With the new year, the GST drops by a percentage point, but public transit costs more and Hydro-Quebec will almost certainly keep inching its rates higher. One thing I noticed though: postal rates aren't rising this time.
posted at 23:49

 
More lists of favourite restaurants of 2007.
posted at 23:47

 
A story that's been percolating in the media has come to a good end: a man who put a snowbank up for auction on eBay found a buyer after several disappointments over prank bids. The proceeds are to go to charity.
posted at 23:35

 
With the city's Ecocentres closed for the holidays, trash and recyclables are piling up. Can't help but agree with the man quoted in the article: this is an essential service and shouldn't shut down for two weeks.
posted at 13:46

 
There's more snow around than we've had at this time of year in ages, something that's making nearby ski hills and outdoorsy folks very happy.
posted at 13:44

 
So far this year, Montreal has counted up 41 homicides, about average: we had only 35 in 2005, a recent low. One death that recently made the list was of the elderly man pushed off a bus in August who died just before Christmas and thus upped his attacker's charge from assault to manslaughter. The Journal looks back at other transit-related attacks over the last few years, but there seems to be no pattern to them.

By comparison, Quebec City had no homicides in 2007 – that we yet know about, anyway.
posted at 13:37

 
Some recent pieces from Spacing Montreal: photos from a 1972 snowstorm, some notes on Steinberg's, a peek at the ATM-like smart card machines appearing in metro stations, and a look at the fruitless reworking of a commercial façade on Park Avenue.
posted at 13:22

 
An evocative photo gallery accompanies the Journal's growing dossier on the 1998 ice storm. Also some notes on improvements made in the electrical distribution system as a direct result of the storm, and some remarks on limits in our ability to predict the weather.
posted at 23:47

 
Blogger Steve Faguy interviews a cabal of urban planning geeks concerned with the Griffintown development. They might have at least capitalized the names of the individual respondents.
posted at 23:40

 
The city will pocket the difference when the federal GST drops to 5% starting on New Year's Day.
posted at 23:23

 
Richard Martineau talks about how Montreal gets dumped on for being all the wrong things about Quebec.
posted at 23:07

 
This U.S. radio station (with internet streaming) has a show featuring classic ensembles including Oscar Peterson, till 2 a.m.
posted at 23:05

 
This odd item has been floating to the top of my searches today: a piece about Montreal in a French Christian paper. Interesting facts: there are no ghettoes in Montreal, only francophones go to the Jean-Talon market, and Mill End is a notable Jewish neighbourhood. Their short list of useful addresses is also a bit odd. In contrast, this brief piece from USA Today praises Patati Patata's food and a cold pitcher of St. Amboise. I do wish people would fact-check, but then what would I snicker about?
posted at 21:53

 
It's actually news that recycling bins are littering some streets today, but it seems chiefly to be a Plateau Mont-Royal problem because that borough isn't doing a pickup till next week. A call to 311 (my first!) assures me that the trucks will be by in Villeray sometime today; the status of other boroughs in this matter remains unknown.
posted at 13:51

 
Even though Nez Rouge has been trying to recruit more volunteers, two journalists have a quiet evening as they accompany a series of partygoers to their homes.
posted at 12:02

 
Interesting profile of a Montreal shmatte mogul turned Hong Kong tycoon.
posted at 11:58

 
The Journal de Montréal is amassing a dossier on the tenth anniversary of the ice storm of January 1998: today, the memories of André Caillé, Hydro-Quebec's president at the time. Radio-Canada has a special and Spacing Montreal also has an entry with a request for personal stories.
posted at 11:51

 
We're getting close to the tenth anniversary of the 1998 ice storm and several media websites will be running memoirs: this rather sad tale is the first I've spotted, about a woman who simply assumed she was going to die in the cold and dark.
posted at 15:13

 
The idea of an ecological park to protect the forests and wetlands in the entire Montreal area (they're calling it the Montreal Archipelago, but I think the Hochelaga Archipelago would sound better and focus less on the urban domination that clearly irks mayors of major towns like Laval and Longueuil) is a nice one, but whether the protection will have any power against the big bucks waved around by developers remains to be seen.
posted at 14:40

 
Some service stations around the city have run short of gas, but this is supposed to be fixed sometime soon.
posted at 14:18

