Metro '72 Nothing Cool about this one

                       This is the aftermath of an accident in Montreal's Metro system ( one life lost) and lots of damage......I believe the photo's are from Jan '72 but i think the accident was in the previous Decmber 9th.???   I will find the newspaper story & post it soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                 .........................HF&RV......................

Metro 66.............seemed cool to us,.just not inside the cars..lol

In 1966 ,with much anticipation we awaited the 'new Metro subway sytem'    too cool ,travel underground and all over Montreal.....Wow , neat stuff.....

Yikes !! Another Oil Rig Explosion in the Gulf ( deja-vu all over again)

                          There has been another explosion on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

A Miner Energy platford 80 miles off the coact of Louisiana was rocked by an explosion on Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard has said, according to Bloomberg News.

CNN reports that all 13 people on board the rig have been accounted for, with only one suffering injuries. Rescue helicopters were en route to the scene.

There is no word if any oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, but a Coast Guard spokesman on CNN said the rig was not believed to have been producing oil.

Next Generation is Just Plain Uncool-------& that's crazy

                                         MONTREAL – Amid a late-summer heat wave that boosted the temperature in part of the Montreal Island subway system to as much as 34 degrees Celsius, its operator is sticking to its guns and won’t add air conditioning to the specifications for its next generation of métro cars.

Michel Labrecque, board chairman of the Société de Transport de Montréal (STM), Tuesday rejected an air-conditioning demand issued by Richard Bergeron, leader of the Project Montréal party.

Bergeron had just repeated to reporters that the STM should equip all new rolling stock – métro cars and also buses – with air conditioning.

He presented a detailed series of rebuttals to objections raised against his party’s proposal during a city council meeting last week by Marvin Rotrand, vice-chairperson of the STM.

A combination of design changes to the next generation of subway trains can be expected to cut peak temperatures in the underground system by “three or four degrees” Celsius, Labrecque said at a city hall news conference that began as Bergeron’s was winding down.

While the electrically powered métro trains currently in service generate about 80 per cent of the heat inside the system through acceleration and braking, the design for the next generation should cut this by “about 25 per cent,” to about 60 per cent, Labrecque said. The STM also is roughly halfway through a 20-year program to improve ventilation through shafts that link subway tunnels to the surface, he added.

The debate boils down to priorities and available money, added Rotrand, stating frequency and punctuality of transit service are rated much higher as priorities by users than summer temperatures.

Heat levels in the transit system triggered fewer than 100 of the 17,000 to 18,000 complaints and comments submitted to the STM by users last year, Labrecque said.

The timing for the subway system is “crucial,” Bergeron said, given that a fleet of replacement métro trains still up for bidding is expected to remain in service “for the next two generations,” to about 2065. That’s about a half-century after deliveries are expected to begin and almost a century after the city’s subway system initially entered service.

Labrecque said the transit agency plans “a pilot project” next summer to try out air conditioning on longer-haul bus routes. That echoed remarks he’d made last Friday.

But the details for what Labrecque called a benchmarking study haven’t been finalized, he told reporters Tuesday.

Bergeron, accompanied by city councillor François Limoges, said a higher comfort level would draw additional users into the transit system.

Questioned by reporters, both said they could not predict how many commuters would choose to forgo private vehicles for buses or the métro if summer heat was not an issue.

“Bergeron admits he does not know if air conditioning will bring in lots of new riders,” Rotrand said.

“He can’t come close to proving” that such a move would bring more ridership and, thus, prove cost-effective.

Rotrand pegged the overall price tag of Bergeron’s proposals at about $225 million, although that figure includes retrofitting existing equipment.

Bergeron estimated the cost of a gradual changeover to air conditioning at “perhaps $2 million,” on an annual basis.

About 95 per cent of private vehicles now sold provide air conditioning, Bergeron said, up from about 5 per cent in 1980.

Transit users “should be able to benefit from a quality of service comparable to what is quasi-standard to its competitor, the automobile,” he added.

Mayor Gérald Tremblay and his administration “should take into account that transit users are not second-class citizens,” Bergeron said.

Bergeron said the greenhouse-gas emissions avoided by taking one private vehicle off the road would allow 12 busses to be equipped with air conditioning without any net additions of greenhouse gases

                                             .............................................HF&RV.........................................

