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--- (Courtesy of The Montreal Gazette)
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As you can see from the following pictures, this handsome 1950 building (mostly known for its Mourelatos) has cleaned graffitis, new doorway, kicked out the shady dance school. I would bet this will be student residences / apartments, but they might have to get it rezoned? July 22nd 2013: Summer 2012:
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See link for a look at the strips: http://montrealgazette.com/entertainment/local-arts/pearls-before-swine-cartoonist-shows-his-love-for-montreal-in-comic-strips Pearls Before Swine cartoonist shows his love for Montreal in comic strips BILL BROWNSTEIN, MONTREAL GAZETTE More from Bill Brownstein, Montreal Gazette Published on: January 16, 2015Last Updated: January 16, 2015 4:11 PM EST Stephan Pastis, creator of the Pearls Before Swine comic strip, was so taken with Montreal that he has drawn two strips on the city. Note the Habs jersey. Stephan Pastis, creator of the Pearls Before Swine comic strip, was so taken with Montreal that he has drawn two strips on the city. Note the Habs jersey. Stephan Pastis is in love. With Montreal. The comic-strip creator of Pearls Before Swine took in the city for the first time last fall. He caught the Habs playing the Bruins. He made the mandatory bagel, deli and poutine pilgrimage. He checked out the bistro and indie bookstore scene. He marched and/or biked from Old Montreal to Mount Royal. Upon leaving, he expressed a desire to uproot to the city. Of course, the temperature was relatively balmy back then. Pretty similar to that of his current San Francisco home. Fast-forward three months. The thermometer has hit a punishing minus 29 Celsius – not even factoring in wind-chill factor – during our telephone chat. “So maybe I’ll live in Montreal only during the warm months,” says Pastis, clearly unaware that the warm months generally constitute less than half a year here. No matter. Pastis is, unarguably, one of the most successful cartoonists on the planet. Pearls Before Swine runs in more than 750 newspapers, including the Montreal Gazette. He has an estimated 17.6 million readers a day. Pastis’s professed love for our city is not just idle talk, either. He is providing Montreal a showcase that will leave tourism officials here drooling. Pastis has drawn two Pearls Before Swine strips – to appear on Monday and Wednesday in our paper and worldwide – not only extolling the merits of our bagels, smoked meat, poutine et al but also this declaration from his Pig character: “I AM MOVING TO MONTREAL!!” 0117 col brownstein Of course, Pastis’s second strip could trigger thermo-nuclear war. His Habs-sweater-sporting character (Pastis, in fact) proclaims that “MONTREAL MAKES THE BEST BAGELS IN THE WORLD” – much to the chagrin of a New Yorker who feels otherwise. This process began innocently enough when Pastis asked his friend, Just for Laughs’s Andy Nulman, if he could help him acquire tickets for the Canadiens-Bruins bout on Oct. 16. Nulman obliged him and when Pastis asked how he might repay him, Nulman suggested perhaps a single drawing of a Pearls Before Swine character in a Habs sweater that could be hung at JFL headquarters. But when Pastis found himself sitting on ice level at the Bell Centre, right at centre ice next to the penalty box, he was so overwhelmed that he decided to put together the two Montreal strips. It was only weeks later that Nulman learned of Pastis’s scheme, after receiving the strips at his office. Nulman, in turn, was overwhelmed. So, in his capacity as “Chief Attention Getter” for Montreal’s 375th birthday bash, Nulman arranged to have an original of one of the strips – the “moving to Montreal” – presented to Mayor Denis Coderre and to have Pastis named an honourary Montrealer. “I don’t draw very well,” says Pastis, who turned 47 on Friday. “So the single drawing Andy asked me to do came out really badly. I felt terrible about that, especially after he got me that awesome seat. So when I got back home, I had the idea to do the two strips about Montreal. “Maybe when I come back to Montreal, I will be able to get a free drink as a result,” he muses. No doubt. But what’s this about his inability to draw? “If you lined up all the cartoonists in the world, I think I’d be in the bottom quartile. I was just a lawyer before. No art school training or anything.” But what Pastis does have is a battery of quirky characters: Rat, Pig, Croc and Goat. He also has edge and provides his characters with a narrative that clearly resonates with readers. “There are tons of talented people who come out of art school every year, and they don’t become syndicated. There are maybe 200 people in the U.S. who make their living doing this. You’d be better off telling your parents that your financial plan is the lottery. 0117 col brownstein “What it comes down to is the writing. If you can write and make people laugh, then you really have a leg up – and can even get away with drawing stick figures.” Regardless, Pastis has come a long way. Because he was a sickly child and missed a lot of school, his mother provided him with crayons and paper to keep him amused. Inspired by his favourite strip, Peanuts, he began drawing. And he kept on doodling through law school and through his stint as a lawyer for an insurance company. It was during a “boring” law school class that he came up with Rat, the first of his Pearls Before Swine characters. In 1996, on a whim, he drove to a skating rink in nearby Santa Rosa, Calif., where Peanuts creator Charles Schulz had his coffee and an English muffin every day. “That was such a weird confluence of events,” Pastis recalls. “My wife just happens to be from the town where he lived. So I waited for him and after he got his coffee and muffin, I went up to him and with the worst opening line ever, I said: ‘Hi Sparky (Schulz’s nickname). My name is Stephan Pastis and I’m an attorney.’ He turned white. He probably thought he was getting served with papers. It was terrible. “Then I said: ‘Oh, I also draw.’ So he asked me to sit down. And that was the start of a long conversation.” Not long after that encounter, Pastis began drawing Pearls Before Swine. Two years later, he began submitting to the various cartoon syndicates before signing a contract with United Features. His strips initially appeared online. It wasn’t until 2002 that Pearls Before Swine made its debut in newspapers. It didn’t take long for Pastis to earn praise from fellow cartoonists. The National Cartoonists Society awarded him Best Newspaper Comic Strip in 2004 and 2007. RELATED Mayor Coderre beams over comic strips praising Montreal Also a huge fan of Gary Larson’s Far Side, Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes and Scott Adam’s Dilbert, Pastis remains much inspired by Schulz. “For me, Schulz is the basic rhythm of sequential art,” Pastis says. “He is basically the air we breathe and the water we drink. He is the foundation. As for Larson? How funny can one human be? I learned a lot from him.” In addition to the comic strip, Pastis recently began writing children’s books, based on his character Timmy Failure, the 11-year-old CEO of a detective agency. The first in the series, Timothy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, became an instant bestseller. He has since penned three more volumes. Making life more complex for this cartoonist is that he usually produces his strips seven to nine months – save for the two Montreal efforts – before they are published. As a consequence, it’s difficult to remain topical. “There have been all these polarizing events that have taken place in the interim – be they in Ferguson, New York or in Paris. So when I wake up and see what strip is in the paper and what’s going on in the world, it can be radically different, but it can also, strangely enough, be quite relev ant – because hostilities in the world seem to be a constant.” The tragic events that took place at the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo have, not surprisingly, left Pastis shaken. “Our job as cartoonists is to make fun of everything. There are no sacred cows. It is such a horrific thought that there are people out there who would kill you if you make fun of certain things. “That’s just so medieval to me. Are we living in 2015 or in 1215?” he notes, before adding: “If there is one small silver lining to this, it’s that the goal of these people was to suppress, but the result is that a magazine that would have sold maybe 60,00o copies is going to sell 5 million. That’s what you get, and that’s what you deserve, when you try to stifle creativity and freedom of expression.” sent via Tapatalk
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Lachine: College St-Louis expansion
un sujet a posté denpanosekai dans Projets oubliés et/ou en suspens
Une école moderne et lumineuse à Lachine The "abandoned anglophone school" in question is the Lachine High School from 1930. Looks like a great project. -
Travel and Leisure
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Montreal Forum adds a touch of Dawson College class Brenda Branswell Montreal Gazette August 9, 2010 MONTREAL - Some Dawson College students will have classes this year in a place they probably never expected to study - the old Montreal Forum. The downtown college is renting additional space in the Pepsi Forum because of an influx of 300 additional students. Dawson is creating nine classrooms in the building, including two computer labs for students who are studying social sciences, said Donna Varrica, a college spokesperson. Dawson is one of several colleges that is accepting more students for the coming school year. The decision to take in extra students came in June when the Quebec government announced it would inject more than $1 million to deal with the space problem at Montreal Island's crowded CEGEPs. Varrica said the top priority for Dawson was to find extra space that wasn't far from the college. Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Forum+adds+touch+Dawson+class/3378079/story.html#ixzz0w9Kr4HzN
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New life for Helene de Champlain building
un sujet a posté CFurtado dans Divertissement, Bouffe et Culture
The Ville Marie borough has given the go-ahead for a major facelift of the Helene de Champlain pavilion on St. Helen's Island - the building that until a six months ago housed the Helene de Champlain Restaurant. It will undergo a 10-million dollar expansion and upgrade this fall. After the facelift it will house a restaurant affiliated with the prestigious Relais et Chateaux chain as well as a cooking school and library. http://www.cjad.com/node/1174275 -
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/School+crashes+into+building+Penfield/3099570/story.html#ixzz0pfhIUE1k Just another reason why cyclists should be forced to abide by the exact same laws as drivers. What if someone had been killed?