 
Eleven days after mid-December's big storm the snow clearance is almost over, and the city's touted downtown bike path, which came with a promise to be open year-round, has just been cleared.
posted at 11:58

 
Interesting background and photos of what was lost to enable construction of the Ville-Marie autoroute.
posted at 13:22

 
Obits and accolades for Oscar Peterson: New York Times, Globe & Mail obit and accolade, the BBC, the Guardian, Pravda, Xinhua...
posted at 12:49

 
A local photographer documents a snow clearing sequence in Mile End: 1 2 3.
posted at 12:09

 
A U.S. view of the Quebec accommodations flap (originally from the New York Times).
posted at 16:29

 
One food writer gives her list of interesting restaurants for the year.
posted at 13:37

 
A nice piece on Place Jacques-Cartier when it used to be a real market, not a tourist trap. Also from Spacing Montreal, pix of Christmas kitsch.
posted at 13:26

 
STM union agrees to Essential Services orders not to pull sneaky pressure tactics like last week's sudden droughts of 55 buses in the early evening.
posted at 16:34

 
Christmas Eve open house at city hall till 17h.
posted at 15:29

 
Montreal-born jazz pianist Oscar Peterson has died: CBC has a photo gallery, and his Wikipedia entry has a spirited accolade from Ray Charles that won't make the mainstream media.
posted at 14:28

 
After buckets of icy rain yesterday, the weather returns closer to normal as the city woke to a Christmas Eve dusted over with white hoarfrost. One unfortunate man was brained by a slab of ice that dropped off a building at Ste-Catherine and Papineau last night.
posted at 12:47

 
A terse look at the Plattsburgh airport that's supposedly blandishing Montreal travellers looking for a bargain. As a business piece it considers the strength of the dollar as a factor, but doesn't take into account Canadian travellers' unwillingness to get entangled in American-style security and searches.
posted at 12:28

 
The building at the corner of Saint-Laurent and Ste-Catherine that used to house the live go-go dancer will be demolished this spring to make way for the exciting glass box that will anchor the Quartier des spectacles.
posted at 14:44

 
It's a huge shopping weekend despite dodgy road conditions that have killed four people already on roads around the city.
posted at 14:38

 
Interview with the founder of Nez Rouge, which needs more volunteers this season.
posted at 14:28

 
A sports writer asks why Montreal doesn't support any secondary hockey team, which is a reasonable question of such a hockey town as this. It seems a missed opportunity in several senses.
posted at 14:20

 
We are running out of room for the snow being removed from our streets and some may be illegally dumping snow directly into the river. One man, however, has found a novel way to remove a snowbank from his front yard: he's auctioning it on eBay.
posted at 18:45

 
The SSJB and the Mouvement Montréal français are outraged that some people are getting served in English in some hospitals in Montreal, and call for a return to the more draconian principles of Bill 101, which mandated that all hospitals function solely in French. Not sure how much bite the English complaint has in return.
posted at 14:52

 
Praise for Raymond Bachand, Jean Charest's current minister for the Montreal region.
posted at 14:18

 
Not everyone can easily reach 311 yet – apparently some phone systems need to be tweaked to allow a new 3-digit number to dial through.
posted at 14:02

 
A food bank in the Point that serves 350 families regularly and helps hundreds of others is menaced with closure not from lack of supplies, but because it can't meet its rent or expenses. But this Quebec government is not interested in being generous to the poor or homeless – studies must have shown there aren't many votes in it.
posted at 13:55

 
The city's parking meters are more profitable than ever.
posted at 11:49

 
Another realism piece about what it's like to do snow clearing work, although I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "F--k you!" (isn't it time newspapers stopped being coy about perfectly common words?). And a man who was director of public works for more than a decade is quoted as saying that the snow clearance is a bordel et de tour de Babel.
posted at 03:56

 
The National Post has a curious entry from a Montreal commentator. His description of the Bibliothèque nationale's Christmas trees is exact: photo here
posted at 03:46

 
Hour explains Spacing Montreal.
posted at 21:23

 
As temperatures rise, rain is forecast for the weekend, which may delay the original promised deadline of Christmas for getting the snowfall cleared away. Meanwhile, rush hours have been a big mess, and some people are worried about the snow clearing bill although, since it's a job that has to be done, worrying about it isn't going to help.
posted at 14:59

