The first known Yelp review

 

Bit of a gap in Irish inventions after whiskey

 

Small things 29 Jan

• Will someone from the Netherlands please call the US Senate and inform them that McDonalds won't go bankrupt if minimum wage is raised to $15 an hour?
• There is a select group of people who are insulted, angered and betrayed by the effect the Biden administration will have on a subsidized Canadian industry made up of 170,000 workers, most of whom still have jobs, even counting the current round of lay-offs. And yet nobody seems insulted, angered and betrayed by the bankruptcies, the permanent closing of 10,000 restaurants and restrictions on in-house dining, an industry composed of 1,200,000 workers.
• Mixed up news: I heard Lady Gaga sang a sea shanty at the inauguration or something...
• A Darth Vader baby onesie was recalled as a choking hazard, because of course it was.
• Who's gonna find a cure for windmill cancer now that Trump is gone?
• Try not to stress about life being too short. You'll just stress even more when you realize the stress just made your life even shorter.
• Dear Donald. Now you can have all the 'hamberders' and 'covfefe' you want....
• Would anyone put it past the company who makes Zoom to try and sabotage the Covid vaccine supply chain?
• Egg roulette: You hide some wasabi under the filling of one of the devilled eggs.
• I can't believe I'm still talking about Trump....
• Trumpy trump trumpeze

Clairtone T7

 

OMG! 

We used to have one of these at home back in the 1970s...

Same colour and everything.

Play the whole album - Delerium - Karma

If you have a Spotify or any other music streaming service that lets you listen to entire albums in one go, I've got some homework for you.

Once I began to wean myself off of radio as my primary source for new music, I turned to the only other place one could go to find new stuff - the record store. I wandered into one not long after moving to Calgary and heard this ethereal voice over industrial flavoured synths and asked a worker what I was hearing. It was the new album from Delerium, Semantic Spaces.

Listening to the album now, I'm struck by the cheesiness of it all, it smells so much of the early 90s. But the two men behind Delerium (Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber) were moving on from their industrial roots and venturing into the territory established by Enigma from France. Based in Vancouver, Delerium enlisted the talented female singer Kristy Thirsk to elevate their new sound. But like I said, Semantic Spaces was just the boys shaking things out as far as I'm concerned. Even though it was their seventh album to date, it's their first under the Nettwerk label. It's in their next Nettwerk label album, Karma, that things really come together. I'm intentionally skipping Spheres II, as it wasn't a Nettwerk release. 

Even though Karma sounds more like Enigma than the previous album, the boys made use of a wider variety of vocalists, including Kristy again, but this time also recruiting Sarah McLachlan, Lisa Gerrard, Jacqui Hunt and Camille Henderson. They even recorded a 30-piece choir in a West Vancouver church to avoid the cost of getting the rights of existing church choir recordings.

It all begins on track one, Enchanted. The atmospheric soundtrack transports you to another place, maybe Asia. The industrial mood is still there, but the world music flavour of the chants tames it, makes it far more accessible. I do find the vocals a little on the cheesy side, but the track tries not to take itself too seriously. It's the pace setter.

On Duende, the world music prevails, but now the beat feels industrial while East Indian instruments round out the sound. Here we're introduced to the buttery voice of Camille Henderson. Heavily produced, but moving along at a nice clip. This makes both for great driving music and background music at a party.

Next we are transported to some lush jungle in instrumental Twilight. The synth melodies really shine on this track with absolutely no need for vocals at all.

Then we are visited by Sarah McLachlan. Silence charted quickly, reaching number one in Ireland and Scotland and top ten in much of Europe and North America. This song kind of makes you wonder if the other vocalists threw down the gauntlet and Sarah came to show them how it's done. Regardless of how she got involved in Silence, you can't imagine anyone else pulling it off.

Forgotten Worlds and Lamentation is where the choir provides most of the vocal texturing.  

Euphoria would not feel out of place on Semantic Spaces if you removed the world voice chants and throat singing. This is where we hear Jacqui Hunt for the first time. Again, don't try to find any deep meaning in the lyrics. It's about the mood, not the message.

Wisdom brings Kirsty back for a bit more angelic musings before a couple more songs finish the album.

In all seriousness, if you're looking to give your speakers a good test, from the lowest synth bass pedals to soaring voices from the world's best female vocalists, you could do much worse than to test drive this thematic sampling of mid-90s worldbeat.

