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When the Milan Expo opens next year, the centerpiece building will be a masterpiece of sustainable engineering. Designed around the idea of an urban forest, the new Palazzo Italia will generate its own electricity, and will be clad in materials specifically designed to clean the surrounding air. The designers, Nemesi & Partners, are using photocatalytic cement - basically, concrete that's been mixed with titanium oxide. When the building material comes into contact with ultraviolet light, the titanium oxide reacts with nitrogen dioxide in the air, converting the pollutant to a salt that can easily be washed away. The building will open in time for the Expo's launch next May, and we're already planning to book a trip over so that we can spend a day sniffing the air next to the building. -
Street lamps transform Montreal into a living comic book
un sujet a posté jesseps dans Divertissement, Bouffe et Culture
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/2/5266704/street-lamps-transform-montreal-into-a-living-comic-book]The Verge This is something I did not expect to see on that site. Plus I am surprised that no one posted this yet, or someone already did and I did not see. -
Place des festivals : Luminothérapie 2013
un sujet a posté ScarletCoral dans Divertissement, Bouffe et Culture
Le projet de luminothératpie de cette année à la Place des festivals via The Gazette Luminothérapie's field of swaying stems Place des festivals will be filled with glinting lights and moving melodies for this year’s Luminothérapie installation BY SUSAN SEMENAK, THE GAZETTE NOVEMBER 22, 2013 The designers of Entre les rangs, led by the Montreal architecture firm KANVA, were inspired by the long narrow parcels of land set out in New France. The installation at Luminothérapie features music to give the impression of wind in a wheat field. MONTREAL - For all its summertime verve, Place des festivals can be downright desolate come winter. Without late sunsets, lingering festival crowds or lineups for food trucks, the concrete quadrangle adjacent to Place des Arts is cold and windswept. In a few weeks, though, it will become a twinkling, swaying wheat field. On Dec. 11, the interactive multimedia show called Entre les rangs, which means “between the rows,” opens as part of the fourth annual Luminothérapie design competition organized by the people who run the Quartier des spectacles as an antidote to Montreal’s long grey winters and a way to showcase the creativity of Montreal designers. It was an idea that came to Montreal architect Rami Bebawi and his team at Kanva Architecture one frigid end-of-winter day last March when they bundled up and headed over to take stock of the site. To find the “soul” of the place, he says, they listened to the wind. And then they enlisted designers in a host of other fields, among them the indie musician Patrick Watson and the local landscape design firm Côté Jardin, to help create magic using light and sound. “The space is just so big. It’s like an open lot surrounded by buildings in the middle of a dense urban environment,” Bebawi said, pouring espresso in the firm’s sunny St-Laurent Blvd. loft while taking a break from the preparations for the show’s opening. “Stand back, though, or look at it from above, and what you see is a long narrow parcel of land with Mount Royal to the north and the St. Lawrence River to the south, a site that rises and then dips, with many levels in between.” Its rectangular shape, the designers noticed, is reminiscent of the long, narrow tracts of farmland that have characterized rural Quebec ever since the seigneurial system of New France. “We started to play around with this shape, and with the idea of history and weather and the natural cycle of the seasons,” Bebawi said, doodling his vision on a notepad as he spoke. Before they knew it, the team had conjured a large-scale urban metaphor for a wheat field in rural Quebec, one made of more than 28,000 plastic rods topped with simple white bicycle reflectors. In the winter wind, bathed in reflected light, the stylized stems will sway as they would in a blustery wheat field. The stems vary in height from 3½- to 5-feet-tall, set tightly together and anchored in recycled plastic posts. Each of them is topped with a simple old-fashioned bicycle reflector that will catch the light emitted from overhead coloured lamps, the colours moving with the wind as music plays. With the sound emanating from speakers hidden at street level all around the site that is louder when the wind picks up, it gives the impression of a moving melody. The most successful public art installations, Bebawi says, create a collective experience. The Entre les rangs field is laid out in a series of slightly curved lines with breaks every now and then for people to cross through. Entre les rangs’ 6-foot-wide aisles are perfect for strolling side by side or for walking through alone. The Entre les rangs exhibition is one of two installations chosen from among 44 submissions for this year’s Luminothérapie competition, which promotes new ways of using public spaces as open-air galleries. The competition runs from Dec. 11 to Feb. 2, 2014. The other exhibit is a playful series of projections called Trouve Bob, a kind of high-tech version of Where’s Waldo that will be projected on the façades of the buildings surrounding Place des Festivals. It invites visitors to play a game in which the character Bob hides in a psychedelic world of unusual characters, all of them hiding out in the architecture of the projection surfaces. It was designed by a Montreal multimedia collective called Champlagne Club Sandwich. For more information: http://www.quartierdesspectacles.com ssemenak@montrealgazette.com © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette -
