Montreal City Weblog

Notable incidents this weekend: a suburbanite stabbed his wife and was cornered by firefighters; ambulance techs and police were pelted with rocks in Côte-des-Neiges when they showed up to treat a victim stabbed in a church hall party; a man who tried to rob an east-end bar was subdued by bar...

Elegiac Jean Béliveau on Saku Koivu's time as Canadiens captain and the non-event of his departure from the team. Yesterday's demo at the Bell Centre was in support of keeping Alex Kovalev on the roster

Despite their growing popularity, how tough are the Bixi bicycles, and will they hold up to rough treatment? La Presse finds a lot of Bixis with broken bits, as well as damaged parts on the stands that hold the bikes at the stations.It's a trade-off...

Guerrilla gardening has its devotees around town, part of Le Devoir's look at alternative urban agriculture this weekend.

A look at the renovation of Dorchester Square, although going so far as to say it has blighted downtown Montreal for a decade is a bit silly. It's just a lived-in urban square.

The choice of a new director for the Musée d'art contemporain has sparked a general complaint as 80 people connected with the art world have signed an open letter to protest the museum's choice, seen as lacking in daring and vision

The Caribbean parade is about to start on René-Lévesque at Guy, marching eastward. Curious how the Gazette calls it the Carifête while La Presse calls it the Carifiesta. (Fagstein emails to point out that these are actually two distinct events happening at the same tim

The city is buying equipment for the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in hopes of getting the Grand Prix back, possibly in the same spirit that launched the south seas' cargo cults...

Montreal could be paying twice what it should for the new water meters, according to an estimate drawn up by Gaz Métropolitain in 2003 and comparing it to the deal struck with the Génieau consortium this year...

Four women from Montreal have been found dead in a car sunk in a lock near Kingston. There are a lot of unanswered questions so far.

The Bixi has been so popular that the city's going to expand it to new boroughs with 2000 new bikes and 100 new stations this summer.

Another piece on the moving company that hauls with bicycle trailers, who will probably be just as busy as every other mover in town today; a number of households are in the street after not finding new digs...

Verdun and Montreal North will get new hockey rinks from the Canadiens' foundation to help kids. They've already built one in Saint-Michel.

The Communauto car-sharing service continues to grow as more people see the advantage of having the use of a car without the hassle of owning, parking and repairing it.

Josh Freed tries to defend his apostrophe joke but seems only to dig himself in deeper.

The city has unveiled a plan for universal curbside composting within five years.

Zinedine Zidane's team beat a local police team 10-0 at Molson Stadium yesterday, part of his UNICEF tour, although he did not get to bring soccer legend Lakdhar Belloumi with him, because Belloumi was denied a visa by the Canadian government for reasons that have not been made clear.

The city has announced it's freezing the transfer payments to its boroughs so they'll get the same amount next year as they got this year.

The Canadiens have drafted a second player from Quebec, another centre, Gabriel Dumont. Réjean Tremblay has some thoughts on Harvard-bound Louis Leblanc

Workers have begun spiffing up Dorchester Square, a job that will take till 2011.

Heritage Montreal wants to save the Guaranteed milk bottle that's been a landmark (and occasionally an eyesore) downtown since the 1930s. The trick will be to restore it but make it inaccessible to taggers. Photo by Ben Soo.

The Economist has a story right now on municipal corruption in Montreal, with a terse summary of the black marks against the current administration. Louise Harel has jumped on this to go on record saying she wants City Hall investigated, but the SQ is already doing that.

Another Vision Montreal councillor quits the party to sit as an independent. Louise Harel says she's not worried about the recent departure of three high-profile members of what's now her party.

Radio-Canada is saying that Mayor Tremblay has recruited François Purcell, who used to be head of Vision Montreal, as well as Claire Saint-Arnaud, who also used to be with the opposition party. But the Gazette can't get any confirmation from the mayor's office

The animation of the big Fête nationale show by Guy A. Lepage is deemed a success, with 250,000 people present and only twenty arrested, mostly for drunken hassling of some kind...

Story here says Montrealers eat worse than the average, but doesn't say what average we're being compared to. Apparently most of us are not pounding the recommended five daily portions of fruit and vegetables.

Montreal man Abousfian Abdelrazik is to finally come home from his native Sudan, where he was stranded for six years because he was on a UN terror list. He's never been charged with any offence, although the UN says he trained at an al-Qaeda camp and has some dodgy acquaintances...

Réal Ménard is to become a Vision Montreal candidate. Not sure how this works alongside his being already a Bloc M

Fluff season is a story with legs as images and stories of the notorious tree spooge begin to proliferate. This city has plenty of cottonwood trees (among the tallest trees in town) so it's not surprising they can fluff up a neighbourhood when the time comes.

At the risk of sounding grouchy: why are people allowed to bring strollers on the bus at rush hour? You can't bring a bike into the metro during those times, and even dedicated cycle commuters accept this as a reasonable restriction...