Why America doesn't have free healthcare

 

China's high speed rail network

China has a very robust high speed rail network as seen on this map. The purple lines are speeds greater than 300 km/h, the red lines greater than 250 km/h.

Shenzhen to Beijing would be a 23 hour drive, non-stop. By train it's 9 hours and costs $143.

Cat ruins Zoom meeting

 

Things I learned lately 29 Jan

• Afternoon naps have been linked to better mental agility.
• People who say we shouldn't cater to cyclists in Canada because you can't cycle in winter, don't cycle at all. Also, cyclists in Finland cycle all year round. It is a complete myth that people don't cycle in winter because of the cold. If they don't cycle in winter it's because of the poor infrastructure. https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU
  
  
  
• Mardi Gras is coming and a parade isn't viable, so New Orleans residents are decorating and turning the front of their homes into 'floats'.
• The fossil fuel sector directly accounts for less than 1% of all jobs in Canada. Between 2014 and 2019 other sectors have created 42 jobs for each one lost in fossil industries.
• Peter Frampton knew David Bowie from school, since he was 12 years old, and they were buddies for life.
• "Sourdough" became the nickname for California Klondike miners at the turn of the last century because they carried starter in their backpacks to make bread without having to find a town, let alone yeast.
• In 2007 the writers guild of America went on strike leaving tv and movies without any writers for 4 months. This led to tv studios relying on shows that didn’t require writing, like talk shows, game shows, and reality shows. NBC decided they’d get Celebrities to compete in one of their reality shows that had been sinking in the ratings. The Celebrity Apprentice premiered in January 2008. The season got ratings more than twice as high as the previous one, and led to host Donald Trump being a mainstay of network TV until February 2015. On June 16, 2015 Donald Trump announced his candidacy for POTUS.
• The Buffalo Bills had a terrible season in 1970. This allowed them the 1st overall pick in 1971, in which they drafted O.J. Simpson. O.J. met his wife Nicole Brown while in Buffalo and then allegedly killed her. O.J. hired Robert Kardashian to be his lawyer. They won the case, and the Kardashian name became somewhat famous. Kris Kardashian rode that mild fame through her divorce, into her marriage to Bruce Jenner (thus becoming Kris Jenner) and when Kim grew up, she dropped an infamous sex tape. That sex tape wouldn't have been such a big deal if she hadn't already been semi-noteworthy (although Ray J also had something to do with that fame). So yeah basically the Bills are the reason we have to suffer with the Kardashians. If they hadn't drafted OJ, he wouldn't have met Nicole and Robert Kardashian would be just another lawyer in NY.
• British officers in India during the 18th Century were eating quinine pounder to treat their malaria. The powder was so bitter they mixed with their club soda. They brought it back to the UK and they started putting it in their gin. Hence gin and tonic.
• In 1997, Star Trek: Voyager wasn't doing well with ratings, so they introduced a new character acted by Jeri Ryan. She and her husband Jack eventually got divorced in 1999 because of her time on that show. Fast-forward to 2004, when Jack Ryan was running for a Senate seat in Illinois. During that race, juicy details from his divorce were released, and they didn't make him look very good. This led to him dropping out and led to the GOP having a lot of time to find a replacement to run against none other than Barack Obama, who won in a landslide.
• Charles Francis Feeney (born April 23, 1931) is a businessman and philanthropist who made his fortune as a co-founder of the Duty Free Shoppers Group. Feeney gave away his fortune in secret for many years, until a business dispute resulted in his identity being revealed in 1997. Feeney has given away more than $8 billion. Until he was 75, he traveled only in coach. He does not own a car or a house and wears a $10 Casio F-91W watch. As of 2016, he lived in a rented apartment in San Francisco, with a remaining nest egg of $2 million.
• At the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, some of the paintings have been replicated in relief, so visually impaired people can enjoy it too.

Breaking time and space

 

It's not just me right?

 

Eggs versus cereal (honest review)

 

Green energy costs over 10 years

 

"You know what this poutine needs? More carbs"

Jim Gaffigan does an 8 plus minute bit just on poutine, with a dollop of Tim's jokes.

Small things 22 Jan

• It's super easy to 'love winter' from inside a nice warm house all day and all night.
• Can we please make all retail pay terminals the same so that you tap the same exact spot on each one? Also, let's all welcome WalMart into the 21st century - they now have tap.
• Never be afraid to prove yourself wrong.
• I love that as an adult you can do whatever you want. Like have breakfast for dinner. Or just dessert for dinner.
• I went into the bank with a mask on today. I didn't even get a second look.
• The only part of your reflection you can lick is your tongue.