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/montreal/What+that+mysterious+boom/9216575/story.html MONTREAL - What was that boom? What was that flash of light? And where were they coming from? Hudson, St-Lazare and towns farther afield were rocked briefly by the sound of an explosion and a flash of blue-green light in the night sky at around 8 p.m. Tuesday. But the source of the big boom remains a mystery. Officials in the off-island towns, as well as at the Sûreté du Québec, were flummoxed, leaving residents who heard the noise to wonder what happened. "No one seems to know what it is exactly, but a friend described it as bright blue flash in the sky followed by the sound," tweeted Kalina Laframboise. "It's been heard all over the region but no details," wrote Greg Patterson. "My opinion is that it was a meteor hitting the atmosphere with sonic boom." "Felt like an explosion, or a 'short' earthquake," Faith MacLeod said on Off Island Gazette's Facebook page. "Stepped outside and neighbours were out wondering what it was." "Yes, was sitting watching TV and I thought one of my kids fell out of bed. It was super loud," added Jenn Ryan Baluyot on the same Facebook page. Residents from Pincourt to Pointe-Claire and Pierrefonds reported hearing the sound. On social media, it was even reported as far away as Ormstown and Cornwall, Ont. St-Lazare mayor Robert Grimaudo said he had no idea what the source of the explosion was. Nor did the SQ, nor Environment Canada. Nothing in the weather patterns in the area could be to blame, least of all the snow that began to fall around the same time, an Environment Canada spokesperson said. Tracy Moore was at home in St-Lazare with her boyfriend and heard and felt something strange around 8 p.m. "It was really freaky — we heard this boom outside," she told The Gazette an hour later. "It sounded like that explosion we had last summer at the fireworks factory here. "It was just this boom. It lasted a few seconds." Moore went online to a local Facebook "community connections" group she's a member of, and wrote: "Did anybody hear the boom? Or was it just us?" "And, like, 211 posts later, people are still talking about it," she said. "People felt their house shaking and thought a tree had landed on it. The dogs were freaking out. My girlfriend in Cornwall, her husband works for Ontario Hydro and he saw this flash of light in the sky. "He says he never saw anything like it before — and he works for Hydro!" Did you hear anything? Let us know on Twitter @mtlgazette or by leaving a comment on this story. For more on this story visit the Montreal Gazette's Off Island site. © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette
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L'usine de l'arrondissement de LaSalle de la Brasserie Labatt a été retenue pour brasser sa toute nouvelle bière Bud Light Platinum pour le Canada. Le mandat permet de maximiser l'utilisation du nouveau modèle de bouteille d'aluminium qui a été installé en 2012 au coût de 3 millions de dollars. Le mandat national vient consolider les 800 emplois de la brasserie du sud-ouest de Montréal. Sa production a débuté discrètement en décembre. Il s'agit en fait d'une deuxième bonne nouvelle pour les travailleurs de l'usine montréalaise en moins de 12 mois. L'an dernier, elle avait en effet obtenu le mandat de brasser la bière américaine Michelob Ultra pour l'ensemble du pays. «L'obtention de ces mandats n'est pas étrangère à la qualité de nos travailleurs et de nos maîtres brasseurs ici à LaSalle», a dit, dans un entretien, Hugo Tremblay, directeur des affaires de l'entreprise pour le Québec. La Bud Light Platinum n'a de légère que le nom puisqu'elle contient 6% d'alcool par volume. La direction de Labatt n'y voit pas d'incongruité, car Bud Light est considérée comme une marque de commerce par Labatt. Platinum est présenté comme une bière de qualité, dite premium, au même titre que les produits Alexander Keith's, par exemple. Son lancement publicitaire a coïncidé avec le Super Bowl. La bière a fait l'objet d'un lancement couru à la Société des arts technologiques, boulevard Saint-Laurent, le 31 janvier. Le liquide se vendra au pays en bouteille bleu cobalt de 650 ml, en canette de 355 ml et en bouteille d'aluminium de 355 ml. La Platinum qui se vend depuis l'an dernier aux États-Unis y a connu un franc succès. Fin 2012, la