are now beginning to patrol the metro with an eventual squad of 133 intended to take on the job, mostly a matter of of keeping gang activity out of certain stations.
posted at 11:10

 
La Presse is doing a series of Expo 67 retrospectives this week. Today there's a glimpse of how a fun fair like La Ronde got appended to what was originally a more serious project, and a look at the man who got Expo built against the odds.
posted at 11:03

 
Apparently it takes seventeen people working full time to manage the waiting list for the city's subsidized housing, at $700,000 per year.
posted at 13:44

 
As discussions begin on their new contract, the opening demands of the city's blue-collar union are called unrealistic, setting the stage for a tough dispute and possibly strike action.
posted at 13:30

 
People are being advised to stay away from city emergency rooms if they possibly can. One emergency chief speaks up, and the health minister responds with a promise that a solution to the recurring crisis will be found.
posted at 13:24

 
A promised movie about the killings at the École Polytechnique is on hold as Telefilm money fails to come through, although SODEC has given it the nod.
posted at 13:12

 
A piece on the legal perils of blogging in Canada is only marred by smugness on the writer's part, but it's misplaced: he seems to think getting sued is the price bloggers pay for whoring after media attention. I think he's mistaken: getting sued is the price some bloggers pay for expressing opinions without a bank of big-media lawyers as backup, yes, but that's a different matter. (In other words, bloggers do want readers. Whether any of these readers are mainstream journalists is not such a pressing matter.)

The piece includes an aperçu of the problems being experienced by Zeke's Gallery and several other blogs in Canada, a country unfortunately not quite so firm in its dedication to freedom of speech as our neighbours to the south. Some of us may have been misled into imagining we have an American's freedom to say what we think. As a blogger I'm watching these cases to see where the discrepancy falls.
posted at 13:06

 
A civil engineering professor checks out a few major highway features and rates their decrepit concrete structures. Now nobody can say they didn't know.
posted at 16:54

 
A report's going around that Montreal is going to get blanket wireless internet services, starting with the Plateau and moving outward.
posted at 13:38

 
A bit more detail on the new municipal squad of inspectors of rental housing.
posted at 13:29

 
New tests of river water quality say it's okay for surfers to hang ten off Habitat 67.
posted at 13:27

 
It seems UQÀM kept two sets of books over the Îlot Voyageur project, as they'd done over their science complex on Sherbrooke at Saint-Urbain, to represent its finances differently to different entities. Conflicting reports have emerged about what will be done with the partly-built structure on Berri opposite the library, but it seems likely that nobody will be rushing to finish it in the short term.
posted at 13:07

 
Sad little piece about how the Washington Nationals are gradually forgetting their roots as the Montreal Expos.
posted at 12:59

 
A bomb hoax emptied part of Place Ville-Marie yesterday afternoon and blocked streets with emergency cordons.
posted at 12:14

 
An excellent account of what jury duty is like at the Palais de justice, with sidebars on the relative rarity of jury trials and the excuses people use to try to get out of serving.
posted at 12:04

 
The city's finally putting some funds into inspecting and correcting bad rental buildings with the threat of fines and the ultimate threat that the city can seize the building from a delinquent owner.
posted at 16:28

 
Fringe festival mini-reviews, more Fringe festival mini-reviews, more reviews and dance reviews for the final weekend blowout of this year's Fringe.

And do not forget to be on the Main tomorrow afternoon for the street fair and for this.
posted at 13:58

 
A good explainer about the green roof in Côte-des-Neiges and how it works.
posted at 13:47

 
The city's east-end refineries spew almost as much greenhouse gas as all the cars in the city.
posted at 13:10

 

Jarry Park pool

Some city pools are opening early because of the hot weather.
posted at 10:45

 
Interesting obit for a Montreal guitarist I'd never heard of – bit of cultural history.
posted at 11:17

 
Of the 17 homicides here so far this year, ten have been pinned on street gangs, but police maintain that the city is safe.

I think they're right. American cities this size would kill to reach mid-June with only 17 homicides. Perhaps I should rephrase that...
posted at 11:09

 

Rogers Communications has a plan to put a 30-storey tower on the Îlot Balmoral. It's supposed to have a concert hall (although how people can talk blithely about "replacing the Spectrum" as if venues like that have no resonance or history), and absolutely nothing is said about the fate of the Blumenthal Building, whose beautiful façade is rotting away on Ste-Catherine.

Incidentally, with all the talk about the Quartier des Spectacles, does anyone believe that the ambiance of the area will be improved by the appearance of a giant Best Buy where the Spectrum is now? Can we possibly get the city to appreciate that Ste-Catherine doesn't have the scale of a suburban mall, and that wedging giant stores onto it is absolutely at odds with creating the sort of vivid, exciting, lively atmosphere they purportedly want? All the small businesses shown above will be erased when the Spectrum is razed. Instead we'll have a featureless glass wall. Is this meant to be beneficial and to attract people to the area?

