Whining for nothing (and the hits for free)
Columnists desperate for something to whine about this week were given a big gift by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, which ruled that the Dire Straits song Money for Nothing was unfit for air...
View ArticleConcordia reaches for a new Lowy
It's official: Concordia University's executive committee has recommended that Frederick Lowy, who served as rector/president from 1995 to 2005, be reinstalled as interim president. Barring some...
View ArticleSome reading on Quebec’s anti-scab law
Hearings began today (finally a reason to watch the National Assembly channel!) into Quebec's labour laws, specifically the provisions against strikebreakers (scabs). They are prompted by the enduring...
View ArticleBixi in Toronto
Fagstein reader Kenny D sent in this photo from Toronto, which is the latest city to be assimilated into the Bixi empire. The official launch is Tuesday, May 3, with an official "first ride". The rate...
View ArticleSacré orange!
"It's all orange." I looked at the map of Quebec ridings about 10:30 p.m., and I couldn't believe it. It wasn't just pockets of orange, or lots of orange. It was all orange. With the exception of a few...
View ArticleAll-traffic radio: A $9-million waste
Last week, news came out that Cogeco and the Quebec government have reached a deal that will see the creation of two new all-traffic AM radio stations in Montreal set to open in the fall. The project...
View ArticleBru-winning front pages
It's always fun to peruse the Newseum gallery of front pages of winning and losing cities after a major sports championship. Unfortunately for Vancouver, trouble-makers ruined what should be awesome...
View ArticleRolling the dice on Quebec’s infrastructure
Infrastructure is one of those things - nobody pays it any attention to it until it fails. People have better things to worry about, so they don't think about their water pipes, their electricity...
View ArticleJack Layton front pages
It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what would make the front pages of the papers on Tuesday. Not only was Jack Layton a larger-than-life figure, and the first leader of the opposition to...
View Article#6party is over, but the hypocrisy continues at McGill
Showing what I consider to be a rather stunning level of restraint, McGill University allowed a group of students to occupy its administration building for days before finally calling in the police to...
View ArticleFaster than the speed of consent
A few weeks ago, CBC Montreal came out with a story about a local telemarketing company that was being accused of defrauding small businesses by selling them things they didn't want by phone. In fact,...
View ArticleA proposal for the tuition debate
Gasoline prices Colombia: $1.91 Tokyo: $1.83 Sydney: $1.50 Yellowknife: $1.49 Johannesburg: $1.40 London: $2.14 Stockholm: $2.18 Amsterdam: $2.37 Montreal: $1.39 Source: Globe and Mail, 2011 I don't...
View ArticleIci on parle English, mais n’inquiétez-vous pas
"Ici on parle English" - "Quel avenir pour le français à Montréal?" - "Montréal français? It's over!" - "Des unilingues anglais comme patrons? Get used to it!" Kind of hard to imagine words that could...
View ArticleAn Oasis of bad publicity
So here's the deal: A Lassonde, the company that makes Oasis fruit drinks, is apparently sensitive to other companies using the name for consumer products, even when there's no risk of confusion with a...
View ArticleAnglo rights in a sovereign Quebec?
It's not hard to imagine why anglophones in Quebec are so against the idea of separation. For them, there isn't this big conflict between being Canadian and living in Quebec. For them, Canada's...
View ArticleAnglophones: Vote PQ (ha ha, just kidding)
It happens, it seems, during every election. Reporters stuck on campaign buses to Saint-Félix-de-who-kn0ws-where look for some unusual story to report on inevitably throw out the idea that anglophones...
View ArticleHow exaggerating protest numbers could backfire on students
12,250. That's how many people, according to a firm hired by Radio-Canada, were at Place du Canada at 2:35pm on Wednesday during the monthly protest against tuition hikes and Bill 78. As I predicted,...
View ArticleEnglish-language Quebec election night coverage plans
CBC Montreal getting ready for election night :) twitter.com/thomasdaigle/s… — Thomas Daigle (@thomasdaigle) September 1, 2012 Provincial elections are the biggest tests for English-language media...
View ArticleEven if it’s not to blame, we should tone down our rhetoric
In the aftermath of an awful shooting at the Parti Québécois victory party on Tuesday night, commentary has been flying far and wide, people urging calm, people urging unity, people urging a toning...
View ArticleCJAD and Bain: Calmez-vous
It seems everyone was up in arms on Thursday after hearing that CJAD radio had given Richard Henry Bain, the man accused of killing a man at Metropolis on the night of the election, a 40-minute...
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