Maisonneuve

Judging by my Facebook homepage during the NBA finals, we might be underestimating how many people follow basketball. Granted, I'm what would be considered a visible minority and most of my friends are also visible minorities...they are the basketball fans of Montreal. Who cares if it's not on RDS. Since when did RDS become the symbol of sport in Quebec? Does RDS's coverage of the English Premier League mirror the interest of that league in Montreal? Definitely NOT, and anyone who's been to a pub or bar during big Premiership or F.A. Cup matches can agree to that. Does RDS's coverage of the NBA mirror the interest in that league in Montreal, especially among Montrealers who are visible minorities? NO. Enough with the RDS argument, I've heard it too often and it's insulting because it's doesn't take into consideration the hundreds of thousands of people who like a sport. Not everyone is a Canadiens fan. Go Habs Go, but on average RDS only gets 1.4 million viewers for a Canadiens game. In a province of 7 million people, only 1.4 million people (on average) are Habs fans? See, this is why the RDS argument fails.

Just curious, when you compare Manhattan and Toronto's skyline, which one looks most impressive? I think Manhattan's does, but I'm not that impressed with the quality of architecture I see in Manhattan compared to Toronto, in terms of residential towers. In Toronto, though there are many banal condo towers, there are some that are well designed and give off an aura of sleek modernity. In contrast, New York has a lot of uninspiring condo towers, that are really tall, but that's it. I noticed that on my last trip to New York down from Toronto and I have a new appreciation for some of the condo towers in Toronto. Even the ones in Vancouver and Calgary are nicer than most I saw in Manhattan. You would think New York would be the place that would excel in this category, but in my opinion Toronto, and to a lesser extent Vancouver and Calgary have New York beat for style of condo towers. Do you agree?

I love the Knicks. Which I could be in Montreal for such a game, but I can see my team when the come to Toronto anything. Not that their worth seeing... Damn Isaiah Thomas as a "consultant" That's like the Habs bringing back Reggie Houle and Mario Tremblay as "consultants".

That Facebook group has 13,068 members. I hope at least that many go to the game. I hope they fill the joint, even if it is the Knicks against the Raptors. There's a lot more basketball fans in Montreal than we think. The problem is that most of them are not wealthy enough to afford regular season tickets at NBA prices. Therein lies the reason there is no NBA team here. But hey, there's markets in the NBA that are really horrible, so Montreal can't be as worse as Oakland, Seattle (who lost their team), Atlanta. Why not Montreal then? Molson would love the extra cash. Tie the NBA team's tickets in with Habs regular season tickets, so that people have to buy both as a set like Leafs-Raptors and Knicks-Rangers

