This is Montreal

The Montreal Alouettes have bid farewell to their in-house dance and cheerleading program. For the first time this season, Montreal’s football team has partnered up with the Université de Montréal Carabins stunt cheer squad instead. For some, it’s the end of an era. For others, it’s just another evolution. CBC journalist Douglas Gelevan takes us through the legacy of the Alouettes cheerleaders, from the baton-tossing Majorettes of the 50s, through the pom-pom shaking era of the 60s and 70s, to the knee-high socks of the 80s, right up to modern day. We’ll hear how the cheerleaders’ style, how they were perceived — and whether they got paid — reflected the attitudes of Montreal society throughout the decades.

At a meeting at city hall on Tuesday night, Montreal police chief Fady Dagher spoke publicly about an internal investigation into allegations of racist, violent acts by police officers at Station 39 in Montréal-Nord. While Dagher is proposing internal reforms, columnist Noémi Mercier believes we also need to examine bigger questions about the place of police in Quebec. She crunched the numbers for L’actualité magazine and found that Montreal has more police officers per capita than any other major Canadian city.

While the Island of Montreal is projected to lose nearly 10 per cent of its population in the next 25 years, some other nearby regions like the Laurentians are growing. CBC’s Aatefeh Padidar spoke with some new Laurentians residents — including some former Montrealers — about what prompted them to move. And we’ll hear what this population shift could mean, both for the regions that are losing residents and those that are gaining them.

July is peak season for biking in Montreal. It’s also one of the months when the most cyclists are hit by cars. The numbers show that a handful of intersections account for a large number of collisions involving bikes. CBC reporter Patricia Kozicka breaks down what makes these intersections so dangerous and what can be done to fix them.

A teenager from Blainville is asking international groups to investigate the environmental impact of Stablex, a US-owned hazardous waste site in his community. 14-year-old William Guindon argues that Canada and Quebec have failed to apply their own environmental protection laws, so now he’s taking his fight global by filing requests to the United Nations and to an environmental watchdog under the Canada-US-Mexico agreement (CUSMA). CBC journalist Sarah Jesmer looks at the controversy around the site, and what power these international bodies have to respond, particularly in the midst of trade tensions with the US.