A lot of today's local news is about the golf tournament, how it's going and a lot of joshing about how one of the players fell into a pond. There are also pictures. I'm afraid all I know about golf I learned from reading The Clicking of Cuthbert, published in 1922.
posted at 12:47

 
Journal journos clock drivers on several urban boulevards and find they are exceeding the speed limit, in some cases by as much as 60km/h. But they might also want to have a look at a whole set of north-south arteries like Saint-Urbain, much less like a highway than the three chosen for the article, but still treated very much like an expressway, especially between Jean-Talon and the tracks.
posted at 12:25

 
Today marks a year since the fall of the Concorde overpass in Laval, as people talk about how they still mistrust the state of Quebec roads and fear driving under them (although has this reduced the number of cars on Quebec highways? I doubt it), those who experienced the debacle and those who died in it.
posted at 11:41

 
Interesting account of Jack Kerouac doing a TV interview in Montreal in 1967. This would be the show described in the article. I wonder if the Toronto writer is correct in what he thinks he's seeing, or if the audience is actually surprised and pleased that this American icon is able to chat in demotic French.
posted at 20:20

 
Part of Papineau in the Plateau remains closed after construction excavations caused neighbouring buildings to begin to collapse.
posted at 13:31

 
Interesting profile of the owner of a longtime fixture on Plaza Saint-Hubert.
posted at 13:21

 
The closures of businesses continue along the moribund, once lively stretch of Montreal's Main. As one of the Montreal Livejournal community observed today: "Those sidewalks better give pedestrians an orgasm when this is all over with."
posted at 12:15

 
Suggestions for the Journées de la culture and another look at the festival; more on Pop Montreal.
posted at 11:53

 
A man roughly in his mid-20s was knocked down in Laurier Park by a cyclist this week without any I.D. on him and nobody has reported him missing so his identity remains unknown. The bike path down through that park is on enough of a slope that you can pick up more momentum than you realize when you reach the corner where the man was hit, a tricky spot where footpath and bike path converge.
posted at 11:41

 
Today, Saturday and Sunday are the Journées de la culture with free bus shuttles running on the weekend among various free cultural events and entities. This is followed in fairly short order by Pop Montreal, which runs through next week with lots of acts to see.
posted at 23:58

 
GE Hydro, a familiar site along highway 20 in Lachine, is to close next June, ending 450 jobs in an installation that once employed 3500. It's being blamed on global restructuring. I wonder if that building will be turned into condos.
posted at 23:51

 
More on the disquiet of nearby residents at plans for rebuilding the Turcot Yards highways; Neath of Walking Turcot Yards has some thoughts about the plans for demolition of housing.
posted at 10:58

 
Mayor Tremblay condemns Outremont's dissipation and his administration says there's nothing like that going on at city hall.
posted at 10:38

 
Incarcerated killer Valery Fabrikant is asking for his computer back to prepare a case against Concordia University.
posted at 10:22

 
The scandal of the open bar at Outremont borough hall has blown up and blown over quickly now that "journalists have finally been invited" to eyeball the "whisky Glenfiddich mais aussi du Saint-Raphaël, du Martini, du gin, de la vodka, du rhum Havana Club 7 ans, du cognac, du vin blanc, du vin rouge, du Champagne, des bières Heineken mais aussi de marque canadienne." It just sounds like any club bar, and Outremont is probably pretty accustomed to regarding itself as a reasonably classy club. In any case, the borough mayor has found out why you need to stand the occasional journalist a free drink.
posted at 03:00

 
UQÀM gets a $20-million advance from Quebec, but there are various strings attached and the government will presumably be keeping a closer eye on university budgets for awhile.
posted at 02:45

 
A pane of glass dropped off the Ste-Catherine entrance to Complexe Desjardins yesterday and injured a teenage girl passing below.
posted at 02:26

 
How the city managed to score the Presidents Cup and how the bus drivers' union is angry that the STM has lent out 35 of its newest buses for the golf event when buses are already in short supply, while Canada's prime minister comes to greet the golf stars like some small-town mayor.
posted at 11:08

 
A rave for the opening performance of the Opéra de Montréal's season; a reprint of a Washington Post rave about the charms of the city; glimpses of the Hot Springs and of several local music compilations that have just come out; previews of new shows to land at the Museum of Fine Arts over the next year.
posted at 10:47

