Fagstein » photos

Caption CTV’s Christine Long

Fagstein — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:00:27 +0000

Caption Natasha Gargiulo and Freeway Frank

Fagstein — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:00:20 +0000

Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again

Fagstein — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:38:44 +0000

There are some things at CHOM that will always be constant: The name, the format, the listeners complaining that the same songs get played over and over, and every decade or so the program director deciding to shake things up by putting Terry DiMonte back on mornings.

DiMonte began his first shift back at Montreal's Spirit of Rock on Monday, and I managed to score an invitation to see it from the studio (even if it meant pulling an all-nighter after a late shift at work). This is the story of that day.

Terry DiMonte reads the paper just before he starts his first show. (And by "the paper", I mean the section in Saturday's Gazette seemingly devoted to him)

It's hard to imagine someone like Terry DiMonte being nervous about going on the radio. So I didn't take it too seriously when he warned me the week before that he would be a nervous wreck on his first day.

But as he walked into Astral Radio's Fort St. offices just after 5am, it was apparent he wasn't quite 100% back in his chair and it would take some time to make him fully comfortable. He knew he would be judged from the moment he pressed the button that turns on his microphone, that thousands of people who knew about him coming back (either through the promotional campaign Astral put on or through the full-page piece in Saturday's Gazette) would be tuning in just to hear his voice again.

He was worried about screwing up, absent-mindedly referring to Q107, the station he left a month earlier, instead of CHOM. Thankfully for him there were posters with CHOM's logo and frequency all over the studio, so he needed only look up if he forgot.

In the end, he didn't screw up. He got the call letters right, and the frequency, and the motto. He needed to be reminded of the phone number at one point, but mostly it was like he never left. And if he was nervous at all during his first break ("break" being how radio types refer to "the part where I'm on air"), he didn't show it as he said hi:

The first song for DiMonte's first show was Back in the Saddle by Aerosmith, which came as a suggestion on Facebook when overnight host Ronny Mack asked fans which should be the first song. DiMonte hadn't thought of that song as an option, but considered it very appropriate considering he's coming back from Calgary.

The team

Maureen Holloway joins Terry DiMonte on his first show

Shortly after the show began, DiMonte was joined in studio by Maureen Holloway. Holloway ~~hosts~~ is a big part of the morning show at Q107 in Toronto, and contributed to his former morning show at (a different) Q107 in Calgary. Both are owned by Corus. Because Corus no longer has a Montreal station with the sale of CFQR and others to Cogeco, she wasn't on the air here and Astral managed to reach an agreement to bring her on to do a segment just before 6am and have it repeated at 7:15.

But because Holloway was just finishing a vacation and happened to be in Montreal, she came into the studio and joined DiMonte for a few hours, giving him someone to chat with on air. His actual cohost, Heather Backman, doesn't start until Jan. 16.

Holloway's arrival, a surprise for DiMonte, resulted in a reunion for the two friends who have worked together for many years, going back to when DiMonte hosted the morning show at Mix 96.

The show has two other regular contributors, both of whom come in studio to do their bits: Eric Engels with his once-daily Habs report and Trudie Mason with news on the hour.

Mason did her first newscast at 6am:

DiMonte did some sports news after that, and got in a mention of Calgary Flames captain Jarome Iginla scoring his 500th career goal. It was a legitimate sports story of national interest, but a bit of a reminder that there's still a bit of Calgary in DiMonte.

Engels only comes in once a day. You can listen to his first Habs report here (MP3).

Esteban Vargas sits behind the big board pressing all the cool buttons

The last contributor to the show is the guy behind the scenes, board operator Esteban Vargas. I recognized the name, but I didn't know where I'd heard it. He suggested it might have been when he was doing odd shifts as a traffic reporter, which might have been true. But I think I actually recognize the name, oddly enough, from the Kelly Alexander Show podcast, even though I haven't listened to that in quite a while.

