Fungi!

I came across this stump in one of the alleys at the far northern end of Mile End, right before Van Horne. I find it weirdly fascinating to look at. I wonder if it was deliberately cultivated to be surrounded by these fungi or if it just happened naturally. It looks like there is an ashtray or something built into the top, which makes me think it was deliberate. Or maybe that thing was just sitting there and got fungied in place, which is why the whole thing is out in the alley now. I should go back and get it and put it in my backyard to see what happens to it.

Earlier this spring, I also took a picture of a fallen tree in Parc Mont-Royal that had a similar affliction, except not as complete.

Alley Sightings

You can hear these birds before you see them and to see them, there is only a space between the high fence where they are visible. I wonder if this is the house of the Greek barber on Avenue du Parc, whose shop is full of singing birds?

This supposed to be a picture of the washing machine and the clever graffiti art behind it, but Charlie has a weird knack for getting herself into the frame.

A very nicely designed little cat ladder. I hope to see a cat using it one day.

One of the prettier alley segments (and one of the few alley intersections in Mile End)

Heavenly indeed!

Dieu de Ciel has a terrasse!

I wonder if its existence is due to the new changes over on Laurier? I can't quite see how, as it starts one block east of here, but the timing suggests that there may be a connection. In any case, hell yes!

Now if only it would stop raining. It's pretty funny because I took the dog out at around 3:30 or so and it was grey and spitty. We walked to Van Horne via the alleys seeing very few people. Then the atmosphere started getting lighter and the sun even came out. As we came out of the alley on to St-Viateur, we saw that the street was suddenly full of people. There were lineups at both hipster Italian coffee shops and groups walking up and down the street as if they had been out all day. It's amazing how quickly this city reacts to good weather.

I feel a bit guilty talking about how much rain we've had, just because for us in the city life is pretty cushy compared to the people getting flooded out right now to the south. I came up on the train through upstate New York on Monday and you could see flooded houses, business and roads for a good ways along Lake Champlain. Rough.

Laurier avenue improvements - the painting is down

I've been really busy with work and life as well as having a hard time believing that Spring is really here with this constant end-of-times rain we've been having. But seeing actual activity on the work being done on avenue Laurier spurred me to take a picture and do some blog posting.

Quite soon after Projet Montreal got elected to the borough of the Plateau, they announced a bunch of fairly radical traffic-calming measurements, the biggest one being the transition of Laurier from Saint-Laurent to Mentana from a two-way street to a one-way street with a dedicated bike lane and widened sidewalks. The project was supposed to start last fall but got pushed back to this Spring. I remember having a meeting with our landlord at work, which is the Fabrique of the church and one of the older Marguillier (literally Churchwarden, one of the people responsible for the management of a parish) saying with some smug bitterness that it was never going to happen. You may recall that much of the opposition against the closing of roads came from older members of the church for reasons I still don't fully understand. He seemed to be fully in that camp and as we were negotiating other stuff, I did not press him on this. I wonder how he feels today, seeing that early last week the cops blocked off the westbound lane, getting drivers prepared for its absence. Since then, they have painted the lines, funnelling traffic into a single lane heading east and creating two nice wide lanes for bikes.

Looking west

Looking east

It's pretty nice, but this much space for the bikes will only last until they start widening the sidewalk. Though I could be wrong about that. I think one side will be bikes going in two directions and the other will be the wider sidewalk, though it could be that bikes will have dedicated lanes in each direction, which would be pretty sweet.

Also, will there be no parking at all on Laurier?

When I see how bottled up the cars get with only a single lane, it makes me think that for sure smart commuters are going to start avoiding Laurier, which is a good thing. But it also makes me think that this transformation only affects the symptoms and not the disease, to some degree. There still are a lot of lazy, greedy car owners who live in and around the Plateau who could be using other modes of transportation, but the majority of drivers are coming from places where they don't have good alternatives other than cars for getting to their jobs. So these changes just make their commuting life less pleasant. Honestly, as people who know my position on cars can guess, I'm not too sympathetic with them. Nevertheless, our larger governments, the municipal and provincial need to start putting in longer-term and longer range mass transport alternatives for these people. This is certainly not the responsibility of the borough governments. I applaud Projet Montreal for making this change, as it is a fairly powerful move towards a more responsible and social form of urban transport.