"Get off the computer, you're spending too much time online."

"Mom, can I go out to see my friends?"

"You know you can't. There's a lockdown and a pandemic."

"But mom!"

"You can visit your friends online!" 

[realizes the contradiction]

[sigh]

Explosive thoughts

I found this online:

The universe is an ongoing explosion.

That's where you live.

In an explosion.

Also, we absolutely don't know what living is.

Sometimes atoms arranged in a certain way just get very haunted.

That's us.

When an explosion explodes hard enough, dust wakes up and thinks about itself.

And then writes about it.

The world expects mistakes

 

Incredible young drummer

Yoyoka covers Dazed and Confused on drums. 

This girl rocks!

Reality (spelling) check

 

Things I learned lately 22 Jan

• QAnon believed that before Biden got elected, Trump would pull a rabbit out of a hat and reveal a waterfall of evidence that the deep state Democrats really were running a pedophile ring. Now that this hasn't come to pass, they're in shock. For real.
• Despite the different colors, all the loops in Froot Loops cereal are the same flavour, a generic fruit flavour the company calls, you guessed it, ‘”froot.” 
• LEGO fans have conducted tests that indicate that LEGO bricks can be used 36,000-38,000 times before they will no longer hold firmly together. 
• A group of hedgehogs is called, appropriately enough, a prickle. 
• The term for goose bumps, or the bristling of hair on the skin from fear, cold, or other reactions, is horripilation.
  
  
  
• Ronald Reagan was a Trekkie through and through. During his stint as U.S. President, he enjoyed two private screenings of 80s-era Star Trek films and, after his presidency was over, visited the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation to see everything up close and meet the cast and crew.
• While wild salmon get their color by eating shrimp and krill, farm-raised salmon generally have carotenoids added to their feed, either through natural ingredients like ground-up crustaceans or synthetic forms created in a lab. Otherwise their flesh would be grey and nobody would buy grey salmon.
• The NHTSA, the organization that crash tests vehicles, rates the Tesla Model 3 the best at "lowest probability of injury", less than 6%.
• Chicago gun violence is off the charts. Since 2012, there have been 9,228 shooting victims, 1,347 shooting deaths and 659 murder victims under 24 years of age.
• Satan has an Instagram account. It's hilarious.

I lay on froot

 

He's me!

 

Perspective

 

Sign on a beach

 

Small things 15 Jan

• I'd rather be excluded for who I include than included for who I exclude.
• They should sell a splurge protector.
• Am I the only one that keeps looking online at my fave places to eat while on vacation to see if they're still open?
• 2022 sounds like 2020 too.
• 2021 sounds like 2020 won.
• Are people enjoying season two of 2020 so far?
• "Here's a question for [Rep. Paul] Gosar since he's from Arizona but he's also challenging the Arizona results. And this applies to Republicans from Pennsylvania and Georgia and Michigan and all the other swing states. If the presidential election was fraudulent, how come YOUR election wasn't fraudulent? Why did you take your seat if the results from your state can't be trusted? It's the same ballot. Literally the same piece of paper." ~Seth Meyers
  
  
  
• A group of UPS trucks is called a parcel.
• If the SolarWinds compromise has proven anything, it proved the old adage that the only safe data is the data that is totally offline. And one could argue that even offline data isn't completely safe.
• For what it's worth, most of the tech support answers I give I got from a Google search. Ta-da!

"Dad, why is that book so thick?"

"It's a long story..."

Mosquitos before they shrank

 

Play the whole album - Zero 7 - Simple Things

If you have a Spotify or any other music streaming service that lets you listen to entire albums in one go, I've got some homework for you.

If you've never heard of Zero 7 before, they are, IMHO, the best example of quality downtempo electronica slash acid jazz in the world. Comprised of the duo Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker, Zero 7 started out as studio engineers and remixers.

The duo usually enlist the help of guest vocalists on their albums, using unique artists like Sia, Sophie Barker and Jose Gonzalez, to name a few. Their debut full album, Simple Things, released in 2001, was an instant hit, garnering the "Best Newcomer" Muzik Award.

The album opens with I have seen, with the lush male vocals of Mozez riding a Rhodes piano soul groove that sounds as fresh today as it did in 2001. The string arrangements are sublime.

Next we have Polaris. I think they made a mistake putting this spaced-out instrumental as the second song. I would have picked one of the other slam dunks from the collection for a strong one-two punch.

