Data show that REM downtimes closely followed the temperature last winter.
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Kate
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Kate
The RCMP have uncovered a plot cooked up by two men at Montreal’s ICAO headquarters to traffic Chinese war materiel to Libya. Sounds like a background plot for a bad action movie.
Blork
Malformed link.
Kate
Thanks, fixed
Ian
Bon Cop, Bad Cop 3
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Kate
Quebec is putting up $7.8 million for housing offices and municipalities in advance of moving day, meant to help people in a jam looking for a new place to live that they can afford.
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Kate
Mayor Plante says it’s inutile to say “Hi” after “Bonjour” and merchants should speak French to customers.
Incidentally, Bernard Drainville is blaming the rise in English spoken in French schools on asylum seekers. Note that it isn’t a question any more of languages other than French – there must be some kids speaking Arabic or Spanish, for example – it’s English, that wickedest temptress among languages.
Ian
Multiculturalism is an English plot to destroy French, didn’t you hear?
It’s just a variation on white replacement theory.Blork
Is it only anglos who understand that the “hi” is code for “I won’t judge you or be harsh with you if you happen to speak English?”
Ian
I still think âllo/’allo would be an ideal solution. But yeah, like Blork said, French first & let people know they can switch if they want. If it was signage it would follow OQLF rules – English second, and half as important.
MarcG
Maybe it needs to be whispered so it’s half the volume.
Kate
Blork, they know, and they don’t want that option to be offered.
Ian
Well, therein lies the rub. It’s not that French isn’t represented, or even dominant; it’s that it’s not exclusive.
Kate
How will this square with summer’s tourism season? Are we really meant to stick stubbornly to French when asked directions by an American or British tourist?
Ian
I guess like in Europe people would simply say “do you speak English” but I’m sure once the bonjour/hi problem has been resolved, speaking any language in public other than French … oh wait
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Kate
The Guardian reports on Céline Dion’s struggle with stiff person syndrome, essentially rewording a piece (in English) in Vogue France, photographed wearing some very odd clothes.
qatzelok
The clothing in the Vogue article appear to be therapeutic so a kinesiologist might be required to explain them to civilians.
Ian
Or perhaps an upholsterer.
Blork
walkerp
I didn’t realize she was only 55! That’s really sad and sucks for her. Anglos like to joke about her because we can’t deal with sincerity but she has always struck me as a fundamentally decent person who never allowed her celebrity to overcome her humanity. I attribute a lot of that to her Quebec background.
JP
It’s a great interview. I’m glad she is doing better. My two favourite blogs rarely overlap but today both have a post about Celine’s interview!
Unlike a lot of celebrities, Celine buys all her designer clothes: “I have always bought everything myself. I didn’t want to borrow. It’s a form of respect. People pay to come and hear me sing, so I pay to buy myself clothes by designers.”
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Kate
Gilbert Rozon is in La Presse Tuesday blaming everyone except himself for the downfall of Just For Laughs. His letter to the paper is reproduced in full.
Blork
Side note: welcome to the new Longueuil Comique Fest! https://www.lapresse.ca/arts/humour/2024-04-23/longueuil-comique-fest/un-nouveau-festival-d-humour-sur-la-rive-sud.php
PatrickC
The article says there were four sisters of Rozon’s among the “hauts dirigeants” of the company. That’s a lot of nepo. That said, some of his criticisms of the way media capitalism works sound plausible to me.
Kate
I’ve mentioned before, I think, that I worked there in the graphic design department in summer 2009. His twin sisters would show up occasionally and we gave them precedence over anything else going on. They used to run a twins parade that sort of hung off the main festival and was their pet project. I don’t think it made any money.
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Kate
The RCMP is taking over investigation of a bomb scare at the Museum of Fine Arts on April 7. The caller made other threats, a young person has been questioned, and his apparent motives seem to have alerted the Mounties.
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Kate
Four cars were torched early Tuesday at a repair garage in Hochelaga. This incident follows other vehicle arsons over the weekend.
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Kate
99.5% of the workers at the Port of Montreal have rejected the latest contract offer from the Maritime Employers Association.
The CSN is making moves to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Laval.
Strike action is likely to be happening at SAQ stores soon.
Meantime, the strike by the 1600 teaching assistants at McGill has ended.
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Kate
Two incidents Monday, one in Dorval and the other in Rosemont, involved suspects crashing into police cars. There have been a lot of incidents of car thieves attacking police in recent weeks.
In tangential news, TVA is reporting an incident from the weekend in which a driver at the wheel of a BMW without plates fled from police who had drawn their guns. The vehicle surged onto the downtown sidewalk as the driver fled.
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Kate
The OQLF says that bonjour-hi is on the rise in Montreal, and complaints about lack of service in French are surging. Same CP story as Radio‑Canada in English.
And Bernard Drainville is pondering punishments for students who speak English in class.
jeather
That will certainly work to make teenagers love French.
Ian
I enjoyed how the article leads in with “la possibilité de pénaliser les élèves qui ne parlent pas français en classe” but quickly drops the pretense and starts banging on about English. How quickly ethnonationalism descends into targetted suppression.
That said, I sent my kid to French school and they were forbidden from speaking any language other than French in the school … that was CSDM. I would be surprised if it were different in Vaudreuil, but then again lots of things surprise me.
Kate
Ian, what happened if someone disobeyed and spoke some language other than French?
Was the rule just for the classroom or was it in the whole building and grounds? I remember a story about the difficulty some families had when siblings were punished for speaking together in their home language in the schoolyard.
dwgs
Anglo here who sent his kids to French school (by choice). Yes, they were punished for speaking anything but French in the schoolyard, the halls, the bathrooms…
Kevin
It’s always amusing when reactionaries discover something that’s been happening under their noses for decades.
