In the rearview mirror: The biggest headlines from Montreal in 2023

From ChatGPT experiments and institutions shuttering to ice storms, floods, fires, and protests, here's a look back on some of the biggest stories of 2023.

J.P. Karwacki

J.P. Karwacki

December 27, 2023- Read time: 15 min
In the rearview mirror: The biggest headlines from Montreal in 2023Photograph: Kajetan Sumila on Unsplash

And just like that, 2023 has come to a close.

As news can come and go at a rapid-fire pace these days, we thought we'd do the work of digging through an entire year's worth it and bring you the biggest headlines from this past year.

Herein lies a time capsule of the city's biggest headlines from the past year, a collection of rising trends, spectacular events, shocking revelations, municipal mutations, and everything in between.

From a relatively easy-going start to the year of journalists playing with AI and bagel-themed sneakers to wars on orange cones, topics either arrived with a bang and fizzled out or smouldered long after they caught on: Housing was an immense headlining topic, natural disasters touched down in every season of the year... but we wouldn't blame you if you didn't keep track of it all.

So here it is, a collection of stories that should make you go oh yeah, THAT happened! and appreciate not only how far we've come, but also how far we have to go.

JANUARY

Photograph: © Off The Hook

The year started out strong with the launch of Nike's Bagel Dunks, and while the shoes officially launched at Montreal’s Off the Hook boutique on Jan. 13, the first people to line up arrived the night before at around 7 p.m. to guarantee their purchase, waiting outside in the cold.

Postmedia also announced it was slashing 11 per cent of its roughly 650 editorial staff across the country, including journalists at the Montreal Gazette.

“It’s a gong show, the next quarterly results will be announced soon and it’s almost certain there will be more layoffs,” said one Postmedia employee to the Rover, who would not go on the record for fear of reprisals. “Everyone is exhausted and afraid and Postmedia seems totally detached from how bad things are on the ground.”

Montreal gazette layoffs: Postmedia forms advisory council to help 'keep  journalists' | CTV News

Also of note:

FEBRUARY

Image: CBC

In this sweeping report covering the exploits of one Robert G. Miller, founder of an electronics parts distributor, tales of young girls allegedly paid large sums of money for sexual favours are told. It’s a harrowing read of seedy behaviour, hush money, and dropped investigations. The investigation lasted throughout the year, with reports still coming out even now.

MARCH

1 missing, 9 injured in Old Montreal fire | CTV News
Photograph: Sofia Ajram / CTV News

All eyes were on a five-alarm blaze that left two dead, five missing, and nine injured (including two in critical condition) in a heritage building hosting illegal Airbnb-style short-term rentals. Tensions flared well beyond what a single paragraph here can contain; here’s an in-depth look, as journalists investigated complicit culprits.

Une photo d'archives d'une vaste salle de style art déco.
Photograph: Centre Eaton de Montréal

Also, there was the announced reopening of Le 9e, a restaurant located on the ninth floor of downtown's Eaton Centre. Closed for almost a quarter of a century, its 1930s art deco architecture achieved heritage status.

APRIL

City streets littered with trees and wires, hundreds of thousands without power, carbon monoxide poisoning, and death: It was the worst power outage in Quebec since the 1998 ice storm brought on by toppled power lines and blocked roadways.

During April Fool's Day, politicians took time to tell us about their album releases, Twitch streams, and beer launches—you know, instead of doing their jobs.

Also of note:

MAY

The Main Deli Steak House Montreal smoked meat

Big news covered by just about every outlet was the abrupt closure of the alt-smoked meat restaurant The Main Deli, the latest likely victim of our perfect storm of labour shortages, gentrification, high food prices and pandemic closures squeezing the restaurant industry.

Photograph: Patrick Sanfaçon / La Presse

The blaze lasted for more than 42 hours: The Monastère du Bon-Pasteur, a 19th century former monastery, quickly became a five-alarm fire requiring 150 firefighters, and barely anything was salvaged except for a Fazioli concert grand piano and a Kirkman harpsichord from 1772.

