If it does, this will be a big symbolic victory for democracy over the autocratic-style Tremblay mayoral regime. The opposition to renaming the street in honour of Robert Bourassa was overwhelming, and the edict was issued without a single public consultation. It’s only a street name, sure, but it’s a very big deal to a lot of people, and in many ways representative of the ongoing language tensions in Montreal. A victory here would be symbolically huge.

Update: Victory! Park Avenue is saved!

The Merchant’s Association delayed their annual street festival in order to campaign against the name change. Something tells me that people will be making up for it with a big party tonight.

The fate of Charles Lapointe, the city’s chief tourism promoter, hangs in the balance after he publicly trash-talked the condition of Montreal’s streets.

Directors of Tourism Montreal will hold an emergency session Thursday after Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay suggested Wednesday that Lapointe should be booted from his job because he has undermined the city’s international reputation.

Lapointe stepped over the proper line of conduct Tuesday when he issued a public warning that the city risks losing tourism traffic unless it cleans up its act, Tremblay told reporters at a city hall news conference.

Tourism Montreal’s directors, he added, “should be asking themselves: ‘is Mr. Lapointe still credible to sell Montreal?’ ”

So according to Tremblay, credibility is achieved by . . . lying?

That’s the only explanation for why Lapointe is taking so much flack for voicing what can only be described as the truth. Our roads are a mess. Anyone who goes outside can see that. Is the city looking for someone who will merely compliment the Emperor’s New Clothes? I really think someone needs to redefine the term “credibility” for these guys.

Here’s a thought: Instead of firing Lapointe, why not, you know, actually fix the problem and clean up the streets?

But that would imply that perception ought to be based on some semblance of reality. And that’s clearly not a position that Tremblay’s team endorses:

The mayor acknowledged that the city does have a problem with dirty streets, but “not all truths should be said in public,” the mayor added.

Remind me, M. Tremblay, exactly whose credibility is the issue here?

I’m not sure which is sadder: that Park’s name is being changed, or that this is the only issue for which Tremblay has cared enough about to fight for since taking office.

City politics are a mess, and it’s time for some new thinking down at City Hall. How about this: Segacs for Mayor! Not only will I change Avenue Bourassa back to Park Avenue, but I also promise to change Rene-Levesque back to Dorchester, Marcel-Laurin back to Laurentian, and – for good measure – Lionel-Groulx metro station to… anything else. Maybe I’ll even open that one up to a vote.

The Gazette may try, but it’s still got nothing on the Mirror’s Best of Montreal. After all, who can resist lines like “here’s to the Big O, finally paid off 30 years after a man had a baby.” And it says a lot that in the Montrealer closest to hell category, Karla Homolka was beaten out by Gerald Tremblay AND Jean Charest. (The latter is particularly ironic in light of this).

So I dutifully trotted over to the local polling station and listened to two women in line behind me discuss how they believed Jesus Christ was on their side and he should burn all the evil-doers and how the rioters in Paris were on their side and were burning the evil-doers… yes, these are the people who are voting for our leaders. But I digress.

Anyway, it now seems that Gerald Tremblay has been re-elected as king – er – mayor of Montreal. I guess Montrealers felt that Tremblay, who fought against demergers after promising to decentralize, is bad but Bourque, who pressed for the mergers in the first place, was worse. And I can’t really blame them for that sentiment.

Still awaiting results in my own borough of CDN-NDG. The official results site isn’t much help, either. Typical.

Update: The Tremblay team candidate, Michael Applebaum, has been elected as borough mayor.

Update: Paul also wins my prize for quote of the day, with this insightful analysis about the Tremblay-versus-Bourque municipal election race:

Do any of you remember that episode of South Park where they’re selecting a new school mascot and are reduced to choosing either a giant douche or a turd sandwich? Life really does imitate art sometimes…

We missed ya, Paul! Sure good to have you back.

My electoral card came in the mail today, and with it, the inevitable depression that always hits me during a particularly awful election.