Though he's been at Astral for six years, and clearly knows what he's doing, there were a few jokes about child labour when DiMonte posted a photo of Esteban online.

The magical computer box lists songs, commercials, traffic reports and all the other live an recorded sounds that go into a show.

Terry needs a clock

It was one of those things. If you see in any of these videos DiMonte looking ahead and up as he talks, he's looking at a non-existent analog clock. There used to be one on the opposite wall, but it disappeared some time after he left in 2007. There's one on the wall behind him, but that's incredibly awkward to try to look at when you're on the air from that chair.

DiMonte explains the reason best in the video, but the clock provides a reference not only for the time (which he can just read off his computer screen), but also how much of the show is left, and how long until the top of the hour. After decades in radio, it's become second nature to him to see an hour in terms of the analog clock and to mentally plan accordingly.

DiMonte was repeatedly assured that a clock would be acquired and installed.

Media circus

There were quite a few people around to witness DiMonte's return. In addition to myself, the studio was visited by cameras from:

Global Montreal

CTV Montreal

... and CHOM's own promotions department. (There was a second, more professional-looking camera also taking video)

The CHOM video of DiMonte's first day has been posted online. It includes his first and last words on his first show. The latter part includes a specific thank-you to me, which I didn't expect. My mom heard it, but in case you want to listen to just that part, here it is (MP3).

A complete list of DiMonte's news coverage is at the bottom of Monday's post. So far it includes a Saturday feature and live chat with The Gazette, a story and later in-studio interview at CTV Montreal (they've produced a behind-the-scenes video vignette), and a brief on Global Montreal, plus wherever Astral's press release has been republished.

But DiMonte has also been talking to non-traditional media. Besides me, he's talked to Gazette blogger Bugs Burnett and the Cornwall Free News, besides one-on-one chats with people on Twitter and Facebook.

Terry appreciates you calling

Plenty of DiMonte's critics say he has a huge ego and everything is about him. While I'd never accuse any successful media personality of not having an ego, DiMonte spent quite a bit of time his first day answering calls from listeners, even with the studio filled with people and everything else going through his mind.

The calls were relatively short, and some had to be interrupted because DiMonte had to go back on the air. In general, they went something like this:

Even Andrew Carter at CJAD was getting calls from people welcoming DiMonte back, one Astral employee walked into the studio to report with a laugh. (I tweeted that, resulting later in Carter coming in and asking "who's Fagstein?" - after a bit of nervous panic, we introduced ourselves, and it turns out he likes the blog.)

DiMonte also communicated via Facebook and Twitter, as he's become a bit more adept at social media in the past few years.

Cake

A special cake was brought in to celebrate DiMonte's first show

A special "welcome back Terry" cake was brought in, much to DiMonte's surprise. That missing bit on the left is where he stuck his finger in to taste the icing. "I bet that's fantastic," said the guy who continues to be worried that his return to Montreal is a one-way ticket to extreme weight gain.

What's next?

In case there are still people in Montreal who don't know about DiMonte's return, the big promotional push will come next week when Heather Backman joins the show and things start moving on all four wheels. I haven't been told of any extreme promotional plans, just the usual contests (including their "man cave" watch-the-Super-Bowl-with-Terry deal) and advertising/marketing.

Maureen Holloway and Terry DiMonte share a hug as she departs for Toronto

UPDATE (Jan. 16): CHOM's website has some audio clips from DiMonte's show. They include more episodes of Holloway's Dirty Little Secrets, Engels's Habs Report and Pierre Houde of RDS talking about Michael Cammalleri, as well as interviews with visiting artists like Martin Short, Mark McKinney and Demetri Martin.

There's also a short-answer get-to-know-Heather segment, in which we learn they haven't yet decided whether they'll call her Heather Backman or Heather B.

Caption CBC’s Sue Smith

Fagstein — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:00:16 +0000

Merry Christmas

Fagstein — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 05:00:04 +0000

May all your publications be error-free, may all your broadcasts be blooper-free, and may any deviation from this at least be really, really funny.

