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- On peu voir le Queen's Hotel sur la rue Peel, coin Saint-Jacques, et l'annexe à coté. Démolition de l'annexe:

via Blouin Art Info : 10 Must-See Warped Public Art Sculptures in Montreal BY Low Lai Chow | March 28, 2016 If cities were people, Montreal would be the rebellious, off-kilter kid who steals all the thunder at a party. Basking in diversity as the lively cultural capital of Canada (Ottawa is Canada's actual capital city, FYI), Montreal has a social calendar that is perpetually packed with events and festivals. Rule of thumb: if there is a party in town, know that there are a hundred more you haven't heard about. With over 315 public artworks in the municipal collection, Montreal also has some incredible public sculptures around town, from parks to libraries. Culture+Travel picks out ten of the most warped public art to seek out in the City of Festivals. See pictures of the artworks here. - Révolutions (2003), Michel de Broin | Rifting on the impossible, Montreal-based sculptor de Broin takes visual inspiration from the ubiquitous outdoor staircases seen throughout the city for this loopy 8.5-meter high Moebius strip out of aluminum and galvanized steel. The artist has said of the enigmatic work, “The staircase makes us think of what returns without repeating, transformed in its cycle. We can all project ourselves into this curved space and enter the game of revolutions.” In short, this work is infinity in poetry. Where: Parc Maisonneuve-Cartier, behind Metro Papineau metro station in Ville-Marie - Le Malheureux Magnifique (1972), Pierre Yves Angers | Cement-covered and huddled over in a humanistic form, Yves Angers' 1972 sculpture is a landmark that marks the entrance of Montreal’s bustling Latin Quarter. First installed in Place Pasteur in 1973, it was moved to the front of Alcide-Chaussée Building in 1991. Angers is said to have been inspired by the works of Rodin; his accompanying art says, "À ceux qui regardent à l'intérieur d'eux-mêmes et franchissent ainsi les frontières du visible” (French for 'To those who look inside themselves and thus cross over the borders of the visible'). Where: 385, Rue Sherbrooke Est, at the intersection of Sherbrooke and Saint-Denis streets in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal - Theatre for Sky Blocks (1992), Linda Covit | Installed on the shore of Lake Saint-Louis, Covit's minimalist work dwells on the environment. It was first exhibited in 1992 at the first Salon international de la sculpture extérieure. With the water and the sky in the background, three monolithic steel columns have a photograph of clouds silk screened on them. It all begs the questions: What is real? What is fictitious? Where: Parc Fort-Rolland in Lachine - Anamorphose D'Une Fenetre, Claude Lamarche | From afar, Claude Lamarche's artwork resembles colorful scribbles that seem to have leapt off the tip of a pen to interact with the exteriors of the Maison de la culture Mercier building in real life. A red arrow-shaped sculpture points at the upper left-hand corner of the wall while a blue arrow twirls one corner of it. A yellow window frame hangs on one wall, while steel rods and tubes prop up the sides. Where: 8105, Rue Hochelaga, at Maison de la culture Mercier in Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve - Monica (1985), Jules Lasalle | Evoking the gigantic head sculptures of Easter Island and excavated archaeological remains, sculptor and modeller Jules Lasalle's larger-than-life 3D portrait of a woman with a smile on her face is deliberately fragmented, denoting the passing of time. Lasalle created the artwork in 1985 at the first Lachine, Carrefour de l’Art et de l’Industrie sculpture symposium. Where: Promenade Père-Marquette in Lachine - From A (1986), Takera Narita | Comprising three parts of a granite and mortar fluted column to reference ancient Greek civilization, this unusual ruins-like sculpture by the late Japanese artist Takera Narita appears to pop up from the ground and sink back into it. It alludes to the cycle of history, with the title hinting at a path between two points as a mathematical formula. Narita created the work for the second Lachine sculpture symposium L’an II – Lachine, carrefour de l’art et de l’industrie in 1986. Where: Parc René-Lévesque in Lachine - La vélocité des lieux (2015), BGL | Completed in 2015 in conjunction with the redevelopment of the Henri-Bourassa–Pie-IX intersection in Montréal-Nord borough is this work by Jasmin Bilodeau, Sébastien Giguère, and Nicolas Laverdière of Québec collective BGL. It comprises five bus-like forms on eight steel columns. Denoting the ebbs and flow of human activity and community, the cheerful 19-meter high sculpture looks like a Ferris wheel right out of an amusement park in frenzied motion. In reality, this static artwork doesn't actually move. BGL also recently represented Canada at the 56th Venice Art Biennale. Where: Carrefour Henri-Bourassa–Pie-IX in Montréal-Nord - Le Mélomane (2011), Cooke-Sasseville | Based in Québec City, the creative duo of Jean-François Cooke and Pierre Sasseville has a taste for the absurd. Evidence? This cheeeky bronze sculpture shows an ostrich sticking its head into a gramophone horn, illustrating the stronghold of music and new realities. Where: Parc François-Perrault in Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension - Site/Interlude (1994), David Moore | Shaped like gigantic legs, five steel wire structures filled with large stones stand starkly, deliberately spread out to coerce viewers to walk from one to the next so as to see the full work. Dublin-born and Montréal-based artist David Moore took inspiration from seeing how the legs and feet were often the only vestiges left standing from the ancient statues of Greece's archaeological sites. First displayed in Montréal's Old Port, Moore's work is a reflection on the passage of time and on progress. Where: Parc René-Lévesque in Lachine. - Regard Sur Le Fleuve (1992), Lisette Lemieux | Situated on the shore of Lake St. Louis, Arthabaska-born artist Lisette Lemieux's large billboard-like work includes incisive cutouts of the word 'FLEUVE' (French for 'river') and the word’s reflection in water, so that actual river water appear to fill up the cutout parts. Both a wall that obstructs the river view, as well as announces its existence, the work urges viewers to rediscover the river. Where: Parc Stoney-Point in Lachine