I wrote this as a comment to the story on the Gazette website, and I am reposting it here: I do not see this situation the same way the article sees it. I see it quite differently. In fact, I see it as true to form for most Toronto-based/English Canadian entities and events. Many Toronto-based entities try to make whatever their doing to be Toronto-centric. It is the largest city in Canada, so what do you expect. However, whenever being Toronto-centric fails, or is seen as no longer practical for the success of the entity or event, the entity or event suddenly becomes inclusive to other parts of Canada. For example, for years Hockey Night in Canada was accused of being Toronto-centric, but in the last few seasons the Leafs have faltered while the Canadiens have improved, thereby forcing CBC to show more Canadiens games. Also, Scotiabank Nuit Blanche in Toronto normally showcases many Quebecois artists. Even Canada Day celebrations become this inclusive affair to showcase First Nations and Quebecois culture because of a lack, or minimal existence of English Canadian culture. So as to not seem like Canada is a country without culture or national identity, culture from Quebec is appropriated by Toronto-based/English Canadian entities to fill voids on their end, so they don't look foolish. Another example are the Toronto Raptors, who after 15 years of existence, have only now decided to play a game in Montreal, now that it is clear to everyone that they are the NBA's version of the Expos; NOW they want to be 'Canada's Team'. However, ask yourselves one question: Would TIFF give a damn about showcasing Quebecois film makers if they they had enough Toronto-based film makers to showcase? Probably not. So TIFF's inclusion of Quebecois films, just like the increased showing of the Habs on CBC, the Raptors sudden realization of a world outside the GTA and the "song-dance" of Natives & Quebecois musical acts on Parliament Hill on Canada Day is more symbolic of a lack or minimal existence of Toronto-based/English Canadian culture to show, than it is about taking a swipe at Montreal/Quebec culture. One more note: I'm part of a national organization based in the U.S. that represents a specific cultural group that was having a convention in Toronto early in 2010. For the 1-2 years leading up to the event, the convention planning committee would meet in Toronto to organize the event. They made their whole promotional effort all about advertising to Toronto professionals, Toronto schools, Toronto organizations, ETC.... However, in late 2009, they weren't making as much as an impact in Toronto as they thought they would have in terms of registrations. So all of a sudden, they started to try to promote to cities like Montreal, Ottawa and other parts of Canada. This was AFTER the fact. AFTER the Toronto-centric approach didn't work. As a result of wasting their advertising dollars hitting a wall in Toronto, they had very little left to promote to other parts of Canada. The event was still a big success, but it could have made a much bigger statement had this Toronto-based planning group planned big from the start. Only out of desperation and not wanting to see the event flop, did they shift from being Toronto-centric to nationally minded. TIFF's inclusion of Quebecois film makers is true to form for Toronto-based entities. They were just trying to avoid the embarrassment of not having a lot of Canadian-based films to show the world at what is becoming a top-notch film festival event. Imagine the egg on the faces of the leaders of TIFF as the world media asks 'why aren't there a lot of Canadian films featured?" That's what TIFF is trying to avoid. It's just about optics,not about trying to diss Montreal. P.S. I'm an English Canadian living in Toronto. Just in case I get labelled as Quebec separatist for my comments by "anonymous" commentators.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/editorials/Rivalry+rekindled+between+Montreal+Toronto+film+fests/3403365/story.html By BRENDAN KELLY, The Gazette August 16, 2010 MONTREAL - It looks like the rivalry between the Montreal and Toronto film festivals is heating up again. The two festivals have never got along particularly well, and over the years Montreal World Film Festival president Serge Losique has seldom been shy about voicing his disdain for the Toronto International Film Festival. But, pun intended, the tiff between Montreal and TIFF had died down in recent years, as the two events staked out quite different turf. Toronto has become so huge that it seemingly didn't need to worry so much about duking it out with Losique's lower-profile get-together, and the result was that the two festivals were content to ignore each other. But the hostilities were reignited last week when the Toronto fest decided to announce its Canadian films the same day Losique was unveiling his lineup at a press conference here. If you think that's a coincidence, you're remarkably naive. This was a deliberate shot across the bow at the World Film Festival, an attempt to underline that Toronto does more for Quebecois cinema than Montreal does. This year, TIFF has way more A-list Quebec features than Montreal, and that is indeed an embarrassing state of affairs for the Montreal fest. T.O. will host the world premieres of Montreal filmmaker Jacob Tierney's Good Neighbours (formerly titled Notre Dame de Grace), the latest from The Trotsky director, once again starring Jay Baruchel, and noted Quebec director Robin Aubert's A L'origine d'un cri. Polytechnique director Denis Villeneuve's Incendies, his adaptation of the acclaimed Wajdi Mouawad play, will have its North American premiere in Toronto, as will cool auteur Denis Cote's Curling. Toronto also has a couple of Quebec films already seen here, including Xavier Dolan's Les amours imaginaires and Catherine Martin's Trois temps apres la mort d'Anna. In addition, Louis Belanger's Route 132, which opens the Montreal festival, will have its English-Canadian premiere in Toronto. This all just serves to highlight the lamentable fact that Montreal has only two made-in-Quebec features in its lineup: Route 132 and Julie Hivon's Tromper le Silence. Following the Montreal and Toronto announcements Tuesday, Losique told Le Journal de Montreal that he wasn't unduly worried by the quantity of Quebec films going to Toronto, falling back on his familiar argument that the Toronto fest is all about star-studded Hollywood junkets while his event takes the high road and shines the spotlight on world-class arthouse cinema. Losique couldn't have liked Incendies director Villeneuve's comments in La Presse about how Toronto has always been such a great supporter of Quebec film. "It's incredible the platform (Toronto) gives us to present our films to the entire world," said Villeneuve. Of course, filmmakers should be free to premiere their films wherever they want to and it's nice to see Toronto providing a showcase for the best cinema made chez nous. But the timing of their announcement stinks. Why did they have to deliberately steal Losique's thunder last Tuesday? That was petty and totally unnecessary for a festival that is now one of the world's most significant film confabs. The result? Just exactly what the Toronto fest bosses wanted. Everyone in the film milieu last week was talking about the Quebec contingent at TIFF rather than the Montreal lineup. Losique couldn't have been happy to open La Presse Wednesday morning and see that the lead story in the paper's Arts et Spectacles section was a celebration of the Quebec presence at the Toronto fest -under the title Le Quebec a l'honneur. The World Film Fest story was pushed to the bottom of the page by the TIFF news. Don't get me wrong. The meagre Quebecois content at the World Film Festival is a big problem and points to the still-frosty relations between the fest and the province's film distributors. Alliance Vivafilm, for example, has only one feature at the Montreal fest, Route 132, and the company is not even making the talent from that film available for individual interviews during the fest. Clearly there's something wrong with this picture. But that doesn't justify Canada's top film festival deliberately bullying the struggling, cash-strapped fest from Montreal. Here's a thought for the TIFF brain trust -show a little class next time, guys. bkelly@thegazette.canwest.com © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette

