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(Courtesy of The Montreal Gazette)

The first installment in a new Gazette series about living in Montréal. http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/montreal-az/index.html Being a Montrealer can be tough: the winters, the crumbling infrastructure, the corruption scandals ... But the start of the summer party and festival season has finally arrived, making this a perfect time to bask in all that this city has to offer, and to celebrate why we love Montreal, from A to Z. There’s so much to celebrate about living in Montreal If overcoming adversity is the secret to communal happiness, then we’re due an extra helping of joy. We ask some prominent Montrealers what they love most about our city BY RENÉ BRUEMMER, GAZETTE CIVIC AFFAIRS REPORTER JUNE 7, 2014 9:11 AM Things are looking up: Montreal’s skyline as seen from the lookout on Mount Royal. Photograph by: Megan Martin/Special to The Gazette MONTREAL — In order to truly appreciate life, a wise friend once told me, one has to suffer a little. We were descending from the peak of Mt. Algonquin in the Adirondacks after an unexpectedly harrowing five-hour hike through snow and ice that allowed ample time to ponder the question: “Why did we choose to inflict this on ourselves?” But as we descended, elated, my friend pointed out that it was the hardships we overcame that made the journey so special, and brought our disparate band of hikers closer. If overcoming adversity and suffering en masse is the secret to communal happiness, then Montrealers are due an extra helping of joy. Just as a sailor trapped in the darkness of a long storm may forget the existence of the sun, many Montrealers swamped by waves of corruption scandals and a particularly nasty political climate have lost sight that they live in one of the greatest and most vibrant cities in the world. One that manages to remain mostly harmonious in spite of, or perhaps because of, its vast diversity. More tarnished jewel than island paradise, Montreal is all the more precious to those who choose to live here — in part because of its imperfections. There are signs, finally, that Montrealers are starting to feel that glimmer of warmth again, and with it a rebirth of their pride. The shift in attitude coincides with the re-emergence of the sun, a glorious Habs playoff run, and Grand Prix weekend, what radio host Terry DiMonte refers to as “the starting gun for the summer.” It’s a time when we see our metropolis through the eyes of outsiders who see it as a special place for its unique French-English mix, harmonious multicultural melding and its expertise in the art of joie-de-vivre. The Gazette asked a handful of prominent Montrealers what they think makes our metropolis stand out. Alongside these perspectives, today we kick off a Gazette summer series on the many things that make this city a special place to live, from A to Z. We’ll run daily features — one for each letter of the alphabet. Congratulations, Montrealers, we’ve made it through some dark times. Now, it’s time to celebrate under the sun. The last many months have been hard on the soul, CHOM morning man Terry DiMonte notes. “I’ve told family and friends across the country that it has been very difficult to live in Montreal over the past 18 months, even more difficult than normal,” DiMonte said. “I had a French friend who told me, ‘Anglophones love the city so much because they have to fight so hard to stay.’ “When I first came back from Calgary, my first summer was the Maple Spring (season of student protests), which I found incredibly difficult, and that was followed by the election of the Parti Québécois (government) and all the disharmony and divisiveness (that followed), and that I found really, really soul-sapping.” In his four years in Calgary, DiMonte found that city clean, well-run and “all of those things that Montreal isn’t.” Yet he returned, for there is something about this city’s chaos that attracts. “As much as I hate to say it, part of what makes Montreal special is it demands a lot of you to live there — the construction, the politics, the closed highways, the potholes, the things we argue about, it’s all of those things that make the place in an odd way a special place. … It gives it a flavour you can’t find in any other city in Canada.” All that adversity breeds a certain toughness, said Michel Leblanc, president and CEO of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal. The city has shown resiliency in the face of a slew of crises, including loss of status as Canada’s top business metropolis, the flight of head offices and a decimated manufacturing sector. “Despite all that, there is an optimism, or will, to develop the city that always comes back,” Leblanc said. “We are an ambitious city. That doesn’t