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/iamgold-to-sell-niobec-mine-in-quebec-for-500-million/article20906794/

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

Essar Steel met à pied une centaine d'employés supplémentaires à son aciérie de Sault-Sainte-Marie, en Ontario. Pour en lire plus...

Quelque 2100 travailleurs perdront leur emploi en raison de la fonte des ventes d'acier de la compagnie, appelée jadis Stelco. La fermeture de l'aciérie est temporaire. Pour en lire plus...

L'aciérie de Sault-Sainte-Marie propose à ses employés de travailler hebdomadairement une journée de moins pour éviter 500 mises à pied. Pour en lire plus...

Le CN presse de nouveau le Surface Transportation Board afin qu'il prenne rapidement une décision au sujet de sa proposition de rachat de la ligne régionale Elgin, Joliet & Eastern de Chicago auprès de U.S. Steel. Pour en lire plus...

Sunset in Dubvronik Top part of the Parliament building in Budapest Castle in Lake Bled (Slovenia) Somewhere in Montenegro Statue of Tesla in Zagreb Whipping Willow tree made from steel in Budapest Statue a top of Heroes Square in Budapest Some guys mother holding a book in front of the University in Zagreb Something from Ljubljana (Slovenia)

Une entreprise indienne, Tata Steel, achète 20% des actions de New Millenium, une entreprise d'exploration et d'exploitation minière opérant dans le nord du Québec et au Labrador. Pour en lire plus...

La nature exacte du recours en justice prévu par le CN n'a pas été précisée, mais il porte sur la d'acheter Elgin, Joliet & Eastern auprès de U.S. Steel au coût de 300 M$. Pour en lire plus...

Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization When Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States. Bread in a New Zealand supermarket. Soaring transportation costs also have an impact on food, from bananas to salmon. But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle. “It was kind of a no-brain decision for us,” said Darryl Siry, the company’s senior vice president of global sales, marketing and service. “A major reason was to avoid the transportation costs, which are terrible.” The world economy has become so integrated that shoppers find relatively few T-shirts and sneakers in Wal-Mart and Target carrying a “Made in the U.S.A.” label. But globalization may be losing some of the inexorable economic power it had for much of the past quarter-century, even as it faces fresh challenges as a political ideology. Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages. Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex. “If we think about the Wal-Mart model, it is incredibly fuel-intensive at every stage, and at every one of those stages we are now seeing an inflation of the costs for boats, trucks, cars,” said Naomi Klein, the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” “That is necessarily leading to a rethinking of this emissions-intensive model, whether the increased interest in growing foods locally, producing locally or shopping locally, and I think that’s great.” Many economists argue that globalization will not shift into reverse even if oil prices continue their rising trend. But many see evidence that companies looking to keep prices low will have to move some production closer to consumers. Globe-spanning supply chains — Brazilian iron ore turned into Chinese steel used to make washing machines shipped to Long Beach, Calif., and then trucked to appliance stores in Chicago — make less sense today than they did a few years ago. To avoid having to ship all its products from abroad, the Swedish furniture manufacturer Ikea opened its first factory in the United States in May. Some electronics companies that left Mexico in recent years for the lower wages in China are now returning to Mexico, because they can lower costs by trucking their output overland to American consumers. Neighborhood Effect Decisions like those suggest that what some economists call a neighborhood effect — putting factories closer to components suppliers and to consumers, to reduce transportation costs — could grow in importance if oil remains expensive. A barrel sold for $125 on Friday, compared with lows of $10 a decade ago. “If prices stay at these levels, that could lead to some significant rearrangement of production, among sectors and countries,” said C. Fred Bergsten, author of “The United States and the World Economy” and director of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, in Washington. “You could have a very significant shock to traditional consumption patterns and also some important growth effects.” The cost of shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to the United States has risen to $8,000, compared with $3,000 early in the decade, according to a recent study of transportation costs. Big container ships, the pack mules of the 21st-century economy, have shaved their top speed by nearly 20 percent to save on fuel costs, substantially slowing shipping times. The study, published in May by the Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, calculates that the recent surge in shipping costs is on average the equivalent of a 9 percent tariff on trade. “The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today,” the report concluded, and as a result “has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.” The spike in shipping costs comes at a moment when concern about the environmental impact of globalization is also growing. Many companies have in recent years shifted production from countries with greater energy efficiency and more rigorous standards on carbon emissions, especially in Europe, to those that are more lax, like China and India But if the international community fulfills its pledge to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change, even China and India would have to reduce the growth of their emissions, and the relative costs of production in countries that use energy inefficiently could grow. The political landscape may also be changing. Dissatisfaction with globalization has led to the election of governments in Latin America hostile to the process. A somewhat similar reaction can be seen in the United States, where both Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton promised during the Democratic primary season to “re-evaluate” the nation’s existing free trade agreements. Last week, efforts to complete what is known as the Doha round of trade talks collapsed in acrimony, dealing a serious blow to tariff reduction. The negotiations, begun in 2001, failed after China and India battled the United States over agricultural tariffs, with the two developing countries insisting on broad rights to protect themselves against surges of food imports that could hurt their farmers. Some critics of globalization are encouraged by those developments, which they see as a welcome check on the process. On environmentalist blogs, some are even gleefully promoting a “globalization death watch.” Many leading economists say such predictions are probably overblown. “It would be a mistake, a misinterpretation, to think that a huge rollback or reversal of fundamental trends is under way,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “Distance and trade costs do matter, but we are still in a globalized era.” As economists and business executives well know, shipping costs are only one factor in determining the flow of international trade. When companies decide where to invest in a new factory or from whom to buy a product, they also take into account exchange rates, consumer confidence, labor costs, government regulations and the availability of skilled managers. ‘People Were Profligate’ What may be coming to an end are price-driven oddities like chicken and fish crossing the ocean from the Western Hemisphere to be filleted and packaged in Asia not to be consumed there, but to be shipped back across the Pacific again. “Because of low costs, people were profligate,” said Nayan Chanda, author of “Bound Together,” a history of globalization. The industries most likely to be affected by the sharp rise in transportation costs are those producing heavy or bulky goods that are particularly expensive to ship relative to their sale price. Steel is an example. China’s steel exports to the United States are now tumbling by more than 20 percent on a year-over-year basis, their worst performance in a decade, while American steel production has been rising after years of decline. Motors and machinery of all types, car parts, industrial presses, refrigerators, television sets and other home appliances could also be affected. Plants in industries that require relatively less investment in infrastructure, like furniture, footwear and toys, are already showing signs of mobility as shipping costs rise. Until recently, standard practice in the furniture industry was to ship American timber from ports like Norfolk, Baltimore and Charleston to China, where oak and cherry would be milled into sofas, beds, tables, cabinets and chairs, which were then shipped back to the United States. But with transportation costs rising, more wood is now going to traditional domestic furniture-making centers in North Carolina and Virginia, where the industry had all but been wiped out. While the opening of the American Ikea plant, in Danville, Va., a traditional furniture-producing center hit hard by the outsourcing of production to Asia, is perhaps most emblematic of such changes, other manufacturers are also shifting some production back to the United States. Among them is Craftmaster Furniture, a company founded in North Carolina but now Chinese-owned. And at an industry fair in April, La-Z-Boy announced a new line that will begin production in North Carolina this month. “There’s just a handful of us left, but it has become easier for us domestic folks to compete,” said Steven Kincaid of Kincaid Furniture in Hudson, N.C., a division of La-Z-Boy. Avocado Salad in January Soaring transportation costs also have an impact on food, from bananas to salmon. Higher shipping rates could eventually transform some items now found in the typical middle-class pantry into luxuries and further promote the so-called local food movement popular in many American and European cities. “This is not just about steel, but also maple syrup and avocados and blueberries at the grocery store,” shipped from places like Chile and South Africa, said Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets and co-author of its recent study on transport costs and globalization. “Avocado salad in Minneapolis in January is just not going to work in this new world, because flying it in is going to make it cost as much as a rib eye.” Global companies like General Electric, DuPont, Alcoa and Procter & Gamble are beginning to respond to the simultaneous increases in shipping and environmental costs with green policies meant to reduce both fuel consumption and carbon emissions. That pressure is likely to increase as both manufacturers and retailers seek ways to tighten the global supply chain. “Being green is in their best interests not so much in making money as saving money,” said Gary Yohe, an environmental economist at Wesleyan University. “Green companies are likely to be a permanent trend, as these vulnerabilities continue, but it’s going to take a long time for all this to settle down.” In addition, the sharp increase in transportation costs has implications for the “just-in-time” system pioneered in Japan and later adopted the world over. It is a highly profitable business strategy aimed at reducing warehousing and inventory costs by arranging for raw materials and other supplies to arrive only when needed, and not before. Jeffrey E. Garten, the author of “World View: Global Strategies for the New Economy” and a former dean of the Yale School of Management, said that companies “cannot take a risk that the just-in-time system won’t function, because the whole global trading system is based on that notion.” As a result, he said, “they are going to have to have redundancies in the supply chain, like more warehousing and multiple sources of supply and even production.” One likely outcome if transportation rates stay high, economists said, would be a strengthening of the neighborhood effect. Instead of seeking supplies wherever they can be bought most cheaply, regardless of location, and outsourcing the assembly of products all over the world, manufacturers would instead concentrate on performing those activities as close to home as possible. In a more regionalized trading world, economists say, China would probably end up buying more of the iron ore it needs from Australia and less from Brazil, and farming out an even greater proportion of its manufacturing work to places like Vietnam and Thailand. Similarly, Mexico’s maquiladora sector, the assembly plants concentrated near its border with the United States, would become more attractive to manufacturers with an eye on the American market. But a trend toward regionalization would not necessarily benefit the United States, economists caution. Not only has it lost some of its manufacturing base and skills over the past quarter-century, and experienced a decline in consumer confidence as part of the current slowdown, but it is also far from the economies that have become the most dynamic in the world, those of Asia. “Despite everything, the American economy is still the biggest Rottweiler on the block,” said Jagdish N. Bhagwati, the author of “In Defense of Globalization” and a professor of economics at Columbia. “But if it’s expensive to get products from there to here, it’s also expensive to get them from here to there.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/business/worldbusiness/03global.html?pagewanted=1&em