UPDATE: Santa has passed Montreal already.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otOJ5eHjWNU

Caption Mitch Melnick

Fagstein — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:21:06 +0000

Caption Mike FM’s Patrick Charles

Fagstein — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:00:19 +0000

Caption Sarah Bartok and Aaron Rand

Fagstein — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:00:17 +0000

Caption CBC president Hubert Lacroix

Fagstein — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:00:48 +0000

Caption Lori, Todd and Mutsumi

Fagstein — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:00:34 +0000

Graite Kenadeun speleng

Fagstein — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 04:15:35 +0000

Great Canadian Coaches bus parked on Berri St. last week

I was downtown around Berri St. and René-Lévesque Blvd. last week, frustrated that I had just missed my night bus connection, when I walked down the street and noticed this curious beast parked next to a hotel. It's a bus by a company called Great Canadian Coaches, based in Ontario. On the side is a mural of images of great Canadians past and present. The other side of the bus has another few dozen faces. By my count, there are 45 hand-painted images of Canadians (46 if you count Wayne and Shuster separately, more if you count the Group of Seven individually). I thought that was really nice.

Near the door, I spotted this image of Canada's governor-general, David Johnston:

Image of Governor-General David Johnston... or Johnson?

It didn't take me long to notice the spelling of his name next to his image. Shouldn't it have a T in it? I remember the newly appointed governor-general had the same name as a Gazette journalist (which led to some good-natured fun at his expense congratulating him on his new post).

Of course, I was right. Both the journalist and the governor-general are spelled "Johnston". It's kind of an embarrassing mistake to make on the side of a bus.

Here's the kicker: It's autographed.

Signature of Governor-General David Johnston (note the very apparent "T")

I tried to wrap my head around the logic. Did the governor-general sign his name and not notice that his name was misspelled right there? Was the name added after the signature? Was Johnston just too polite to point out the error?

Rather than jump to conclusions, I asked the bus company and Rideau Hall's press office about the mistake.

Rideau Hall's Marie-Eve Létourneau responded to my email (in which I tried to be as protocol-friendly as possible, referring to him as the Right Honourable David Johnston, stopping just short of calling him "His Excellency"). She said Johnston did indeed sign the bus when both were in Waterloo, Ont. She said he did notice the misspelling of his name but "made no mention of the misspelling" to Great Canadian Coaches. She said they would address the matter with the company.

The story from Great Canadian Coaches differs slightly. Managing Director Lorna Hundt said the company was aware of the misspelling, and "we are waiting until we have the coach home long enough to have it corrected.

"We were very embarrassed about it, especially when we met him and had him sign his image on the coach," she continued. "He was wonderful about it and showed his keen sense of humour, saying that he always spelled his name incorrectly when he stole sheep from the neighbour’s farm."

It's a cute little anecdote, even if it contradicts what Rideau Hall told me.

Hundt said the company felt bad about the error. "We take a great deal of pride in the images on our coaches, and this mistake was regrettable," Hundt wrote in an email.

Great Canadian Coaches has many buses, each with a different mural honouring different people (with themes such as stage and screen, women, musicians and athletes). Though it was particularly embarrassing because it happened on the only image on this particular bus that has been autographed, it's not the end of the world.

Except Johnston's name isn't the only one they misspelled.

(For the sake of those who may not be familiar with some of these figures - and I admit some were unfamiliar to me - I've linked the photos to their Wikipedia pages)

Craig Kielburger becomes "Craig Keilburger"

"Wilfred Gordon Bigelow" becomes "Wilford Gordeon Bigelow"

When I got home, I went on the company's website to learn about them. I saw pictures of their other buses, and noticed that some of them also had misspellings.