See, the crux of the matter is this: If over 60% of Iraqis could face the threat of bombs, guns and terrorism to exercise their right to vote, then who the hell am I to sit at home during even a seemingly inconsequential election? What gives me the right to take my right to vote for granted and to treat it so lightly?

On the other hand, what would possess an otherwise sane person to go out and cast a ballot for someone like Gerald Tremblay, who promises to fix the roads but is really just fixing his coffers after breaking his promise to decentralize and fighting the demergers tooth and nail using every trick in the book?

Or Pierre Bourque, who fancied himself king of Montreal and helped spearhead the mergers in the first place, and is hoping that a few years of Tremblay’s reign will make us forget his autocratic, dictatorial style?

Then there’s third-candidate Richard Bergeron, who promises an all-out war on cars that makes me wonder if he’s secretly having long lunches with “Red Ken” Livingstone.

*Sigh*.

And best of all? The only protest party on the ticket is the ridiculous but ultra-leftist White Elephant Party.

Hmmmm… time for a write-in campaign?

Update: It’s not all boring. At least one guy has a sense of humour:

What is this guy, some kind of comedian? Rick Blue of the satirical duo Bowser and Blue is a council candidate in Beaconsfield. The official candidates list says he lives on “Dork Drive.”

Okay, Bowser and Blue are my first nominees for write-in candidacy.

Will Mayor Gerald Tremblay have to stop using “Go” in his election slogan?

Quebec’s language watchdog yesterday said it will investigate complaints that Tremblay is contravening the provincial French language charter by illegally using English on election material.

[ . . . ]

The use of the English word “Go” is not a problem on election posters and billboards because the charter doesn’t apply to signs that feature “religious, political, ideological or humanitarian” messages of a non-profit nature.

But that exception does not extend to pamphlets.

The OLF is also chasing Bourque for the crime of distributing English-only brochures in my area:

Il y a quelques jours, l’équipe Bourque/Vision Montréal a également été montrée du doigt après avoir distribué des dépliants uniquement en anglais dans les arrondissements de Côte-des-Neiges et de Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.

This election is actually very sad, because I detest both Tremblay and Pierre Bourque. I voted for Tremblay last time because he promised to de-centralize the megacity… and he promptly reneged on that promise and spent his entire term trying to circumvent the demerger process. As for Bourque, it was his egomaniacal ambition that sparked the whole merger fiasco in the first place. I have no intention of voting for either of them.

So it’s amusing to see both candidates on the defensive due to language policies designed to oppress the “maudites anglaises”.

The best graffiti of election posters seen so far: on the corner of Sherbrooke and Decarie, under a big poster of Tremblay reading “Go Montreal”, someone scribbled the word “away”. Please, M. Tremblay, just go away.

Then Tremblay raised another possibility yesterday, telling reporters earlier in the day this city might bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games on the 40th anniversary of the costly 1976 Games and hinting he might make a more concrete announcement during his remarks at the closing ceremony.

All Tremblay said, however, was Montreal would not wait another 30 years to meet the world again.

Is he nuts????

Montreal is finally going to finish paying off the Big Owe next year, 30 years after the fiasco of the 1976 games. And now, just as we’re finally climbing out of debt, Tremblay wants to send us zooming right back into it? You’ve got to be kidding me!

Sure, I cheered when Vancouver was awarded the 2010 games. Canadian pride and all. But I’m not delusional. A 2016 Montreal bid would surely be futile, since what makes Tremblay think that Canada would be awarded two Olympic games in the same decade is beyond me. But even a failed bid is costly. Just look at what cities like Paris and New York just spent to lose the 2012 Games.

Memo to Tremblay: you may be soaring high right now because we managed to host a relatively minor sporting event without bleeding massive sums of cash. But you really need to get over your delusion that this means Montreal is invincible.

Someone please, please take Tremblay’s ego down a peg before it’s too late.

Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay called the sudden downpour of rain an “act of God.” But he spoke Wednesday about the need for the city to take steps to ensure such acts don’t end up causing headaches for residents every time they occur.