Such as the third track, Destiny, featuring Sia. Yes, that Sia. She already had a presence on the Australian music scene in acid-jazz band Crisp, but was still relatively unknown elsewhere in the world. That changed immediately with her appearance on this album. She would go on to be a regular contributor on Zero 7 albums, featuring almost exclusively on their third album The garden in 2006. Sophie Barker provides backing vocals here and sounds like Sia's twin.

Give it away is another instrumental, which I like much better than track 2. It's like a perfect R&B number begging for a vocalist to jump in and croon improvisation style.

Simple things, the title track, doesn't really connect for me, but it's still a quality track, again with Mozez doing the lead.

Red dust is another one of those magical instrumentals that feels like a jazz project pulled out of the dusty archives and given a little modern polish. It has the same kind of vibe as the Bob James theme song from the sitcom Taxi. And who doesn't love a jazzy tune with a little flute and trumpet?

Track 7, Distractions quickly became a favourite of mine, again featuring the smooth (double tracked) vocals of Sia. In fact, the chorus is what does it for me. "I only make jokes to distract myself from the truth." Powerful line. She sings it with such conviction. I love how the instrumental line goes on a different melodic line while that's being sung too. Gorgeous. Even the coda is insane. Just listen to that acoustic guitar anchoring it all together.

Then comes the best song on the album, In a waiting line. Check out the video for this gem too. This is Sophie Barker's debut as main vocalist and she is just as good or perhaps better than Sia. She also co-wrote this song as she also co-wrote Destiny. You hear a lot more synth touches on this track, but the electric piano is still the main event. The synth runs up and down the scale are great.

Out of town, another instrumental, would not be out of place on a travel video.

This world brings Mozez back doing his best James Bond soundtrack love theme.

Likufanele is another fave of mine. It has a lovely South African flavour, hinting at the possibilities for this duo going forward in the decade before last. The lyrics say "Igama obizwa ngalo likufanele". Translation: "The name that they call you by suits you".

Make sure you check out the special edition version, which includes the bonus tracks Salt Water Sound, another fave instrumental of mine, and Spinning, again featuring Sophie Barker.

The special edition version also has some live versions and remixes of some of the tracks.

This is an hour of acid jazz with a little something for your brain too.

Life is about balance

 

Growing up in Quebec

I was lucky to have been raised in a perfect little town. We moved there when I was maybe 5 or 6. Just before I was born it was known as St Eustache-sur-le-lac, but in 1963 it was renamed Deux Montagnes, or Two Mountains as us English called it.

I don't really know why my dad moved us there in 1966(?), but it might have had to do with the low price of renting and real estate compared to Laval or Montreal, where we had lived previously.

What made Two Mountains unique was its location. Right on the north shore of Lac des Deux Montagnes, which is sort of the convergence of the Ottawa River as it meets Riviere des Mille Iles. Across from us was Laval Ouest, the western tip of the island of Laval.

Northwest of us was farm land and apple orchards. A little further upstream, just as you round the bend to the Ottawa River was Oka, famous for its monastery and their cheese. Just northeast of us was St Eustache. Two Mountains started out as a place where people built summer homes, then started staying year round. This was made possible and quite attractive as a result of the CN commuter rail line that came out to our town from downtown Montreal. In fact, our town was the end of the commuter line. It probably shouldn't have even come out this far, but rumour has it that the idea was for CN employees and their families to use the rail line to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big city and relax in Two Mountains and its beautiful beach.

That's right, we had a beach. There aren't many records of it online, but based on this picture I found doing a little digging, it was called Plage Brunette, then later, renamed to El Rancho Beach. You can see the train bridge not too far off at left.

Two Mountains had some nice parks with decent sports fields, considering its population at the time of less than 8,000. We had a Dairy Queen! But it was a walk-up counter style place that was only open during summer months. It's still there too, but is now a bigger, enclosed store open year-round.

We had a movie theatre on the main street, Oka Road, called the Normandie, that has 25 cent movies back in the early 1970s. I remember going there to watch Swiss Family Robinson.

You could always hear the church bells on Sunday. That's something unique to very specific towns in Eastern Canada, but especially in Quebec. I wouldn't be surprised if every town in Quebec had church bells. It's a sound you don't realize you miss until it's been absent and you hear it again.

The town had a nice amount of forest at its north end that was a pleasure to walk through, and was home to many kids' hideaways, complete with fire pits. Not much remains of that forest, but you can still see a few tree stands south and west of the newer Deux Montagnes train station, named Reserve Naturelle du Boise-Roger-Lemoine on the map.