Toronto's mayor has backed off a little on his earlier statement that he wants his city to seize Canada's festivals crown from Montreal. A tempest in a teapot, says Mayor Tremblay. Still, it's a fact that Toronto can basically do this if it wants to. Montreal has to use all its cultural savvy to distinguish itself and make itself more interesting – and it won't do this by importing clone big box stores onto its quirky downtown streets.

It's ridiculous that government puts money into projects like uncovering the façade of St. James United, money wasted when at the same time it countenances the closure of the Parisien and the Spectrum, and the addition of things like Future Shop, a giant Pharmaprix, and now this Best Buy, along the same part of Ste-Catherine.
posted at 10:47

 
Montreal is the best place to start a business in Canada, but then we have a piece saying our entrepreneurs have no inspiration.
posted at 11:13

 
UQÀM is looking at serious cutbacks to reduce its deficit, including cutting programs and selling buildings. There's a dossier.
posted at 11:06

 
Street gangs are becoming clever and organized enough to launder their money through the stock market.
posted at 11:00

 
The police may begin issuing invoices for working on big demonstrations, the city wanting to come out of such events in the black. This is pretty bizarre, and it would be interesting to know whether other cities have instituted similar ideas.
posted at 23:04

 
The local real estate market is still sizzling with more properties changing hands and prices constantly rising.
posted at 22:52

 
The STM is planning to add elevators to five metro stations on the orange line, at a price tag of $10 million per station.
posted at 22:21

 
It's all bridge news today.

A man climbed into the Jacques-Cartier bridge last night, our second bridge climbing this week, and the Sûreté du Québec says it's had enough of trying to persuade such folks down, and is simply going to send its tactical squad up to get them.

Environmentalists may ask for an injunction against the construction of the highway 25 bridge, saying it will damage delicate parts of the Rivière des Prairies.

I don't think this will get anywhere. The will of the car is at work, as is the will of the Quebec Liberals to court voters in Laval.

And finally, the city is building a rather old-fashioned bridge across the Aqueduct in Lasalle. It looks almost like something the Romans would've come up with.
posted at 11:21

 
Two views on what to do with the homeless youths that tend to show up in Montreal in summertime.
posted at 11:10

 
One writer's picks at the Fringe festival; an American Fringe performer's difficulties with parking and the city.

(I am so tired of the American obsession with "eh". I don't know who says "eh" but I don't hear anyone I know saying it. Maybe older, rural Canadians used to say it a lot, but come to Montreal and actually listen to its anglos speaking now, and you won't hear it. It's not current any more, so it's not funny. Let it drop.)
posted at 11:17

 
Not a major piece today but a disturbing story about Nuns' Island dumping what sounds like raw sewage into the river.
posted at 11:07

 
Trucks are back on the Ville-Marie but lanes are still closed, and one engineer thinks the old expressway should be treated gingerly till more studies are done.
posted at 10:54

 
No surprise that the mayor of Toronto intends to claim the title of city of festivals for itself. Mayor Tremblay tries to cool down the competition aspect and one writer attemps to deconstruct the whole scenario. But we haven't heard the end of this.
posted at 10:51

 
Rookie UK driver Lewis Hamilton wins his first Formula One race at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, a race that saw a crash that damaged another car badly but didn't injure its driver severely. Play-by-play.
posted at 15:57

 
Okay bit of history work tracing Montreal's first high school from its Sulpician origins. Would be more interesting with pictures.
posted at 13:00

 
Nice piece on the young woman bringing environmentalism to Chinatown.
posted at 12:25

 
Grand Prix weekend is reaching its climax after party scenes and more party scenes and oh yes, some stuff about a car race.

As a dark undertow to all the glitz, we have Bernie Ecclestone threatening (again) to withdraw the race from Montreal – this time unless facilities at the track are updated.
posted at 12:14

 
A man forced the closure of the Champlain Bridge yesterday afternoon by climbing into the structure and refusing to come down for some hours. He's being evaluated in custody.

Meantime, the Ville-Marie expressway is closed to large trucks till Monday because Transports Québec is worried about the state of a support near the Fort Street exit. The Concorde viaduct collapse must be making the government agency extra cautious about the state of its aging concrete structures.

Also, yesterday fifty nude cyclists held a demo ride to protest the dominance of the car and society's over-dependence on petroleum. It was part of the World Naked Bike Ride movement. (Not to be a cynic, but what do these protesters think their tires and other plastic bike parts are made of? Fairy dust?)
posted at 11:45

 

The news is chiefly that nobody is being buried because of the strike at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, but it also means the grounds are being neglected and becoming more gothic by the day.

posted at 19:13

 
Glamour and speed seem to go together this weekend at the Grand Prix: an entire dossier covers the race and the culture and there's even a piece on Formula One and the environment.
posted at 14:06

 
A mostly foreign partenariat public-privé has been chosen to build the extension of highway 25 into a bridge across to Laval. It seems to be mostly forgotten that the city didn't want this project, which will encourage ever more motorists to commute into the city.
posted at 13:53