As we drift past the Saint-Jean holiday and school lets out for summer, municipal election stories are bound to slow up for awhile...

The young man who attacked and raped nine times has been declared a long-term offender, even though he was only sixteen when he started on his series of assaults in Montreal North...

The Turcot work and the Bonaventure demolition will probably happen concurrently, leaving commuters in a snarl.Neath of Walking Turcot Yards comments on this week's zeitgeisty shift which saw the city ask Quebec for a rethink of their Turcot plans...

The STM is going to hire more inspectors to try cutting back on fare fraud, but the idea of slowing down Opus users by insisting on seeing their payment receipts as well (if that's seriously planned) is nuts and won't fly for long...

Jazz photographer Herman Leonard will be shooting at the festival this year, and a show of his prints will open the festival's new exhibition hall in September, in the Maison du Festival de jazz, which used to be called the Blumenthal Building.

Nice piece on how a Duluth Street community centre turned its parking lot into a compact garden: a commenter notes that it was originally the Jewish Peretz school, back when the nearby apartment building was still a synagogue, and also that the community centre is run by Mennonites, which I didn't...

A recent poll says 90% of francophones are worried about the state of French in Montreal whereas the state of French only troubles 24% of non-francos.

It's a really good fluff season this year: the origin of tree fluff is explained here. (Just don't think about drifts of tree sperm and you'll be OK.) There's also some tree fluff pictures in this photo essay on Coolopolis.

The city has unveiled its plans to demolish the Bonaventure autoroute and replace it with an urban boulevard & ndash; to be completed in 2013. Infrastructure work is to start pretty soon.

Guy Lafleur gets a year's probation for giving contradictory evidence about his son's activities. He also has to pay a nominal fine and make a charitable donation of $10,000...

Police, community workers and city officials are keeping watch in Montreal North in hope of avoiding another riot like Tuesday night's, as the uncompleted Villanueva inquest continues to weigh on people's minds.

A coalition of environmental organizations has come up with an alternative proposal for the Turcot exchange, emphasizing public transit and minimizing its impact on nearby communities.

La Presse will no longer be printing a Sunday edition after the end of this month; it's also asking for wage concessions from all its employees.

After a bit of a dust-up it's been decided the two Anglo bands will play at l'Autre Saint-Jean after all. (In Quebec City, anglo bands can perform during the Fête nationale, if they do so in French and only speak French from the stage.

Work on the new Turcot exchange will involve the coming and going of thousands of trucks and plenty of dust and noise. The effect on quality of life in Saint-Henri is now being discussed at the hearings.

Place d'Armes is going to be changed to occupy all the space between Notre-Dame and the other buildings although cars will still be able to circulate on all four sides...

The dust hasn't settled yet on the Autre St-Jean affair which will doubtless spill more ink, pixels and noise today as people debate whether two bands who perform in English ought to be taken off the bill for the Rosemont park spectacle...

One local cyclist has installed a powerful air horn to defend himself in traffic; Spacing's Jacob Larsen gets some press for his online study of Montrealers' cycling habits and preferences; some stuff about getting off the island on a bike towards Beauharnois.

Henry Aubin looks at the ideas of Projet Montréal and notices that their interest in a city not based primarily around the car actually might have legs

Three Molsons have put in a bid on the Canadiens and the Bell Centre. So has Quebecor. La Presse mentions a third, an American offer connected with Pierre Boivin. Quebec has offered a $100-million loan to help either Quebec-based buyer snap it up.

A U.S. writer comes here and enjoys the Tour de l'Île although her comment about "courteous auto drivers" makes me wonder what was in her water bottle

After a lengthy squabble over where the Shriners would build a new hospital, they eventually agreed to put it on the Glen Yards side alongside the new Montreal Children's. But now it seems the project is on hold because the Shriners, like many others, find themselves a little short of cash.

Hearings on the proposed plans for the corner of Saint-Laurent and Sainte-Catherine have shown that they are not universally welcomed, architects and urban planners saying they will banaliser the area (we need that verb in English) and that the area should not have been handed over en masse to real...

The new neighbourhood coming into being near Rosemont metro, where the old city yards were demolished a few years ago, will include social housing built on green principles with affordable spaces for larger families.

The 2-22 Sainte-Catherine project receives mixed responses from its immediate neighbours, some of them speaking with trepidation of how the neighbourhood will feel with an eight-storey tower on the southeast corner of the street, and a 12-storey tower completely taking up the west side.

Been lots in the media about David Alvarez, the Montreal-born dance kid who's shared a Tony Award with two other dancers for the lead role in the musical Billy Elliot. (Born here, it sounds like Mr. Alvarez hasn't lived here for awhile, but we take what we can get.)

Louise Harel and Gérald Tremblay both showed at the Montreal Citizens' Summit this weekend. Harel wants to overhaul the city government and smooth out differences between boroughs although she seems not to have spoken of dismantling the system completely...