The number of anglophones in Vaudreuil-Dorion has been growing immensely this century, going from 13% of the city’s population to 22%.
All those kids who grew up in the West Island in the 70s, 80s, and 90s moved further west to have families.
Uatu
Why is everyone upset about being greeted in French and Norwegian? /s
Tee Owe
I think in Norwegian it’s Hej (though pronounced the same, also in Danish and Swedish) – nice comment!
walkerp
I worked as a service de garde yard monitor many years ago in Rosemont and we were supposed to ensure that the kids spoke french in the playground. Currently, my child goes to french primary school and they don’t seem to enforce it there anymore. Personally, I’m all for enforcing french without being too aggressive and draconian about it as some kids will default to their english gang and they can fall behind in their accent and idiomatic usage of french.
qatzelok
@jeather: “That will certainly work to make teenagers love French.”
You say “love it” as if French was an ancient tribal dance kept alive to amuse the authenticy-shopping colonist. The idea is to get people *to speak it* not just love French like they do in some swamps in Louisiana.
Don’t forget that English became a global language through major punishments to other languages and civilizations.
jeather
I say “love” not “use” that because the article specifically quotes Drainville as saying that: de les inciter pas juste à parler, mais à aimer le français, à avoir le goût de l’apprendre et à le parler au quotidien
I’m not saying it’s a bad rule (or a good rule; I don’t have the knowledge here), I’m saying that losing marks for speaking in English in science class is not a rule that is designed to make teenagers love French.
giriş
It’s concerning to see linguistic tensions rising in Montreal. I understand the importance of preserving French, but it feels punitive to consider penalizing students for speaking English in class. Language should bridge communities, not divide them.
MarcG
Old meets new: AI spam on the Quebec language debate.
Ian
My older daughter went to an EMSB school and it was required that all the children speak French in the playground and no other language as the yard monitors were CSDM and the CSDM was not allowed to ask their workers to speak any language other than French, and many of them felt that if the children were speaking their own languages they might be speaking behind the monitors’ backs. They were given detention for speaking any language other than French. In an English school.
This was part of the reason I sent my younger daughter to a French school, so that it would at least make sense – and she would actually learn French in school instead of just being punished for not speaking it.
This is not a metaphor, but could be.
@qatzi Let me remind you about Haiti, Algeria, etc. None of those people spoke French because they were interested in learning fun new languages.
Ian
Sorry for the typos, I was just emerging from a lovely nap.
@Kate to answer your question it was just a reprimand in the French school, it was a pretty progressive school that only used punitive measures as a last resort. The tension between French and Englsih was lower there than in the English school I found, as so many of the kids were not Canadian, so studying in French – kind of a “we’re all in the same boat” vibe so they actually seemed to have fun with it, like enforcing rules of a game. Lots of Ubisoft workers’ kids and American kids. Of course that is the genteel and well-heeled version of what Mile End has turned into, mileage may vary in more gritty parts of town.Kate
Did a light proofread just now.
It’s kind of a weird but typical metaphor – being punished for speaking English at recess in an English‑language school.
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Kate
After three pepper spray incidents in the metro last week, the STM has had to admit that it’s hard to control a substance that’s legal to buy. Incidents have been gradually on the rise for a decade.
P
I’ve been under the impression that it’s illegal to buy or sell pepper already anywhere in the country. Anyone got any idea whether that’s the case?
Andrew
It’s illegal to carry it to use as a weapon, including self defence so intent matters. MEC sells bear spray and that’s totally legal on the trails. Amazon calls it dog spray, but I don’t know if anyone would believe that in the city unless you’re a mailman in a sitcom.
Ephraim
It’s like protecting yourself in your home… they would expect that if you have kids you might have a baseball bat, but you better not have a sock over it (in case the thief grabs it, they get the sock, you still have the bat) and you better have children in the home. Now… a fire extinguisher, that everyone has a reason to have one in their home and you can use it to spray someone or hit someone. That is coincidental… a bat, pepper spray or bear spray might not. But wasp nest spray, that might be needed even in the city.
Ian
It’s always easier to explain a hammer than a knife … but basically yeah if you stab someone with a pen, that pen is now a weapon and you get charged with assault with a weapon.
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Kate
Item for Ian: there’s a clown festival starting this Thursday.
Ian
Oh boy! All our problems will be solved! 😀
Ephraim
Is the National Assembly in recess?
Ian
I’d sooner have Pierrot than Legault.
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Kate
La Presse has a dossier Monday on how Quebec’s emergency rooms are more overwhelmed than before Covid, despite political promises. Christian Dubé says things will improve in 2025 and I’m sure the reanimated Canadiens will win the Stanley Cup next season too.
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Kate
A brawl on a city bus in Hochelaga on Sunday evening sent one man to hospital. That seems to be the entire police blotter for the weekend, except for a torched car.
Update: and a second torched car item.
Ephraim
Never look for chametz in your car with a candle.. 😀 (Those who know, know. All others… sorry!)
Ian
With my kids and their snacks my car is FULL of chametz haha … I’m looking forward to the bonfire tonight but I don’t think I’ll park in it.
Kate
I was going to slide a “gut yontif” in here somewhere, but it looks like we’ve already got one.
Ephraim
@Ian – Car is safe, it’s too late after 11:42AM anyway. 😀
Ian
פשוט המזל שלי
Here I am with such an opportunity and stuck with this car full of crumbs 😀Ephraim
They will buy them back next Tuesday night
Ian
Nah it’s just shagetz, I should just vaccum my car 😉
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