bière détenait plus de 1% du marché américain, ce qui est énorme lorsque traduit en hectolitres. Un résultat semblable au Canada «nous procurerait beaucoup de bonheur», de dire M. Tremblay. Labatt possède la brasserie de LaSalle depuis 1956. Il s'agit de l'une de ses six usines canadiennes. Le brasseur exploite 20 centres de distribution au Québec. Appartenant au géant américano-belge AB InBev S.A., Labatt emploie 1200 personnes au Québec. Les précédents investissements remontent à quelques années déjà. Labatt avait investi 50 millions en 2005 pour la modernisation de deux chaînes de production puis 2,3 millions en 2009 pour installer quatre récupérateurs de chaleur. http://affaires.lapresse.ca/economie/fabrication/201302/07/01-4619185-la-bud-light-platinum-sera-brassee-a-montreal.php?utm_categorieinterne=trafficdrivers&utm_contenuinterne=lapresseaffaires_LA5_nouvelles_98718_accueil_POS6
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SYNOPSIS At the end of WWII, 60 minutes of raw film, having sat undisturbed in an East German archive, was discovered. Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1942, and labeled simply "Ghetto," this footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw Ghetto. However, the later discovery of a long-missing reel, inclusive of multiple takes and cameraman staging scenes, complicated earlier readings of the footage. A FILM UNFINISHED presents the raw footage in its entirety, carefully noting fictionalized sequences (including a staged dinner party) falsely showing "the good life" enjoyed by Jewish urbanites, and probes deep into the making of a now-infamous Nazi propaganda film. A FILM UNFINISHED is a film of enormous import, documenting some of the worst horrors of our time and exposing the efforts of its perpetrators to propel their agenda and cast it in a favorable light. [video=youtube;Khut0kKn-c8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khut0kKn-c8
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Anyone who's sat at a red light for minutes on end in the middle of the night when there's no cross traffic can cheer on science for proving what we already knew: lights that adapt to the flow of traffic, instead of dictating the flow of traffic, can improve the flow of traffic. A team of researchers discovered that if you let lights locally decide how to time their signals based on how much traffic they're dealing with, and then communicate that with nearby lights, you get closer to the "green wave" of lights that keeps thing moving smoothly. The issue with the centralized, top-down system of control is that it is geared to address an average traffic situation that rarely occurs as planned. The variations in rush hour traffic mean that lights are trying to apply one solution to a vast number of situations. In their trial in Dresden, Germany the team found that traffic congestion was eased by nine percent, pedestrian congestion by 36 percent, and bus and tram traffic by 56 percent. With rush hours spreading in time and distance, the proof and implementation of this can't come soon enough. Blog: http://www.autoblog.com/2010/09/23/study-traffic-lights-should-respond-to-cars-not-other-way-arou/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+weblogsinc/autoblog+(Autoblog) To tame traffic, go with the flow Lights should respond to cars, a study concludes, not the other way around By Rachel Ehrenberg Web edition : Friday, September 17th, 2010 Traffic lights that act locally can improve traffic globally, new research suggests. By minimizing congestion, the approach could save money, reduce emissions and perhaps even quash the road rage of frustrated drivers. The new approach makes traffic lights go with the flow, rather than enslaving drivers to the tyranny of timed signals. By measuring vehicle inflow and outflow through each intersection as it occurs and coordinating lights with only their nearest neighbors, a systemwide smoothness emerges, scientists report in a September Santa Fe Institute working paper. “It’s very interesting — the approach is adaptive and the system can react,” says mechanical engineer Gábor Orosz of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “That’s how it should be — that’s how we can get the most out of our current system.” An ultimate goal in traffic regulation is “the green wave,” the bam, bam, bam of greens that allows platoons of vehicles to move smoothly through intersection after intersection. When that happens, no drivers have to wait very long and sections of road don’t become so filled with cars that there’s no room for entering vehicles when the light does go green. To achieve this rare bliss, traffic lights usually are controlled from the top down, operating on an “optimal” cycle that maximizes the flow of traffic expected for particular times of day, such as rush hour. But even for a typical time on a typical day, there’s so much variability in the number of cars at each light and the direction each car takes leaving an intersection that roads can fill up. Combine this condition with overzealous drivers, and intersections easily become