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http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Gazette+exclusive+EMSB+pitches+tout+fran%C3%A7ais/2414008/story.html This is much needed. And not all of it should be spent on grammar reciting either (as is often the case). I think a big part is just being able to learn to get use out of it. Practice comprehension and conversational skills first, then worry about written skills. Although I had great French teachers in school, how was I (or anyone else) to become fluent by spending only 4-5 hours a week on it? This compared to living the rest of the week entirely in English (except for the Habs/Expos game back in the day). Having said that, English instruction should be toughened up as well. The quality of written English of a good portion of university peers is downright abysmal. They should have to pass a stringent English exam to get accepted into a regular program (if they fail, they should take a year-long mini program designed at teaching them proper written and spoken English). From what I have heard, they offer English-Second-Language courses that are taught by immigrants with heavy accents (notably from Ukraine and China). WTF?
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Surfing a River When the Wave Doesn’t Move Source: nytimes TO the uninitiated, the scene on a recent morning along the St. Lawrence River in Montreal might have inspired confusion. Behind the striking modular apartment complex known as Habitat 67, a crowd of surfers slipped into wet suits and waxed up their boards, 500 miles from the nearest ocean beach. They were preparing to surf a standing river wave in the St. Lawrence, where high-velocity water roars over a steep river-bottom depression, pitches back and upward, and creates a waist-to-overhead breaker. Surfers paddle into it or swing out by rope to catch the green-faced wedge, rewarded by a seemingly endless ride. “Once you’re carving, it’s exactly the same feel as on an ocean wave,” said Chris Dutton, the founder of the Web site SurfMontreal.com, “except that instead of going straight down the line, you carve a little bit, flip around, carve back, and can go all day.” Modern river surfing on standing waves evolved on the Eisbach River in Germany in the mid-1970s. Tidal bores have been ridden for years on the Severn in England; in Bordeaux, France; and on the Amazon. New standing waves are being pioneered almost daily in rivers in places like Colorado, and in Ontario and Alberta in Canada. Corran Addison, an Olympic kayaker and three-time world freestyle kayak champion, was the first to tackle the Habitat wave with a surfboard, in 2002. Mr. Addison’s river-surfing school, Imagine Surfboards, has taught 3,500 students since 2005, and has expanded to include a surf shop and board line. A second Montreal river-surfing school, KSF, has hosted 1,500 students a year since 2003. From fewer than 10 original surfers, Mr. Addison estimates the current participants to number around 500. The wave quality was low on my first day at Habitat 67, Mr. Addison, my instructor that day, explained. Instead of the usual method of getting into the wave — starting upstream and allowing the current to draw me into place — I would start downstream from the wave lying flat on the board, and use a rope to counter the river’s flow, swinging out into position, popping up into a surf stance, and then making my way into the wave. After scrambling down a steep embankment to the edge of the river, I got my first close-up look at the wave; a humplike wall of water surrounded by a torrent of rapids, with a lone surfer rocking back and forth just below the peak. The locals made the approach look fluid and easy. Of course, it wasn’t. Even with a wide, seven-foot-long “fun shape” board, all the forces — raging waters, the tension of the rope, my own weight — conspired against gaining balance and stability, and I lost the rope and was flushed down the rapids, repeatedly. Still, unlike at the ocean, where I would have faced a battering shore break and a lineup of experienced surfers anxious for the next set, all I had to do to try again was climb the riverbank and walk up the path. “In the river you’re going against the current — that dynamic itself makes it more complex,” said Costas Kanellos, a Montreal native who started river surfing in 2005 and has since taken to ocean surfing in Maine and Florida. “But having a consistent wave allows a lot of people to improve at a quicker rate than they would in the ocean.” Mr. Dutton was my instructor for my second crack at Habitat 67. First he demonstrated how to maximize the rope with body positioning: like a water skier angling far out from behind the boat, I had to remain upright to leverage the strength and weight of the torso as a counter to the force of the rope. In the water, Mr. Dutton had me start out on my knees, so I didn’t have to get up from a prone position. Despite the fatigue in my arms, I stood up, leaned with all my body weight, and carved away from the riverbank. Nearing the wave, I turned the board upstream and released the rope when I was inside the wave. A dense, solid but fluidly dynamic water surface rushed beneath my board. It was a moment of mild vertigo, depth and perspective hard to