The cable car company that wants to build a skyride between the Old Port and St. Lambert is threatening to turn its back on the city if the port doesn't change its mind by June 18...

A study dating back to 2007 lists the $1.5 billion of work needed by Quebec's universities, McGill in particular needing urgent repairs on some of its oldest buildings which date back 200 years, but even the École Polytechnique, barely half a century old, is crumbling. More details

An infectious disease specialist at the MUHC caught swine flu. He's getting better.

Neither Phyllis Lambert nor Dinu Bumbaru like the skyride idea for the Old Port. I can't guess whether that means we'll eventually get it, or not.

It's not only anglo commentators who are critical of Louise Harel's entry into municipal politics...

A broken water main caused a flood this morning in the underground malls of the Bell and Banque Nationale towers, closing them for the day and also shutting off electricity in the area. Metro service on the orange line hasn't been affected, apparently.

A negative assessment of Louise Harel in the Gazette focuses on her history as the PQ minister responsible for the failed and fractious attempt to merge the island of Montreal into one city. La Presse finds the Gazette's commentary worth a report in itself.

The Féria du vélo is under way, the Tour la nuit running tonight and the Tour de l'Île on Sunday...

Serge Savard has dropped out of the race to buy the Canadiens, saying that the Molson family has the muscle.

The STM's Biobus experiment is turning out well, proving to save 45% on fuel and emit lower amounts of carbon than a regular bus. The STM wants more of them but can't make a major purchase till after next year.

Just For Laughs has announced its major comedy lineup. There's also talk about the inevitability of a new festival: a festival of circus arts to take place in various locations in June – but not this yea

Interesting obit for a quadriplegic doctor that worked at the Children's.

School buses in three different locations were torched overnight: Radio-Canada says they're used to bring agricultural workers out to their jobs in fields near Montreal.

More on the pilgrimage to the Black Rock plus a photo essay.

The mayor is preparing to shuffle duties in his cabinet but so far the only known element seems to be Helen Fotopulos leaving the mayoralty of the Plateau, whose management has been under examination by the city for a few weeks...

The city wants to allow voting by mail, but since a city doesn't have citizenship as such, the criterion would be property ownership or the operation of a business...

Offers being made on the Canadiens are getting larger and larger.

The National Post, not without a certain satisfaction, ponders the demise of our red-light district. Spacing has a good piece on changes in the area and what they will mean – worth reading the comments on this on

An enumeration of the construction spots to avoid this weekend in the Montreal vicinity as highways and bridges get spiffed up, the Mercier Bridge being the major one going off the island.

Intercity buses are beginning to use a new space on Berri that's part of the construction site abandoned by UQÀM. It won't affect passenger activities yet, because it's not finished, but it will get buses off the library block where they've been parked behind a visual barrier for quite awhile

Images of the new hall for the Montreal Symphony have been released. To be built on the sterile tarmac behind Place des Arts, it will loom over the now clear-cut square where the crabapple trees used to bloom this time of year.

Not surprisingly, last night's closure of three metro lines at rush hour caused a major snafu of traffic downtown.

The Port of Montreal, which did well in 2008, is feeling the pinch of recession now as 2009's first three months shows a cargo decline of 14% compared to last year.

It's the anniversary of the celebrated Lennon-Ono bed-in at the Queen Elizabeth hotel, an event important enough for the Guardian UK to unveil previously unseen photos and also run an analysis of why the event is still regarded as significant.

Heritage Montreal is asking for a moratorium on the project planned for the old Marianopolis site on the flanks of Mount Royal...

Spacing ponders how social engineering is implicit in plans for 2-22 Ste-Catherine.

Director Xavier Dolan has pulled three awards at Cannes for J'ai tué ma mèr

A little about last weekend's bus stop victim, whose funeral was held yesterday. It seems particularly tragic to me that someone who presumably left Vietnam in search of a better life was brought to a violent end on a Montreal street corner.

Kathleen Winter talks about the difficulty of learning how to fix bikes – I believe the service she's looking for is Concordia's Right to Move, which lists friendly bike shops and holds occasional bike repair seminars.Later note: Michael Black emails to suggest this Hour article, which lists a...

The dodgy municipal water meter contract has an interesting clause that stipulates that the city will never own the monitoring devices that provide data about water flow – these are meant to remain property of engineering consortium Génieau...

Respected broadcaster Bernard Dérome has spoken out against Tory cuts to the CBC, pointing out that they diminish our access to information...

After a two-year trial in Montreal, Rwandan Désiré Munyaneza has been found guilty of war crimes. It's a legal first in which Canadian law has been applied to a crime against humanity, in this case the attempted genocide in 1994 of the Tutsi people by the Hut

Ville-Marie announces butt-tossing crackdown and one young man has already caught a $169 fine for throwing down a butt outside McGill metro...