I'll be keeping you posted as the work continues.

Scaredy Cat

I've seen this little guy around many times in the alley just west of Clark, north of Saint-Joseph. I've seen him farther afield as well, in the alleys to the west. Here, the dog has freaked him out. He arches but doesn't turn tail and run. I imagine conserving energy is a priority for him as he is a thin, scraggly fellow, probably eating food scraps from the restaurants that face onto Laurier and whatever kind residents put out food for him.

"Hey, Johnny Prosciutto!"

Fermez le Berger Blanc!

I went to the protest in front of City Hall to demonstrate against the city rewarding the Berger Blanc with a renewal of their contract to be the official city pound. The Berger Blanc is a private operation that is the sole owner of the contract from the city to deal with stray dogs and cats. The place is a fucking nightmare and finally proper attention, at least by the media and the citizens, is being paid to it. The Mirror did a cover story on it a few weeks ago and Radio-Canada did a visit with a hidden camera that revealed how badly the animals are abused. Momentum is starting to build and somebody, maybe Society for the Protection of Animals Canada, organized a protest.

Turnout was quite good and lively for a rainy, grey saturday. There were maybe 300-500 people there, chanting and waving signs. Lots of dogs, of course. The majority of the people were on the City Hall side of the street, up on the steps with lots of signs, but there was a good crowd on the other side of the street as well. The police were there, handling the situation in a very professional and friendly manner. Every time a car would drive by with dogs in the back, everybody would cheer. Good media turnout too, with cameras from Rad-Can, Global and CTV. It was just a good scene all around. There is going to be another protest, same place (275 rue Notre-Dame est) on May 13. Be there! There is going to be on in Quebec City as well on that date. This campaign has real potential to make change.



The thing is, while the heart of this issue is an emotional one—the natural human reaction to cruelty to our animal companions—the relatonship between the Berger-Blanc and the city is a very clear example of fallout from the corruption that is endemic to the current administration. I'm not saying that there is any explicit corruption in the contract that the Berger-Blanc gets (though I wouldn't be surprised if there are some kickbacks going on there), but that the way the issue of stray animals and pets is handled (or rather not handled) is an indirect result of leaders whose priority is lining their pockets and maintaining their power. This isn't just about treating animals humanely. It's about how you manage city services, specifically animal control. We should have an infrastructure in place that actively works to limit stray animals through licensing, neutering and education. Rescue shelters should be the last stage in this overall plan, not the first and only, as is basically the case in the city right now.



The city deals with the animal issue by giving one company the sole contract to deal with stray animals. There is no oversight, just the money. And that organization basically runs those animals though like a slaughterhouse. They don't even check the animals for RFID tags. No effort is made to return them to their owners. There are several stories of people calling the Berger-Blanc looking for their dog and employees saying it wasn't there, only to find out later that their dog was there and was killed! You can read in more detail here the negligence and abuse that takes place at the Berger Blanc. It gets worse.



This issue is very similar to the shoddy municipal construction, the terrible road conditions, the shitty bus service, the bootleg domestic airport and all the other embarrassments that make Montreal seem second class when, in fact, she has the heart and soul of the greatest city in Canada. The difference here is that living creatures are suffering terribly and that can motivate people to take action. I've also heard that several organizations and veternarians are working on getting the funding to build a competing shelter to try and get the contract. I hope to hear more concrete information on such a project and would certainly support it.

In the meantime, let's keep fighting. Here is a very helpful web page from the Humane Society with links to all the people you can contact here in Montreal to put pressure on about this issue