pinpoint in such an alien environment. I lasted a few fleeting seconds before washing out the back, long enough to feel the potential. When we left at 6 p.m., there was a five-person lineup forming, with a parking lot full of more surfers, off work and getting geared up. Though river surfing is in its infancy, the familiar complaints of overcrowding are already being heard. On a peak summer weekend with ideal river conditions and good weather, Mr. Addison said, the lineup can grow to 50 people. “The bad thing would be if surfing continues to grow in popularity,” he said, “and you show up in March to a 50-person lineup, never mind August.” Mr. Addison and others have turned to creating their own river waves using artificial obstacles. In 1997, he helped design a wave park in Valley Field, Quebec, now an Olympic kayak-training center. A similar whitewater park on the Arkansas River in Pueblo, Colo., has become a destination for river surfers. Mr. Addison proposes to use sunken concrete blocks to engineer four more standing waves in Montreal, at an estimated cost of 40,000 Canadian dollars each, though he has so far received little governmental or corporate support. “Ultimately,” he said, “we need more waves.” IF YOU GO Habitat 67 is at 2600 Avenue Pierre-Dupuy in Montreal. From Autoroute Bonaventure 10, take Avenue Pierre-Dupuy north. Park in the pull-off to the right, just past the street address. Walk behind tennis courts and down a dirt path; the wave itself is easy to spot, just down the embankment. Some information is online at http://www.surfmtl.com and http://www.surfmontreal.com. SURF SCHOOLS Imagine Surfboard, (514) 583-3386; http://www.imaginesurfboards.com/eng/surfschool.html. KSF School of River Surfing and Kayaking, (514) 595-7873; http://www.ksf.ca (in French).
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More Quebecers see immigrants as threat: poll By Marian Scott, The GazetteMay 22, 2009 6:59 Protesters demonstrate outside Palais des congrès during the Bouchard-Taylor hearings on reasonable accommodation in November 2007. Protesters demonstrate outside Palais des congrès during the Bouchard-Taylor hearings on reasonable accommodation in November 2007. Photograph by: John Kenney, Gazette file photo One year after a provincial report on the accommodation of cultural minorities, a majority of Quebecers still say newcomers should give up their cultural traditions and become more like everybody else, according to a new poll. Quebecers’ attitudes toward immigrants have hardened slightly since 2007, when the Bouchard-Taylor commission started hearings across Quebec on the “reasonable accommodation” of cultural communities. The survey by Léger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies found that 40 per cent of francophones view non-Christian immigrants as a threat to Quebec society, compared with 32 per cent in 2007. Thirty-two per cent of non-francophones said non-Christian immigrants threaten Quebec society, compared with 34 per cent in 2007. “If you look at opinions at the start of the Bouchard-Taylor commission and 18 months later, basically, they haven’t changed,” said Jack Jedwab, executive director of the non-profit research institute. “If the hearings were designed to change attitudes, that has not occurred,” he added. Headed by sociologist Gérard Bouchard and philosopher Charles Taylor, the $3.7-million commission held hearings across Quebec on how far society should go to accommodate religious and cultural minorities. It received 900 briefs and heard from 3,423 participants in 22 regional forums. Its report, made public one year ago Friday, made 37 recommendations, including abolishing prayers at municipal council meetings; increasing funding for community organizations that work with immigrants and initiatives to promote tolerance; providing language interpreters in health care; encouraging employers to allow time off for religious holidays; studying how to hire more minorities in the public service; and attracting immigrants to remote regions. Rachad Antonius, a professor of sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal, said it’s no surprise the commission failed to change Quebecers’ attitudes toward minorities. “Focusing on cultural differences is the wrong approach,” Antonius said. Cultural communities need to achieve economic equality by having access to education, social services and job opportunities, he said. “If there is greater economic integration, that is what is going to change things,” he said. The poll reveals persistent differences between younger and older Quebecers and between francophones and non-francophones on cultural and religious diversity. For example, 56 per cent of respondents age 18 to 24 said Muslim girls should be allowed to wear hijabs in public schools, while only 30 per cent of those 55 and over approved of head scarves in school. Sixty-three per cent of non-francophones said head scarves should be permitted in school compared with 32 per cent of French-speaking respondents. Only 25 per cent of francophones said Quebec society should try harder to accept minority groups’ customs and traditions while 74 per cent of non-francophones said it should make more of an effort to do so. The poll also found Quebecers split on an ethics and