Saint Catherine Street

So for those, uh, who have forgotten about it and are just being reminded, if they wanna take part on Sunday, where do they go?

Well, they can just come over to, um, behind, um, Westmount High School, which is of course on St. Catherine there, just past Clark Avenue.

There is the fabled WAG, as we call it locally, which stands for, of course, the Westmount Athletic Grounds.

There is a running track, and that is where registration will take place at 10:00 AM.

That says everything.

And I know a lot of people, especially in Westmount, will be thinking of Eddie Nolan, who was such a big part of this for many, many, many years and ran several marathons himself before he succumbed to cancer.

So again, that's Sunday, Westmount High, right behind Westmount High, where, uh, uh, Hallowell is the street behind, uh, Westmount High, St. Catherine and Hallowell.

Onto the match-

um we get new t-shirts and we start our trip and there's like a mass of people right outside this one church like right down the road from where we started and they're so excited they have signs like and i'm like wow it's a pretty good showing all right all right we're off to a good start and like that everyone's like honking their horns on the way like whoever's passing us and we're all just cheering so pumped and um it was just amazing and so it probably takes about 15, 20 minutes to finally get to like where we're supposed to be, where everyone knows we're going to be.

And it's called St. Catherine Street where we start.

And for those that don't know, it's like this, it's a really great street where like it's all this outdoor shopping kind of on the street, lots of clothes and things like that.

It's a really fun street to walk down.

It was a dry goods store.

But then everything changed when he moved his flagship store to St. Catherine Street right in front of Phillips Square, which is where the Bay was for so long.

The Bay took over the old iconic Morgan's building eventually in the 60s.

But that was Morgan's and that store changed everything because when that store moved to St. Catherine, All these other stores started moving to St. Catherine and it essentially moved the shopping district from old Montreal where it used to be to St. Catherine where it is today.

Eaton's.

Eaton's not originally from Montreal because most of the other things on this list that we're going to talk about today were from Montreal.

Eaton's was opened in Toronto in the 1860s, moved to Montreal in opened up a shop here and in 1925 opened up the giant flagship store on St. Catherine Street.

It was like one of the great shopping institutions of Montreal, famous for its Christmas windows, famous for, you know, the real Santa Claus was at Eaton's.

But we had a great time on Tupper Street, and it was fun to get to know Nick even more so than I got to know him when we worked at CJD together.

And so we bought a place on Blenheim Place in Lower Westmount, the last of those little dead-end streets off St. Catherine Street, just before you get to the, the old Palm Bakery condos and down Academy Road that takes you into St. Henry.

It was a, it was a small home.

It was perfect.

When I saw this story first emerge, uh, maybe a month ago, that this is what's gonna happen and get ready Montrealers, right? Because our city's already, you know, just crumbling all around us with so many street closures, closures for months, for a y- a year plus, depending on where you are.

Have you driven by, you know, Peel Street, Guy Street, for example, in the downtown core of Montreal, Saint Catherine Street.

Have you walked around there and seen what, what's going on there, let alone closing Park Avenue for, for the infrastructure buildup and then ultimately, uh, tearing it all down to get back to normal again.

I see it's a week though, it says.

So we're really seeing that that's like a massive problem.

And our most recent campaign was triggered by one of the biggest ultra-fast fashion companies in the world, a Chinese company called Shein, opening up a pop-up store here in Montreal on St. Catherine Street.

And we wanted to send a message to the federal government that this business model should not be allowed in Canada.

We rented an enormous garbage truck and put a message saying no to disposable fashion and parked it in front of the store.

First of all, in general, I'm very happy with having her as mayor, certainly over Madame Plante.

And I know that downtown Montreal is a mess, so I'm not going to pounce on the fact that St. Catherine Street looks so bad.

But what I can tell you is this.

Garbage cans all over the downtown area are overflowing with garbage, never seem to get emptied.

People, I said, you can comment there.

So let me ask a couple.

Brian wants to know, when will St. Catherine Street from St.

Mark to McGill, to McGill College, be completed with construction?

First of all, in general, I'm very happy with having her as mayor, certainly over Madame Plante.

But I know that downtown Montreal is a mess, so I'm not going to pounce on the fact that St. Catherine Street looks so bad.

But what I can tell you is this.

Garbage cans all over the downtown area are overflowing with garbage, never seem to get emptied.

People, I said, you can comment there.

So let me ask a couple.

Brian wants to know, when will St. Catherine Street from St.

Mark to McGill, to McGill College, be completed with construction?