The city bought eight new ice-crushing machines last year but has been cautious about using them because they can damage the road surface if the ice is too thin. I haven’t spotted one in use yet.
Updates from January, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A five-alarm fire broke out early Saturday in a row triplex in Verdun and has caused the evacuation of 100 people and a few minor injuries. No mention yet of the cause.
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Kate
There’s various items this weekend about a condo name or sign that caused a stir and has been taken down. The name of the project is Osha, based on the name Hochelaga, claimed to be “un dérivé des termes Osha et Aga, «qui auraient été donnés par les autochtones à Jacques Cartier et à son équipage à leur arrivée» and it claims to be a “remarquable habitat.”
The developers used an engraving of Jacques Cartier meeting the natives that’s been often reproduced, and their website cited Billy Two Rivers, who has said he was never consulted. Citing a Mohawk for the etymology is also dubious because “Hochelaga” was presumably a name Cartier heard from the Iroquoians, who spoke a different language.
The condo project website now says “We are sensitive to the questions raised by some people regarding our recent advertising campaign. The purpose of the latter is not to offend anyone, we will change to remove certain historical references.”
Query: If you want some free publicity for your product these days, is it worth taking a chance on doing something disrespectful of the native community, then getting free PR before apologizing?
Blork
A generation ago, white people were criticized for ignoring history. Now white people are criticized if they reference history.
While the reference to Billy Two Rivers is iffy — or is it? Isn’t it just a statement that BTR said something? I’m not sure it’s a problem since he is a public figure.
Otherwise, I’m not really sure what the problem is. It’s a development in Hochelaga. Hochelaga has that history. The Mohawk/Iroquois mixup is regrettable, but I doubt that’s behind much of the complaints. Basically this sounds like another case of oversensitivity — primarily by white people with a saviour complex or a strong need for virtue signalling.
While I think it’s appropriate to complain if there is a legitimate complaint, there’s a downside to complaining every time you feel offended. If people blow up every time there is a first nations reference the result will be nobody ever mentioning first nations, which basically means the erasing of history.
Ian
I was ferrying children home from a sleepover in HoMa and I saw 2 billboards with that ad still up yesterday, one on Viau, one on Notre-Dame east.Maybe they had to take one specific billboard down but there are others still up.
JP
I don’t think this is about white people being criticized if they reference history.
I think it’s more white people (those are your words) or rather condo developers being criticized for referencing “history”/the native peoples who lived on this land in ADVERTISING a condo development. The irony of which is that this can only happen because in the 500 years or so since Cartier’s arrival, they have pretty much been pushed off the island or have disappeared.
I think it’s in poor taste to use this “history” in advertising/promoting a condo development. It’s not like these native groups still exist anywhere close to the neighborhood and, if they don’t exist, why don’t they? Maybe the condo developers want to show that condo development is not completely unlike colony development.
I don’t know that this is an oversensitivity. For what it’s worth, I’m not white or native, and I have absolutely no idea who lodged the complaint, but this is my take on it. I’m not even opposed to condos or their development. If I could afford one, I would even look into it. I do, however, feel that the advertising is distasteful.
Blork
Disclaimer: I want to state that I’m not trolling and I don’t even have a firm position on this. I’m just trying to understand it.
The problem (for me at least) is that *the problem* isn’t very well articulated. And this is frustrating because I see more and more of this — people jumping on bandwagons of complaint about this or that yet they are unable to clearly articulate what they are complaining about or to offer good alternatives.
In this case, imagine if the condo promotions only showed Jacques Cartier standing there with a big grin, with no mention of the Iroquois or any other first nations; would that be OK? I doubt it. Then the complaints would be about “white washing” or otherwise ignoring native history.
So what’s the solution? They definitely could have been a bit more sensitive in how the history is presented. But this brings us back to my concluding thought on my original post, which is if you need to be so hypersensitive and to walk on eggshells every time you make a reference to native history, the results will be that people will basically say “fuck that” and will stop referencing native history at all, because it’s too much trouble.
It would be one thing if the “problem” in this case were very clear and well understood. But it’s not. Whatever the issue here is, it seems worthy of a bit of a “tut-tut” and maybe a small correction, but that’s about it. It seems like we’ve lost the ability to make a big thing out of a big thing and a small thing out of a small thing. I feel like there are mobs of spring-loaded people all over the place just waiting to pounce at the slightest little problem and to treat it like it’s the end of the world. WTF?
Mark Côté
Can we agree that there are certain subjects that are more sensitive than others? The effects of colonization continue to this day. The sensitivity to this amongst a growing part of the white population is pretty new, arguably one or two generations. Google around for the treatment of First Nations people, for the (lack of) support for their communities, for the persistent ignorance of not just their culture but also what has been done to them. When it comes to advertising in particular, I think it’s entirely reasonable to expect some care and respect.
Blork
@Mark Côté: I don’t think there’s any serious disagreement that first nations people have been treated badly over the centuries. And I certainly don’t have any problem putting time, attention, and resources into the various reconciliation efforts, and clean water initiatives, etc. Those are all concrete issues with concrete positive solutions.