“We can’t correct a system that has been in place 50-60 years ago and that has to be revised for the 21st century,” said Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay.

“That’s why we have to invest billions of dollars.”

Tremblay has promised to devote $10 billion over the next 20 years to replace the system, and he has the full support of Quebec Premier Jean Charest.

Let’s put aside the issue of whether newer is better, in light of the fact that one of the worst spots is the brand-new L’Acadie interchange, just completed this year after millions of dollars of taxpayer money were spent. Our system isn’t bad because it’s old; it’s bad because it’s bad. Montreal has lousy roads, legendary potholes, poorly-maintained pipes and water mains that have a habit of bursting in the wintertime. This isn’t new and it’s not going away anytime soon.

These are empty promises for Tremblay to make. Today, he’s placating angry people who have water damage in their basements or who got stuck on flooding highways yesterday. And by the time he actually has to spend a dime, someone else will be in office – both his office and Charest’s. They’ll have other spending priorities, like referendums or language police. And we’ll all forget about it… until the next flood.

Mayor Tremblay says it’s “not payback” for their votes to demerge… but the map rather belies that statement:

Mayor Gérald Tremblay said that the increases were not meant to punish the demerged boroughs, but were the result of the harmonization of municipal tax rates and the increase in the value of their properties.

What exactly is their justification for raising taxes across the West Island?

Executive Committee Chairman Frank Zampino said that part of the increase in costs is associated with new labour agreements and new responsibilities that have been transferred to the megacity.

You mean, the new labour agreements that were negotiated by unions made more powerful by the forced mergers, who held the city hostage? The same unions that actively campaigned against demergers? Nah, couldn’t be.

If the cities who voted to demerge weren’t sure they made the right decision, this ought to clinch it. The “not punishment” tax increases will last a year, and then the cities who voted to demerge can escape the iron grip of the megacity once and for all.

Disgusted.

That’s how Michael Vadacchino felt about the result of last night’s demerger referendum in LaSalle.

Vadacchino, a borough councillor and leader of the demerger committee, said the system implemented for the referendum vote was completely undemocratic.

[. . . ]

But getting 35 per cent of people to vote at all, let alone the same way, isn’t easy, he said.

“They made the barrier so high, they knew it would be as difficult as possible to achieve.”

LaSalle voted 60% in favour of demerger, but those 60% of votes represented only 20% of all registered voters. People who stayed home, were out of town, or who moved away or even passed away and didn’t get their named removed from the heavily-padded lists, all counted as automatic “no” votes under the 35% rule.

In the other Montreal sectors where demerger failed, the result was even closer. Anjou and Ste-Genevieve are bitter about the 35% rule as well. In Saint-Laurent, 75% of the votes cast were for the Yes side, but they represented only 28.5% of registered voters. Pierrefonds also voted over 70% “Yes”. And Roxboro and Ile-Bizard both lost by razor-thin margins.

The 35% rule was designed as an added hoop for demergerites to jump through before they could get their cities back. But despite that, I’m starting to re-examine it with interest.

Maybe – just maybe – it’s not such a bad idea after all. In fact, I think we ought to immediately apply this rule to all Montreal municipal and provincial elections from now on.

That means that Gerard Tremblay would have to get 35% of all registered voters in Montreal to turn out and vote for him in the next election. No simple majorities for you, M. Tremblay. And Jean Charest would need 35% of all Quebeckers of voting age to turn out and vote for him before he could get back into office.

With this rule, we could ensure that no politican ever got elected to any office… ever again.

A world without politicians? Sounds pretty good to me.

Stay tuned for the political fallout.

Update: As predicted, both sides are claiming victory:

“I think the word is jubilation that one would apply to what is going on right now in Westmount,” said Peter Trent, former mayor of [Westmount].

And Gerard Tremblay is playing the spinning game, trying to see the silver lining:

“Montreal is bigger and stronger than it was before,” he said, noting that places like Anjou, St-Laurent, Pierrefonds, LaSalle and Roxboro, which weren’t part of Montreal before the forced mergers, now are.