Entrevue avec Bernard Landry L'avenir de Montréal, l'avenir du Québec http://journalechos.com/articles.html C. Bergeron Dans son édition de juin, Échos interviewait Isabelle Hudon sur l'avenir de Montréal. Soucieux de proposer des points de vue variés, nous avons eu l'idée d'interroger sur le même sujet l'ex-premier ministre Bernard Landry, qui a accepté notre invitation. Bernard Landry n'est pas de ceux que l'on peut ranger du côté des sceptiques ou des mélancoliques. Pour celui qui fut premier ministre du Québec de 2001 à 2003, mais aussi ministre des Finances sous le gouvernement Bouchard, le discours actuel sur le déclin de Montréal n'est pas justifié. « Dans l'aéronautique, un secteur de pointe, Montréal fait partie des villes de tête avec Seattle et Toulouse. L'industrie y est parfaitement intégrée. Même succès dans les technologies de l'information et dans l'industrie pharmaceutique, deux autres secteurs de pointe. Non, franchement, pour ma part, je dis non au misérabilisme ambiant. » Il ne croit pas non plus à l'âge d'or prétendu des années 60 et 70. Malgré des événements qui ont certes frappé l'imaginaire, comme l'Expo 67 et les Jeux Olympiques, « Montréal n'était pas en première place de quoi que ce soit », dit-il. Il est courant de pointer le succès de Toronto pour déprécier Montréal, mais cela se fait par manque de recul, croit M. Landry. « Les sièges sociaux, dont on déplore la baisse à Montréal, ne sont pas nécessairement de bonne qualité à Toronto sur le plan décisionnel. L'important, c'est la nature du siège social, le rôle qu'il remplit dans la réalité : y prend-on vraiment toutes les grandes décisions ou est-ce une succursale plus ou moins déguisée ? Ici, vous avez par exemple CGI et SNC-Lavalin, deux compagnies d'envergure mondiale, dont le siège social à Montréal constitue un vrai centre de décision. » Toronto et Montréal : un problème politique M. Landry, on le sait, est un ardent souverainiste. Mais c'est d'abord un nationaliste cohérent, qui pense la réalité à partir d'un point de vue national. Aussi n'est-il pas étonnant de l'entendre évoquer la rivalité entre Toronto et Montréal en des termes politiques. « Si vous regardez l'action du gouvernement du Canada, dit-il, vous voyez une certaine constante en faveur de l'établissement de Toronto comme métropole du Canada à partir des années 1950. La canalisation du Saint-Laurent, tout d'abord (NDLR : creusée en 1954, elle fut inaugurée en 1959) : elle a désavantagé Montréal au profit de Toronto. On aurait dû exiger une compensation. » Les chiffres tendent à donner raison à M. Landry. Selon l'historien Paul-André Linteau, dans son Histoire de Montréal depuis la Confédération, Montréal détenait en 1961 38 % du trafic maritime canadien ; sa part tomba à 18 % en 1977 et à 6 % au milieu de la décennie suivante. « Deuxième problème, enchaîne-t-il : les aéroports. Avec la politique de Trudeau, qui a beaucoup fait de mal à Montréal, Dorval et Mirabel se sont littéralement mangés, favorisant aujourd’hui l’aéroport de Toronto. » M. Landry cite également, plus près de nous, la volonté récemment affichée du gouvernement fédéral d'établir une commission pancanadienne des valeurs mobilières à Toronto, au détriment de l'actuelle AMF (Autorité des marchés financiers). Manœuvre parmi d'autres qui isolerait Montréal et le Québec des grandes dynamiques internationales. Le rôle du gouvernement québécois Il va de soi que dans un tel contexte, le rôle du gouvernement québécois est crucial. « La métropole devrait être portée par le gouvernement du Québec, dans les intérêts du Québec », affirme M. Landry. « Le gouvernement québécois devrait avoir 100 % du contrôle des pouvoirs. » Au-delà des opinions politiques de chacun sur la souveraineté, il importe de prendre conscience des conséquences que recèle le statut minoritaire du Québec au sein du Canada, selon M. Landry. « Vous savez que pour moi, la solution demeure l'indépendance du Québec, pour que le Québec prenne le plein contrôle de son destin, qui est aussi lié à celui de Montréal. » Car nonobstant le développement économique, Montréal se trouve également à la croisée des chemins sur le plan culturel. Il n'est pas dit que la ville gardera à tout jamais son statut de métropole francophone, en vigueur depuis les années 60. Encore une fois, la Charte des droits canadienne, où se trouve inclus le principe du multiculturalisme, influence défavorablement l'intégration des immigrants à la société québécoise francophone. Les initiatives du gouvernement québécois étant subordonnées en bonne partie aux grandes orientations constitutionnelles du Canada, l'équilibre linguistique devient de plus en plus difficile à assurer sur le territoire.

