This is Montreal

When a massive hole opened up in the Sauvagine bridge in Chateauguay, it didn’t just provide a clear view of the frozen river below, it arguably gave us a pretty clear picture of the challenges facing Quebec's road infrastructure. By some measures, more than 40 per cent of the province’s roads aren’t in good shape. With the provincial budget coming, engineers and economists are calling for better investments in road maintenance. But with a maintenance deficit in the tens of billions of dollars, is it a budget hole we can actually patch?

When the rest of us head inside, a crew of researchers from McGill and UQAM gear up and brave the freezing rain, to try to better understand the wildly unpredictable cocktail of precipitation that can happen when the temperature hovers around zero. The goal is to help cities and citizens be better prepared when an ice storm is looming. But just capturing that data can be a big challenge.

​In the ​spring of 1940, Nazi Germany had gone on the offensive. France and other European countries had been invaded and Britain could be next. So​ Britain devised a plan to secretly ship its wealth out of the country to keep it from Nazi hands and help finance the war. A top secret plan was born and one downtown Montreal basement would play a starring role. Producer Craig Desson brings us this story.

The city of Montreal’s new administration is promising to do more to accelerate the pace of building affordable rentals, even as it softens the requirements for private developers to invest in or build social housing. Host Ainslie MacLellan sat down with Caroline Braun, executive committee member in charge of housing for the city at the end of January to hear more about her administration's vision for how to get housing built.

If Canada’s women’s hockey team has developed to where it is today, and if professional women’s hockey in Montreal has become a reality, it’s in large part due to Daniele Sauvageau. CBC journalist Melinda Dalton traces Sauvageau’s journey from a hockey-loving kid in Deux-Montagnes who wasn’t allowed to play, to being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Watch the video documentary here.