 
A Montreal man is barred from selling Christmas trees in Manhattan after being welcome there for nine years.
posted at 12:56

 
Quebec is buying back the Saint-Sulpice library building to keep UQÀM from selling it into private hands. On the other hand, Quebec is not going to cover the university's debt from building that gamboge glass building on Sherbrooke at Saint-Urbain.
posted at 12:41

 
Montreal now has a 311 service, although unlike other *11 services it isn't to be available 24/7, at least at first. It's for municipal information inquiries and will be open extended business hours 365 days a year. La Presse cites Laval and Gatineau as exemplars, but the idea apparently began in Baltimore, Maryland and has spread from there.
posted at 12:34

 
The TQS TV network is fighting for survival with 30 days to come to a deal with its creditors. Accusations are flying back and forth between it, the CRTC and Radio-Canada, which publishes its response here.
posted at 12:23

 
A new network of clinics is expected to relieve the shortage of family doctors in the city. Funny thing, I thought the CLSC system was supposed to be exactly this, but apparently not.
posted at 12:17

 
Three prisoners who used a ladder to escape Bordeaux Jail on Sunday during the blizzard are still at large and considered dangerous. You'd think there'd be mugshots of the fugitives online, but I can't find them. (Later note: a smart reader emails to say they're here.)
posted at 13:46

 
Quebec and the AMT have signed with Bombardier to provide 160 double-decker commuter train cars, which should allow an increase of 70% in trains available at rush hours. The new trains should be ready in 2009.
posted at 12:46

 
The total snow so far this year is now being estimated as 110 cm, and a week's being given for the snow clearance, for which there is apparently at least enough money left in the city budget. Did schools close too readily? Were people too ready to go shopping? The Toronto Star compares the Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal approaches to snow clearing, and we also have some thoughts on slush and a collection of snow day videos and stills from Neath of Walking Turcot Yards.
posted at 11:49

 
I seem to be running periodic Chris DeWolf updates, but he's doing good stuff: the widening of Dorchester under Jean Drapeau, the Bibliothèque nationale deciding to preserve copies of publicity posters, and the idea of keeping the block of de Maisonneuve behind the Bay closed to traffic.
posted at 22:52

 
Yesterday's big snow remains the biggest news story, with schools closed and travel rendered difficult whether by car or airplane. Various numbers are being bandied around, but between 26 and 32 cm is a ballpark, bringing to roughly 70 cm the total for December so far, and all before the winter solstice. And Marcel Tremblay says it'll be cleared away before Christmas.
posted at 11:54

 
A new bridge to Île Bizard seems inevitable, but plans are being pulled this way and that; the future of the old STM terrain at Fullum and Mont-Royal is uncertain, some seeing posh condos there, and others social housing. (Also, if the STM gets rid of both this garage and the one at Rosemont and Saint-Denis, where will its buses sleep at night?) And Quebec is taking an interest in Montreal's recent moves toward water management.
posted at 11:38

 
After a long career and a fight to establish freedom of reproductive choice for Canadian women, Henry Morgentaler retires at age 84.
posted at 11:30

 
Ville-Marie is going to have new benches and garbage cans designed by Michel Dallaire, who's also doing the urban bicycles for the new short-term bike rental scheme. Nothing's said here about making sure nobody can sleep on these benches, but I'll bet that's part of the brief.
posted at 11:27

 
Despite problems with the previous administration, Outremont re-elected a Union Montréal candidate, Marie Cinq-Mars, as borough mayor in yesterday's election. The secondary election for a borough councillor was also won by Union Montréal. The mayor's party no doubt feel this is a gesture of support, but what's interesting is that Projet Montréal's Jean-Claude Marsan came a pretty close second to Cinq-Mars, leaving the Vision Montréal candidate trailing. Only 29% of the electorate braved yesterday's storm to vote.
posted at 11:22

 
Some people are relieved and happy that Karla Homolka has left Canada. Others are expressing concerns that she could still be a danger, wherever she goes.
posted at 11:00

 
A blizzard covering this whole part of the country continues to dump ice pellets and snow on the city, and people are being asked to stay off the roads and highways. Marcel Tremblay is also asking citizens to behave responsibly during snow clearing, which we're going to see a lot of this week.