 
News about this weekend's golf extravaganza is building as the sport's major names arrive in town.
posted at 10:57

 
Denys Arcand's new L'Âge des ténèbres is to be launched at October's Festival du nouveau cinéma.
posted at 10:53

 
Mayor Tremblay wants to be the one to see the Quartier des spectacles through to completion.
posted at 10:40

 
Story about a dentist turned blues musician whose band debuted this week.
posted at 10:31

 
Yesterday beat a long-standing record for high temperature on September 25, and the entire month may break records for sun and heat.
posted at 10:06

 
People living close to the existing Turcot Yard overpasses are concerned about noise and dirt and increased traffic flow when the highways are brought down to ground level.
posted at 10:03

 
The city is freezing parking meter rates for all of next year.
posted at 09:47

 

Another store closure on the endlessly excavated Main
posted at 11:17

 
Montreal musician Patrick Watson has won this year's Polaris Music Prize. Local acts Arcade Fire, the Dears and the Besnard Lakes had also been in the running.
posted at 11:02

 
Ville-Marie wants to double its fines for breaking its draconian cleanliness laws.
posted at 10:46

 
A trio of MNAs, one from each major party, is presenting a 20,000-signature petition to the Quebec government in favour of protecting Île Charron from development.
posted at 23:39

 
Engineering giant Alstom is to pursue Quebec legally for sidestepping the tendering process and handing a large STM refurbishment contract directly to Bombardier.
posted at 23:34

 
Oh, my people. Paris Hilton, paid to show up and shill a club in Old Montreal, was greeted by swarms of fans and journos. "A black SUV with bodyguards transported Hilton about 100 metres to the club" – what else do we need to know about her and her lifestyle?
posted at 11:25

 
Thousands of households in the east end are still without water as the city works on a water main that runs along Pie-IX.
posted at 11:20

 
Montrealers visited city mosques yesterday to familiarize themselves with Islam and its culture. La Presse also has a peek at ultra-traditional Catholic practices in which women still cover their heads for church services.
posted at 11:19

 
Major golf names are arriving in town towards next weekend's Presidents Cup event on Île Bizard.
posted at 11:13

 
The family of PQ leader Pauline Marois is suing the Gazette over recent claims that their domaine on Île Bizard is partly built on agricultural land and partly on land that Quebec expropriated for an eventual highway that's planned to despoil the island. But the Gazette seems to have done extensive homework, and the ball is in her court.
posted at 11:10

 
A thoughtful obit for John Collins, longtime cartoonist at the Gazette. A selection of his work over many years is on the McCord Museum site.
posted at 10:52

 
A French blogger has some nice photo posts here on the current Magie des lanternes and selections from the sexy Montreal firemen calendar with semi-clad firefighters looking particularly hallucinant.
posted at 10:50

 
A nice bit from astrophysicist Hubert Reeves on the value and virtues of the city park. And while I'm mentioning Montreal-born boffins, pop sociobiology guru Steven Pinker is a Montrealer by birth and praises our "culture of argumentation" in this recent Guardian piece.
posted at 13:18

 
A profile of the oldest, indeed the first school in Montreal, and a peek back at another grand school building which was torn down to leave, if I'm not mistaken, a lot which has remained empty for years.
posted at 12:12

 

I've been meaning to blog this great series of old tram photos collected in the Coolopolis blog, even going back to the days when they were pulled by horses. Above is yet another tram photo, this one by Edgar Gariépy of a tram on Saint-Denis in 1914: the church spire in the distance is probably St. Charles, its spire now an architectural fragment incorporated into UQÀM: notice that the Quartier Latin was a respectable residential area back then.
posted at 12:02

 

More on the $1.5-million plan to restore the cross in an atmosphere of nervousness about cultural accommodation. Photo from my man Edgar Gariépy in 1943, long before the cross acquired its security fence.
posted at 23:33

 

One of the three photo exhibits currently at the Just for Laughs museum. This is a view of the fifth-floor gallery where one of the two concurrent exhibits of Respect is being shown (the other being held over near the Biosphere). These aerial photos of remoter parts of Canada are stunning, if a bit impersonal, showing us vast sections of the country most of us will never see in person.