Two of those lost their bids by tiny margins. And all of them had a majority Yes vote, but failed to get the 35% required. If I were Tremblay I wouldn’t be so proud that most voters wanted out.

So far on the Montreal island, the Yes side has pulled it off in Anjou, Baie D’Urfé, Beaconsfield, Dorval, Kirkland, Île-Bizard, Île-Dorval, Montreal-Est, Montreal-West, T.M.R., Pointe-Claire, Roxboro, and Senneville, among others.

Dollard, my hometown till recently, is still up in the air. The Yes side is leading with 83.95%, but so far only 33.02% of voters have cast a ballot. The magic number of 35% must be reached for the result to count. There are still a number of polling stations to report, though, so it’s looking encouraging.

8:35pm: We did it!!! Dollard has 39.43% voter turnout.

8:40pm: Côte St-Luc and Hampstead are still up in the air; neither has hit the 35% mark yet. Westmount is just a few votes shy, with a lot more polls to count. And Pierrefonds and St-Laurent are both very far away and it doesn’t look like either of them are going to make it.

8:45pm: Off the island of Montreal and around the province, a number of former municipalities reached 35% but voted “No”. These include Aubert-Gallion, Beauport, Black Lake, Bromptonville, Buckingham, Canton Sutton (by a narrow margin), Cap-Rouge, Charlesbourg, Charny, Gallix, Hull, Maple Grove, Melocheville, Metis-Sur-Mer, Mont-Brun, Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel, Petit-Matane, Robertsonville, Saint-Athanase, Saint-Élie-d’Orford, Saint-Émile (also by a narrow margin), Sainte-Rosalie, Sainte-Veronique, Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Saint-Jean-des-Piles, Saint-Luc-de-Matane, Saint-Rédempteur, Sillery, and Val-Bélair. There are close races in a number of others. Oh well, that’s their democratic right and at least the people had the opportunity to decide. And besides, I can take consolation in the fact that the “no” victory isn’t a victory for Gerard Tremblay.

8:50pm: The 35% mark has been surpassed in Westmount, with over 90% of ballots cast voting Yes. As if there was ever any doubt. Cote St-Luc and Hampstead are still shy of the cutoff.

8:55pm: Hampstead has pulled it off. I guess the largest polls reported last because the turnout in the end was over 50%, with more than 90% of the votes to demerge.

9:00pm: Cote-St-Luc has surpassed 35% and thus voted to demerge. It seems that on the island of Montreal, only Pierrefonds and St-Laurent have not yet reached 35%. Neither seems likely to either, though it might be close.

9:10pm: Final results in Dollard are 85.21% Yes, with 44.12% voter turnout.

9:25pm: Of the 22 former cities on the island of Montreal that held referendums today, 18 have now voted to demerge. Only Ste-Genevieve, Pierrefonds, LaSalle, and Saint-Laurent are still short of the 35% turnout needed to make their yes majorities count.

9:35pm: As several people have correctly pointed out, I’ve made an error. The 35% rule actually states that 35% of all people in each municipality must vote yes in order for the vote to count.

Therefore, the cities of Anjou, Île-Bizard, and Roxboro, contrary to my earlier report, actually failed their bid to demerge. All three had Yes majorities and more than 35% of people voted, but less than 35% of the total people voted Yes.

Ste-Genevieve and LaSalle also lost their bids to demerge, and Pierrefonds and Saint-Laurent appear to be headed towards losses as well.

Therefore, of the 22 cities on the island of Montreal that held referendums, it looks like only 15 will successfully demerge.

9:50pm: Pierrefonds has officially failed its demerger bid.

9:55pm: Dollard’s final results were actually perilously close. 37.36% of registered voters cast a “Yes” ballot, which surpasses the 35% required but is a lot closer than I would have thought. I’m glad now that I urged my friends and relatives in Dollard to take the time to vote. Unlike in most elections *ahem Federal*, every vote actually counts in this one.

Oh well, Dollard is out of the megacity and that’s what matters.