Brrrrrrrr.....is it end of summer or a new cold war

Ahh the Russians are coming the Russians are coming,..........it seems the Putin lead regime of Russians still wants to subtly contest Canada's sovereingty over the True North Strong & Free.............according to this GAzette story ,the Russians not being able to wrestle their own 'states' back into the fold ,want to flex their relatively flabby muscles against Canada's claim to the North ( you know where the North West Territories are....lol) 

    Instead of just scrambling jets to intercept the 'wayward Russian bombers' they should have shot them down,......and you know what would happen....Nothing ,the Russians would launch formal complaints and make a lot of noise,but otherthan that ,they would be put in their place,& a message would be sent to the international community that they now know where the border is,.....................besides you can bet that big brother south of the border is watching too...  besides there are far more threats & nutbars on the planet than the Russians,......      

Two CF-18 fighter planes shadowed the Russian TU-95 bombers within 55 kilometres of Canadian soil after they were discovered approximately 220 kilometres north of Inuvik, Northwest Territories, said Harper's spokesman Dimitri Soudas in a statement.                                                            CHURCHILL, Man. — As Prime Minister Stephen Harper prepared to depart on the next leg of his week-long trip to the North, the government revealed that Canadian fighter jets were launched on Tuesday after two Russian bombers approached Canadian airspace.

Similar to an incident at the end of July, two CF-18 fighter planes shadowed the Russian TU-95 bombers within 55 kilometres of Canadian soil after they were first discovered approximately 220 kilometres north of Inuvik, N. W. T, said Harper's spokesman Dimitri Soudas in a statement.

Once the "Bear bombers" turned around, the Canadian jets, scrambled from 4 Wing Cold Lake, Alta., returned safely back to base.

Annually, U.S. and Canadian militaries monitor 12 to 18 of the Russian flights, but the Department of National Defence does not regularly release information on them.

In Wednesday morning's statement, Soudas said that the government "has ensured our Forces have the tools, the readiness and the personnel to continue to meet any challenges to Canadian sovereignty with a robust response."

He added that the CF-18 allows the military to "meet Russian challenges in our North," and that when the new F-35 replacement jets go into service, they will continue with a similar mission.

Soudas said the technologically advanced F-35 is the best plane the government could provide for the military and "when you are a pilot staring down Russian long-range bombers, that's an important fact to remember."

After the incident in July, the opposition claimed the government was using the routine Russian flyby to bolster support for the Harper government's plan to spend $16 billion on new stealth fighter jets.

Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff told journalists at the time that the incident doesn't prove the case for buying new fighters.

"We're in the middle of a $54-billion deficit and we're just about to do $6 billion in corporate tax cuts," Ignatieff said. "So they're buying their joint strike fighter, or they want to buy it, on borrowed money. And we think that's crazy."

The House of Commons defence committee meets Wednesday at the request of opposition MPs to debate whether to hold hearings to study the government proposal to buy 65 F-35 fighter jets

Say, What time is it kids ? ------It's (come on you know it)

            ----It's Howdy Doody time,.the guy behind the Howdy Doody show, checked out yesterday

Birth:  Oct. 28, 1924
New York
New York County
New York, USA Death:  Aug. 13, 2010
West Bloomfield
Oakland County
Michigan, USA
Composer, Television Screenwriter. He shall be remembered for the song "It's Howdy Doody Time". Raised in New York City, he graduated from Columbia University and served in the US Navy during World War II. From 1947 until 1955, he wrote songs for television, and for RCA records. As the primary writer of NBC's popular children's TV program "The Howdy Doody Show" (1947 and 1960), he was credited with both the show's theme song and the coining of the expression "kowabunga", which was appropriated by California surfers of the 1960s and later by the cartoon character Bart Simpson. After 1958, Kean worked as a stockbroker. He died in a nursing facility of emphysema.

Lot's of kids watched this show, as for the cowabunga word I thought that was from Ninja Turtles ( things you learn while bringing up kids..lol) but i guess he coined the word way back in the Howdy Doody days,....also Bob Keeshan ( Captain Kangaroo,was on the original cast of Howdy Doodty Show)
I'll bet you can't sing the song in your heads right now can you ? or are you?    hahahahah
 Come on "It's ---------Howdy Doody Time , it's howdy...........now you've got it........lol
                                                  hf&rv

2 Stabbed in Verdun ,.suspect at large

  According to news reports moments ago Two people in Verdun were stabbed.