religion course introduced last year in schools across the province. A coalition of parents and Loyola High School, a private Catholic institution, are challenging the nondenominational course, which they say infringes parents’ rights to instill religious values in their children. Half of francophones said the course was a good thing while 78 per cent of non-francophones gave it a thumbs up. When asked their opinion of different religious groups, 88 per cent of French-speakers viewed Catholics favourably, 60 per cent viewed Jews favourably – down 12 percentage points from 2007 – and 40 per cent had a favourable opinion of Muslims (compared with 57 per cent in 2007). Among non-francophones, 92 per cent viewed Catholics with favour, 77 per cent had a positive opinion of Jews and 65 a good opinion of Muslims. A national poll published this month by Maclean’s Magazine also revealed that many Canadians are biased against religious minorities, particularly in Quebec. The survey by Angus Reid Strategies reported that 68 per cent of Quebecers view Islam negatively while 52 per cent of Canadians as a whole have a low opinion of the religion. It found that 36 per cent of Quebecers view Judaism unfavourably, compared with 59 per cent of Ontarians. The Léger Marketing survey of 1,003 Quebecers was conducted by online questionnaire May 13-16. Results are considered accurate within 3.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. mascot@thegazette.canwest.com © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette
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Vijay Mahajan, professeur à la McCombs Business School de l'Université du Texas à Austin, propose un pari audacieux. Pourquoi ne pas miser sur l'Afrique? Pour en lire plus...
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Immigrants' children more likely to graduate from university
un sujet a posté ErickMontreal dans L'actualité
Immigrants' children more likely to graduate from university Statistics Canada's new study. Close-knit South American family has played major role in her success, student says SHANNON PROUDFOOT, Canwest News Service Published: 8 hours ago The odds of celebrating a university graduation vary widely for young adults in Canada, largely depending on where their parents were born, according to a new study from Statistics Canada. The children of immigrants are more likely to toss a graduation cap in the air than their peers with Canadian-born parents. However, the children of Chinese immigrants are almost three times more likely to graduate from university than those of Latin American immigrants, the report finds, at 70 per cent compared to 24 per cent. By comparison, about 28 per cent of the children of Canadian-born parents get university degrees. Children of Indian parents and those from other Asian countries and Africa have graduation rates above 50 per cent, while about 25 per cent of children with parents from European countries like Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands get degrees. "The children of almost all immigrant groups have either similar or higher university completion rates than the children of Canadian-born parents," says Teresa Abada, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Western Ontario who conducted the study for Statistics Canada. Some of this can be explained by the fact immigrant parents are more likely to have university educations themselves and to live in big cities, she said, and those characteristics are associated with higher university graduation rates for their children. But even taking those factors into account, the children of immigrants - especially those from China or India - still fare better than others in education, Abada said. The scope of this study didn't allow researchers to discover why this might be, but similar research in the U.S. "suggests a sense of obligation to one's parents to do well academically" is at work, she said. University of Calgary students' union president Dalmy Baez says her close-knit South American family has played a major role in her success at school, whether it was 2 a.m. trips to photocopy campaign posters or cheering from the sidelines at debates and sporting events. Her Chilean mother and Paraguayan father met in Montreal after both immigrated to Canada and later moved to Calgary to raise Baez, 21, and her three siblings. Two of the Baez children attended university and two didn't, she said, though all have enjoyed success in their own fields. "I wasn't really sure if I was going to go to university," she said. "The second I started showing interest in school and subjects, they both became incredibly supportive and encouraging." Baez expects to graduate with a degree in political science and a minor in communications this spring and says she'll likely pursue a career in politics afterward. She and her siblings share a house in Calgary that they bought with their parents' help and now pay the mortgage on. A shortage of funds for post-secondary school can be a major barrier for the children of immigrants, Baez said, but for her parents it was crucial that their children get the most out of the life they built in Canada. "Our parents wanted us to take advantage of the opportunities we had here and they certainly weren't going to let us get away with not," she said. -
