Montreal is falling down
By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - 9 Comments
A history of bad design choices now haunts the city as its bridges, roads and tunnels crumble
Photo by Roger Lemoyne
When a grapefruit-sized chunk of concrete smashed through the windshield of a 29-year-old man’s car in Montreal last Thursday, city officials quickly scrambled to the scene. Like most Montrealers, they assumed the worst—that it was yet another in a series of mishaps involving the city’s crumbling infrastructure. Their worries turned out to be misplaced. Within a few hours, police had eliminated the possibility that the object was once a part of the overpass above busy Papineau Avenue and were instead investigating whether someone had thrown it. “I want to reassure the people of Montreal: the rock that caused this incident has nothing to do with the structure,” Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay told reporters at the scene, deftly avoiding the very word “concrete.” “Vehicles can pass in total safety.” Still, it’s hard to blame even the most paranoid residents for assuming the contrary. It’s raining concrete in Montreal, it seems, and the situation has people on edge.
The most recent incident occurred in late July, when a 15-m long, 25-tonne chunk of concrete fell onto the busy Ville-Marie expressway in the city’s downtown core. Miraculously, no one was injured. (Transport Québec estimates 100,000 vehicles travel along the expressway daily.) Montrealers were no doubt shocked by the accident but, at this point, it may be a stretch to say they were surprised.
The accident was, after all, a grim reminder of a similar collapse in nearby Laval in 2006. Five people died and six more were seriously injured when the de la Concorde overpass came tumbling down onto cars travelling below. And the de la Concorde collapse was itself reminiscent of an incident in which eight heavy concrete beams fell from the Souvenir Boulevard overpass in Laval in 2000, killing one and injuring two others.
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Trouble in Bixiland
By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 20 Comments
The bike-sharing program hits a speed bump amid questions about management and its business model
CHRISTINNE MUSCHI/REUTERS
It is as Montreal as a two-cheek kiss, a made-in-Quebec success story that has garnered both awards and lucrative contracts around the world. Yet the Bixi bike-sharing system, best known for its sleek two-wheelers of the same name, is plagued by lack of administrative oversight, questionable management and a business plan that has it teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, with a whopping $37-million debt after only two years of operation.
Such is the contention of a scathing report by the city’s auditor general’s office, published in mid-June, which takes both the city and Bixi administrators to task for “neglecting or avoiding several elementary management rules,” and the “illegal nature” of Bixi’s initiative to sell the system to cities including Toronto, Ottawa and London, England. And while administrators have hit back—Bixi spokesperson Michel Philibert recently called the report “old news” in an email exchange with Maclean’s—it seems clear now that the beloved Bixi system won’t likely be able to run without a regular injection of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Bixi began life as part of the city’s 2007 transportation plan entitled “Reinvent Montreal,” a wide-ranging plan that sought to coax Montrealers out of their cars, and make Montreal “a bicycling city par excellence,” according to an executive committee decree from that year. The idea of a bike-sharing program wasn’t new—Paris, notably, has had one since 2007—but it was the first in North America, and a pet project of Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay. The “pay and go” idea was developed by Montreal’s parking authority, while Montreal industrial designer Michel Dallaire crafted the bike.
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Connect the dots
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 11:44 AM - 14 Comments
Jennifer Ditchburn lays out a web of political coincidence.
Both Housakos and Pentefountas worked within the Action Democratique du Quebec — Pentefountas was party president while Housakos oversaw the financing wing … Another ADQ associate, former St-Eustache, Que. mayor Claude Carignan, was named to the Senate less than a year after Housakos reached the red chamber himself … former Montreal city councillor Marcel Tremblay was named a citizenship judge in 2010. Housakos delivered the farewell speech when Tremblay left municipal office last summer. Housakos and Soudas were advisers to Tremblay’s brother, Montreal mayor Gerald Tremblay, a decade ago …
Housakos’ former business partner Nicholas Katalifos, a Montreal-area school principal, was named a chairperson on the Employment Insurance Board of Referees in 2009 … friend and business associate, Montreal lawyer Jean-Martin Masse, was appointed to the board of Via Rail after Housakos left the same post and was named to the Senate in late 2008 … Former Mulroney-era cabinet minister Gerry Weiner, for whom Housakos worked as a young political staffer, was named by the government to the board of the Old Port of Montreal Corp. last summer.
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Montreal is a disaster
By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 1:45 PM - 275 Comments
The once-glamorous city is now a corrupt, crumbling, mob-ridden disgrace. What went wrong?
