La blogueuse is taking off this morning for a weekend with no net connection (!) and thus, no blog. Back Monday!
posted at 06:28

 
Good radical thoughts on the rivalry between Montreal and Quebec City.
posted at 11:06

 
Just realized that since yesterday, Blogger's been doing something to links that makes them inoperable. A bug report is in, and I'm going back to fix the existing posts. Sorry about that.
posted at 10:22

 
The Cité des arts du Cirque is now open in Saint-Michel by the old quarry.
posted at 10:04

 
Investigation of the Laval metro extension expenses shows that consultants were lavishly paid without any connection to the progress of the project. Nothing in this truncated story says why such an unwise decision was made.
posted at 09:57

 
More details here on the Rosemont-Plateau rape suspect, although by the end of the article he's pretty much no longer just a suspect, but a perp waiting for possible deportation.
posted at 09:43

 
Interesting and detailed obits for Frank Cotroni, whose last project in life was a recipe book.
posted at 10:18

 
The same Montreal man who pulled a stunt at figure skating championships earlier this year was arrested in Athens for diving into the Olympic pool in a tutu. I'd be more entertained by this if he weren't doing it as publicity for a casino.
posted at 10:14

 
Police have arrested a man suspected in the attacks on women in Rosemont and the Plateau.
posted at 09:57

 
Previous owner of swingers' club L'Orage is in court over whether the establishment could be called a maison de débauche (common bawdy house, I suppose) or not.
posted at 14:20

 
The Olympics always gives a leg up to elite sports, as here, with the city vowing to revisit its policy of supporting this type of endeavour. Unfortunately this has very little to do with helping the populace keep in shape.
posted at 14:12

 
Frank Cotroni dies at 72... of natural causes.
posted at 14:06

 
Glad to see a new Idle Words entry with more entertaining thoughts on Montreal and on understanding joual.
posted at 09:30

 
Interesting series of photos of graffiti in Montreal: 1 2 3.
posted at 09:26

 
Not a new story, but ongoing: Beaux-Arts director Guy Cogeval is being sued for plagiarism over his huge catalogue of Édouard Vuillard's oeuvre by two other art historians who say he misappropriated their work. He says he's confident he's in the right. Another interesting link on the story from a French paper (lifted shamelessly from Zeke).
posted at 09:12

 
Friday's article on this blog has been unlocked!
posted at 08:51

 
It's a quiet news day when the issue of store closing hours in four malls, all far from downtown, is the top local story on many sites.
posted at 08:46

 

The Château cinema, corner Saint-Denis and Bélanger, which dates from 1931. Today it's some kind of church - the marquee says Tu as du prix à mes yeux tu comptes beaucoup pour moi et je t'aime - Dieu but the old name remains on the front of the marquee. 1936 photo: Ville de Montréal. Gestion des documents et archives.
posted at 11:56

 
Toronto piece on the mean streets of Montreal, a phrase that seems a tad lurid to describe a few, widely scattered gang incidents.

(Might be worth remembering the source of that phrase: "But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid." - Raymond Chandler, of course.)
posted at 12:01

 
Glowing review of our bike path system by a writer from Maine.
posted at 10:08

 
Here's the end-of-summer pop scene column.
posted at 09:58

 
Top sawbones Dr. Hugh Scott warns against healthcare alarmism in advance of next month's health summit.

Here's a central point: over the last decade, "hospitals and physician services, which fall almost entirely within the public domain, increased by 36.1 per cent and 49 per cent, respectively. Dental care and prescription drugs, most of which are delivered outside of medicare, went up by 83.3 per cent and 142.4 per cent, respectively. This should provide a note of caution to those who would advocate a greater role for the private sector in personal health care, Scott says."
posted at 16:40

 
Thoughtful obit for television pioneer Jean Pouliot.
posted at 16:36

 
I don't eat the stuff myself, but I'm selflessly pointing to this list of the best chocolate ice cream available in town for everyone else who does.
posted at 16:33