Leslie Nielsen becomes "Leslie Neilson"

Mike Myers becomes "Mike Meyers"

Sarah Chalke becomes "Sarah Chalk"

Françoise-Marie Jacquelin becomes "Fracoise-Marie Jacquelin de la Tour"

Henrietta Muir Edwards becomes "Henriette Muir Edwards"

Alex Baumann becomes "Alex Bauman"

When I asked Hundt about additional misspellings, she said "Let me know what you found, and we’ll take care of it."

Well, here's what I found. From the names I saw on that bus in Montreal, and the ones I found on photos online, about 100 total, I found nine errors.

I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether a 9% error rate is acceptable for names of supposedly famous Canadians that a company puts on the side of a bus.

Let there be night light

Fagstein — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 09:05:48 +0000

Someone want to explain to me what this is? Taken at 4:20am (more than an hour before sunrise), facing south-southeast toward downtown.

Is it ... aliens? The moon? Some secret government experiment? Aurora borealis? Patrick Lagacé?

Rolling the dice on Quebec’s infrastructure

Fagstein — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 02:08:51 +0000

Have you seen so many Transport Quebec trucks in one place in your life?

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 lines, their building foundations or their roads or bridges, so long as they're working properly. But when something goes wrong, any of these can suddenly become a top priority.

For this same reason, those who are in charge of infrastructure tend not to prioritize it. If the people don't care, why should the government? Making a working thing still work is not going to win you as many votes as making a brand new thing. And that's a logic that's not reserved for inept governments. Given the choice between paying a professional engineer to do an inspection on that seemingly innocuous crack in a home's foundation and spending that money on a new big-screen TV, which do you think is going to be the more common choice?

Lessons from NASA

(Feel free to skip this section if you know what STS-51-L and the Rogers Commission are)

When I hear about major infrastructure failures, like the de la Concorde overpass collapse in 2006, I think about the Space Shuttle.

The Space Shuttle was an extremely complex system, requiring thousands of highly educated experts to work together to make it a success. But of all those engineers, scientists, programmers, administrators and other staff, it's just those handful of people who actually board the shuttle for a trip into space that really attract the public's attention. And for every mission, it's only those few days spent actually executing it that people notice (if even that).

On a cold day in January 1986, all those experts worked hard to send one of those space shuttles into orbit. Like a scene from a movie, the flight director asks department heads if they're prepared for launch, and if everyone agrees, gives the "go for launch", which can be revoked right up until liftoff. The launch can even be aborted while in progress. There's a procedure for all that, because those really smart people have pondered every contingency.

Launch delays for the shuttle program were so common as to be routine. Mechanical issues and bad weather were the most common reasons (there are uncommon reasons too). But they're also very expensive, not to mention how bad they look for the public, even if they understand that safety is paramount.

The launch of STS-51-L was delayed multiple times, because of bad weather at the launch site, bad weather at emergency landing sites, and mechanical failure. It was six days after its originally scheduled launch that it finally took off from the pad at Kennedy Space Center. And even then it was over the objection of engineers who were worried about the effect the cold might have on a critical component of the external solid rocket booster.

Actually, it wasn't quite like that. There wasn't some veteran gray-haired engineer sitting at mission control explaining exactly what would happen, screaming that no one was listening to him and guaranteeing that the shuttle would explode if it lifted off. The conversation actually took place internally within the contractor responsible for the rocket booster. The engineers in charge signed off on the launch despite the concerns. And it's not too hard to understand the logic. The concern was theoretical. It wasn't guaranteed that the part would fail, and even if it did, there was a backup.

On Jan. 28, with the weather having warmed up and no remaining reasons for delay, STS-51-L took off. Everything looked fine for 73 seconds, even though the part in question - an O-ring seal around the right solid rocket booster - had indeed failed, along with its backup. By the time anyone noticed something was wrong, the failure led to the solid rocket booster partially detaching, the centre fuel tank disintegrated and the orbiter was torn apart.