It says something about a city when tales of bravery in the face of organized crime are apparently a prerequisite to governing it. Five weeks into an increasingly bizarre election campaign dominated by scandal, graft and good, old-fashioned backstabbing, Gérald Tremblay wants it known that he is scared for the well-being of his family. Montreal’s mayor and leader of the municipal party Union Montréal (Quebec has parties at the city level) is vying for a third term. He says his decision to clean up city hall during the past four years has made him a target of Montreal’s criminal underbelly. He recently reminded voters of the time police found two fire bombs behind his country house in 2005. Then there was the time when, as Quebec’s industry minister, he denied a liquor permit to a Montreal-area wine producer—who was subsequently found dead in the trunk of his own car. “I’m not naive,” Tremblay told Le Devoir last week. “I’m very well informed. I knew exactly what I was getting into with the city of Montreal.”Not to be outdone, Tremblay’s opponents offered up their own brave bona fides. Tremblay’s main challenger and leader of the rival party Vision Montréal, Louise Harel, reminded voters that her late husband, journalist and union leader Michel Bourdon, was repeatedly threatened by the Mafia. Richard Bergeron, of the upstart Projet Montréal, says he has requested police protection, though he makes it clear that his crusade against municipal corruption hasn’t garnered him any death threats—yet. “Everyone knows where I live,” he told a reporter recently. Continue…
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Unilingual Francophones don't speak English. Shocking, but true.
By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 5:40 PM - 38 Comments
The first French-language debate between Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay and challenger Louise Harel took place this morning. (According to La Presse‘s preliminary report, it was “very animated”—as all municipal leaders’ debates have been known to be.) There won’t be an English-language sequel, though. Harel announced earlier this week she’d be passing up the opportunity to express herself in la langue de Mordecai for the perfectly ridiculous reason she doesn’t speak it.
Cue the necessary outrage:
“There’s an obligation for the candidates running for mayor to address the different communities that make up Montreal,” said Marvin Rotrand of rival Union Montreal, incumbent Mayor Gérald Tremblay’s party. [...] “This is indicative of an attitude toward anglophones in general – almost as if we’re second-class voters. I mean, she’s written us off, basically.”
And the equally predictable outrage over the outrage (in this case, from the professionally-outraged Richard Martineau):
It’s not up to elected officials nor mayoral candidates to make efforts to be understood by Anglophones: It’s Anglophones who should be integrating into the majority! It’s up to them to get a move on it! The burden of integration is on THEIR SHOULDERS!
All this over a debate that would otherwise have been ignored by the vast majority of Montrealers and amounts to little more than an electoral booby-trap for Harel. Sure, it’d be ideal for Harel to be perfectly bilingual, but she isn’t—and won’t be come November, when Montrealers have to decide whether or not that fact makes her unsuitable for the mayor’s job. In the meantime, the mere option of electing a unilingual Francophone is enough to get everyone competing, once again, to officialize their status as members of “North America’s Most Aggrieved Linguistic Minority.”
It’s a cliché, but plus ça change…
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The péquiste pick
By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments
Montreal’s leading mayoralty candidate is a hard-left separatist
For most Montrealers, the reach of municipal politics extends only as far as the trash can and the snowplow. As long as both are taken care of, the people don’t much care who’s in charge: in 2005, barely a third of eligible voters bothered casting a municipal ballot. This November’s election was going to be a variation on the theme, pitting Montreal’s charisma-free mayor Gérald Tremblay against fussy upstart Benoît Labonté. Early polling suggested Tremblay would ride into a third term on a wave of indifference.Not anymore. Labonté recently ceded his spot as leader of Vision Montreal to Louise Harel, a former Parti Québécois minister with a well-known taste for the jugular. Much to the chagrin of Mayor Tremblay, Montreal’s politics are suddenly dominated by a familiar Quebec staple: language politics.
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Louise Harel for mayor of Montreal? Two damn anglos weigh the odds.
By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 3:49 PM - 8 Comments
From: Martin Patriquin
To: Philippe GohierHarel just declared. She’ll be the next mayor.
From: Philippe Gohier
To: Martin PatriquinWhat a fall from grace for Tremblay, who seemed to have it locked up not that long ago. How did he go from the nerdy, technocrat who seemed to generally have things on track to the guy who totally lost control over a bunch of money-grubbing bureaucrats and appointees so quickly?
From: Martin Patriquin
To: Philippe GohierToo much dirt from water metres, Zampino, FTQ, etc. Continue…