10:00pm: The results are in. 15 Montreal cities have voted to demerge. Anjou, Pierrefonds, St-Laurent, Ste-Genevieve, and LaSalle have all fallen well short of the required 35%.

And 132 people in Île-Bizard and 74 people in Roxboro are kicking themselves right now for staying home.

Hmmm, considering that Dollard and Roxboro had been merged into a single borough, I wonder what happens now that DDO has voted to demerge and Roxboro hasn’t. Does Roxboro become its own borough? Will it be merged into Pierrefonds?

Predictably, Paul Martin came under attack, as did Stephen Harper. Also not too surprisingly, most of the commentary seems to agree that Gilles Duceppe scored the most points, and Bloc voters are unlikely to swing back to the Liberals on the basis of this debate. If Harper thought he was going to win any seats in Quebec, he also probably blew his chance tonight.

But in general, the debate was scripted, rehearsed, and had few surprises.

Tremblay versus Trent was much more interesting. Who knew Peter Trent could (sort of) speak French?

Should be interesting, if only because the whole merger/demerger campaign so far has been run on emotions and passions, manipulation tactics, misinformation, and dirty tricks. Citizens were deprived of any kind of chance to debate the issues when the mergers were forced upon us in the first place. So there’s been inadequate focus on the real facts.

I’ll try to watch… hopefully it’ll be over by the time the Sopranos season finale begins.

Now it seems that the City of Montreal is trying to remove that incentive by hurrying to sign union contracts with city employees:

After all the delays in settling on new contracts, why the sudden rush now? At a minimum, any contracts signed in this uncertain period before demerger referendums should contain a clause exempting any boroughs that vote for independence on June 20.

Anything else risks locking any demerging boroughs into costly contracts that could, if city hall weakens, even include wasteful minimum-staffing clauses or the expensive four-day week.

[ . . . ]

The temptation to hog-tie any breakaway boroughs by trapping them into onerous contracts must be formidable. But if Tremblay thinks suburban voters are angry now, then he really doesn’t want to see their reaction to open-handed, hastily-signed new contracts.

I’ve lost count of the number of dirty tricks that the pro-mergerites have employed so far. Outdated registration lists containing names of people who’d been deceased for a decade, no door-to-door registration but door-to-door verification of list deletions, scare tactics and overly-biased campaign materials… not to mention the way the merger itself was carried out in the first place, as a steamroll over democracy.

Given all that, I find it hard to be surprised at this latest tactic. If Tremblay wants to cut off his left foot to avoid allowing citizens to demerge, then he’s a bigger fool than I thought. Unfortunately, it will once again be Montrealers who will pay.

Really, if you think about it, whatever sick freaks did this didn’t time it very well. Not only is the school is closed for Passover anyway, but there’s gonna be a lot of angry Jews discussing it at their seders and demanding action.

In the blogosphere, I see that LGF and Burnside have picked up the story. And Stefan Sharkansky wonders whether officials are too politically-correct to release information that would seem to implicate Palestinian-sympathetic vandals as the responsible parties:

The CBC and the Toronto Star might not want to confront the unpleasant truth about the motives and identities of the arsonists, but at least some Canadian journalists are doing their jobs:

The CTV network quoted sources who said the notes denounced recent attacks against Palestinians, including the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Islamic Hamas movement, and threatened further attacks.

The contents of the note and the name of the “unknown organization” that signed the note should be released.

If – and this is a big if – what CTV said is true about the content of the note, then it must – and will – be dealt with. Especially considering the note threatened future attacks, which is truly chilling:

“Our goal was only to sound the alarm without causing deaths. . .but this is just a beginning. If your crimes continue in the Middle East, our attacks will continue,” the letter reads.

There’s no telling whether the assholes who did this were using it as an excuse or cover-up, or whether they really are affiliated with some Hamas-sympathetic group. Not yet anyway. My sense is that the police will release details when they see fit, and until then, they might be keeping them under wraps to help them do their jobs. And anything that increases the chances of apprehending the responsible parties is okay with me.