gridlocked. Equally frustrating is the opposite extreme, where a driver sits at a red light for minutes even though there’s no car in sight to take advantage of the intersecting green. “It is actually not optimal control, because that average situation never occurs,” says complex-systems scientist Dirk Helbing of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, a coauthor of the new study. “Because of the large variability in the number of cars behind each red light, it means that although we have an optimal scheme, it’s optimal for a situation that does not occur.” Helbing and his colleague Stefan Lämmer from the Dresden University of Technology in Germany decided to scrap the top-down approach and start at the bottom. They noted that when crowds of people are trying to move through a narrow space, such as through a door connecting two hallways, there’s a natural oscillation: A mass of people from one side will move through the door while the other people wait, then suddenly the flow switches direction. “It looks like maybe there’s a traffic light, but there’s not. It’s actually the buildup of pressure on the side where people have to wait that eventually turns the flow direction,” says Helbing. “We thought we could maybe apply the same principle to intersections, that is, the traffic flow controls the traffic light rather than the other way around.” Their arrangement puts two sensors at each intersection: One measures incoming flow and one measures outgoing flow. Lights are coordinated with every neighboring light, such that one light alerts the next, “Hey, heavy load coming through.” That short-term anticipation gives lights at the next intersection enough time to prepare for the incoming platoon of vehicles, says Helbing. The whole point is to avoid stopping an incoming platoon. “It works surprisingly well,” he says. Gaps between platoons are opportunities to serve flows in other directions, and this local coordination naturally spreads throughout the system. “It’s a paradoxical effect that occurs in complex systems,” says Helbing. “Surprisingly, delay processes can improve the system altogether. It is a slower-is-faster effect. You can increase the throughput — speed up the whole system — if you delay single processes within the system at the right time, for the right amount of time.” The researchers ran a simulation of their approach in the city center of Dresden. The area has 13 traffic light–controlled intersections, 68 pedestrian crossings, a train station that serves more than 13,000 passengers on an average day and seven bus and tram lines that cross the network every 10 minutes in opposite directions. The flexible self-control approach reduced time stuck waiting in traffic by 56 percent for trams and buses, 9 percent for cars and trucks, and 36 percent for pedestrians crossing intersections. Dresden is now close to implementing the new system, says Helbing, and Zurich is also considering the approach. Traffic jams aren’t just infuriating, they cost time and money, says Orosz. Estimates suggest that in one year, the U.S. driving population spends a cumulative 500,000 years in traffic at a cost of about $100 billion. And the roads are just going to get more congested. The optimal way of dealing with such congestion is to take an approach like Helbing’s and combine it with technologies that deal with driver behavior, Orosz says. Car sensors that detect the distance between your bumper and the car in front of you can prevent a sweep of brake-slamming that can tie up traffic, for example. “In general these algorithms improve traffic, but maybe not as much as they do on paper because we are still human,” he says. “It is still humans driving the cars.” http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/63481/title/To_tame_traffic,_go_with_the_flow
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Since everyone here loves Maclean's http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/10/14/the-good-bad-and-ugly/ What the hell is going on in BC? (and secondarily, Alberta, Red Deer? Seriously?!) I liked one of the comments:
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Hot new Vdara hotel might be a little bit TOO hot Bill Pintas was vacationing in Las Vegas when he decided to stay at the swank new Vdara hotel, a curvy 57-story tower owned by MGM Resorts. He was sitting at the pool when he encountered something alarming. He recalls, "I'm sitting there in the chair and all of the sudden my hair and the top of my head are burning. I'm rubbing my head and it felt like a chemical burn. I couldn't imagine what it could be." Like an ant under a magnifying glass, he remembers running to an umbrella, but being unable to escape the hot light. He recalls, "I used to live in Miami and I've sat in the sun in Las Vegas 100 times. I know what a hot sun feels like and this was not it. My first inclination was thinking: Jesus we've destroyed the ozone layer because I am burning." Speaking with employees, he was alarmed to find out that the hotel staff was aware of the situation. He recalls, "They're kind of giggling and say: 