I heard thunder a little while ago too – that's just weird.
posted at 13:57

 
The owner of the Rialto theatre wants to sell it, but nobody else wants it either.
posted at 13:24

 
A massive transformation plan for the Radio-Canada building and its surroundings has been submitted for city approval.
posted at 13:19

 
In the midst of a blizzard, Outremont elects a new mayor today: this Radio-Canada piece gives a good short resumé of the three candidates and their claims to fame.
posted at 12:59

 
Today's chill is only an hors d'œuvre to another major snowstorm starting early tomorrow and expected to dump anywhere from 20 to 40 cm of snow on the city, depending who you read.
posted at 11:30

 
After more than a month of inquiry and solicitation of opinion, Le Devoir has concluded that the Quebec national dish is... pâté chinois. Apparently the origin of the name is obscure but Le Devoir, typically, suggests an analysis of the contents of the dish as symbolizing anglophones and francophones united by a layer of first nations people, symbolized by the corn. A close second is the tourtière, originally named for the tourte, a species of pigeon hunted to extinction to fill pies.
posted at 11:17

 
Mayor Tremblay spoke yesterday at the final day of the Bouchard-Taylor hearings, saying he thinks cultural communities get along fine in Montreal for the most part. One columnist begs to differ.
posted at 11:06

 
The notion of a fast train to Quebec has been revived again. I've seen it come and go before in the six years I've been blogging, but I still think three hours is no big deal and spending half a billion dollars to reduce it to 2h15 is silly.
posted at 10:58

 
The city is to build its 45th public library on the old municipal workshop lands behind Rosemont metro, cleared over the last couple of years.
posted at 10:50

 
Walrus magazine has an interview with comics artist Julie Doucet and how Montreal inspires her.

But I have a bone to pick with the copyediting. Some Toronto sites lately are being ohhhh-so-politically-correct in putting the accent-aigu on "Montreal" even when the text is in English. Walrus does it in that article. Spacing Montreal – based in Toronto – also does it, although not all its correspondents follow suit.

Look folks: Montreal takes an accent in French, and it takes an accent if you're mentioning an institution with a French name in English text: Journal de Montréal for example. In a direct mention in English, the name does not take an accent. Do you actually call the city "Mon-ray-al" when you talk about it in English? If not, then please knock it off.
posted at 21:11

 
The city has opened a bistro and cafeteria with real food in the Beaver Lake chalet.
posted at 21:00

 
The first Montreal Brazil film festival starts today at the Cinéma du Parc; it's the 25th anniversary of the Jubilation Gospel Choir, with concerts tonight and all weekend; fascinating piece about the old synagogues of Montreal with several photos showing these architecturally varied and vanished buildings.
posted at 14:05

 
Residents of Point St. Charles are fighting the closure of their post office, planned for this spring. The Exploring Southwest Montreal blog is following this issue, quoting a resident as simply saying that you need to be able to get to the local post office on foot.
posted at 13:43

 
Worth looking at this item about a coalition fighting the city's plans for Notre-Dame East if only to scroll down and compare the two sketches showing the urban boulevard idea versus the city's Decarie-like sunken expressway. An urban planner also voices well-considered criticism of the project.
posted at 13:29

 
The McGill superhospital has hired a British manager to oversee the projet public-privé that Quebec is imposing on the plan.
posted at 23:21

 
The city's new contract for installing industrial and commercial water meters is tainted by conflict of interest concerns because a business closely related to the eventual winner was involved in choosing them for the contract. The opposition wants the city to delay signing and look into it.
posted at 23:15

 
The city will embark on yet more road work next year, and the bit of de Maisonneuve behind the Bay will remain closed off while work is done on the notorious cracked concrete block somewhere abaft the big store.
posted at 23:10

 
Not sure if this Journal de Montréal story about textbooks in the trash is reporting on a serious problem, or just one of their intermittent attempts at manufacturing outrage. The head of the school commission has already been quoted calling it a lack of good judgement, but the accessory stories about regional schools not having enough books may or may not be relevant. There are political and economic factors involved in providing mass quantities of textbooks: the environmental angle here may be something of a red herring.
posted at 12:27

 
Stéphane Harbour, disgraced ex-mayor of Outremont, will get a nice lump sum and a small pension, while investigations show that dinner receipts from the mayor and his cronies list dining companions that were not actually present. An interim manager has been sorting things out and a new Outremont mayor will be elected this Sunday.
posted at 12:05