There were some wonderful places that bring a lot of nostalgia back to its current and former residents from the 60s and 70s. Jed's, which I've blogged about before, was a favourite pit stop for candy and kids novelties right near the old train station. Long gone now and demolished to make way for the new modern train line currently being built. Mario's Pool Hall, across from the original Lake of Two Mountains High School (now Ecole des Mesanges). Mario's had in my humble opinion, the best home cut fries I've ever eaten and a killer juke box. It was the cause of many a high school student being late to class. 

Two Mountains was the perfect place to grow up. Safe. Friendly. My mom never locked the front door, even when she went out. That's a habit she didn't break for a long time.

Lots of waterfront. Did I mention the beach? It's gone now unfortunately. A 50 minute long train ride and you found yourself in downtown Montreal.

Things I learned lately 15 Jan

• Amen is Latin for "so be it".
• Dove chocolate and Dove soap are 2 different companies.
• The thing most confusing to folks about Covid restrictions (in Canada) has to do with their inconsistency. You can fly and in some cases go to school. You can shop and gather in groups of 5 or less, but only outdoors. Otherwise, it's no parties, no church, curfew by 8 pm unless you're walking a dog and no haircuts.
• The deepest lake in the US is Crater Lake in Oregon, at 1,949 feet (594 m).
• Texarkana is the only US city to straddle two US states.
  
  
  
• This is going to seems bit confusing, but North, South Carolina is 100 miles southeast of Due West, South Carolina.
• Iowa is the only US state that has a river on both its entire eastern and western border. On the east is the Mississippi and on the west is the Missouri.
• Alex, a famous African Grey parrot (1976-2007) pioneered new avenues in avian intelligence. He possessed more than 100 vocal labels for different objects, actions, and colors and could identify certain objects by their material. He could count up to 6 object sets and was working on seven and eight. Alex had advanced math skills for an animal. Alex's most impressive moment was when he asked an existential question about his own appearance. He had been presented with a mirror, and after observing himself asked, "What colour?" He then learned the word gray the colour of his feathers. He relished ordering his humans to perform various tasks for him. He also acted as a coach and cheerleader to his fellow birds, alternately encouraging or admonishing them during their lessons. His favorite toys were cardboard boxes, key chains and corks.
• Probiotics have not been proven to have a positive health benefit to our gut microbiome.
• Cold weather doesn't make you more susceptible to the common cold or flu. Cold weather makes the air in your nose and throat cooler, which in turn makes the viruses more active.
• The programming language that the financial services infrastructure is based upon hasn't been taught in computer sciences for 50 years.

Spider cat

 

Walls don't work

 

Small things 8 Jan

[This week on House Hunters] 

Realtor: "So what's your budget?" 

Wife: "Well, my husband and I each just got our $600 stimulus check, so...

Husband: "$1.2 million?"

[Library visit]

        Visitor: Do you have a book about Pavlov's dog?

Librarian: It rings a bell...

Visitor: How about a book about Schrodinger's cat?

Librarian: We might have it. And we might not.

• The door to the maternity ward says Push. Push! PUSH!!
• It turns out that the kids in Africa didn't care whether I finished all my supper when I was a kid.
• I have purposely switched my car's infotainment to the radio just so that anyone working on my car can't listen to my personal music.
• The car's weakest part is the nut holding the steering wheel.
• Spiders are the only web designers that like to find bugs.

Colonel Sanders' stick body

 

Wabi sab-e

Are you trying to get more Canadian content in your life? Do you like watching people renovate their own home? How about a cute little 100+ year old farmhouse in Nova Scotia, with the cutest couple you'll ever meet?

Then head on over to Wabi Sab-E and check Elliot and Hannah and Wally (the fur baby) out. Funny and joyful and positive. No bad vibes here. Slick editing. Even their soundtrack choices are fun.

I commend Elliot for his willingness to learn as much as he can - from YouTube no less - about the aspects of the projects he has no experience with. I could never trust myself to do that.

My fave episode is #22, but the DIY doghouse is a close second.

Bias from choice

When a baby reaches for one stuffed animal in a room filled with others just like it, that seemingly random choice is very bad news for those unpicked toys. The baby has likely just decided she doesn't like what she didn't choose.

Though researchers have long known that adults build unconscious biases over a lifetime of making choices between things that are essentially the same, Johns Hopkins University found that even babies engage in this phenomenon demonstrates that this way of justifying choice is intuitive and somehow fundamental to the human experience.

