"Sauvons l’église Saint-Sauveur!" I wrote three years ago. And for three years, it seemed vaguely possible that the 145-year-old church on lower Saint-Denis Street wouldn't be demolished. The huge hospital for which it was supposed to make way, the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montreal (CHUM), has been stalled for years, and for awhile it would have been reasonable to guess that it would eventually crawl into the back room where tired, abandoned Montreal megaprojects go to die. Alas, that wasn't the case. Kristian Gravenor broke the news in yesterday's Gazette that city council has issued a demolition permit for the church, which has sat empty and abandoned for years. It isn't in the best shape -- its prized stained glass windows, designed by the renowned Guido Nincheri, were stolen in 2006 -- but its bones are strong. More importantly, it remains a testament to the city's history. Saint-Sauveur was built thirteen years after a fire swept through the Faubourg Saint-Laurent in 1852, its greystone façade, neo-Gothic architecture and tin steeple a testament to the fashion of the era. In the beginning, it was actually an Anglican church named Holy Trinity. It didn't become Catholic until the 1920s, when Holy Trinity moved west to NDG and the church was sold to a Syrian congregation.

Stapling a poster to a Saint-Viateur hydro pole A Quebec Court of Appeal judge has ruled that Montreal's anti-postering bylaw, which prohibits posters from being stuck to public street furniture, violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Montreal will now have to find a way to legally accommodate posters on public property. We have local activist Jaggi Singh to thank for this ruling. Ten years ago, he was charged with sticking a poster on municipal property, and with the help of civil rights lawyer Julius Grey, he took his case through the ...

Montreal seen from Mile End, 1840 Browsing through the Gazette's archives, which have been digitized and made accessible by Google News (at least until 1989), I came across a nice description of Mile End in 1840, when it was sparsely-populated farmland a good 20-minute carriage ride from the edge of Montreal. It comes from Joseph Charles, who lived in the area as a boy. "We moved out to the Mile End and lived for a time in a great big old stone house on Mr. Jacob Wurtele's farm. It ...

J'ai trouvé ces plaques montées sur trois poteaux d'électricité sur l'avenue de l'Esplanade entre les rues Bernard et Saint-Viateur. J'aime comment les gravures en cuivre ironisent sur les plaques officielles d'Hydro-Québec. La plaque en bois, par contre, imite la texture naturelle d'un poteau: le grain du bois et même les agrafes omniprésents. (Nous sommes après tout dans le Mile-End, la capitale montréalaise de l'affichage sauvage.)...

HONG KONG --- Good street furniture is not one of Hong Kong's strengths, so when people here can't find a place to sit outdoors, they do the most logical thing: they bring their own chair. In natural gathering spots around the city you'll come across a motley array of household chairs that have been placed outdoors and tied to a post or railing. You can see them at bench-less bus stops, or on steep stairways, sometimes with one leg trimmed so the chair can sit evenly on the steps. ...