 
Cheery pieces today: a summary of the year in Montreal with the theme of crumbling infrastructure, and a look at how the area makes itself unappealing to newcomers.
posted at 11:53

 
The name of Lino Saputo, big cheese of the big cheese company (and patron of the new soccer stadium), has come up in an Italian mafia investigation, causing a knock to company share values.
posted at 23:52

 
Urgences Santé workers have rejected a tentative contract agreement, sending their reps back for more negotiations.
posted at 23:46

 
Police defused a bomb found under a truck today but the reason for the booby-trapped vehicle has not been made clear.
posted at 23:39

 
The STM is to test its new electronic fare cards soon. New turnstyles are already installed in more than half the stations, and bus readers come next. (I wonder how one qualifies as enough of a transit geek to be in the testing group.)
posted at 11:11

 

Montreal police have adopted a new logo based on the star element in their existing insignia. It will take a few years before all the uniforms, cars and so on are re-branded. More examples here of the logo in use.

The police department is also making cuts in neighbourhood stations ostensibly to free more police to go out on patrol.
posted at 11:05

 
STM maintenance guys are threatening to boycott overtime and possibly to strike, a threat with extra teeth given the STM's promise of increased services as of next month. They want to kick-start stalled contract negotiations.
posted at 10:55

 
Mary Deros, councillor for Park Ex, has crossed the floor to join Mayor Tremblay's Union Montreal party. Her switch makes the ruling party a majority in Villeray/Saint-Michel/Parc-Ex borough and, to some extent, offsets the flight of Benoit Labonté in the other direction.
posted at 10:50

 
Emile Bertrand's old spruce beer recipe has found a new home in the Point.
posted at 10:46

 
A fairly amusing rant on the impending law against displaying cigarettes for sale.
posted at 23:44

 
Norbourg investment honcho Vincent Lacroix is convicted of fraud and faces unknown but non-trivial sentencing and a fine of up to $5 million.
posted at 23:38

 
Numbers confirm that it's getting steadily more difficult to see a primary care doctor in Montreal. But it could be worse: cultural barriers could make it difficult to impossible to get medical care at all.
posted at 23:27

 
Laval wants more money for a metro extension, specifically one that would turn the orange line into a loop. But this isn't new: Gilles Vaillancourt was saying the same thing in August.
posted at 02:39

 
I am amused to note this blog and this blog which seem to be emulating a rather familiar formula.
posted at 02:35

 
The Liberal Party wants to make immigrants sign an engagement moral to Quebec values, these to include secularism, gender equality and respect for the francophone majority. Meanwhile, a poll shows that Quebecers would like a constitution of their own to protect the predominance of French, gender equality, historic heritage and institutional secularism.

It's just a tad bizarre that Quebec is claiming secular institutions are a cultural fixture here. So many "secular" schools are named after saints or religious concepts, hospitals have names like Sacré-Cœur, Notre-Dame and St. Mary's, major streets and one of the grandest rivers of the world are named after Roman Catholic saints. As recently as the mid-1960s, a brand new island built for an international exposition was quite naturally named Île Notre-Dame.

Like fish being asked to think about water, many Quebecers don't realize what a deep pond of Catholic culture they're swimming in. Can it possibly be a sneaking admiration for France's dedication to an entirely secular public life? We've never had secular institutions here. Maybe it's time we gave it a try.
posted at 01:54

 
As its tenth anniversary approaches, local media are soliciting verbal and visual accounts of experiences of the 1998 ice storm.
posted at 01:33

 
This blog has become accustomed to seeing cyclical waves of concern. One is the entirely predictable collective shudder of disgust at the mess revealed in our streets when the snow recedes in early spring. Another is the early winter/pre-Christmas wave of concern for the homeless, currently exemplified by reports of the death of a disturbed homeless man in a snowbank. These are the same people Ville-Marie is chivvying out of parks and forcing away from squeegeeing in the summer.
posted at 10:56

 
After famous architect Moshe Safdie left the McGill superhospital project last week, another architect weighs in to support and explicate objections to the kind of public-private partnership that's at the heart of the MUHC's current plan.
posted at 10:45

 
The Montreal and Toronto stock exchanges will merge today: I doubt this will be noticed much on the street.
posted at 10:21