The nine-buck admission also gets you the World Press Photo show, much of it pretty harrowing stuff - war and devastation, dead babies, mutilated people - but also some amazing sports and wildlife photography. There's also an exhibit for the 60th anniversary of Magnum Photos. The galleries are well lit and the occasional view of the city from the windows only adds to the overall effect. A must-see before the end of the month (the Biosphere edition of Respect is up till the end of next February).
posted at 14:27

 

Using the bike path: Wrong

The headline of this piece made me think obituary, but Bicycle Bob is still alive, albeit retired.
posted at 13:34

 
A Le Devoir writer ponders how waves of mergers, demergers, decentralization and agglomeration have weakened the organizational structure of Montreal and left it adrift politically.
posted at 13:28

 
The United Nations announces that this week's environmental meeting in Montreal came to an historic agreement on speeding up the discontinuation of chemicals that damage the ozone layer. A lot of people around the world are happy with this, and Montreal is getting a lot of positive glow as a side effect – more mentions internationally than I see spin off even from major sporting events.
posted at 13:22

 
A slightly rueful description of the major construction changing the look and feel of eastern downtown.
posted at 12:55

 
Several city mosques are open for visitors this weekend, although they should have put the list on a web page rather than in a linked .doc file.
posted at 12:41

 
Montrealers are among Canada's biggest public transit users but it doesn't come cheap.
posted at 12:32

 
Emergency work being done on a water main on Pie-IX north of Jarry means that several thousand east-enders will be drinking bottled water for a couple of weeks, and residents in adjoining areas must cut back on water usage.
posted at 10:33

 
Contradicting yesterday's reports, the federal government is denying it has plans to scrap the Champlain bridge and replace it with a ten-lane superbridge. Authorities also maintain that the existing bridge is safe, and not a collapsing wreck as was implied yesterday. I suspect this was a deliberate canard to distract anyone commenting on Car-Free Day, which as usual successfully cut pollutants to nearly zero in its tiny corner of downtown.
posted at 10:48

 
I love pieces like this which, with 20/20 hindsight, says that of course it was obvious that the mayor and Benoît Labonté would part ways (here's a somewhat more reasoned critique of the flaws in the city's current structure). I'm also a bit amused by how this editorialist is just dying to know why Concordia punted Claude Lajeunesse from its top job, but puts it in idealistic terms about "right to know": Fagstein probably guesses the reason in a recent blog post.
posted at 10:31

 
Not a great day for Quebec female athletes as Myriam Bédard is found guilty of abducting her own kid, and onetime top cyclist Geneviève Jeanson admits taking a forbidden performance drug years ago.
posted at 10:25

 
Discussions are afoot on redesigning the Peel Street entrance to Mount Royal park. Not sure what they mean by "reopen gateway" because it's not like it's difficult to find a way in. Plans are also afoot to spruce up the cross, which although 83 years old, as noted in this piece, has certainly been upgraded at various stages: the original design didn't allow for turning purple when the Pope dies, I'm sure.
posted at 10:14

 
Car-free day reigns in a small piece of downtown between the two rush hours, but although suburban transit systems are offering free rides today, the STM is not.

Rima Elkouri cycles downtown along "le couloir de la bonne conscience" of the Saint-Urbain notional bike path, Patrick Lagacé derides the idealism with an argument that the only way to change behaviour is via tolls and fines, Benoît Aubin ponders how the car presents the ultimate clash between individual interests and the common good, Chris DeWolf writes about the event on urbanphoto.net and the Mirror talks to several "wonks" on the transit issue.