                    This story has been updated.

MONTREAL - Police were searching for a suspect seen fleeing the scene of a stabbing in Verdun Monday, after one man had his throat slashed and another man was stabbed in the back.

Police responded to 911 calls about 1:15 p.m. and one victim was found at the corner of Rielle and Wellington Sts.The other victim was found stabbed in the back at the corner of Verdun and Gordon Sts.

Both victims appear to be in their 20s, he said. They have not been identified.

Montreal police Constable Olivier Lapointe said both victims were rushed to hospital and were thought to be in critical condition. The suspect was seen fleeing on foot on Gordon, he added. Police have set up a large security perimeter in the area to look for the suspect, he said.

One woman who works in an insurance office in the neighbourhood said the area can be scary.

“I was always afraid. It’s not a safe corner,” said Melissa, who would give only her first name.

A young man, who also did not want to be named, said: “It’s not surprising. It’s more uncommon in the daytime.”

More details to come.

 .....I hope it's noone weknow..................................................Cheers !! -HV&RV-

A little Montreal Flavour throughout the years

Hi , just posting a few photos from Montreal over the years ,most of which we have seen in other threads,However these were available in the GGazette this morning:Maybe you will like them,                                                     HF&RV

Griffintown -changes coming soon.

  

                The spectators arrived on foot or by bicycle, like black shadows in the gathering darkness.

A torch cast a flickering light on the crowd outside the New City Gas Company, an 1849 factory jammed up against a railway viaduct near the Bonaventure Expressway.

Steve Bates, who plays guitar and electronics with the band Lanterner, set up his equipment as audience members sprawled on the cracked asphalt or perched on the curb in the warm summer night.

The outdoor concert, organized by the Griffintown Cultural Corridor, was more than a free night of experimental music, with the Montreal skyline as a spectacular backdrop. The happening, Bates explained, was also a cri du coeur for a unique neighbourhood facing an uncertain future.

"This neighbourhood matters to me," said Bates, who does not live in Griffintown. "Acoustically, as a musician, I think this is an amazing sounding space," he added. "It starts to make people think about how cities could be designed so they sound more interesting. This doesn't exist anywhere else in Montreal except for this exact location."

Griffintown is a neighbourhood on the edge. It's a district on the edge of downtown and Old Montreal, a gateway to the city, a soulful working-class neighbourhood whose 200-year history owes much to the Lachine Canal, which borders it.

It is an area on the margins, populated by crumbling buildings with corrugated metal siding and poplars poking up through cracked asphalt.

And now, it is a neighbourhood poised on the verge of transformation, facing a future, critics say, that threatens to erase much of its storied past.

Harvey Lev's Belgian shepherd mix, Darwin, nosed

around the sculpture garden outside the New City Gas

building. It includes a recycled-metal structure by Lev's partner, Esther Hageman, and a totem fashioned from woodfoundnearthesiteof St. Ann'sChurch, torndown in 1970.

A large sign reads: "See other side of sign." The other side is blank.

The pony-tailed Lev runs a paper-manufacturing business in the heritage building, which once produced the coal gas that lit Montreal's streets and homes in the gaslight era.

The art display is a nod to Corridart, an eight-kilometre outdoor exhibition created for the 1976 Olympics. Mayor Jean Drapeau infamously had the artworks torn down two days before the games began because he considered some of them subversive.

"I wanted to create a little bit of an art space here," said Lev, 58.

"When the bulldozers come to make the bus corridor, I know I can't stop them but I can make a historical moment," he added.

An uneasy calm hangs over Griffintown -roughly defined as the area between McGill, Guy and Notre Dame Sts. and the Lachine Canal -something like the "phoney war" in the early days of the Second World War.

No construction cranes pierce the skyline -yet. But the lull won't last forever.

In October, developer Devimco plans to break ground for 1,375 high-rise condominiums south of Wellington St. along the Lachine Canal.

Last year, Devimco scaled back a controversial $1.3-billion scheme for Griffintown announced in November 2007. The original plan approved by the city called for condo towers of up to 24 storeys with nearly 4,000 units, two big box stores, two hotels and a 2,000-seat theatre.