What millions on the ground and on television saw was an explosion and clouds of vapor heading in directions they're not supposed to go. The Space Shuttle Challenger had been destroyed, and its seven astronauts wouldn't survive. (Their exact cause of death isn't clear, but they survived the explosion and may have even been conscious as they plummeted to their deaths.)

An inquiry was ordered, and it was thorough. Blame was spread around, particularly among those who dismissed safety concerns because they wanted the launch to proceed. But there was also blame placed on a culture where risks were be minimized because of overconfidence in the safety of the system as a whole. So much redundancy was built in, and minor failures in such a complex vehicle were so common, that concerns about even serious problems were easily dismissed.

The shuttle program was grounded and the next one wouldn't take off until 32 months later. NASA made sweeping changes as a result of the report, and the disaster is even taught to engineering students as a lesson in what happens when one becomes overconfident in safety. The hope was that, for the shuttle program specifically and for major engineering projects in general, such a mistake would never be allowed to happen again.

And then it did.

The circumstances and cause were radically different for the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1, 2003. It happened on re-entry, not takeoff, and while there were concerns about damage before it began its doomed descent into the atmosphere, nobody really had a clear idea what kind of damage could be caused by a simple piece of foam flying off the external fuel tank.

Still, the conclusion reached after the second fatal accident in the shuttle program was that NASA had not learned its lesson from Challenger. The culture had not sufficiently changed, and safety concerns were being dismissed wen the likelihood of them causing significant trouble was low.

A hole beneath the elevated Metropolitan Expressway currently being repaired

Risk management

Whenever I hear a politician, a company CEO or anyone else say that safety is their "number one priority" or that they don't take any chances with safety, I cringe. Because really, safety is not paramount. It's a risk, one they try to minimize but only so far as their budget can reasonably take them. If it costs too much money to reduce the risk of injury from almost impossible to impossible, they'll stick with almost impossible, so long as they can do so legally.

And the rest of us are the same. Yes, speed kills, but the vast majority of speeding doesn't result in death. A driver who goes 120 km/h in a 100 zone is increasing the risks to himself and others around him, but the chances are still pretty low that anything bad is going to happen. You buy your car with airbags and crumple zones because you know that the chances are pretty good that someday something might happen, but on a given day the likelihood is too small to even think about.

It's called risk management. Nothing can be made 100% safe, so a balance is reached where there's an acceptable (very low) level of risk that can be achieved economically.

The question, then, becomes where this balance is to be placed. For something where failure is a mere inconvenience (like, say, cable TV), something like 99% or 99.9% is sufficient. People will complain when they get to that 0.1% of the time, but there won't be any commissions convened to investigate it. For infrastructure where failure can mean fatalities (like in a bridge or tunnel), 99.9% is nowhere near adequate. Even a 99.999% success rate would mean failure for one out of every 100,000, or a couple of cars a day on the Turcot Interchange. It has to be 100%, and it has to be everywhere.

Workers do repairs on the St. Pierre Interchange at night to minimize traffic disruption

Quebec, you've lost me

Before Sunday, I had confidence in Quebec's infrastructure. You might think that's ridiculous, with all the news I've been exposed to about collapsing overpasses, crumbling bridges and surprise sinkholes under our roads. But things I had seen gave me more hope than fear. When the government shut down one span of the Mercier Bridge, it acted before there was structural failure and before anyone died. When Transport Quebec imposed lane reductions on the Turcot Interchange, it did so as a proactive measure. While Montreal motorists whined that this was all evidence of the government being irresponsible about infrastructure, I took it the opposite way.

But the collapse of a "paralume" at the entrance to the Viger Tunnel on Sunday changed my feeling on the subject. It was entirely subjective, and maybe not entirely rational (it looks increasingly like this was the result of a mistake in repairs to the tunnel's walls rather than a case of not noticing a badly decayed structure). But as of that moment I couldn't trust Transport Quebec to keep roads safe.