Meanwhile the federal government has dreams of replacing the Champlain bridge with a ten-lane megabridge that would be a massive umbilical cord of auto commuting to and from the island, and no light rail service will be added to the existing bridge either.
posted at 10:17

 
A report says that the anglo community in Quebec is fragmented and powerless and needs to do more to save itself, the first suggestion being – to learn better French. The report is here but must be downloaded as a PDF file. There are roughly 700,000 anglophones living in Montreal.
posted at 11:29

 
Suggested bicycle excursions for autumn, and five parks near Montreal suggested for autumn day trips. Also, the Conseil du patrimoine de Montréal is condemning a Rivière-des-Prairies plan to put a municipal building on increasingly scarce wetland park area, with remarks about how the city must do more to preserve its parks.
posted at 11:22

 
The Festival du Nouveau Cinéma reveals more of its lineup for the October festival, with emphasis on Canada and Quebec filmmakers.
posted at 11:17

 
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel is to be entirely remade and will be reborn as a 21st century luxury hotel with posh condos attached. What, no provisions for affordable housing?
posted at 11:15

 
The entire board of the Musée de l'art contemporain foundation handed in their resignations yesterday in some kind of statement about funding; Concordia parts ways with president Claude Lajeunesse only two years into a five-year contract.
posted at 11:13

 
Both murders committed on Monday are pinned on gang activity.
posted at 11:08

 
Its own citizens are finding Côte-des-Neiges scruffy and excuses are made.
posted at 11:06

 

Interesting view of Jean-Talon market at harvest time, one dealer talking about how changing demands have gradually changed what she grows; there are items about Montreal's public markets marking 75 years of operation – but that must refer only to the current markets, because there were farmers coming into town and selling in the area around Marché Bonsecours, shown above (photo Edgar Gariépy), more than 75 years ago.

And here's another rave for the culinary excesses of Au Pied de Cochon.
posted at 10:54

 
The city has sacked 45 workers so far this year for goofing off. Most of them were blue-collar workers.
posted at 22:36

 
The Journal tries again to make a scandal out of a McGill study on the effects of cocaine on the human brain, even getting the Tories to blame it on the Liberals.
posted at 11:40

 
The Journal has an entire dossier encapsulating all their recent stories about pedophile predators working locally via the net. I'm not going to link individually to all the entrapment stories, which are equally pathetic and unpleasant to read.
posted at 11:25

 
STM runs a fast food shuttle bus so that kids from a high school can get to a mall and eat lunch. Some people think this is a Bad Thing.
posted at 11:15

 
Ville-Marie mayor Benoît Labonté is the most prominent of the three Union Montréal councillors who quit the party Monday, citing dissatisfaction with Gérald Tremblay's leadership. The role of running the downtown area, held by Labonté, had been resumed by Tremblay after last month's underground fissure debacle.

I've got my crystal ball all warmed up here and am going to predict that Labonté either now joins Vision Montréal, Pierre Bourque's old party, and becomes its leader, or else he starts a new party with himself at the helm. I'd also like to gently point out that one doesn't have to be a complete partisan for Tremblay to remember that having a strong leader for mayor has not always been beneficial for this city.
posted at 10:17

 
Outremont riding has elected Quebec's second ever NDP MP: Thomas Mulcair, once Jean Charest's environment minister and, according to the Wikipedia, great-grandson of Honoré Mercier. None of the three Quebec federal ridings holding byelections on Monday elected a Liberal.
posted at 23:29

 
Stats on internet pedophiles have surged locally lately, although I wonder if this is because police have had more resources to investigate them. The Journal also ran an entrapment in which several men were caught trying to make assignations with people they'd been led to believe were very under-age girls. What puzzles me is the quotes in the first article from Jacques Viau: he says the internet has created a new generation of pedophiles. I don't claim to know how it works, but is it possible for someone who hasn't experienced those urges to be "contaminated" with them by seeing internet porn? And if it's so close to the surface in so many people, what the hell do we do about that? Anyway, Richard Martineau has some thoughts on what he calls a culture of pedophilia with some lurid examples.
posted at 09:55

 
190 countries have sent representatives here for discussions on the environment, the ozone layer and global warming both being on the agenda. But was it really necessary for all those people to fly here, knowing what we know about the damage caused by airplane carbon emissions?
posted at 09:34

 
Mayor Tremblay is putting the police service on a tight budget next year and asking it to cut expenses and staff.
posted at 10:37

 
Next month's Pop Montreal fest has released highlights of its schedule.
posted at 10:35

 
The Journal de Montréal mimes surprise and scandal that McGill is carrying out a study on cocaine use, as if academic studies don't have to jump through ethical hoops to be approved at all.
posted at 10:28

 
STM workers are demonstrating today outside a Quebec Liberal Party meeting to show their opposition to the party's support of public/private partnerships for transit maintenance.
posted at 10:21