 
Not a lot of detail here: the Port of Montreal decided on its own to tear down the building on Cité du Havre that was built as a studio for Radio-Canada for Expo 67, then served for some years as the Musée d'art contemporain's temporary home. The mayor thinks it may have been a heritage building. If this were Habitat we were talking about I could see the fuss, but it's possible that the building under discussion had outlived its usefulness - after all, most of the Expo installations are long gone now, and I don't recall this building being any marvel of memorable architecture. I also wonder what Dominic Taddeo wants to do with the space.
posted at 16:22

 
Dissatisfied with Quebec's ideas on the issue, Montreal has decided to cook up its own scheme to deal with the Notre-Dame East issue. Quebec wants to see the stretch between the bridge and the tunnel turned into an unbroken stretch of highway; Montreal would prefer to see it integrated better with the surrounding cityscape. Either way, we'll have so many more cars here by the time it's built that the details will make little difference to the embouteillages of 2009.
posted at 16:13

 
My 15 minutes of fame would have to fall on Friday the 13th.

There's a nice piece about this blog in today's Le Devoir, page B8. Ironically, I can't link to it, because it's locked to subscribers only. But it's worth going out in the rain to get a copy of the paper.
posted at 10:29

 
A reader emails to say that the Windsor Hotel wasn't demolished, but that the larger part of it was destroyed in a disastrous fire in 1957. This is interesting: I'm learning local history here as I go along.

Found a relevant clipping with a photo of the hotel burning.
posted at 10:00

 

Peel and René-Lévesque, or - as it was then - Dorchester. The grand Windsor Hotel was mostly demolished (see next extry) to make room for the CIBC building, but part of it still lingers on Peel Street. August 1936 photo: Ville de Montréal. Gestion des documents et archives.

Incidentally, having been asked where I'm getting the modern photos from, I suppose I'd better assert my ownership of them, such as they are. I'm taking them all myself with my Nikon Coolpix digital.
posted at 12:47

 
Fluff piece on the Montreal institution of the 5 à 7.
posted at 11:12

 
There's been a series of sexual aggressions around western Rosemont, and a rape last night in the Plateau, and the police think it's the same guy. There's a police sketch and description here. (I still can't see people in terms of meters and kilograms, so he's 5'9" and 180 lbs.)
posted at 10:52

 
Dark, melodramatic Gazette piece on kids getting "recruited" for street gangs. If my only two options were to shoot hoops all day or join a gang, I know which I'd be doing. We're so hard up for ideas that some local authorities in this area are going to make a trip to the U.S. to find out what they do about street gangs. (Start a war and ship them off to Iraq?)

And predictably, the police are saying they're worn out doing all this extra policing. I can see where this is going.
posted at 10:39

 
Freecycling - the movement to give useful stuff away instead of throwing it in the garbage - is flourishing here; the Yahoo group was started in March and already has 726 members.
posted at 10:27

 
This is probably how the ancient Egyptians felt when they heard there was a new pyramid project in the works. They're looking for a firm to replace the roof of the Olympic Stadium, again.
posted at 10:19

 
A blogger writes admiringly about Central Station, not a space that usually gets much praise locally. His verbal descriptions of the O Canada frieze around the ends of the station are better than most of his photos.
posted at 14:07

 
Serge Losique announces details of the upcoming World Film Fest while handwaving the recent report critical of his management style. Have to say this year's poster hardly looks worthy of the sort of world-class event the fest is trying to be. More here from Variety and from the Hollywood Reporter on the contents of the fest and their implications.
posted at 13:11

 
Thoughts on small river dams and on Lucien Bouchard's ideas about health care.
posted at 12:55

 
Yikes. a cloud of toxic gas seeped past the West Island and through downtown yesterday, and nobody did anything about it.
posted at 10:38

 
Police finger several known gangs as behind elevated levels of strife around town of late, even though nobody's talking. Garnotte chimes in with a comment on the mayor's reassurances on the city's safety.
posted at 10:05

 
Readers have written to tell me about the dome in yesterday's (old) picture. Seems it is not the dome of the Bonsecours market, but of a building that used to be on Place Royale where the archaeology museum is now, and which burned down before the museum was built. Thanks for the correction!
posted at 09:36

 