  • Ye Olde Orchard announced that it would have to change its name to Maison Publique Old Orchard because of the OQLF—and it happened in November.
  • After 73 years selling deli meats prepared in their own smokehouses, Quebec Smoked Meat closed up shop.
  • There was so many accounts of arson that it amounted to one a day since the beginning of the calendar year... and it was only May.
  • The land that was once the site of the Hippodrome racetrack saw an incoming residential development plan with prerequisites for housing, public housing, and transit. No idea if anything will come of it yet.
  • Using one of the latest engines for 3D visualization, Moshe Safdie and his architecture firm digitally recreated Habitat 67 based on its original concept that was first envisioned 56 years ago.
  • Part of a larger, five-year urban development plan to attract businesses and people, north end Montreal's La Prairie Louvain hoped that 10,000 sunflowers would draw us all in to the Ahuntsic–Cartierville, and it did, and then they had to decide what to do with said 10,000 sunflowers.
  • After 60 years, the Champlain Bridge was being taken apart piece by piece, but would live on as wristwatches, public art, a greenhouse, a bicycle, and other items.

JUNE

Another smog warning issued for Montreal due to forest fires | Montreal  Gazette
Photograph: Allen McInnis / Montreal Gazette

Smoke and haze lingered over North America, with polluted air spreading from hundreds of wildfires burning throughout Canada including northern and western regions of Quebec.

Hausse de loyer: fermeture de la librairie du Mile-End S.W. Welch
Photograph: Dominic Gildener / Métro Média

A Mile-End book store that faced closure because of a massive rent hike in 2021 announced it would close its doors at the end of July. Signs thanking the community and announcing a closing sale were splashed across S.W. Welch Bookseller.

Also:

JULY

A woman in caught in heavy rainfall as she crosses an intersection with several flooded underpasses. An orange construction cone is placed in the middle of one of them.
Photograph: Ivanoh Demers/Radio-Canada

As fears of a tornado in the Montreal area subsided and dramatic rainfall abated, the city began wading through some of its aftermath, with flooded homes and underpasses, and closed roads. 

Environment and Climate Change Canada reported that between 50 and 100 millimetres of rain fell over the city in the space of a couple hours, calling it a torrential downpour in an assessment of the storm.

Photograph: Archives Métro

The REM launches with an “open house weekend” on July 29 and 30. Here's everything you need to know about the new system, from its cost and operating hours, to how it will affect bus lines from way back when.

Artist Zilon with his finished product
Photograph: Stéphanie Allaire

Street artist Raymond Pilon, known as Zïlon, died. Considered a leading figure in the Montreal underground punk movement of the 1970s and '80s and a pioneer of Quebec street art, his death is a valuable lesson in how we venerate what we have (or don't).

Also:

AUGUST

Photograph: Martin Tremblay / La Presse

Métro Média, which includes the Journal Métro and 16 local weeklies, announced the immediate suspension of its activities. The closure was in part due to the phasing out of Publisac, but there was more to it than that.

Au total, 192 contingents aussi variés que colorés ont fait le trajet de près de trois kilomètres sur le boulevard René-Lévesque.
Photograph: Josie Desmarais / La Presse

With 15,500 people having participated in its annual parade, Montreal Pride announced that it had experienced "a record year".

Photograph: Dave Sidaway / Montreal Gazette

Scrambling with a labour shortage and inflation pressures on rent and food, Montreal restaurateurs are finding it even more difficult to be away from their loved ones: Maison Publique and Chez Sophie restaurants close.