People assume they choose things that they like. But research suggests that's sometimes backwards. We like things because we choose them. And, we dislike things that we don't choose.

"I chose this, so I must like it. I didn't choose this other thing, so it must not be so good. Adults make these inferences unconsciously," said Lisa Feigenson, a Johns Hopkins cognitive scientist. "We justify our choice after the fact."

This helps explain why some people who choose one party or candidate over another continue to justify that choice, even when presented with evidence to suggest that the choice might have been misinformed.

Things I learned lately 8 Jan

• What Calgary budgets for snow removal every year: $40 million. What Montreal  budgets for snow removal every year: $160 million
  
  
  
• Norwegians are supposedly known for not eagerly talking to strangers. Unless they're hiking.
• There are two types of penne. Penne rigate has a grooved surface. Penne lisce has a smooth surface. Apparently Italians don't like penne lisce much because sauce doesn't stick to it very well.
• Between 1993 and 2009, law enforcement agencies in Europe believed they were dealing with a sophisticated female serial killer because her DNA had been found on diverse crime scenes throughout Austria, France, and Germany; it was determined, however, that the DNA from “The Phantom of Heilbronn” was actually from contamination at the (cotton swabs) factory of manufacture. 
• The metal foot on the end of a tape measure, known as the "tang", is designed to be loose. The tang floats slightly to account for its own width dependent on whether you’re measuring from the outside of an object (like from one end of a board to the other) or inside an object (like the distance one one edge of a window frame to another).
• Icelandic tourism has quadrupled since 2010.
• The first McDonalds opened in Iceland in 1993. The last one closed in 2009. High tariffs on the imported ingredients led to low profit margins. Burger King suffered the same fate. Fast food businesses that sourced Icelandic ingredients did better.
• The point of the outward facing staple setting is for a looser hold that is easily removed later.
• The key to even heating in a microwave is leaving a hole in the middle of the food.

When you gotta go but it's cold outside

 

The last EXO train to Deux Montagnes

Deux Montagnes, the town I grew up in, was made a viable bedroom community in large part thanks to the commuter train that serviced the town from downtown Montreal since 1925. The train service began in 1918, but only expanded out to St. Eustache-sur-le-lac (as it was known back then) in 1925. Fun fact: there was a time that the train ran a summer-only extension to Calumet Beach. Definitely before my time.

Before the line was upgraded in 1995, the trip into Montreal took anywhere from 50 to 65 minutes depending on the length of the train and whether it was being pulled by the old electric box cabs or not. You'd think a commuter would rather drive the trip, which could potentially go quicker by car. But the train made it possible to relax and socialize during the commute and not have to worry about parking. The train delivered you right into Station Centrale, which was connected indoors to both Place Ville Marie and Place Bonaventure. From either of those two places you could take a Metro anywhere downtown.

When I started working I took the train every day, getting off at Bois Franc (known as Val-Royal back then) to switch to a bus that took me out by the airport.

When CN ran the line, by the 1980s it eventually saw slumping ridership, in my humble opinion a direct result of severely reduced service and hiked fares. During WWII, the line ran 77 trains per day. At its later peak the line ran 44 trains per day. But at its worst, we were lucky to see 5 trains a day, especially on weekends. Ridership on the entire line went from almost 9 million per year in 1966 down to a low of 2 million in 1981. CN even tried to abandon the line. Thankfully, the Quebec government would not permit this and the same people who ran the Montreal transit system (STCUM) took it over in 1982 and modernized it in 1992.

Under the new Réseau express métropolitain (REM) project, the Deux-Montagnes line is being converted to driverless light metro operation which will see a train arrive every 5 minutes at peak operating times and every 15 during off-peak. The trip downtown on the REM system should take no more than 35 minutes, finally much faster than a car trip. It will also run 20 hours a day, which will be welcome news for those wanting to attend hockey games and other late night events downtown.

The problem is that there's a lot of work required across the entire system to transform the existing line, including bigger stations, overpasses and track and catenary rebuilds. So the line is shut down as of 31 Dec 2020 to allow for full-time construction to begin.

In this video, some hard core train fans decided to ride the last scheduled train on the last leg between the two stations in Deux Montagnes. They even drank a toast, with alcohol, on the train. It's a bittersweet time for Deux Montagnes residents, who now have to wait over 3 years to see the project completed and the new line commissioned.

The new REM line will open in 2024, at which point it will also be possible to travel to the airport by train.