mean we necessarily realize all our ambitions, but when we say Montreal will be a cultural metropolis, and we way Montreal is a city of creativity, we actually create those two Montreals, we project ourselves as an international metropolis.” After a long decline, Montreal is rebuilding its roads and bridges, and residential and commercial office towers are sprouting everywhere, and especially downtown. There are 86 building projects over $5 million underway in Montreal and its demerged municipalities, Quebec’s construction commission reported this week. That indicates a positive outlook by developers, and the banks that saw fit to finance them, Leblanc said. The challenge, however, will be putting up with 10 years of construction zones. Beyond the current building boom, Dinu Bumbaru of Heritage Montreal also notes the city’s unique geography. “What I think is wonderful, somehow, is the space of the city itself,” Bumbaru said. “The architecture is not an architecture of immense landmarks, but one of streetscapes, and the connection between those, in a way. We can have a stroll on Gouin Blvd., or a stroll from the mountain down to the Lachine Canal. It is a strollable city. “It is the scale of the city, the notion of neighbourhoods and the fact that we have a living core.” (Eighty-four thousand people live in the Ville Marie borough, making for the most populated downtown core in North America after New York City, La Presse reported this week). While many cities are statistically diverse, their cultural groups are often grouped into ghettos that inhibit interaction and can create tensions. Montreal has a “mixity,” notes Bumbaru, “a porosity in the city fabric” that allows the multitudes to merge. That coming together creates a unique collectivity among people from all over the globe, says comedian Sugar Sammy. “People say there are two solitudes — I think there’s actually all these cultures that are starting to meld together,” said Sugar Sammy, whose bilingual standup shows have drawn 235,000 fans in Canada and India over the last two years, and whose new French TV show, Ces gars-là, is drawing a wide anglophone audience. It helps, he notes, that most Montrealers are bilingual, if not trilingual. The easy mixing allows Montrealers, often strongly attached to their own neighbourhoods, to visit the city’s other many varied locales and yet always still feel at home, Sammy said. “It’s not just biculturalism, but so many cultures and the fact that people know about each other here,” he said. Despite the division caused by Quebec’s proposed charter of values, Montreal’s “mixity” is actually a source of unity, Sammy said. Montreal’s city council and its mayor unanimously defied the charter, and the PQ, which proposed the charter, were trounced in the April elections. Communications strategist Martine St-Victor describes Montreal’s intermingling as harmony, as opposed to mere “tolerance.” “Harmony means not only that you have Asian friends, it’s that you love Asian restaurants — that you actively seek out other cultures and make them your own,” she said. “There is this human contact that you don’t find, for example, in New York or Paris,” she said, in part because many of Montreal’s neighbourhoods, with their local cafés and small cordonneries, maintain their village feel. “You sense you are part of a collective, that we are not just individuals, which is great.” It’s also a city where people aren’t afraid to look one another in the eye. And the city has a new champion, she said, in Mayor Denis Coderre. “He’s taking the city where it hasn’t been in a long time because he has guts. He has a big mouth, but he backs it up.” Since his election in November, Coderre has travelled to municipalities throughout Quebec, and to New York City, Paris, Lyons, and Brussels to forge bonds. And to proclaim: “We’re back.” “Our role is to make the city known, to make sure we are contagious. We have a great reputation internationally,” Coderre said. “When people come to Montreal, they fall in love with it.” At home, Coderre’s message has been: Tackle the issues, stop beating ourselves up about past transgressions and gain more power as Quebec’s major metropolis. If city council is proactive and takes decisions, the people will appreciate it, he argues. And they will forgive your mistakes, which allows for progress. “When we step back and look at ourselves in a bigger way, I think this is one of the greatest places in the world,” Coderre said. And a city that suffers as one also gets to celebrate as one. “We have this sort of sense, I think, of going through something together,” Sugar Sammy said. “We live whatever the pulse is, and if you live it together you feel it, and I think it makes you fall in love with the city even more.” rbruemmer@montrealgazette.com Twitter: ReneBruemmer