 
A bit about the dramatization of St. Urbain's Horseman as the CBC prepares to screen their version of the famous anglo-Jewish-Montreal work.
posted at 10:00

 
Jean Charest says that, as of the new year, schools won't be selling burgers, fries and soda to their students. Prediction: this will make zero dent in the obesity problem. Older kids can get fast food elsewhere. But chiefly, this is government covering its own ass. It doesn't look good for public schools to be peddling fast food, but even more, it's so they can say, a decade hence, "Don't look at us, we did our bit." Malbouffe is an issue, but kids are fat mostly because they don't move around. Or possibly in some cases, as proposed by an atypically realistic Gazette writer, it's because they have the munchies.
posted at 12:01

 
The city suddenly shut down the Bleury overpass over the Ville-Marie yesterday, after an inspection showed risk of collapse, and the Ville-Marie itself was closed for several hours. Now Bleury has been reopened to traffic.
posted at 11:44

 
Google Street View's arrival in town has caused some concern about privacy issues, although I don't see how taking pictures of public streets violates anyone's privacy. A number of Montreal streets are already viewable via Virtual City, a site which started with Toronto but has now branched out here. The immediate impression is how many fragments of the city are merely anonymous bits of wall. (Also, someone has to tell them about Montreal's individual view on compass directions. Boulevard Saint-Laurent is not an east-west street!)

Also the intro to Urbania's Montréal en 12 lieux is sweet. It's the teaser for a TV and web series about the city, apparently.
posted at 11:33

 
The Journal de Montréal notes an in memoriam notice in the Gazette for General James Wolfe, who died after capturing Quebec City for the British in 1759.
posted at 15:51

 
More stories from last year's Dawson incident: bits from trauma staff at the Montreal General and from paramedics on scene who risked death to help the injured, and notes on the ceremony.
posted at 12:58

 
Our city gets some reflected glory from being the eponym of the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty that has successfully cut production and use of CFCs and other chemicals harmful to the ozone layer.
posted at 12:50

 
More items on the treasures of the Sulpicians exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, on display in the old Erskine and American Church next to the museum, a building the museum acquired not long ago. It's also free.
posted at 12:01

 
Montreal police want a bigger budget to patrol for death threats on the internet and to track illegal guns.
posted at 11:22

 
The Dawson shooting took place exactly a year ago and local media are all marking the anniversary. There will be a quiet ceremony as people ponder how they and the college have been changed by the incident. There are thoughts from shooting victims and from the police who ended the incident, and stories about what has become of the families of the perpetrator and the one fatality that day.
posted at 11:38

 
Some explanation of the city's new diesel-electric bus model meant to hit streets next year.
posted at 11:28

 
L'Itinéraire's downtown charity meters are bringing in a little regular money but not enough to fund all the programs they feel are needed.
posted at 11:23

 
In my nearly six years doing this blog there have been certain chronic stories that crop up as reliably as ragweed, and one of them is friction between Montreal and its blue-collar workers – in this case because some workers have put protest stickers on their vehicles even before contract negotiations begin.
posted at 11:18

 
The Canadiens start training camp today, determined to at least make the playoffs this year. A list of questions and a photo of a celebrity fan.
posted at 11:11

 
One of the longest-standing officials in the city, Dominic Taddeo is retiring from his job of running the Port of Montreal. He's been at it for 23 years.
posted at 11:01

 
Quebec is world leader in common-law marriages, 35 percent of cohabiting couples doing so without formal marriage.
posted at 11:53

 
You can submit your ideas for the Pine-Park interchange on this page of the city site.
posted at 11:40

 
How lighting effects are used to bring the city to life. Also I find that the Quartier des spectacles has a website now.
posted at 11:28

 
This year's lanterns festival at the botanical garden is on a theme of between heaven and earth and is supposed to be extra romantic.
posted at 11:26

 
Some notes on Montrealers celebrating Rosh Hashanah and on a west end bakery that makes challah bread for the feast.
posted at 11:23

 
Dawson director says the college has been strengthened by the aftereffects of the Kimveer Gill shootings a year ago; the policeman who brought Gill down speaks about his experience. There's an online dossier here from last year also.
posted at 11:19

 
The minister for Quebec City is pressing for a fast train link to Montreal. I'm usually in favour of train upgrades, but the current trip takes just under three hours, hardly an eternity.
posted at 22:57

 
The Journal de Montréal has been wringing its hands over how parents can't help kids with homework because they're too clueless. Try the test if you like and see how you do. (Yes, I got a pass mark. And I never studied in French.)

