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.

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 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

Some people in Montreal are pushing for renaming Lionel Groulx to Oscar Peterson. I can’t help but agree.

The Transitive is a new english blog about public transport in Montréal.

Via Spacing Montreal

The report proposes four types of tolls with projected income:

1. A toll ranging from $0.60 to $2.40 per trip across Montreal’s 15 bridges ($445 million per year).
2. A Montreal highway toll.
3. A general toll on highways in Quebec’s larger urban centres.
4. A toll on the most congested roads and highways across the province ($1.6 billion per year).

More at the CBC

Montréal, like most North American cities, needs to discourage driving, particularly people doing daily commutes by car. It’s important to put the resulting profits from the tolls into something which offsets the deleterious effects of so many cars, like public transport.