A quick word for English Language dispute. Quebec parents challenge French Language Charter ELIZABETH THOMPSON, The Gazette Published: 6 hours ago Quebec parents challenging the constitutionality of a Quebec law that blocks some children who attend English private schools from transferring into English public schools will get their day before Canada's top court in December. The Supreme Court of Canada has set aside Dec. 15 to hear two cases that pit the Canadian Charter of Rights against Bill 104, leading some to hope that a final decision in the dispute could now be rendered in time for the start of the 2009 school year. "It appears the court is doing everything it can to hear the case as quickly as possible," said Brent Tyler, lawyer for the parents. The cases centre on Bill 104, adopted by the Parti Québécois government in 2002. Prior to Bill 104, children who were otherwise ineligible to attend English school under the terms of the French Language Charter, Bill 101, could become eligible to attend English public schools after spending at least a year in an unsubsidized English-language private school. Attending English school under a special authorization, such as for a temporary work permit or for humanitarian reasons, could also make a child and their siblings eligible for English education. At the heart of the case is the issue of which takes precedence - the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which provides that children who have attended English schools, and their siblings, have the right to attend English schools in Quebec, or Quebec's language charter. Although the parents in both cases lost at the lower court level, they won at the Quebec Court of Appeal which struck down Bill 104, saying the law was inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights. Tyler said the parents got more good news recently when they learned that the federal court challenges program, which was cut then partially restored by the Conservative government, has agreed to provide $70,000 in funding to fight the two cases before the Supreme Court. Tyler says the outcome of the cases could have a significant impact on English schools in Quebec - particularly in the Montreal area. Tyler said there has been a steady stream of English school closures in the Montreal area since Bill 104 was introduced and the phenomenon is more pronounced in areas of town that had been receiving students who became eligible for education in English school by attending a private school. The English Montreal School Board has estimated it has lost about 450 students a year since Bill 104 was adopted. The stakes are high for many private schools as well, said Tyler. Many English private schools in Montreal accept government money at the high school level, but not at the primary level, meaning they can accept students ineligible under Bill 101 in elementary school but not in high school. "On average, 30 per cent of the children enrolled in the primary programs of these schools now will not be able to continue in the same schools if Bill 104 is upheld by the Supreme Court," said Tyler. The challenge to Bill 104 is just one of several cases the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear this fall - many of them from Quebec. The first case to be heard, on Oct. 7, will be a challenge by a group of Hutterites to an Alberta law obliging everyone to have their photo on their driver's licences. The Hutterites argue the law violates their religious freedom because their religion believes that the second commandment prohibits them from having their photograph taken willingly. ethompson@thegazette.canwest.com
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Différentes perspectives du 1400 DeMaisonneuve... Cette facade du Rizt Carlton va disparaître... Pas fort la facade nord du Crystal... Sous le soleil, la fausse pierre du Simpson est d'un blanc éclatant. John Molson School of Business Siège social de Quebecor
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HEC et McGill # 1 et # 3 au Global Business Challenge a NUS
un sujet a posté ouaouaron dans L'actualité
Top Asian team at global business challenge 31 March 2008 NUS' MBA team beat more than 270 Asian teams to emerge the best in the continent at Cerebration 2008, with DBS as principal sponsor. The Competition is an annual global business challenge organized by the NUS Business School. The team finished second overall among the more than 450 participating teams from 200 business schools worldwide. HEC Montreal team emerged the champion, with the London Business School and McGill University completing the final field of four. Now in its fourth year, the competition gives MBA students a chance to devise global business expansion strategies for participating Singapore companies -- Brewerkz Restaurant and Microbrewery, Expressions International and Qian Hu Corp. Each team had to study its chosen firm and come up with strategies based on the firm’s unique profile and target market. This is the second straight year that the NUS team has finished second in the competition, reflecting the School’s global ranking of the top 100 business schools for its MBA program. -