'Yeah, we know. We call it the death ray." The "death ray" appears to be created by the glass surface of the hotel itself -- acting as a concentrating parabolic dish -- similar to those used to heat water to a boil in solar power systems. The dish concentrates light on a 10-foot by 15-foot hot zone moving across the pool. Temperatures in this area spike 20 degrees Fahrenheit -- or more. Bill Pintas saw his plastic newspaper bag literally begin to melt. The bag -- composed of polyethylene -- is designed to withstand temperatures of up to 120 to 130 degrees Fahrenheit. And the employees recall seeing plastic cups -- which have a melting point of 160 degrees Fahrenheit – actually melting. Other guests, including newspaper reviewers, have also observed the burning beam. The hotel management doesn't call it a "death ray", they prefer the more friendly distinction "solar convergence phenomenon". Gordon Absher, a spokesman for MGM Mirage says the hotel is addressing the problem, and comments, "Because of the curved, concave shape of that hotel, they sometimes get isolated pockets of high temperatures." The hotel is baffled by how to solve the problem of the "death ray", though. When initially constructing the building, they anticipated the issue and put a coating over the glass that absorbs 70 percent of the daytime sunlight. However, that was not enough to reduce its painful effects. And the ray sweeps across a wide area, making it hard to protect a specific region. Comments Mr. Absher, "This is quite literally an astronomical challenge," Absher said. "We are dealing with a moving target." The mishap in architecture isn't as glaring as some of history's most notable mistakes -- such as the 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge, but it is pretty extraordinary. It serves as a reminder that while many take the science and engineering of designing massive skyscrapers for granted these days, it remains a tricky business. It looks like the Vdara may have exposed the wrong guest to the death ray, though -- Mr. Pintas is a Chicago-based lawyer. http://www.dailytech.com/Hotel+Accidentally+Makes+Solar+Death+Ray+Burns+Lawyer/article19756.htm
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Houston study lauds red light cameras despite uptick in accidents We all know we shouldn't mess with Texas. And Houston, Texans shouldn't mess around with statistics, because the folks running the show are going to come to any conclusions they want no matter what the statistics say. This is the easy part: a study of red light cameras in the city shows that accidents have actually increased at intersections with the cameras. These are the parts that are open to interpretation: most intersections only have one camera looking at one (out of four) directions of traffic, but the accident rate went up for traffic in the other three unmonitored directions; and, in the one monitored direction, "accidents remained relatively flat or showed only a slight increase." What do you make of that? Mayor Bill White and the study authors say the city in general is experiencing a swell in the number of collisions, and claim that collisions at the monitored intersections haven't risen as much as the wider municipal rate. Yet they have no data to back up an increase in citywide collisions, and no year-on-year accident data at intersections (let alone an explanation for the uptick). White said that a 40-percent year-on-year drop in red light citations in the month of October shows the program is working and keeping drivers more safe. Critics say that the program is nothing but a cash register for city government. The study's authors plan to study insurance industry findings to come up with more substantive conclusions. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6185795.html
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Just follow the light: Traffic lines stay brighter going in one direction A recent study by North Carolina State University has shown that the stripes dividing our nation's roadways are brighter when they are applied in the same direction that traffic is flowing. In many cases, the twin center lines dividing opposing lanes are painted at the same time, making them more visible in one direction than the other. The issue seems to center around the glass beads that are mixed in with the paint. These reflective beads are most effective when properly oriented. Using a device called – we're not making this up – a retroreflect-o-meter, the team discovered that the difference in the reflective values of painted lines put down in the proper direction was great enough that they could sometimes last an entire year longer than if they were painted in the opposite direction. These findings indicate that the transportation authorities could save quite a bit of money if they go the extra step of ensuring the lines are applied in the correct direction. Additionally, safety would be improved since the lines would be more clearly visible at night. Other more costly alternatives include adhesive tapes with glass beads already embedded in the proper direction. Who knew? http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/03/traffic-marking.html -