The tallest of them all (in 1888) Little Giant It had electric lights, an elevator and mail chute where you could drop letters from any floor. More impressive, the New York Life Insurance Building at 511 Place d'Armes was Montreal's first skyscraper - at eight storeys high MARIAN SCOTT, The Gazette Published: 6 hours ago From the top floor of Montreal's first skyscraper, you can see ... Well, not much, to tell the truth. Crane your neck from the eighth floor of 511 Place d'Armes and you can make out the statue of Montreal founder Paul Chomedey sieur de Maisonneuve in the square, and the roof of the Vieux Séminaire, adjoining Notre Dame Basilica. But back in 1888, oh my! Eight storeys high was a dizzying height, indeed. The New York Life Insurance Building boasted the latest in modern conveniences. Electric lights! An elevator! And a mail chute where you could drop letters from any floor! Impressed? Perhaps not, but back in the gaslight era, these were state-of-the-art innovations. The New York Life had its own generator to provide power to the offices. Imagine a city where the only tall structures were church spires. Just the twin towers of Notre Dame soared higher than the clock tower that sits atop the New York Life. Rising to 40 metres, its facade of red sandstone - imported all the way from Dumfriesshire, Scotland - made a splash against the grey limestone buildings of Old Montreal. The arched doorway and upper windows evoke the Italian Renaissance. "Look, even the smallest detail is decorated," says Madeleine Forget, admiring the carved entrance, with its intricate wrought-iron grille. Forget is an architectural historian who wrote a history of the city's early high-rises (Les Gratte-ciel de Montréal, Éditions du Méridien, 1990). Sculptor Henri Beaumont created the intricate carvings of urns, garlands and masks in the doorway. When the New York Life was built, from 1887 to 1889, architects were just starting to figure out the secrets of high-rise construction. The first ingredient was the elevator. In 1852, Elisha Graves Otis invented the safety brake for elevators. He installed the world's first passenger lift in a New York department store in 1857. The second ingredient was steel. Traditionally, the walls of a building supported the structure. The taller the building, the thicker the walls needed to be. The walls of Chicago's 17-storey Monadnock Building, completed in 1893, are two metres thick at ground level. Steel-frame construction allowed buildings to reach for the sky. A steel skeleton supported the structure, with the exterior walls hanging from it, like curtains. Chicago's 11-storey Home Insurance Building, constructed in 1885, was the first to use this construction method. Montreal would have to wait until 1895 for its first steel-frame building, the Canada Life Assurance on St. Jacques St. Designed by New York architects Babb, Cook & Willard, the New York Life has supporting masonry walls and steel floors. "The New York Life Building," wrote a visitor, "is one of the most imposing in the City." Its construction ushered in Montreal's "office era," noted the late Gazette history columnist Edgar Andrew Collard. The lantern in the entrance is original, as are the beige marble walls and mosaic floor. The hall boasts a coffered ceiling and staircase with an elegant, filigreed banister. Inside, the building is surprisingly modest in scale. Grand lobbies with hordes of scurrying office workers would come later in the history of office buildings, Forget says. "It looks bigger (from the outside) than it is," says Guylaine Villeneuve, director of operations for the building. The New York Life Co. had its Canadian head office on the fourth floor and a library on the eighth. The other floors were rented out. The Quebec Bank, whose name is carved over the entrance, occupied the ground floor. It bought the building in 1909 and was absorbed into the Royal Bank in 1917. For 12 years, only three eight-storey buildings - the New York Life, Canada Life and Telegraph Chambers Buildings - would rise above the skyline. After 1900, 11-storey buildings began to dot the cityscape. In the 1920s, office buildings with towers set back from the street appeared. One is the art-deco Aldred Building next door to the New York Life. Last year, owner Bechara Helal built two penthouse apartments on the roof, one of which he occupies, Villeneuve says. Tourists sometimes stop to read the brass plaque identifying the building as Montreal's first skyscraper, but few come in, she says. Today, the New York Life barely rates a glance among the soaring structures cluttering the skyline. But what it lacks in stature, it gains in well-bred elegance. Dwarfed by modern high-rises, the building preserves a memory of the era when eight storeys was a dazzling height. mascot@thegazette.canwest.com http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=199c1c3e-af3b-4bcf-a949-9b8f88c5c671

