Submitted by mtlweblog on Wed, 03/12/2008 - 02:37.
- The city's blue-collar workers are being called heroes for a change for the sustained effort needed to keep the snow removal wheels turning this season. Despite this, the city is asking for patience with the process, expected to take till the weekend. Looking ahead, a gradual thaw would be better than a sudden warm snap which could bring on flooding in riverside neighbourhoods, although there's no sign of that happening yet. Nonetheless, Madame la Bloggeuse, famous clairvoyante, foresees that the run on snowblowers may be followed by a run on rubber boots. ...Also, some nice glimpses of Sunday's aftermath by a snowshoe-mounted journalist.
- Superior Court has rejected Vincent Lacroix's attempt to launch an appeal of his conviction on 51 counts of fraud.
- A new protest group is saying the St. Patrick's Day parade is too English, which may be true. More signs and cheers in Irish would be appropriate on the day.
- Defenders of Griffintown arrived in a buggy for the first public consultation sessions on the proposed redevelopment of the area.
- Quebec's culture minister is looking for ideas how to repurpose the Bibliothèque Saint-Sulpice – but it has to have some cultural point or purpose.
- Montreal has a new hockey team called the Junior de Montréal. Till recently the St. John's Fog Devils, the team will begin to play next season at the Verdun Auditorium in colours reminiscent of the Montreal Maroons.
Submitted by mtlweblog on Wed, 03/12/2008 - 02:34.
Submitted by mtlweblog on Wed, 03/12/2008 - 02:30.
Submitted by mtlweblog on Wed, 03/12/2008 - 02:26.
- The city has opened five more snow depots, bringing the total to 38, and blue-collar workers are authorized to work longer shifts as more snow continues to blanket the city. Marcel Tremblay says this storm should be cleaned up by Wednesday. I will hold you to that, Marcel.
- A brief hark back to the 1971 blizzard has two video links, the first to cuts of archival snowstorm footage, most with no narration, but a partial voice-over in English kicks in at 3:09 then is cut off. The second one's a more typical talking heads piece with folks reminiscing. (Snow clearance technology hasn't changed much, except it's no longer dumped directly into the river. Shouldn't we have, like, snow-melting laser cannon by now?)
- You're not imagining it: Quebec gets more natural catastrophes and of more varied kinds than the rest of Canada, with ice storms and floods in addition to snow.
Submitted by mtlweblog on Wed, 03/12/2008 - 02:23.
Submitted by mtlweblog on Fri, 03/07/2008 - 20:34.
Submitted by mtlweblog on Fri, 03/07/2008 - 20:29.
Submitted by mtlweblog on Wed, 03/05/2008 - 23:50.
- 70% of Montrealers drive to work, 21% take public transit, 7% walk and only 1.6% cycle. Sad thing for Canada is that these are among the greenest commuting numbers in the country.
- Ville-Marie proposes to close Sainte-Catherine Street to traffic in the Village for a good part of the summer.
- There's a movement afoot to rename Lionel-Groulx metro after Oscar Peterson, based on his having grown up nearby, versus Groulx' writings espousing racist views and supporting fascism. But the STM has had a moratorium on renaming stations since the unwieldy "Longueuil-Université-de-Sherbrooke" business a few years ago – they've been resisting "Beaudry-Village" too.
- A young man of Saudi origins but who had emigrated to Montreal with his family has been sentenced to death for an incident in Jeddah followed by a trial the family claims was bogus. Canadian officials are being asked to step in.
- Residents of Repentigny are dead set against the enlargement of the Lachenaie garbage landfill that takes much of the metropolis's garbage.
Submitted by mtlweblog on Wed, 03/05/2008 - 23:41.
- The Committee for the Sustainable Redevelopment of Griffintown has an online petition asking the city to back off awhile, consult the public more, and consider major projects in the context of their effect on the whole metropolitan area, not just individual boroughs. It's worth signing: the recent Griffintown "consultations" were basically the presentation of a fait accompli, not an inquiry into how residents would like to see the neighbourhood evolve and how beneficial change could be encouraged by the city administration. It's important that they be made to understand that many people care about the life of this city and are well aware of City Hall's tendency to try to railroad things when they're unilaterally chosen, as the Griffintown PPU has been.
- The Institut économique de Montréal is recommending the return of tolls on bridges and highways throughout Quebec. This could raise $1.5 billion annually.
- A meeting of new English rights group Affiliation Quebec came to blows yesterday with Les Jeunes Patriotes du Québec, the sticking point being the presence of quondam local shit-disturber Howard Galganov at the meeting.
- We're running out of space in the garbage dump, nobody wants to open any more of them, and we haven't got a plan in place to reduce garbage in other ways.
Submitted by mtlweblog on Tue, 03/04/2008 - 16:31.
- A conference at the U of M this weekend is looking at the exodus of young anglophone professionals from Quebec (although the National Post calling the Journal de Montréal "sensationalist" is a pot/kettle matter, considering the harsh choice of words in their piece). A call for anglos to participate in the broader political life of Quebec raises the question: do anglos only ever fight for anglo rights, and nothing else? No anglos involved in environmental groups, heritage concerns, health care issue groups, women's groups?
- More than 5500 people turned out to participate in last night's Nuit Blanche, capping off a successful Lumière fest. Not sure how they got a head count for the Nuit Blanche, with so many separate events and people moving around all night, but OK.
- An interesting look at the presence of Chinese folks in Montreal particularly via chats with Cedric Sam and Simon Law of the local blogosphere.
- As of this weekend, our 297 cm of snow is neck and neck with the record-holding winter of 1971 on this date, but that winter surged ahead with the massive blizzard of March 4 that year that established a season record of 393 cm – not one we want to break, I think, although winter is by no means over. It shouldn't come as a surprise that there's been a rash of thefts of privately owned snowblowers: apparently you can't buy one for ready money right now in a store, so a market has grown up for hot ones. So to speak.
- The Canadiens reached the top of the NHL eastern conference last night with a 2-1 defeat of the New Jersey Devils.