(( Photo courtesy of Articule ))

Anyone passing through the Mile End neighborhood of Montréal before June 22nd may want to drop in to Articule on Fairmount near Parc for the Black Market Type + Print Shop. It’s a fun little exhibit about typography in contemporary art. The curator has gathered text from the works of a variety of artists (Robert Crumb, Julie Doucet, Jasper Johns, Marcel Dzama, David Shrigley and many more) and has mounted them on their own, completely outside of the art pieces that once contained them.

The typefaces are not available for outside use, but there is a computer in the gallery which can be used to create your own posters using the fonts in the show. We created a poster advertising kittens we’re trying to find homes for, and put them up all over the neighborhood.

The show was fun, well curated, and relatively unpretentious. The staff was also extremely helpful and willing to talk to us about the exhibit.

What do you do when the municipality doesn’t provide the city-wide composting service you think they should? Well, it would seem that some people would start their own private composting initiative. For $6 a week, they’ll pick up your organic matter and compost it for you. At the end of the year you can pick up some high-grade compost from them for use in the garden.

I’m perfectly happy using my vermicompost in my apartment (for the record, it’s very little work, doesn’t smell, and produces stuff my plants love). It could be interesting for others though, and is also perhaps indicative of the fact that people on the island are interested in the service.

CBC had an article the other day regarding a remarkable drop in serious cyclist injuries on the island. This figure is especially remarkable considering what appears to be an immense increase in the number of cyclists on the road. The police are taking credit, stating that their crack-down on traffic violations among cyclists is responsible. While I don’t have any data to back it up, I find this claim rather suspect.

I would imagine that if there has been the immense drop in serious injuries to cyclists, it would be more attributable to the new bike paths, lanes, and general bicycle infrastructure which is protecting them from traffic and making bikes more visible to drivers. (( Photo via Flickr user CurbsnBenches, under Creative Commons License ))

The Times looks at Montréal’s penchant for local, casual food done very well.

Web Urbanist has a neat little gallery of furniture made from reused items, like this neat sofa made from a cast iron bath tub.

I just ran across this Gazette Article discussing the replacement of Montréal’s 40 odd-year old metro fleet.

“We have the oldest métro cars in the world, which, despite their age, have proved to be the most reliable,” MTC spokesperson Odile Paradis said. “But at some point, we don’t know what may happen. One thing’s for certain: A year’s delay (in getting new cars) makes us that much more vulnerable.”

Translation: There’s nothing wrong with the metro cars, in fact, they’re great. We have to replace them because they’re “old”.

I do agree that there will be some benefit drawn from the new cars – higher speed, linked cars, and lower noise seem to be the biggest draws. Comments like the one above, however, seem to indicate that part of the initiative is just to be new.

(( Photo is from the This is Montreal site, though interestingly enough it seems to be based on a larger photo of the expo I have hanging right over my desk. ))

If you’re downtown near the Concordia campus, I suggest checking out their fun exhibit This is Montréal! It’s an amusing look at the Montréal of yesteryear – Expo 67 and les Canadiens of the Maurice Richard era figure prominently.

But mostly it’s an outsider view of the city at the time, when it was the biggest and most important city in Canada.

On Friday I had the pleasure of attending the Concordia Sustainable Business Conference here in Montréal. While I may end up posting more about it, there was one funny thing I wanted to relate about it.

Martin Valiquette, of Liberté (( for my money, Liberté makes the best dairy products widely available around here )) told a story about a study the company conducted about organic foods. I thought the story was fairly indicative of the regional differences we face in Canada.

The study, which I have zero quantitative information for, was to investigate the reasons why people across the country chose to eat organics.

In Vancouver, people chose organic primarily because it was good for the environment.

In Toronto, they chose mostly it because it was the healthier option for themselves.

In Montréal, the majority of people questioned the validity of the organic credentials of the product in the first place. They demanded better proof, and questioned the authority of the organic certification.

It’s interesting to see the differences in these three places. I don’t want to put too much stock into it, ut found it amusing.

A few days ago I posted about the possibility of renaming the Lionel-Groulx Metro station Oscar-Peterson ( I was surprised to learn was that, in French, places named after people get hyphens after that person’s death). Lionel-Groulx is one of the best designed stations in the system, and one of my personal favourites. In comparison to other transfer stations like Snowdon or Jean-Talon, its simple design is a pleasure to visit and use.

One of the issues with this station, which has not often been mentioned in the campaign to rename the station after Peterson, is that the man the station is named after is an anti-semite. Not a closeted one, whose writings could be interpreted one way or another, but an out and out self-avowed critic of Jewish culture and peoples.

Peterson is surely deserving of some recognition from the city, and I think this is a great way to do that while distancing Montréal from an anti-Semitic figure.

One Nation Under Google: Citizenship in the Technological Republic

A public talk by Professor Darin Barney
Canada Research Chair in Technology & Citizenship, McGill University.

Friday, March 14, 2008
Arts W-215, 853 Sherbrooke Street West, McGill University

18h30, free

See mtl3p for more info