The bill run up by city workers on their cell phones is raising eyebrows: $10 million over four years. However, this averages out to $51 a month per user per phone, which anyone can tell you is pretty baseline. Whether anyone’s using city phones for personal calls, whether cell calls are being made that could be done on a cheaper landline, are the questions somebody should be asking.
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Statistics Canada demographic trend study says that by 2031, one in three Montrealers will be of a visible minority, also by then 28% of the population will have been born elsewhere, compared to 20% in 2006. One third of the current visible population was born here.
But we’re still struggling with how to treat certain aspects of religious and cultural minority, and there are issues that aren’t easily resolved.
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Bigger than the old green boxes, recycling bins on wheels are coming, at least for buildings with eight or more apartments.
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Another Roman Catholic priest is suspected of defrauding his parishioners but the diocese is refusing to hold inquiries.
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Naïma Atef Amad, who made news last week for filing a Human Rights complaint after being thrown out of a French class for not removing her niqab, has been chucked out of another class for the same reason, with both Jean Charest and immigration minister Yolande James backing the principle that you can’t get public services from Quebec with your face covered.
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The Villanueva inquiry resumed Tuesday with a long interrogation of policeman Jean-Loup Lapointe, although no re-enactment was allowed in court.
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A clear summary of the UdeM’s involvement with the Jésus-Marie convent is just a sidebar to a piece on the unpopularity of the university’s new rector.
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The STM is launching the cutely numbered bus 747, linking downtown (doesn’t say exactly where) with the airport.
Wednesday is also the start of the STM’s promise to tweet any metro interruptions longer than 20 minutes via @stminfo.
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Spacing has part two of its ideas for “reimagining” Saint-Viateur, although what they’re asking for seems a tad too rue Laurier in its intentions. It isn’t inherently a pretty street, but they’re thinking abstractedly, like architects. The kind of lighting, for example, that works around the corner on the Bibliothèque Mile End, which used to be a cosy little Anglican church, would be lost on the massive façade of St. Michael’s. And while traffic calming is always worth considering, Saint-Viateur is already a lot narrower than Bernard, and narrowing it further risks making drivers more impatient to get by, not less.
I still don’t think it needs fixing.
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Members of a Montreal parish are only now becoming curious why their previous priest wore Gucci, and where the money went.
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Thirty people lost their homes in a massive fire of suspicious origins early this morning on Aylwin Street.
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Some thoughts on how mandatory bike helmets are no substitute for controlling traffic.
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A must-read: Luc Ferrandez on why the Université de Montréal should stay on Mount Royal and how wonderful it would be if the natural landscape were better integrated into its layout as it is with many of the other universities he shows us.
He’s especially eloquent on the subject of the Couvent Jésus-Marie:
Il ne faut pas vendre le 1420. On ne vend pas sa mère. Point final. Les congrégations religieuses sont les ancêtres québécois de nos maisons d’enseignement. Mes yeux se mouillent quand je pense aux efforts surhumains qu’elles ont fait pour tirer le peuple vers le haut autrement qu’en les menant à l’église. Partout au Québec, les immenses couvents qui dominent les villes et les villages, pourtant pauvres, nous disent quelque chose sur l’ambition humaniste de nos ancêtres. Nous savons tous que Dieu est mort (Nietzsche) – mais ne jetons pas le bébé avec l’eau du bain. L’ambition de la Maison-mère de la Congrégation des Soeurs des Saints Noms de Jésus et de Marie, sa position sur la montagne; la noblesse de ses traits, sa préservation exceptionnelle en font un exemple remarquable de cet héritage. Y mettre des condos de luxe ? Vraiment ?
This is part two to an entry from March 4 which also repays reading. Not only is Ferrandez eloquent, he grasps a key fact about the web, that a picture is worth 1000 words.
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The STM has issued an official veto to the notion of converting the metro to steel wheels, but Zhuzhou isn’t backing down and may take the issue before the courts.
It may be a debate worth having, but as a transit user I’m mostly concerned that new cars get built before the old ones fall to pieces. Litigation is bound to cause delays here.
Apropos new transit ideas, I love the idea of this.
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Andy Riga is getting a mite obsessive about potholes, considering it’s been a pretty mild season all around. He’s even giving detailed instructions how to add one to the Gazette Google pothole map.
Restrains self from indicating fifty-meter pothole at Peel and Ste-Catherine. -
A minor has been arrested in the fatal stabbing of a man in Saint-Henri, early Sunday morning. He’s looking at charges of first-degree murder.
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The Namur–Jean-Talon project has been given the nod by the public consultation office, meaning that 5000 new residences may be built up on the 40-hectare territory. I propose calling it Julepville.
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A Chilean Montrealer who’s lived here for 35 years was visiting Concepcion and got caught in the earthquake; now he just wants to come home.
Quibble with terminology: if people haven’t been able to buy food for a week, do they become “looters” if they take food rather than starving? -
Our mild winter has given most of us an easy ride, but car mechanics are miffed at the downturn in business.
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The lock-outés of Rue Frontenac are launching a PR campaign to remind the public that they’ve been out on the sidewalk for more than a year.
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Photos from Montreal Fashion Week by Yves Jean Lacasse.
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A young man was stabbed in Saint-Henri last night and died on the ground outside a bar – the city’s fourth homicide of the year.
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Guillaume Saint-Jean continues to rephotograph the city: here’s the corner of Notre-Dame and Saint-Laurent, a vanished Victorian school in Saint-Henri and another vanished school down University.
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La Presse journalist Michèle Ouimet spent two days wearing the niqab in public and writes about her experience.
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Chris DeWolf ponders what kind of livery ought to be adopted by Montreal’s taxis. (Also on urbanphoto with comments.)
Chris also had some thoughts recently on the future of Canadian cities.