Transport Minister Sam Hamad isn't exactly helping matters. When asked point blank by CTV's Todd van der Heyden whether he's ultimately responsible for what goes on in his department, Hamad avoided answering the question. To Daybreak's Mike Finnerty earlier in the day, he compared what happened to a plumber doing a bad job on your house, saying it was the plumber, not the home owner, who would be responsible. Hamad clearly wants to blame anyone but himself for this.

And yet the man who's responsible for nothing was in charge enough to reassure us that any road that's open to traffic in Quebec is safe - while standing in front of the proof that his statement was clearly not true.

But I'm not calling for Hamad's resignation as transport minister. Yes, he's incredibly bad at media relations, and he can't take responsibility for his own department. But do we seriously think that the next person Jean Charest appoints to this cabinet post is going to do anything substantially different, other than being a better bullshitter?

Odd sight of an empty Ville-Marie Expressway during the morning rush hour

And this isn't just Hamad's fault. Quebec's infrastructure problem predates his tenure as transport minister. It predates the Charest Liberal government. In fact, funding for inspections has gone up significantly since the de la Concorde collapse. There's just far too much infrastructure out there to keep tabs on, even without counting what can happen when someone makes a construction mistake.

Hamad should take responsibility, if not blame, and Quebec needs to seriously look at how it manages its highway infrastructure, through an inquiry if necessary. And inspection reports should be made public. They'll probably show that there are overpasses, bridges and tunnels all over Quebec that are in a critical state. They'll probably lead the media and motorists to panic, in some cases unnecessarily. But they'll also show the full extent of the problem, and what a monumental task it will be to bring it all up to an acceptable level again.

And it's a monumental task that Quebec will undertake half-assed, if at all. Because Quebecers want huge increases in spending on infrastructure maintenance. We just don't want to pay for it.

CTV Montreal viewers overwhelmingly reject paying more for highway repairs

Well, we don't care THAT much

It's an unscientific poll, but I don't think the 1,393 who responded to CTV Montreal's TalkBack question are too far out of the mainstream. Quebecers want roads and bridges to be safe, but they don't want to pay tolls or higher taxes to ensure this. They want the money to come out of nowhere. Maybe from education, or health care. Many probably think there's a few billion in the budgets of the Office québécois de la langue française and Jean Charest's salary as premier to fix it all up, or that once we eliminate corruption in construction contracts everything will balance out.

But really, just like the government, the transport department, and those engineers at NASA, Quebecers are willing to play the odds. If half a dozen people die once every five years or so because of a major infrastructure failure, that's an acceptable loss, or at least not so outrageous that they'd consider paying a few cents more for gas or paying a few bucks to cross a bridge every day.

We'll never admit it, of course. The Ville Marie tunnel collapse didn't kill anyone, but we're still all up in arms about it just because it could have. (The fact that this happened in the middle of summer when there isn't much other news certainly contributes a bit.) Ask any regular Quebecer, and they'll say there should be no risk, no gambling of anyone's safety. They'll say no injury is acceptable.

They'll say infrastructure safety should be the government's top priority, no question.

Well, except taxes. And health care, and education, and the economy. Those other "No. 1 priorities" will take up a larger part of everyone's attention as the months and years go by without a major infrastructure failure. Those millions of extra dollars being shovelled into keeping our roads and bridges even more safe won't be noticed by motorists, except when they see the traffic cones (which they will no doubt whine about). When the next round of across-the-board budget cuts comes around, the transport department and its team of inspectors won't be immune, any more than health care and emergency services workers are.

And then, in a few years, when we see the next bridge collapse, the next tunnel cave in or the next sinkhole develop that either kills someone or looks like it could easily have done so, we'll have this same debate all over again. We'll all shift the blame around, demanding someone else be held accountable.