http://www.financialpost.com/York+Montreal+nothing+flat/3288462/story.html New York to Montreal in nothing flat Janet Whitman, Financial Post · Sunday, Jul. 18, 2010 New York -- John Parisella, Quebec’s highest-ranking representative in the United States, caught the 8:15 a.m. train Friday from New York City’s Penn Station bound for Montreal. At 11-plus hours, including as much as a two-hour logjam at the border, the journey is hardly a practical one for the business traveller. But for Mr. Parisella, the trip was field research. He’s made pushing for a high-speed rail link between the Big Apple and Montreal one of his top priorities since assuming the post of Quebec’s Delegate General in New York in November. The bullet train idea has been around since the early 1970s, when then Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau proposed a line modelled on France’s high-speed TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) to replace the sluggish and unreliable Adirondack service operated by Amtrak that still connects the two cities nearly four decades later. Now, however, for the first time, a high-speed service stands a real chance of happening. The game changer was U.S. President Barack Obama’s pledge in January of US$8-billion in federal stimulus money to kickstart a build-out of speedy passenger rail lines in at least 10 regions around the United States, including US$485-million for the Northeast in a plan that could eventually connect to Montreal. Billions more in funding is expected. “This is the first time that an American administration has decided that this is the agenda,” Mr. Parisella said Mr. Parisella was talking to the Financial Post on his mobile phone as the train snaked northward. “This is an important development because the two other times that kind of thing occurred were the building of its interstate highway and travelling to space, both incredible achievements. The United States doesn’t do anything half measure.” Linking major Canadian cities into that high-speed system would have a huge impact on both countries by fueling tourism and creating a more mobile workforce, as well as offering new opportunities for manufacturing and the movement of goods and services, advocates say. It also would help air quality by providing a competitive alternative to planes and automobiles. “Where things move is where prosperity occurs,” said Garry Douglas, president of the Plattsburgh-North Country Chamber of Congress, which has been working closely with Quebec for more than a decade to enhance all modes of transportation along the Quebec-New York corridor. “In the 21st century, North America is quickly evolving into a series of north-south corridors.… That’s the big picture of why higher speed rail is important. It furthers human movement in a faster world, and will define and spur new corridors of economic prosperity, moving not only passengers, but integrating business, intellectual capital, culture and so much more.” The Quebec-New York corridor is particularly exciting because of the two great cities at its end — Montreal and New York — Mr. Douglas said. Plattsburg lies en route near the Canada-U.S. border. While Mr. Obama is fully onboard, Canada’s commitment to high-speed rail is less clear. The country — which like the United States, has been a caboose in the world of train travel compared with countries such as France, Japan and China — is still in the research phase. The governments of Canada, Ontario and Quebec have made the Quebec City-Windsor corridor a priority by dusting off and updating feasibility studies from the early 1990s. “The consultants are still working on critical components of the report such as technology, routing, passenger and revenue forecasts, costs, financial analyses and environmental impacts,” said Mélanie Quesnel, a spokeswoman for Transport Canada in Ottawa. The final report will be completed later this year, she said. When asked about the prospect of a high-speed train between Montreal and New York City, Ms. Quesnel said that the Canadian government is “closely monitoring” proposals for faster passenger rail services in the United States. With momentum building south of the border, enthusiasm is likely to grow in Canada, pushing the federal government to make a commitment of its own, industry observers said. High-speed rail is considered all but inevitable now in parts of the United States. But the big question is how fast is fast? Japan, which has had high-speed service for about 45 years, has 288-kilometre-an-hour bullet trains, while France’s TGVs go 208 km/h and China’s modern locomotives can hit 344 km/h. The only “high-speed” rail line in the United States is Amtrak’s Acela Express service, which runs from Boston through New York City to Washington, D.C. While the trains can hit speeds of 240 km/h along some parts of the route, they mainly dawdle along at an average of less than 112 