Montréal a eu une tonne de projets ambitieux comme celui-ci. Mon cours de patrimoine urbain montréalais m'en a fait découvrir quelques-uns. J'irai refouillé dans mes notes si vous êtes intéressés! [ATTACH]12803[/ATTACH]

Canada is the center of the world. You didn’t know that? Oh, yeah. See, your trouble (as always, I address the mirror) is you’ve got Mercator’s projection in your mind—which tells you nothing about the way things really are: It was invented in 1569 for sailors, who couldn’t conveniently fit a globe—the very idea of a globe was new then—into the situation room. And despite the fact that it’s so distortive it’s the icon of news programs, weather reports, travel agencies, Google Maps—it’s our image of what the world looks like. Plus sur le Canada, le Québec, le froid de cet écrivain maintenant chaudement installé en Grèce. Cold Comfort: Notes on Canada

http://www.moneyville.ca/article/952333--plastic-100-bills-here-this-fall-20s-10s-to-follow?bn=1

(Courtesy of The National Post via. The Montreal Gazette) Interesting idea. I just hope they can phase out the penny once and for all.

If you give me 1000$ today, I will pay you back 100 trillion dollars (real money) in about 2 weeks, depending on shipping delays. As proof that I am standing by what I'm proposing, I'm putting in my own money as well to keep one of the 5 bank notes. There are 4 left. I’m looking for 4 people for this deal of a lifetime, but you must act fast. 5x100 TRILLION DOLLARS BANK NOTES :-)

Canadian Commercial Paper Plan Likely to Be Approved By Joe Schneider June 3 (Bloomberg) -- A Canadian judge will probably approve a plan to convert C$32 billion ($31.8 billion) of frozen commercial paper to new notes by the end of the week, though court appeals may keep investors waiting months to get their money back. ``I will have a decision with reasons by Friday,'' Ontario Superior Court Judge Colin Campbell said at the end of a hearing in Toronto today. ``I'll approve,'' unless there's something in his notes that convinces him to change his mind, the judge said. Lawyers representing some of the noteholders have already indicated they plan to appeal Campbell's ruling once it comes out. Some investors object to the plan's limitations on lawsuits targeted at the banks and brokers that sold the paper, which hasn't traded since August. James Woods, who represents 18 companies that want to sue including pharmacy chain Jean Coutu Group Inc., said if the judge rules as he indicated, his group will likely file to the Court of Appeal. ``If we find fraud against banks that are not ABCP dealers, there is no recourse,'' Woods said, urging the judge to reject the proposal at today's hearing. ``It's inconceivable.'' New notes may be issued as early as the end of June if there are no appeals, said Purdy Crawford, a lawyer who led a group of foreign and Canadian banks and pension funds that drafted the proposal. All appeals must be exhausted before the notes are issued, he said. Quick Appeal ``We can't close until we get the sanction,'' Crawford told reporters. ``I am assured by our lawyers that the Court of Appeal will agree to an expedited hearing.'' The insolvent asset-backed paper hasn't traded since August, when investors shunned the debt on concerns about links to high-risk mortgage loans in the U.S. A group of foreign banks as well as Canadian lenders and pension funds led by Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec negotiated the so-called Montreal Proposal in August. The plan would convert the insolvent 30- to 90-day debt into new notes maturing within nine years. Banks agreed to provide funding to back the new notes on the condition that they be given immunity from any lawsuits stemming from the sale of the notes. Campbell said in a May 16 ruling he wasn't satisfied protection from lawsuits over potentially criminal conduct such as fraud was fair, and he delayed approval. The banks agreed to change the plan to allow limited suits under certain conditions within nine weeks following the plan's approval. Possible Fraud Campbell criticized the lawyers opposing the plan for failing to provide examples of potential outstanding fraud. ``So we defeat the plan on the off chance that there is something out there?'' Campbell asked. Once the new notes are issued, investors can hold them to maturity or try to trade them in the secondary market. Some clients of Canaccord Capital Inc. will be paid in full for their debt, under an agreement announced by the Vancouver-based brokerage in April. The case is Between the Investors Represented on the Pan- Canadian Investors Committee for Third-Party Structured Asset- Backed Commercial Paper and Metcalfe & Mansfield Alternative Investments II Corp., 08-CL-7740, Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Toronto). To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Schneider in Toronto at jschneider5@bloomberg.net. http://www.bloomberg.com/index.html?Intro=intro3