The recession put the project on the back burner. Devimco now plans a $475-million development, to be built in four phases. Company spokesman Andre Bouthillier refused an interview with The Gazette.

The start of construction will usher in a new era in a neighbourhood that has surmounted Industrial Revolution-era capitalism, epidemics and the wholesale demolition over its 200-year history.

Lev's heritage property is a mecca for urban planning students and professors eager to study the fabled neighbourhood.

"This area has so much history," said Lev said. "Why not make it work for us?"

Griffintown owes its name to Mary Griffin, a businesswoman who subdivided the former farmland around 1800. It later emerged that the land was not Griffin's to sell.

The real owner, Thomas McCord, had been away in Britain when an associate fraudulently sold it to Griffin. In 1805, McCord returned and launched a successful lawsuit to reclaim his property. But Griffin's name stuck.

In the 19th century, Griffintown was Canada's industrial heartland, strategically positioned beside the Lachine Canal, railways, the Victoria Bridge and the port. Workers there unloaded the coal that fed Montreal's industries and homes, forged iron and brewed ale.

But Dickensian conditions prevailed in the district, where Irish canal labourers staged Canada's first strike in 1843. In 1897, shoe manufacturer and philanthropist Herbert Ames studied the living conditions of Griffintown's working poor and found that half of homes lacked indoor plumbing.

By the 1960s, Griffintown was in a downward spiral. The opening of theSt. LawrenceSeawayin1959 made the Lachine Canal redundant. And in 1963, Mayor Jean Drapeau drove a stake into the heart of the once close-knit community by rezoning it industrial.

That was the year Lev's father, Iser, a Holocaust survivor, bought a former dairy on Peel St. (then called Colborne), where he opened a printing business. Eleven-year-old Harvey would tag along with his father on Saturdays. "He used to keep a bar of bittersweet chocolate in the glove box and a good chunk of speck (smoked pork). That was our treat," he recalled.

"The neighbourhood was full of what we would call slums. At least half the windows were Steinberg's paper bags," Lev said.

But colourful characters abounded at haunts like the Coffee Pot. "Doors on an angle with a 'Buvez Kik Cola sign. Seven old locals dis-sing and telling jokes," Lev reminisced.

Iser was enthusiastic about Griffintown's prospects. "He saw that if the city were going to grow, it would have to grow this way," said Lev.

But Iser was about half a century ahead of his time. Residents were fleeing as homes, schools and churches fell to the wrecking ball.

"People didn't fix their buildings," Lev said. "If the roof leaked, they didn't fix it. When the roof caved in, they called in the bulldozer."

But Lev stayed on.

"It was really a wonderful place," he said. "The canal was ever changing. When the water was low, you'd see the tail end of cars. Real urban grunge. I'm a 10-minute walk from Chinatown and downtown. I have my own playground, where there's not a soul."

The Notre Dame St. sales office for the Lowney condo development in Griffintown is humming.

A poster lists local services like sushi bars, coffee shops and video stores. A widescreen video monitor slowly pans over a condo tower: window, balcony, strip of bricks, window, balcony ... Couples in their 30s pore over samples of ceramic tiles and engineered wood.

While Devimco's mega-project stalled, Prevel, a smaller developer with a track record of renovating former industrial buildings, has forged ahead. "We were the first ones to believe in housing in Griffintown," said co-owner Jacques Vincent.

"Griffintown is an attractive neighbourhood because of its proximity to downtown," he said. "If you go to London, there is the Docklands. If you go to New York, it is Tribeca. In Toronto, it is King St. In Vancouver, it's False Creek and Yaletown."

Vincent, 60, cut his teeth building suburban homes in Repentigny. In 1995, the company broke into the downtown condo market with a successful renovation of a former industrial building on the Old Port.

It has tapped into a young clientele attracted by 500-square-foot condos starting at $139,000.

The company's first foray into Griffintown was the renovation of two former Lowney's chocolate factories. Brand new neighbouring buildings followed.

"My formula is disarmingly simple," Vincent said. "Give the customer what he wants."

The formula appealed to Jeff Dungan, 29, a computer engineer who moved into a unit in the original Lowney's building in 2007 and has since become a leading figure in the Committee for the Sustainable Redevelopment of Griffintown.