Source: http://www.financialpost.com/working/story.html?id=272627 Montreal's aerospace sector skyrockets Hiring Overseas Christopher De Wolf, Canwest News Service* MONTREAL - There's no way around it: The Aerospace industry in Montreal is booming. So much, in fact, that a new report issued by the Conference Board of Canada credits it with being the main force behind Montreal's economy, which is expected to grow by 2.6% in 2008. Just last week, the federal government announced that Quebec aerospace companies will benefit from $660-million in contracts to build parts for new Canadian Forces airplanes. That should lead to even more job growth in the sector, which already counts 44,548 positions in Greater Montreal, an increase of more than 2,500 since 2006. For many companies, finding new employees is a challenge. That's the case for Alta Precision Inc., a 50-employee Anjou, Que.-based company that makes landing gear components. "Our biggest hardship in 2007 was finding the right labour," said Giovanni Bevilacqua, the company's director of business development. "We've actually been going to India and Romania to find new people. " Alta Precision needs to fill 15 positions, Mr. Bevilacqua said. He expects most of its new hires to come from overseas, where it is easier to find workers with several years of experience. But that doesn't mean it has given up on local talent: Last year, the company invested in advertising, headhunters and in-school recruitment to find new employees. Mr. Bevilacqua said that as a small company, Alta Precision has a hard time competing for workers with "big boys" including Pratt &Whitney. Jean-Daniel Hamelin, spokesman for Pratt & Whitney Canada, a Longueuil-based aircraft engine manufacturer, stressed that the diversity of aerospace employers in Montreal is what makes the industry so strong. "If you have an excellent pool of candidates and a large group of employees, they can seek the employer that best suits their need," he said. Last fall, Pratt & Whitney Canada hosted a job fair for the first time in years. "It was a real success," Mr. Hamelin said. "We had about 100 positions to fill and we ended up retaining 175 candidates." The company's workforce now numbers 5,700 in the Montreal area. One of Pratt & Whitney's greatest sources of new recruits are students from Montreal's post-secondary aerospace programs, including those offered by the Montreal Aerospace Trade School, the National Aerotechnical School and the engineering departments at McGill and Concordia universities. Serge Tremblay, president of the Center for Aerospace Manpower Activities in Quebec, a non-profit organization that works with major aerospace players to develop skilled labour in the industry, said innovation is key to Montreal's success. "[in Montreal,] we invest close to 10% of our sales in research and development. By investing millions of dollars a year, it's obvious that you're in it for innovation," he said. Bravo Chris, aka Kilgore Trout :-)
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New York Daily News: A young Montreal circus troupe leaps onto 42nd St.
un sujet a posté mtlurb dans L'actualité
Monday, February 04, 2008 A young Montreal circus troupe leaps onto 42nd St. BY MICHAEL GILTZ Sunday, February 3rd 2008, 4:00 AM It's a stretch for Heloise Bourgeois during a performance of 'Traces.' The five young circus performers starring in the inventive show "Traces" at the New Victory Theater (229 W. 42nd St.) this Friday through March 2 learned to hold a crowd's attention the hard way: by working as street performers in Europe so they could afford to eat and rent a hotel room. "I remember the first show we did in London," says Francisco Cruz, 24, who, with younger brother Raphael and three of their best friends, went on an unofficial "tour" of Europe during a summer break from clown school in Montreal to work the crowds for pocket change. "We made this whole show, written all down on paper. But I don't think we picked the best spot. Our show was 25 minutes long and we made, I think, three pounds," Cruz laughs. "That's about $6! It was ridiculous." But they'd been performing and rehearsing together for years. Francisco and Raphael grew up just outside San Francisco and met their friends Brad Henderson and William Underwood while studying circus moves, like Chinese hoop-diving, hand-to-hand (which involves gymnastics-like moves with a partner) and Chinese-pole maneuvers. They all went to Montreal for circus college, and there met Héloïse Bourgeois. The five became inseparable, constantly working together on tricks and routines. So they knew how to adapt. "For the rest of our time in London, instead of doing street shows, we'd actually work a street light," explains Cruz. "We'd find a busy intersection, and when there was a red light, we'd run out, do a trick then run to each car and try to get money. And they'd be throwing money at us! In an hour, we'd make about 80 pounds. In two hours, we'd make 200 pounds." If it wasn't already clear, they were meant to work together. Luckily, as they neared graduation in 2001, a Montreal-based circus company called the 7 Fingers was looking to create a show. Veterans of the nouveau performance phenomenon Cirque du Soleil, the 7 Fingers had casually formed out of a desire to create their own show. "We really wanted to create something