kn/h. Even a revamped line between Montreal and New York City might not achieve speeds like 190 km/h over the entire run, especially as the route snakes through the Adirondack Mountains north of Albany, N.Y. “But it doesn’t need to,” said Mr. Douglas of the Plattsburg-North Country Chamber of Commerce. “If we can continue working towards high-speed rail from New York City north to the Adirondacks, enhance service from the Plattsburgh area to Montreal and make enhancements through the Adirondack Park for greater reliability, we can achieve a service that will be very attractive for business as an alternative to driving. That’s the essential aim.” Simply pressing the Canadian and U.S. governments to implement a commonsense approach to clearing Amtrak passengers at the border without current long stoppages could easily shave an hour or more off the Montreal-New York trip, he said. Some high-speed rail advocates, however, envision train travel in North America getting on a much speedier track. Instead of merely making the Montreal-New York route competitive with an eight-hour car ride, Andy Kunz, president of the U.S. High-Speed Rail Association in Washington, D.C., said there’s no reason the trip can’t be modelled on the Paris-London run, which clocks in at 2 hours and 15 minutes. “It gets you right smack downtown and you don’t have to get a taxi from the airport,” said Mr. Kunz. “There are people who now work in one city and live in the other. You could see the exact same thing happening with Montreal and New York.” Tunnelling and blasting through parts of the Adirondacks — at a likely cost of tens of billions of dollars — shouldn’t be an obstacle, added Mr. Kunz, whose advocacy group formed about a year ago. “Spain is tunnelling through all of its mountains. Japan is doing it and they’re dealing with earthquakes too. We don’t need studies. The whole rest of the world has already been doing it and has it all figured out and perfected. It’s not rocket science.” Although the vast majority of the Montreal-New York route is on the U.S. side of the border, Mr. Kunz estimated that Canada might have to foot about one-third of the bill to modernize the track through the Adirondacks to the border because the country would stand to gain so much. Florida and California, two states miles ahead of the rest of North America with viable plans for building bullet train lines, were awarded the biggest grants from President Obama’s original US$8-billion pledge. The build out in other parts of the country, including the northeast, isn’t nearly as ambitious yet. That means a high-speed connection between Vancouver and Seattle could end up a faster reality than a Montreal-New York train. To help get things moving, Quebec named former Canadian diplomat Raymond Chretien to co-head a New York-Quebec taskforce to hype high-speed rail. At the same time, engineering, transport and other firms from the United States and around the globe are lining up and bulking up to get a piece of the action, with the expectation that the US$8-billion is only a small fraction of what the country will end up spending on its rail systems as they’re updated over the next two or three decades. Lobbying by those companies and the likelihood another surge in oil and gas prices will likely push U.S. lawmakers and citizens to get behind a true high-speed rail system, where speeds average 240 km/h, Mr. Kunz said. His group, which will tout its goals at its high-speed rail conference in New York City this fall, has come up with a massive overhaul proposal that would cost around US$600-billion to complete. “This is probably the last great transportation system we’re going to build in America,” he said. “With the coming oil crisis, we’re going to be energy constrained. This is the one last big chance to get a rail system to carry us into the 21st century. An Acela project is not good enough and we should not settle for that.” Mr. Parisella, who’s blogging about his train trip, said it’s impossible to predict at this stage how fast a route the Montreal-New York line might end up getting or when. Even a train trip rivaling a car ride would be welcome given that the hour-long flight to Montreal from New York often ends up taking seven hours when travel time to and from the airports, getting through security and delays are added, he said. Mr. Parisella and his girlfriend, Québécois journalist Esther Begin, who made the trip with him, plan to return to New York via plane to save time. But he’s optimistic that sometime over the next several years taking the train will be a viable option. “When President Kennedy said, ‘We’re going to put a man on the moon in 10 years,’ people laughed and said, ‘We’ll see,’ ” said Mr. Parisella, a former chief of staff to late Quebec premier Robert Bourassa. “The bottom line is he wasn’t around to see it, but they were on the moon in 1969.” Financial Post jwhitman@nationalpost.com