Quebec adopts California car emissions standards Rules will gradually lower greenhouse gas emission ceiling for cars Last Updated: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 | 10:17 PM ET Quebec is adopting California's stringent auto-emissions standards next month, in a move to tackle the province's polluting transport sector. When the new emissions standards take effect Jan. 14, Quebec will become the first Canadian province to follow California's lead in reducing greenhouse gases with cleaner light vehicles. The standards will impose increasingly strict limits on maximum greenhouse gas emissions for light vehicles manufactured between 2010 and 2016, and sold in Quebec. By 2016, provincial standards will require light vehicles to produce no more than 127 grams of greenhouse gas per kilometre. New emissions standards for light vehicles in Quebec are modelled after California's stricter regulations.New emissions standards for light vehicles in Quebec are modelled after California's stricter regulations. (Canadian Press)The new rules come after two years of consultation on California's controversial standards, said Line Beauchamp, the province's environment minister. California's emissions program is "really interesting because it is accompanied by a system of penalties, but especially, a system of rewards" for cleaner cars, Beauchamp said in French at a news conference in Montreal on Tuesday. The emission caps apply to a manufacturer's total vehicle fleet, which means companies that manage to come under the limit can either bank their credits, or sell them to others, Beauchamp explained. When the West Coast state first introduced its standards in 2004, it was beset by judicial challenges from the auto industry, a reaction Quebec noted with interest, the environment minister said. But with the advent of Barack Obama as president, and a slow spread of California's standards to other states, Quebec is ready to take the plunge for stricter standards "with much pride," Beauchamp said. The minister noted that several states neighbouring Quebec are among those that have followed California's lead, including Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Connecticut. The Obama administration has also signalled its intent to adopt equivalent standards for all of the United States by 2012. In Quebec, the transport sector generates about 40 per cent of the province's greenhouse gases, half of which is caused by light vehicles.
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Source: http://www.frillseekerdiary.com The Next New York City… MONTREAL Want it all? Want it now? Hop off that subway and charter your jet to Montreal. With heavy sophisticated French influence, plenty of amazing eats, and shopping for days, Canada’s finest if nearing it’s heyday. Day trips to major cities and quiet ski destinations included, you could spend a week or a year learning all there is to know from savvy insiders and locals, who have been waiting for the shining light for decades.
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10 things you can do in Montreal but not Toronto Toronto Star lists Jul 03, 2009 04:30 AM 1. Bring your own wine without being charged a ridiculous corkage fee that defeats the whole purpose. ok jusqu'à maintenant 2. Rent a bicycle from the public bike system, Bixi, and ride some of the most extensive bike paths anywhere. ok 3. Take St. Lawrence Market and Kensington Market combined, double their size, and enjoy the spacious Marché Jean-Talon. encore que le St.Lawrence Market est sympathique 4. Sit and stew at a red light, unable to turn right, because it's against the law. As a pedestrian, dodge traffic as unsympathetic drivers get a jump on the green light. Je trouve que la réputation des conducteurs montréalais est exagérée. La cohabitation piétons / automobilistes se passe plutôt bien, en général 5. Find a strip bar with very little effort, often in your own neighbourhood. bon, là j'imagine que c'est parce qu'ils sont très visibles au centre-ville. Parce qu'ailleurs, il n'y en a pas tant que ça, tout de même 6. Drink beer at a major festival without being corralled into a beer garden. oh yeah, tout à fait vrai 7. Live in a world rich with Quebec TV shows, Quebec films, Quebec musicians and stars, and a media that believes, in a twist on the old saying, "If it doesn't bleed Quebec, it doesn't lead." mmm... c'est plus que le peu de vedettes canadian qu'il y a ne nous intéresse pas 8. See people wearing crampons to navigate treacherous, ice-covered sidewalks in winter . . . and legitimately fear being killed by snow removal equipment. Bof. Est-ce tellement mieux à Toronto? 9. Hear separatist extremists attempt to drown out an English band at a Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day concert, or hint at violence if the Battle of the Plains of Abraham is re-created. il oublie de mentionner que la réaction contre le banissement des groupes anglos a été presque unanime. Pour la bataille des Plaines d'Abraham, par contre, je crois qu'il a raison. Je trouve que les autorités ont vite plié devant la "menace" de quelques extrémistes... On s'en serait foutu un peu, non? 10. Watch a hefty extra chunk of your tax dollars disappear into provincial government coffers. C'est de moins en moins vrai. Les familles sont avantagées au Québec au niveau fiscal. Les célibataires et couples sans enfants le sont en Ontario. - Andrew Chung quand même intéressant de voir Montréal d'un point de vue extérieur