ArcelorMittal To Shut Down Montreal Plant On June 30 March 26, 2008 12:21 p.m. EST Montreal, Canada (AHN) - The largest steel manufacturer will shut down its wire factory in Montreal on June 30. Around 100 Canadian workers employed by ArcelorMittal at the Lachine plant are expected to lose their jobs. ArcelorMittal said it had to close the Montreal facility because of high production cost, oversupply of products and the strong Canadian currency. The plant has 153 employees, but only 53 of the workers will be transferred to ArcelorMittal's steel wire mill at Saint Patrick. Alain Robitaille, general manager of ArcelorMittal's wire division, said demand for steel wire among carmakers had declined in the U.S. over the past six years. At the same time, the Canadian dollar had appreciated vis-a-vis the greenback, making it more expensive for American buyers to purchase their steel requirements from Canada. "ArcelorMittal cannot continue operating two wire mills in a context where it is more advisable to operate only one plant," Robitaille told the Associated Press. On March 14, the company petitioned an Ontario court to require its partners in Wabush Mines to sell to the firm their majority share in an iron ore joint venture in Labrador and Quebec. Prior to ArcelorMittal's court petition, U.S. Steel Canada and Cleveland-Cliffs withdrew from negotiations with ArcelorMittal to sell their combined 71 percent share, but did not explain why. http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010446071