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.

I’d like to invite any Montréalers out there to join me in attending some interesting-sounding talks at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. All are in the Paul Desmarais Theatre, begin at 7:00pm, and are free.

Here’s what the schedule looks like:

7 February – Designing the Post-Oil World by Bryant Urstadt, author of Imagine There’s No Oil — Scenes from a Liberal Apocalypse, a cover story in Harper’s Magazine, August 2006.

21 February – Les verts québecois - par Jean-Guy Vaillancourt, Full Professor, Department of Sociology, Université de Montréal, in French

6 March – Green Worker Co-operatives - by Omar Freilla, Founder of Green Worker Co-operatives

27 March – Film: Up the Yangtze – by Yung Chang, Canada, 2007, 93 min. (Chinese, French subtitles)

This is the first in what I hope will be a number of posts aimed specifically at people living in my home city of Montréal. While this blog aims to tackle some big and general ideas, there is a very special place in my heart for local events, businesses, and culture. ((Photo from Montréal Plus))

What would Montréal be without its food? Le Petit Alep is the younger sister to the more established neighboring Alep, and both specialize in Syrian Cuisine. This restaurant is in a sense a more refined version of little Shawarma/Falafel fast food joints. Those who know me well know I love upscale fast food, and this was thankfully no exception. My Falafel was delicious (no deep-fried chick-pea based hockey pucks here). My girlfriend had a delicious Spinach and cheese dish. Dessert was great too, and it was all extremely reasonably priced.

Le Petit Alep
191 Rue Jean-Talon Est (Metro De Castlenau or Jean Talon )

Phone: (514) 270-9361

$20/Person