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Suddenly, we're not looking so green By MONIQUE BEAUDIN December 10, 2008 Statscan study humbles Quebecers. Many of us recycle, but few are composting Quebecers like to think they're more environmentally conscious than other Canadians, but we have some work to do when it comes to simple changes like switching to low-energy light bulbs, Statistics Canada says. A new study looked at six environmentally active behaviours: recycling, composting, using a low-flow showerhead, using reduced-volume toilet, using compact fluorescent light bulbs and lowering the temperature on programmable thermostats when members of the household are asleep. Just over half of Quebecers said they have done two or three of those six, but only 35 per cent of us have done most or all of them. Quebecers lagged far behind on composting - only 14 per cent of us do it, compared with 31 per cent in British Columbia and 92 per cent in Prince Edward Island, where composting is mandatory. About one-third of us use reduced-volume toilets, and not even half of Quebecers use the more energy-efficient light bulbs - compared with 65 per cent of people in B.C. and Ontario. On the plus side, 95 per cent of Quebecers with access to a recycling program actually recycled (still the second-lowest result for all of Canada) and 59 per cent use low-flow showerheads, which puts us in second place in that category. For a province dubbed the "conscience of Canada" on climate change by former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, and praised by David Suzuki for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for three years running, yesterday's results aren't exactly good news. "At first glance, it is a little bit depressing," said Marie-Ève Roy, a spokesperson for the environmental group Équiterre. "It reminds us that it is a challenge to transform people's interest into concrete action on a daily basis." The information Statistics Canada used is from 2006, and Roy said she expects the next study like this to have much better results. Since 2006, Quebec has announced tough targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, instituted a carbon tax, set the goal of five-per-cent ethanol levels in gasoline by 2012, and announced plans to implement tougher standards for vehicle emissions between 2010 and 2016. In 2006, Hydro-Québec also began offering rebates to people switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs. This year, Hydro-Québec added a rebate program for programmable thermostats. But governments and environmental groups still have a lot of work to do, Roy said, including improving access to public transit, establishing the necessary infrastructure for large-scale kitchen-waste composting, and putting a price on water consumption. "As soon as you put a price on those resources, that helps people understand the impact of each of their behaviours," she said. When people see that turning down the thermostat at night before going to sleep reduces their electricity bill, that helps them understand the effect they can have on the environment, she added. For a link to Hydro-Québec's rebate forms, visit our Green Life blog at http://www.montrealgazette.com/greenlife
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Montreal's tempest in a beer cup A summertime deal between Labatt and the city's Gay Village raises questions about private interests dominating public spaces From Tuesday's Globe and Mail August 5, 2008 at 3:57 AM EDT MONTREAL — Stéphanie Dagenais didn't mind the Bud Light parasols and cups she was forced to use on her restaurant patio in Montreal's Gay Village. It's when the brewery started telling her Bud Light had to go in those plastic cups that the manager of Kilo bristled. "I think it's an aggressive way of doing a sponsorship," said Ms. Dagenais, who was forced to sell the beer under an exclusive deal struck between Labatt, which brews the beer in Canada, and the Gay Village business improvement group. The business association sold the right to sell beer on 54 new patios along a stretch of Ste-Catherine Street to Labatt, part of a summer-long festival that will see cars banished from the street. Owners say the $100,000 deal came with minimum sales quotas for each bar and restaurant, including a healthy sample of Bud Light. Patrons at a bar on Ste-Catherine Street in Montreal drink Molson Export out of the Bud Light cups required through Labatt’s sponsorship of the area. (John Morstad for The Globe and Mail) The Globe and Mail The deal irks restaurateurs like Ms. Dagenais, who doesn't sell much beer at her small restaurant, best