we called 'circus with a human scale,'" says Shana Carroll, one of the artistic directors of the company and, along with Gypsy Snider, a director of "Traces." "We'd been doing these huge productions, and our instinct was to go intimate and demystify circus." Their first production - "Lofts," in 2002 - was an immediate hit and is still performed all over the world. They wanted to build on that success without duplicating it, and here was a group of kids Carroll had known since most of them were little. (She and Snider urged them to further their learning in Montreal.) "After their three years of circus school, we thought, hey, we should hire them!" says Carroll. "If anyone is going to do a show with them, it should be us." The result is "Traces," a 90-minute burst of energy and creativity that incorporates everything from basketball and skateboarding and piano playing to classic stunts. It has played on four continents so far. In classic 7 Fingers style, the five performers reveal details about themselves so the audience becomes invested in them as personalities and really cares about the dangerous, physically demanding work they do onstage. It's the same lesson they learned in London. "It's not only about the trick," says Cruz of the show he has been working on and performing in for more than two years. "People need to see personality. They need to see we're having fun." Sometimes, almost too much fun. "They're young, and there are attention-span problems compared to other people we're used to working with," laughs Carroll, who hopes another 7 Fingers show - "La Vie," a dark cabaret act - can return to New York for an extended run after playing in the Spiegeltent at South Street Seaport last year. "Putting skateboards and basketballs in the shows, sometimes we think it wasn't such a good idea because every time there's a five-second break, they're jumping around!" http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/arts/2008/02/03/2008-02-03_a_young_montreal_circus_troupe_leaps_ont-1.html -
Associated Press: Montreal police learned from previous school shootings
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Montreal police learned from previous school shootings By The Associated Press When a lone gunman entered Dawson college in Montreal and began shooting last September, police counted on new procedures and a bit of luck to neutralize the assailant quickly. Kimveer Gill, 25, opened fire at the downtown Montreal college last September, slaying a young woman and wounding 19 other people before he turned the gun on himself as police cornered him. As luck would have it police officers on the scene for an unrelated matter were rapid first responders able to spot the suspect. But in a city which had seen two college shootings in the 17 previous years, police had also gained experience from the previous incidents to keep the situation from getting out of control. Montreal Police Chief Yvan Delorme said last September that precious lessons learned from other mass shootings had taught police to try to stop such assaults as quickly as possible. "Before our technique was to establish a perimeter around the place and wait for the SWAT team. Now the first police officers go right inside. The way they acted saved lives," he said. Montreal police refused to comment Monday about the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech, but as Americans try to make sense of the deadliest campus massacre in U.S. history which left at least 33 dead, including the gunman, questions have begun to emerge about the time allowed to elapse before authorities contained the shooting. In Canada the lessons were painfully learned from the Dec. 6, 1989 college shooting at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique, Canada's bloodiest, during which Marc Lepine entered a classroom at the engineering school, separated the men from the women, told the men to leave and opened fire, killing 14 women before killing himself. While shots rang out at Ecole Polytechnique emergency personnel "had a perimeter outside and they waited. No one went inside," Delorme recalled last September. Another shooting in Montreal occurred in 1992, when a Concordia University professor killed four colleagues. By last September Montreal officers had changed their modus operandi and rushed into the building only a few minutes after the gunman. "This time it was very efficient, very proactive," Delorme then said. Aaron Cohen, a SWAT trainer based in California, said time is of the essence during such circumstances, as the quick intervention in Montreal eventually showed, avoiding a similar bloodbath. "While they wait another innocent person is dead. There's just no time to sit around," Cohen told Canada's CBC TV. "It has to be fast. On Monday a gunman opened fire in a Virginia Tech dorm and then, two hours later, shot up a classroom building across campus, killing 32 people in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. The gunman committed suicide, bringing the death toll to 33. Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said authorities believed that the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus. Copyright The Associated Press 2007. All Rights Reserved Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