 
As anyone walking around town has probably noticed, most Montreal drivers are totally oblivious to the fact that idling your car is damaging and illegal. Here's a piece from earlier this year that explains why the exhaust of modern cars with catalytic converters is much more damaging in cold weather: they emit nitrous oxide, one of the most damaging greenhouses gases.
posted at 09:58

 
The paramedics of Urgences-Santé have arrived at a contract deal that would forestall any strike, and only have to vote on it.
posted at 21:23

 
The city's about to announce that the Planetarium is to be moved to the Olympic Park. Neither of these pieces asks or answers an even more interesting question: what happens to the site of the current Planetarium? Maybe that will be answered tomorrow.
posted at 21:21

 
Obit for comedy writer Mel Tolkin, who got his start in Montreal after his family immigrated here from Ukraine.
posted at 13:24

 
Nice bit of journalisme vérité as the writer accompanies a snow-clearing team downtown and observes the many obstacles they cope with besides the snow itself. Snow clearance remains somewhat hazardous despite the new law limiting work hours for safety purposes. And my street still hasn't been cleared.
posted at 13:07

 

Plateau councillors are pondering doing something interesting with the Lafontaine park chalet, shown above in greener weather, but it's not too clear what. At the moment it's only used as a shelter for people skating on the pond in wintertime, but it could have its uses in summer as well.
posted at 12:39

 
Review of the latest ponderous tome by McGill philosophy prof Charles Taylor – yes, he of the Bouchard-Taylor commission.
posted at 14:25

 
An evil prank using Montreal's parking borne system.
posted at 14:25

 

Snow clearance guys are getting a day off this weekend after working around the clock all week to clear Monday's snowfall. The process is being slowed down by careless motorists leaving their cars blocking the plows and blowers: 5000 have been towed. And a woman was run over by a dump truck last night, so it pays to be alert, although having chanced on the clearance of Saint-Viateur last night I was impressed by how careful they were, with spotters preceding the machines along the street.

I'm not sure what this talk about overly mild winters with lack of snow is about: on December 16, 2005, we had a 41-cm snowfall that was easily the equal of the one on Monday, and that's only two years ago.

Photo: snow removal, by Ben Soo
posted at 11:35

 
A march is planned downtown this afternoon in support of the Kyoto accord and general environmental concerns as the United Nations conference in Bali continues. Such marches are being held worldwide, while the Harper government makes irrelevant points and tries to derail the talks.
posted at 11:06

 
Montreal has settled with Ste-Catherine Street shopkeepers for damage sustained during the 1993 Stanley Cup riot. If I were feeling superstitious I'd say that now this is dealt with, the team is free to win the cup again.
posted at 10:54

 
In November, Joe Clark was walking along Sherbrooke Street when he was randomly assaulted by a stranger who punched him in the face. Clark's history doesn't suggest a trail of anger and resentment like many recent prime ministers, so the attack remains a mystery.
posted at 10:52

 
Retired senator Jacques Hébert has died at 84 after a long life that included journalism, activism and politics and a well-known long-standing friendship with Pierre Trudeau.
posted at 17:55

 
Snow removal is a bit of a slog but the city says the delay is not its fault. Half of the city is cleared: 3 million cubic meters of snow.
posted at 17:46

 
You can shop on Ste-Catherine Street. Who knew.
posted at 17:42

 
Nice pieces on clotheslines and a comparison of bus transfers from Spacing. Also a comparison of a faked-up shot of Old Montreal from a popular TV show, compared to the real thing.
posted at 10:37

 
The issue of reviving a fast bus lane on Pie-IX is clearly beset with economic and political hazards: the Quebec government seems set on trying to get a PPP in there one way or another. Making the AMT and the STM quarrel might be a effective way to delay improving transit services to Montrealers.
posted at 10:29

 
Stats on road mortality in town are improving, with a fall in both deaths and injuries this year. The police traffic squad is taking the credit, and the impending speed reduction on many streets to 40 km/h is expected to calm the traffic even more.
posted at 10:17

 
Some hospitals are expressing dissatisfaction at the speed of snow removal this week, displeased that their establishments are not being prioritized by city cleanups. I can't quite make out the intention of this Gazette piece, which seems to be striving for a perky tone (viz., the headline) but ends up expressing frustration with the snow clearance after all.