known for tasty desserts, and others who try to tempt palates with fine dining, wine and specialty ales. A representative of the business group even suggested Bud Light is a popular beer among gays in the United States. While the banishment of cars from the street has been good for many businesses and great for pedestrians, the sponsorship is triggering a broader tempest in a beer cup over how much control private enterprises should have over public space. "I guess everything has a price," said Ms. Dagenais, who has several cases of Bud Light collecting dust. "But should it be that way? I don't think so, but it seems to be the way we work in North America." Christopher DeWolf, a writer for Spacing Montreal, an urban affairs website affiliated with the Toronto magazine Spacing, questions how corporate interests were allowed to take over a public street. "The closure to cars has created a destination, it creates an ambience that is impossible with cars," Mr. DeWolf said. "But here you have a product foisted on merchants and their customers. It raises the question of how far we should allow private interests to have such control over our public spaces. I think it's a burden on merchants and it restricts public choice." Bernard Plante, director of the Gay Village business association, said the deal is no different than exclusive beer rights negotiated at other city venues. He pointed to the privately owned Bell Centre where only Molson beer is sold. Mr. Plante brushed aside complaints about the use of public space, saying his business group is provincially legislated and democratically run. "These are the decisions we made on behalf of businesses on the street," Mr. Plante said. Merchants could shed the restraints of sponsorship when the deal runs out after the summer of 2009, he added. But they will have to agree to pay for the street closing, including the cost of street decor and rent to the city for having patios on public streets and sidewalks. Across North America, summer festivals run by private entities take over parks and streets, often with exclusive rights to allow access and to sell products. Many of the examples are more intrusive than the Montreal beer sponsorship. In one infamous example in the United States, Washington's National Mall was fenced off for a Pepsi product launch and concert - a 2003 scene described by the Project for Public Spaces as "singularly shocking for its sheer scope and audacity." Steve Davies, a vice-president of the New York-based group that encourages sensible integration of private business in public spaces, says sponsors get in trouble when they start constraining normal commercial activity. "It goes too far when they use a sponsorship to start telling dozens of private businesses what to do on public land over an entire summer," Mr. Davies said. In Montreal, big chunks of major downtown streets are regularly closed to traffic for short periods for everything from the Jazz Festival to Just for Laughs. The Gay Village pedestrian mall will last 2½ months. Mr. DeWolf said Montreal has one big thing right: The city usually emphasizes free public access, even if access to products like food and drink are often restricted. Labatt officials could not be reached yesterday. But Jean-Luc Raymond, owner of La Planète, which specializes in international cuisine, says he's noticed a little more flexibility from his brewery representative since the controversy broke out. Mr. Raymond has managed to get a little more of the fashionable Stella Artois and a little less Bud Light. "The Bud Light is still languishing," he said, "but I'm not like some others who have to try to sell Bud Light and cheesecake."
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Au Nymex, le baril de light sweet crude perdait 8,75 $ et le baril de Brent était en baisse de 5,39 $. Pour en lire plus...
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Désolé, article déjà présent dans la section "Quartier des spectacles".
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Just got my new camera, hope you like the pix! Some of these took a lot of work (crouching, sitting in weird positions, hardcore tripod action, dodging cars, people, dogs, etc... but it was fun) First photo taken with new camera, my cat trying to steal my food Let's go downtown... First night photo taken with new camera, testing out some things. This shot failed due to the cars stopped at the red light overloading the 15 second exposure. (I was anticipating the light to change but it didn't, boo.) Testing out the zoom on this baby! Now we're in business. University boul. Alright time for some HDR... First HDR with new camera! Buildings just before the mountain with lovely Canada/Quebec flags to piss off Habsfan/Malek/Yarabundi (Joke, j'vous aime!) Le 1000 la nuit Criss que j'adore ce gratte-ciel... I messed this one up, used incorrect settings, but here it is anyway. I also messed this one, but here it is anyway. The 1250 looks like a xmas tree! Le 400 en construction Le 400 en construction encore Les tours Lepine My favorite shot of the bunch : Tour de la Bourse.