"It wasn’t city hall’s fault, it’s just the sort of thing that seems to happen in Montreal." This is the unfortunate thing. Sometimes there's no one person to blame, but a political system laid down by past governments and old or deceased politicians that became habitual over the decades by successive leaders. It's like trying to pin point the person(s) to blame for racism.

Not factual Cyrus, it started way before that in the 19th century.

Totally agree TomOfBoston!!

This is part of Montreal. Those who get it and those who don't. We will say Etienne.mtl.91 doesn't get it and he, and others of his mentality, will say that we don't get it. Then we'll say they will never get it. Then they say we'll never get it. But after all the things you can count that has left Montreal, because of various reasons, the fact that there's people like Etienne.mtl.91 still around shows they will never get it. What's the bottom line?: You can't stop people from shooting themselves in the foot or wanting holes in their heads. ....it makes for great comedy though, just for laughs, to watch social-democratic, independiste dreamers like Etienne.mtl.91 think utopia will arrive once English is non-existent in Quebec. An enormous, juste pout rire, LOL at how people like him underline the survival of French in North America for 400 years, but someone think they can rid Quebec of English, which has been in the province for almost as long. Could they be running a fools errand?

I would disagree with that. While Rozon might have brought a version of Just For Laughs to Toronto, Just For Laughs in Montreal, including the Jazz Fest and even the Grand Prix, still get big promotion here in Toronto, because Torontonians love coming to Montreal.

LindbergMTL you're right, the separation is starting. It's all a secret master plan by the PQ, which they have been working on for the long years they've been in opposition. Now we know when the tax dollars sink into the black hole that is the Quebec Government, they actually go to perfecting the Séparateur Séismique. True, Cataclaw, my office in North York shook. I thought someone was playing around with my chair. Not everyone felt it though. Some people downtown got scared. Crazy downtown Torontonians, it was only 5.5. Good point SKYMTL. The Turcot might have lost a few months off of it's life expectancy...meaning minus 10 years just became minus 10.5 years. The ground is shaking, the 30 isn't ready for trucks yet and the clock is ticking MTQ.

No one wants to be responsible. The longer they talk the more dangerous it is for motorists. This project should have started already. Stop talking and demo. L'autoroute 20 ne serait pas déplacée afin de protéger la falaise Saint-Jacques et son potentiel de développent. At least least switch the roads around so it doesn't feel like your driving in the UK. The optics of things are very important. The route from Trudeau to downtown is the route celebrities, dignitaries, pro sports teams, business people, VIP's and most tourist take. What do you think these people think when they see that tattered interchange and that slab of nothing next to the highway with the roads in a British style layout in North American? there probably thinking "...we'll if their roads are backwards, maybe this is a backwards society too." I wish more people in Quebec were vigilant with the optics of things to the rest of the world. The city doesn't have to look like we're born for a small bread.