Also:

  • The Indigenous Health Center of Tiohtià:ke opened an urgent care clinic for Indigenous people, the first of its kind in Montreal.
  • Back in the 1920s, Montreal was known as Sin City thanks to offering booze while the States turned off the tap, and our jazz scene all started in Little Burgundy.
  • Bell Media announced it would cease operating VRAK, a French-language television channel based in Montreal, as of Oct. 1. The channel had been offering programming geared toward Quebec's youth for the past 23 years.
  • A warehouse basement in an industrial area of Montreal was where Opercule decided to set up shop to produce between 25 and 30 tonnes of Arctic char per year.
  • Four months after the fatal fire in Old Montreal, hundreds of apartments were still available on the Airbnb platform, but a new municipal squad prepared to flush them out.
  • In the basement below Café Monk in Côte-Saint-Paul was transformed into a refurbished bunker named Ferme Fortuna.
  • The Saint-Armand paper mill in the basement of an old linoleum factory in Ville-Émard on the banks of the Lachine Canal had a storied past, but decided to close.
  • The landmark diner Momesso's, purveyors of some of the most fabled Italian subs in the city, went up for sale .
  • One week before school started, and Quebec had 8,558 teaching positions to fill—1,859 full-time and 6,699 part-time, to be exact.

SEPTEMBER

Photograph: © @jfsavaria - Tourisme Montréal

Claude Cormier, the celebrated Canadian landscape architect who helped design some of Montreal's best-known public spaces like the Ring and the 18 Shades of Gay art installation in the Village, died at 63 following complications from Li-Fraumeni syndrome, a rare genetic condition that predisposes patients to multiple cancers.

truck paint spill
Photograph: Simon-Marc Charron/Radio-Canada

A heavy truck spilled a load of paint across Highway 40, staining the road white and prompting a massive cleanup and traffic jam.

Also:

OCTOBER

Since the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 and the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the demonstrations that have followed—both in favour of and against Israel, or in support of Palestine—the city continues to reel from when it all started.

Photograph: Lilly Roy / CTV News

Headlines across the country turned an eye to Quebec since the province announced it would be effectively doubling the tuition costs of English-speaking and international students going to anglo-centric post-secondary institutions.

Also:

  • The city says there are about 800 derelict buildings in Montreal, spurring a bylaw update that aims to crack down on property owners who let buildings sit abandoned and unused for a year or more.
  • Truffles are found in almost every forest in the world. In Quebec, they were discovered for the first time in the 1980s. Since then, the craze has grown to the point where we have even started to cultivate it.
  • Montreal bagel royalty, the Morena family, took on some Ontarians on Family Feud.
  • The Régie des alcools won a case against a restaurant permit holder after calling into question how it was putting more emphasis on wine than food, even though bottle shop-restaurant hybrids like it are multiplying in the province.
  • Workers say point-of-sale terminals are making it easier for employers to pocket their hard-earned cash.
  • The Parti Québécois, the analysis concludes Quebec “has the financial capacity” to leave the Canadian federation and fly on its own.
  • On the outskirts of Montreal, there’s an imposing 6,500-square-foot Georgian mansion in Châteauguay, Quebec you should see.
  • After two years of inactivity, Montreal will increase the amounts paid to real estate developers to facilitate the construction of social and affordable housing on its territory.

NOVEMBER

More than 80,000 nurses and other health workers went on strike across Quebec to demand higher pay and improved working conditions, and that's just the start. It followed a strike by more than 420,000 teachers and other public-sector workers who are part of a common front.

BONAVENTURE in Montreal

Montreal’s Bonaventure Autoroute—a major traffic corridor with 20 million drivers on it a year—is set to become an urban boulevard along the St. Lawrence River that'll include space for pedestrian walkways, bike paths, and places to sit and enjoy the view – but would maintain its existing lanes.

Also:

DECEMBER

healthcare worker with sign.

Public sector workers have been striking for weeks now to pressure the Quebec government into negotiating new collective agreements.

The major union federations, the Fédération autonome de l'enseignement (FAE), Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ), and the common front, a coalition of unions representing more than 420,000 public sector workers in health-care and education, among other areas, are still on strike.

Photograph: Cinema Imperial

The future of a historic theatre in Montreal's Latin Quarter, which has stood for over 110 years, is in jeopardy due to a lack of federal funding for major renovations. Built in 1913, it says it has been trying to do renovation and restoration work to solidify its long-term survival.

Also:


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