The city is proposing a tram to provide transit for the Hippodrome site ..read more

La Presse has found that Airbnbs despite Quebec’s feeble attempt to rein them in. Dossier of 3 articles also looks at loopholes and party houses ..read more

A demonstration was held Thursday to push for government support for the arts ..read more

Fourteen Montrealers were arrested Thursday in what’s described as an organized crime syndicate of grandparent fraudsters. This ruse involves phoning older people, posing as a younger relative, and asking for money to get out of trouble in a remote place. They can count on enough seniors being unfamiliar with their relatives’ voices and travels that some will send quite large amounts. In other news of Montreal-based fraudsters, a man was sentenced to ten years in a U.S. prison in a psychic fraud that netted millions ..read more

Here’s a Journal piece headlined L’écostupidité de l’administration Plante. In this brief piece, Nathalie Elgrably assumes that city hall’s intention to limit wood‑fired ovens is about greenhouse gas emissions. It isn’t. It’s about particulates. Here’s a page from the American Environmental Protection Agency that explains some of the health effects of wood smoke. I still tend to feel that in a city this size, we can deal with a few bagel bakeries and pizza places that burn wood, given all the other sources of crap in the air, but some people clearly do not agree ..read more

Metro service is back to normal Thursday afternoon after a second pepper spray attack in two days, this one at Villa‑Maria. Parts of the orange, green and blue lines were down for ventilation ..read more

CBC has a podcast asking what happened to Belmont Park, the amusement park in Cartierville that closed in 1983 ..read more

Parts of the fencing that separates the SRB Pie‑IX from the rest of the road are going to be replaced because they block the view of pedestrians at intersections. They’re now 1.5m high and will be 70 cm in future. La Presse got a disobliging snark from Ensemble, but this is the kind of thing you have to adapt when risks become clear ..read more

The REM will be running short trains on weekends and statutory holidays. Transit generally is sinking into debt ..read more

It was a bit of a fuss in anglo media recently that some anglo parents of children with learning difficulties were given an information session in French only, with the ministry people saying they were not permitted to give it in English. Now it turns out that in this case, English should have been allowed. Bit of anticipatory obedience there on the part of the flunkies ..read more