A new downtown?...Can we therefore conclude that the existing downtown is flawed? The flaw is too many parking lots and not enough people living downtown. What happens directly to the south is irrelevant. Plug the current holes and worry about the new later.

Maybe Montreal will be able to get an MLB team back, but not anytime soon. It's still bitter. But when you look at the struggle of the Blue Jays, even in Canada's largest market, I have my doubts about MLB coming back to Montreal. But everything is impossible until it happens.

Finally someone with lucid comments about the trade. Fan is short for Fanatic, and some of the posts of hyperbole on this thread around Halak's talent needs to be tempered. I fell for it during the heat of the playoffs, but lets be critical now. Thanks for the edification Ornello! For all we know, Price could be another Theodore. He might not have the mental toughness to be a star NHL goalie capable of winning a cup for a team, let alone for the Canadiens. The Price fanclub, who were happy to see Halak moved, should consider that. However, the Halak fanclub, that didn't want Halak traded, should consider the fate of the Huet, Garon, & Theodore fan clubs. Where are those fanclubs now? -exactly! I use to wonder when Gabriel Morency would rip the Canadiens for getting rid of Garon when he's not that good. He's bounced around at least twice after leaving Montreal. Furthermore, for all we know, Halak could be another Felix Potvin. I started thinking about how Potvin played amazing for two playoffs in a row, brought Stanley Cup championship hope back to a franchise for the first time almost 30 years , but was never quite able to bring the Leafs to the final or even a championship and subsequently never regained his top form of 1992-1994. The Halak fanclub should keep Potvin in mind. Not to turn on Halak, but Theodore took the Habs to 6 games in the second round against Tampa one year and Price took the Canadiens to 1st in the east and second round against Philly in 2008. The only thing that separates Halak from Theodore and Price was game 6 against Washington. That was his big game. He made other big saves after that, but game 6 against Washington is all that separates him from Theodore and Price. One game. You could even make the argument that Price could have gotten the Canadiens just as far in 2008. Time will tell whether Halak is Patrick Roy or Felix Potvin and whether Price is Patrick Roy or Jose Theodore. Montreal would need a veteran to back up Price. We won't know the answers to these questions right now. Think about Halak in the context of NHL goalies who had amazing playoffs for one, maybe two years, but never regained their top form and never won the cup. Kirk McLean, Felix Potvin, John Vanbiesbrouck, Ron Hextall - keep these guys in mind while we evaluate Halak's progress...keep Theo in mind as we evaluate Price.

If this gets built, it would be a game changer for downtown buildings in Montreal.

I'm surprised nobody went out this weekend to take pictures of the city during Grand Prix weekend. No one thought to captures images of Montreal streets filled with people and cars many times beyond the usual. No one thought of capturing the often innovative ways in which companies or clubs try to advertise during the weekend. I would have loved to get a visual feel for the weekend since I was stuck in my downtown Toronto in my G20.

Taller than the tallest (PVM, 1000, IBM, First Canadian Place, Toronto Dominion Centreetc..); not taller than any building downtown - DUh!!!!

This is a great counterbalance to all those right wing propaganda think tanks who try to tarnish Montreal (and Toronto) while elevating Western Canadian cities.

The city is so electric during F1 weekend. It's almost as if downtown Montreal transforms into NYC for a weekend. The people on the sidewalks, the traffic on all streets. The buzz. Miss it.

Even still. If the Canadiens had territorial rights for Quebec, then the Maple Leafs had it for all of English Canada. It's not Montreal's fault the Leafs only have 11 Cups. Montreal had a smaller, poorer (economically) talent pool to chose from and they still dominated. When you have lemons you make lemonade. The Habs have made lemonade 24 times. Suck a lemon Leafs fans.

This is retribution for the Flyers knocking out the Habs. Flyer fans are booing as the Hawks celebrate with the CUP on their home ice. Smell the scent of defeat Flyer fans! Let it marinate! You can all go back to dodging bullets and working at lumber yards.