"I kind of wanted to live somewhere edgy," said Dungan. "There's a lot of development that seems cold, heartless and unoriginal. This was edgy in the sense that you didn't know which way it was going to go."

Dungan is not too happy with the direction Griffintown has taken. The Devimco project galvanized residents, he said.

"The fact that they proposed something so revolting to the people in the neighbourhood got everyone together," Dungan said.

The committee is also fighting a proposal to route South Shore buses through the neighbourhood, along Dalhousie St. The plan is the brainchild of the Societe du Havre de Montreal (SHM), a paramunicipal agency in charge of a $260-million plan to replace the elevated Bonaventure Expressway with a ground-level boulevard touted as Montreal's future Champs Elysees.

The original version of the plan would have routed 1,900 buses a day past the former gas works, requiring construction of a retaining wall that would have covered up the 1849 stone facade, probably designed by John Ostell, the city's leading architect of the day.

Last week, the city agreed to cut the number of buses by half and change the route to avoid destroying the heritage building.

The concession came after the Office de consultation publique de Montreal harshly criticized the bus plan in a report.

Another big player in Griffintown's future is the Ecole de technologie superieure at Peel and Notre Dame Sts. The engineering school affiliated with the Universite du Quebec has plans to revamp the neighbourhood as the "Quartier de l'innovation," a high-tech business district.

The struggle to give residents a voice on the neighbourhood's future has succeeded in one important way, Dungan said: turning Griffintown back into a community.

"At that time, we didn't decide what we wanted the neighbourhood to be but we did decide what we wanted the neighbourhood not to be. That's what Devimco did," said Dungan, who maintains the committee's bilingual website ( http://csrgriffintown.wordpress.com/).

At Wednesday night meetings, a core of a dozen local residents hash out their vision for the district.

That includes development that takes a cue from Griffintown's 200-year history, said Dungan. "You're not going to create what was here before but we can take inspiration from it."

Dungan's suggestions for Griffintown include holding a lottery for development contracts where both small and large developers could submit proposals.

"If parcels of land are small enough, you get human scale," he said. "It puts development over a longer period. You want organic growth that suits the needs of the neighbourhood. You want to have continuous regeneration."

"This has given birth to a community," Lev agreed. "It's been really delightful. Somebody brings a pizza, my partner makes cake and cookies. Someone opens a bottle of wine."

Lev's suggestions for the neighbourhood are simple, like having a horse-drawn trolley ferry passengers alongside the Lachine Canal on weekends or removing the asphalt from century-old cobblestones that still lie under Griffintown's streets.

Local resident Judith Bauer's contributions include setting up a foundation that hopes to buy the Griffintown Horse Palace to preserve it from demolition.

Bauer is a prime organizer of the cultural corridor and helped create a community garden alongside the CN viaduct where nasturtiums, tomatoes and zucchini flourish. "Don't eat the vegetables -this is where the Industrial Revolution happened!" she warns.

In 2004, Bauer and her partner bought an 1857 house next to the Griffintown Horse Palace, a dilapidated building that stables caleche horses.

"I was going to do a master's in mycology," said Bauer, 42, who has dark hair and a 100-watt smile.

But the Devimco project spurred her to drop plans to study mushrooms in favour of activism.

"I got interested in heritage and making sure I didn't get expropriated."

As a mushroom expert, she often interprets urban issues in the light of forest ecosystems.

A mega-project approach to planning eliminates the diversity and small details that make older neighbourhoods interesting, she says. "It's like loggers who clear-cut a forest."

The community garden, ironically dubbed the Parc de la concertation et consultation Hudon-Tremblay, after SHM chief Isabelle Hudon and Mayor Gerald Tremblay, is an example of how small things humanize a neighbourhood, Bauer said.

"I'd like to see caleche routes and artists' spaces. The more that's preserved, the more there's a connection to the place. If it's all new development, it's like being anyplace," she said, "with towers and Starbucks

                                                                                                        ------------------------HF&RV---------------------

Gérard Barbeau - The Golden Voice of Quebec

I bet there aren't many people who know or remember this talented young singer who was raised in Verdun, sang on local radio stations and went on tour in Canada and in Europe, starred in a Canadian film at the age of 14, became a priest at 24 and died 2 months later in 1960. More details in my Album no. 53.

Guy