We certainly won't look in the mirror, and realize that we've reached a subconscious pact with our government that allows them to roll the dice with our safety. Because despite what we say, our No. 1 priority isn't infrastructure safety when we enter the voting booth. It's sovereignty, or the personalities of the party leaders, or health care, or education, or immigration, or whatever big thing has most recently caught our attention.

Like our government, we'll do a lot of talking about how unacceptable this all is. But when it comes time to put our money where our mouth is, we'll suddenly become very silent.

P.S. I wonder who inspects the structures that hold up TV reporters so they can get a better backdrop while reporting on the tunnel collapse.

Happy Moving Day

Fagstein — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 09:12:23 +0000

Bonne Fête du déménagement!

STM takes down its totem pole

Fagstein — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:05:16 +0000

A new bus stop sign design was shown off with a new shelter design

Last fall, the STM showed off - with great fanfare - a prototype for a brand new bus stop shelter, which it installed on René-Lévesque Blvd. near Jeanne-Mance St. Installed along with it, a few feet away, was a prototype for a new bus stop sign pole, as seen above in this photo I took last week.

Cool, I thought, but as hip as it looked, it also meant losing a lot of information, such as what metro/train stops a bus will go to, whether it's a rush-hour-only bus or express bus or night bus, and the bus stop code. All this information was moved to a panel lower down that has schedules and other info.

More importantly, I thought, it's going to be more complicated to add routes to this totem pole, and you can't indicate detours or disruptions in service like you can by slipping one of those temporary bus stop covers over the traditional signs.

With the new night bus network taking effect on Monday, adding four new routes to this stop (and the deletion of this leg of the 515 bus, which also took effect Monday), I passed by on Sunday to see if they had updated the totem pole.

The STM has replaced its prototype totem pole stop sign with a regular one

As it turns out, they've taken it down and replaced it with a regular bus stop sign.

On the shelter itself, there is also a list of bus routes that stop there. I remarked that it seemed limited to nine routes (the exact number that stopped there at the time). Now it will need to fit 12.

A list of stops on the shelter remains unupdated

So far that sign (and a similar one on the inside) remains unchanged, which could lead to some user confusion. (Then again, you can't really read it at night, so maybe it doesn't matter that the night buses aren't listed there.)

Hey, it's a pilot project. Sometimes these things fail. I could point out that I saw these problems the first day I saw this new design, but instead I'll just hope the STM has learned its lesson.

UPDATE (July 5): Andy Riga talked to the STM, which downplayed the significance of the totem pole and said it was not part of the new bus shelter design pilot project. "It was a suggestion of the designer to put an element of clientele info," Marianne Rouette told Riga. "So, as it was not intended to be permanent, we came back to the bus stop model we currently use."

Ici on commerce en français during store hours

Fagstein — Wed, 18 May 2011 04:58:03 +0000

Seen at a store on Ste. Catherine St.

There's quelque chose that strikes moi about this image, but je can pas put my doigt on it.

Supermoon

Fagstein — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 04:15:43 +0000

"Supermoon", as shot from the Belvedere in Mount Royal Park

The media hype (ahem) projected something a bit more dramatic than what really was. I had to explain to a couple at the lookout that despite the label "supermoon" this was just a slightly larger, slightly brighter moon, and you really don't notice the change.

Nevertheless, a full moon on a clear Saturday night is a fun time to take photos (and, based on my unscientific observations, cuddle up with a boyfriend or girlfriend).

Clip du Plateau

Fagstein — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:33:41 +0000

I was a bit curious why, on a bus at 2 a.m., a woman would be carrying a poster with pictures of Guy A. Lepage tied to it with white paper clips. I'd even considered asking her.

But I fear any rational explanation for this, and so I kind of prefer it to remain a mystery.

Real sharp translation

Fagstein — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:19:12 +0000

Found on a Sharper Image beard trimmer box

Man, francophones get all the breaks.

It’s my fruits in a box

Fagstein — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 20:11:22 +0000

The one thing that makes the impending winter a little more bearable.

Fagstein » photos

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