Are parents even supposed to help kids with homework? I thought the whole point was to make the kids work at figuring the stuff out themselves.
posted at 22:55

 
The city's now also planning a public meeting on what to do with the land around the Park-Pine interchange.
posted at 21:58

 
More ambitious hotel projects for Old Montreal; another ambitious residential project for Nuns' Island.
posted at 10:52

 
A short but informative bit here on meetings and the solicitation of opinion on improvements to be made on Mount Royal.
posted at 23:42

 
The city's giving $100,000 a year for five years to the MSO to help it make recordings and do more open-air concerts.
posted at 23:41

 
Interesting bit about a promising young hockey player whose religious beliefs have stopped him playing on Friday nights and Saturdays.
posted at 23:33

 
Downtown shopkeepers are fairly riled that the city's reducing the number of legal parking spaces in Ville-Marie.
posted at 23:31

 
Fagstein found some copyediting doozies today in the Gazette, but I can go him one better: in this Mike Boone column he likens himself to Rosa Parks because he'd rather not have to sit next to somebody talking on a phone on a commuter train. A faux pas on a different scale entirely.
posted at 23:09

 
More details on the World Press Photo show at the Just for Laughs museum. Mentioned here is the accompanying show Respect, an exhibit of aerial photos of Canada's boreal forests that's also on display near the Biosphere. I saw them last week: they're a must-see, just a step from Jean-Drapeau metro.

I do rather miss the days when World Press Photo was shown at one or another Maison de la culture for free, though.
posted at 20:50

 
Workers at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges are back to work today, getting on with that backlog of burials. They still have not come to an agreement with their employers.

In other Sulpician news, a new exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts will feature a restored painting which has not been displayed since the 1978 fire in the Sacred Heart chapel at Notre-Dame, as well as other art objects and artifacts connected with the religious order that once owned the entire island of Montreal.
posted at 11:17

 
Various reviews and accounts and a list from the weekend's Osheaga festival.
posted at 10:46

 
It's world anti-suicide day and it turns out the barriers placed on the Jacques-Cartier bridge in 2004 have cut the numbers of suicides and suicide attempts from the bridge.
posted at 03:33

 
How some of the survivors of the Dawson shootings are coping, a year after the attack.
posted at 21:08

 
The same study that found Toronto mentioned more often than Montreal in world media also found that beats Toronto squarely in tourism stories and is considered a more interesting travel destination.
posted at 21:01

 
A list of the entities found on bike paths that should not be there. I do wish faster cyclists could call out some equivalent of "On your left!" as is done elsewhere when passing around slower ones.
posted at 20:48

 
Polish runner Yolette Kariza has repeated her success getting the best women's time in today's Montreal Marathon two years in a row. Kenyan Laban Moiden won the men's with 3 minutes over his closest pursuer.
posted at 20:16

 
Five women in Outremont riding sewed themselves burqas and wore them to advance polls to vote in the federal byelection in their riding, as a statement about Elections Canada's policy to allow fully veiled women to vote if they showed identification. I have to give them props for theatrical effectiveness.

It's a big issue and blown strangely out of proportion in a city with only a very small number of fully veiled women. I see women in hair-covering hijab all the time, but I've only once or twice seen anyone in full niqab (whereas in parts of London you'll see it daily). Still, isn't showing identification something of a meaningless gesture if no one can check that the face on the passport is yours?

(Couldn't this all be solved by having a woman scrutineer take a peek to verify the identity of any woman who showed up to vote in full face veil? As I understand it, it's OK for women to see each other – the veil is only intended to hide a woman's face from men.)
posted at 14:04

 
Apple wants the parking meters off its impending store frontage on Ste-Catherine and has even offered to pay the city to offset the loss. No deal, says Ville-Marie.
posted at 12:59

 
Yesterday's peak temperature beat a record.
posted at 10:57