Canadian health care system lags behind Europe, study says The Canadian Press January 21, 2008 at 2:57 AM EST, The Globe & Mail (online edition) OTTAWA — Canada ranks 23rd out of 30 countries surveyed in the “consumer friendliness” of its health care system, says a new report compiled by European and Canadian researchers. The study undertaken by a pair of private think tanks — the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy and Brussels-based Health Consumer Powerhouse — measured Canada's performance against that of 29 European nations. It found Canada scored well in terms of medical outcomes, a category that included factors such as heart attack and cancer survival rates and data on a range of other medical procedures. But the Canadian score plunged in areas such as waiting times for treatment, range of services available, ready access to new drugs and some diagnostic tools, and the legal rights of patients. Austria was at the top of the list, with an overall score of 806 of a possible 1,000 points on a complex statistical grid. The next five finishers in order were the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany and Sweden. Canada was three-quarters of the way down the list with 550 points out of 1,000, a showing that was better than countries like Latvia and Poland but not as good as the U.K., Czech Republic, Spain and Estonia. The study is billed as the first annual Euro-Canada Health Consumer Index, although it consists essentially of plugging Canadian data into European rankings that have been published for the last several years. Comparing Canada with Europe, rather than with its next-door neighbour the United States, offers a better picture of the state of national health care, say the study's sponsors. “The Canadian health care system — publicly financed and governed — has much more in common with most European systems than it does with the American one,” said a joint statement by Johan Hjertqvist of Health Consumer Powerhouse and Peter Holle, president of the Frontier Centre. They promised another report later this year comparing Canadian provinces with each other to “support further debate” about health care in Canada. Mr. Hjertqvist has made a name in his native Swede, and across Europe, as an advocate of a greater role for private medical services within an overall system that is publicly funded. The Frontier Centre describes itself as non-partisan and independent, but critics say it has a decidedly right-wing philosophy. The organization was at the centre of a controversy last year when it was given a contract by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper to study electoral reform — even though it was already on record as favouring the current first-past-the-post system. The consumer health study notes that “no one country excels across the entire range” of statistical indicators used to compile the rankings. It notes, however, that countries with “pluralistic financing” — systems that feature multiple insurers and a for-profit component — generally score high on issues like patient rights and access to medical records and information. By contrast, countries like Canada suffer from an “expert-driven attitude” that isn't as consumer friendly. The thumbnail verdict on Canada is: “Solid outcomes, moderate to poor provision levels and very poor scores with regard to patients' rights and accessibility.” The study also notes that Canada spends more on health care than any other country surveyed, even though it obtains poorer than average results. That means Canada ranks dead last out of 30 on yet another statistical grid called the Bang for the Buck index.

La Presse Le dimanche 09 septembre 2007 Après avoir ordonné une enquête administrative dans Outremont pour vérifier des allégations concernant la direction de l’arrondissement, la Ville de Montréal a décidé de scruter les frais de représentation réclamés par tous les directeurs d’arrondissement, un contrôle qui aura lieu dorénavant chaque année pour éviter le gaspillage et les dépenses exagérées, a appris La Presse. À la demande du directeur général de la Ville, Claude Léger, le greffier par intérim Yves Saindon a été mandaté pour obtenir les pièces justificatives des notes de frais des 19 directeurs d’arrondissement de la Ville pour 2006. Ils avaient jusqu’à mercredi pour envoyer leurs documents. En entretien avec La Presse, Claude Léger explique qu’il a voulu implanter à Montréal une procédure qu’il a appliquée à Longueuil, où il a été directeur général de 2001 à 2005. «Je suis très préoccupé par des questions de contrôle interne, dit-il. La Ville de Montréal est une grande organisation où il y a beaucoup de centres de décision. Je veux m’assurer que des principes de saine gestion soient appliqués de façon uniforme partout.» M. Léger considère qu’il est normal qu’une administration comme celle de Montréal vérifie, autant à la ville-centre que dans les arrondissements, quels types de demandes de remboursement sont faits. C’est pourquoi les directeurs généraux adjoints et les directeurs principaux de la Ville sont aussi visés par une telle vérification. Quand il s’agit de reddition de comptes, les règles sont les mêmes dans chaque arrondissement. Toutefois, certains d’entre eux étaient auparavant des villes indépendantes et n’avaient pas tous la même façon de considérer les notes de frais de la direction générale. «Depuis la fusion, il y a un encadrement administratif qui prévoit ce qui est admissible et ce qui ne l’est pas, dit M. Léger. Je vais donc contrôler quelle interprétation chacun fait de cet encadrement administratif, même si la façon de l’appliquer est différente d’un endroit à l’autre.» Un directeur d’arrondissement a droit à 4000 $ de frais de représentation dans l’exercice de ses fonctions. M. Léger veut savoir quelle est la nature des remboursements demandés. «Le contrôle là-dessus doit normalement se faire à l’arrondissement mais moi, je veux vérifier si on a respecté cette somme», dit-il. Le directeur de l’arrondissement de Saint-Laurent, Serge Lamontagne, est très à l’aise avec l’initiative de la ville centre. «On doit viser la transparence dans nos façons de faire», dit-il. «Il y aura d’autres contrôles, prévient M. Léger. C’est conforme à ce que dit le vérificateur général de la Ville, qui trouve que le contrôle interne est très important et qu’on n’en a peut-être pas assez fait. Même si financièrement cela ne représente pas beaucoup d’argent, symboliquement, c’est important pour le contribuable et le citoyen de s’assurer qu’il n’y ait pas de dépenses excessives faites à cet égard.» Les directeurs d’arrondissement ont été avisés que Claude Léger désirait qu’ils traitent «cet exercice comme s’il s’agissait d’une demande d’accès à l’information».