Rue de la Commune, looking east from St-Pierre Street. The forefront building was the Catholic Sailors' club: the contrast shows how bizarre those modern single-pane windows look in older architecture. The Aldred building is peeking over the housetops in both photos, but we can't see the dome of the Marché Bonsecours from this spot any more (see next entry). The Palais de Justice adds a looming touch of incongruous modernity to the current shot. 1936 photo: Ville de Montréal. Gestion des documents et archives.
posted at 12:03

 
The Saint-Sulpice library (next to the club of the same name on Saint-Denis) will become an institut du livre with publishers' archives and other services connected to book publishing, once the Grande Biblio opens up around the corner on Berri. But I've seen no mentions lately of plans for the city's pillared library building that faces Lafontaine Park.
posted at 10:08

 
This story says work is to start at the Glen Yard site of the MUHC superhospital this fall. I put a question mark against this, because all this superhospital talk has been nothing but noise for years, a way to distract us from general dissatisfaction about our existing hospitals. Time will tell.
posted at 09:41

 
Robert Kennedy jr. wants Quebec to back off damming the Magpie River for hydro power, and develop it instead for tourism. I'm with him in theory, at least about not wrecking a pristine bit of the environment, but he might consider that a location 900km from Montreal would only ever attract a small number of wealthy patrons (and that the travelling back and forth would itself be damaging environmentally).
posted at 09:26

 
Lots of talk today about street gang strife by way of explaining recent attacks and violence in our streets. Globe and Mail login mtlweblog/mtlweblog
posted at 09:19

 
The FrancoFolies were a big popular success but still ended up in the red. Festival season has come to an end, pretty much, for the season - now we can relax and wait for the pollen.
posted at 22:17

 
Mayor Tremblay says Montreal is safe despite the recent rash of violent incidents. I don't listen to radio myself, but a friend said today he'd heard a Journal de Montréal writer say on radio that the only reason these minor stabbings, brawls and shootings are making the news is that nothing else is happening: this kind of stuff goes on all the time, but bigger events normally crowd it off the front page. Anyway, for the moment we'll see more cop patrols, especially those of us who live near donut shops.
posted at 22:10

 
August photos are up on urbanphoto. (I have more then-and-now photos coming later this week, I hope, although the weather may not cooperate. I'll also be putting them up all together in one place, as several folks have suggested.)
posted at 11:25

 
The recent outbreak of random violence has pushed the outbreak of random fires off the page. But nobody knows what the deal is: here Peter Yeomans hints there's a "pattern" whereas previous official announcements have denied any such thing.
posted at 09:36

 
As the Olympics approach, ghosts revisit Games past. Here, Nadia Comaneci recollects her perfect 10s in Montreal in 1976.
posted at 09:33

 
Fairly predictable kvetch piece about the weather this summer. (Enjoy today, because the rest of the week looks like we're back to rain.)
posted at 09:28

 
Mount Royal park is getting more and more damaged by people walking off the paths and illicit mountain bikers helping erosion along. Everything from old trees to rare wild plants is taking a hit.
posted at 09:26

 
The renaissance of Mont-Royal Avenue is praised in this article, although locals might shudder to hear that the next plan is to attract more tourists to the area.
posted at 09:21

 
Retrospective of a successful FrancoFolies fest and closing concert.
posted at 09:16

 
Local star Auf der Maur gets her say in the Guardian UK.
posted at 13:11

 
The budgeting problems of the upcoming Athens Olympics are compared to Montreal's.
posted at 11:36

 
Ten years ago the Expos had great promise, says this wistful New York Post piece.
posted at 10:48

 
A rash of violent acts in various parts of town gets the mayor and the police saying it's not a crime wave.
posted at 10:45

 
Most francophone radio stations are doing a radiothon today from 10:00 to 14:00 in support of the CHUM in hopes of spiffing up its image and, I suppose, clarifying the question of where it goes next now that the Rosemont viaduct project is off.
posted at 10:34

 
Montreal gets rated as a high-tech centre by Business 2.0; longish piece about gentrification in the Eastern Townships - close enough to count, i think; the Expos will probably go to Virginia or Washington; Vito Rizzuto stays in jail but no ruling on his extradition is expected before mid-October.
posted at 14:03