And the political reactions continue. Here’s PM Paul Martin:

“This is not my Canada. This is not our Canada,” he told reporters in Burlington, Ont.

“They are attacking all of us. And it is only if we are unequivocal in that statement that we join together that we are preserving our values.”

And of course, Justice Minister Irwin Cotler (a UTT grad himself) wasted no time ringing in:

“As students, we experienced anti-Semitism, but it was an anti-Semitism of ignorance, of stereotype, of prejudice. What we have witnessed here today, it’s anti-Semitism of hatred, racism and violence.”

“We will not be intimidated and we will act and we will bring the full force of the law to bear against those who commit these cowardly hate crimes,” Cotler told reporters.

And Mayor Gerald Tremblay:

“These acts will not be tolerated in our city and must be denounced as emphatically as possible,” he said.

It’s good that people are taking this seriously.

Never once in eleven years of Hebrew school did I feel unsafe in my classroom (except for maybe the fear of exams, or a test tube exploding in a science lab). The current students, who are pretty much exactly like me, won’t have that luxury.

I’m just plain angry now. There should be a special section of hell reserved for anyone who targets or frightens innocent children.

Another update: It seems Michael Demmons has picked up the story. And Ted Belman at Israpundit posted about it, and included an e-mail from Lori Anders, who was a grade ahead of me in high school. The Globe and Mail, Gazette, and La Presse all have plastered the story prominently on their front pages. And the AP story is being picked up off the wires by publications as remote as the Kansas City Star.

Myles ran on Tremblay’s ticket in the original election, and then later quit his party to run as an independent. Tremblay’s stung, and is trying to save his megacity against the demerger movement, which Myles staunchly supports, by pushing forth a decentralization vision.

I guess he doesn’t realize that the only reason Myles’ French ability is at issue in the first place is that predominantly anglophone Beaconsfield and Baie d’Urfé were forced to become part of this megacity.

Just demerge already and get it over with!

When Pierre Bourque first floated the megacity idea, everyone thought he was a megalomaniac who had gone off his rocker. But alas, the mergers were forced through, despite the opposition of everyone who claimed they would result in higher taxes, reduced services, and lower quality of life.

Back then, we said “Hands off my city!” and implored the provincial government to leave well enough alone. They didn’t listen. So now, instead of living in the city of D.D.O., I now have the dubious privilege of being a citizen of the borough of D.D.O./Roxboro.

And guess what happend? We now have higher taxes, reduced services, and lower quality of life. What a shocker!

Pierre Bourque was tossed out on his ass in the first megacity municipal election, widely despised in the suburbs for orchestrating this whole merger fiasco in the first place. I can’t say I think Gerard Tremblay has done a wonderful job as mayor, but at least he’s not Bourque. At least he’s advocating decentralization, and giving borough councillors as much power as possible.

So now we hear that Bourque (having returned as opposition leader after a disastrous stab at provincial politics, running for the ADQ), has a new idea: it wasn’t enough to merge the city, now he wants to merge the boroughs:

According to a report published Tuesday in La Presse, Vision Montreal’s proposal calls for the merger of the former municipalities of the predominantly anglophone West Island into one or two boroughs.

The proposal from former Montreal Mayor Pierre Bourque’s party would reduce the number of boroughs elsewhere in the city and eliminate the function of borough councillor.

This strategy seems fairly obvious. Consolidate as much power as possible under Montreal’s reign, and eliminate even the remnants of decentralization that have survived the merger. Get rid of the last vestiges of Anglo influence by reducing all of the West Island to a single borough with no say, councillors, or power. Destroy any hopes of ever demerging and getting our cities back.

People might think it’s a crazy idea, and it will never happen. But remember, they said that about the mergers too.

I have no great attachment to my borough, but having local representation has got to be better than feeding the Pierre Bourque power machine. So I call on suburbans to unite in one strong, unified voice. Let’s write letters. Let’s protest. Let’s make sure that people know damn well what will happen if they vote Vision Montreal next municipal election. Let’s tell them hands off my borough!