But what’s this? People getting angry because you mention that a place has some native history? WTF is that? Maybe, arguably, it’s in bad taste to invoke that for a real estate development, but FFS it’s really no big deal. It’s just a reference to the area’s history. I’m pretty sure what’s REALLY happening is the neighbourhood’s anti-gentrification people are just grasping at anything they can use to discredit the project.
I’ll gladly take a different position if someone can clearly articulate what exactly is the problem. Saying natives have been treated badly is not the issue *here* because this has nothing to do with the treatment of natives. It’s not a native reserve was expropriated to build the condos. It’s not like sacred land is being used to build the condos. This is like in the US where some white people are so afraid of invoking slavery that they never ever mention black people. How does that help?
One interesting tidbit: the contentious image of Jacques Cartier and his entourage greeting the Iroquois has been photoshopped; in the original image, Cartier has a cross dangling from his outstretched hand. In the Osha condo promos the cross is missing.
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Kate
River navigation is opening up gradually after a big ice jam on Lac St-Pierre at Sorel.
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Kate
After years of wrangling, the massive old Jésus-Marie convent in Outremont is being converted into posh condos, and the developer has been caught sending truckloads of contaminated soil to be dumped on agricultural land outside the city.
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Kate
The wording used about Valérie Plante’s attitude to the Royalmount project varies. Radio-Canada says she thinks the project must be revised and TVA’s headline says something similar while CTV emphasizes that the mayor hopes to hammer out differences with the developer and Global simply says the project faces a setback. Christopher Curtis in the Gazette brings nuance to the story, but traffic problems and longer commutes for drivers are still front and centre in the Gazette’s view, rather than the overall damage such a project risks bringing to the urban fabric.
david100
Can she stop it really?
Kate
Yes, she can. She has leverage through the agglomeration council and can appeal to Quebec to enforce the PMAD, and she could deny infrastructure support for the project. TMR can trumpet that it’s their land and they can do what they like, but it’s not on a different planet. There’s no reason a town of 22,000 people should carry out a project that will damage the surrounding city for generations.
Whether it would be politically advisable for Plante to act – that’s another issue.
Bill Binns
I don’t care too much about this mall one way or the other but I have seen so many dead and dying malls across the US that I’m surprised anyone can put the funding together to build one anymore. Maybe there is something different going on Quebec that makes malls a safer bet? Carrefour seems particularly healthy. I haven’t been to Rockland in years but it’s still around afaik. The burbs are full of the type of big box anchored strip malls that are dying at an alarming rate elsewhere (just yesterday I saw an old Best Buy in Florida that is now a church). I wonder if Quebec has a lower rate of engagement with the internet linked to our appalling literacy rate and that one symptom of this is that brick and mortar retail will hang on a little longer.
mare
If this project goes through it’s maybe time for some old fashioned action like chaining yourself to trees and diggers. Can millenniums be bothered to do such things anymore? The opposition against tuition hikes was successful in swaying public opinion and, after elections, politics.
However this is an issue that’s not causing immediate personal financial loss; can it move people into action to protest? I think it’s a pretty important issue, but everybody in Quebec seems rather blasé about other big bad things that happened or are happening in Montreal and Quebec, like the REM and the “reforms” in healthcare and education. Have we given up? Okay, maybe the reality of climate change makes this all moot in the next decade of two, so why bother now.
Blork
@Bill Binns, this isn’t a “mall,” it’s a “lifestyle center.” Malls are indeed dying, but lifestyle centers and going gangbusters all over. Dix-30, for example, is doing really well. It is most def no a “mall.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_center
(I’m not endorsing it; just pointing out that it’s not a “mall.”)
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Kate
Climate change means Montreal faces more temperature swings and longer cold snaps.
Raymond Lutz
And yet, nothing in the CBC article about the occurring mechanism… ie instabilities in the polar vortex caused by a warmer arctic:
“But Filippelli said it’s likely that warming surface temperatures in the Arctic might contribute to the destabilization of the polar vortex. Because it’s locked into a vicious warming cycle the region is warming over twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Warm air melts bright white, reflective sea ice, which then allows the vast, dark open ocean to absorb more heat, and release more heat. This means more relatively warm air that can potentially destabilize the cold, fenced-in Arctic. ” see source for a nice 3D animation of our January fucked up polar vortex.
Soon (10 yrs) agricultural yields will plummet and food prices will skyrocket. People fed up by our elite inaction will take the streets. Will some kids lose an eye to a stun grenade? Extinction Rebellion!
PS: we are ALREADY at +1.5C warmer than preindustrial global means.
qatzelok
I’ve noticed slightly fewer people at the Car Show this year. I guess they’re finding it hard to get there with all the ice and the flooded streets.
Ian
I drove past it yesterday on my way to the east end and there are no flooded streets, and the ice is mostly gone in the business district.
qatzelok
A drive-by comment. ^^^
Ian
Hey at least I was driving with a carload of teenagers in a hatchback that gets great mileage 😀
Spi 21:27 on 2019-01-26 Permalink
So the sidewalks need to be larger than most, clear of debris and pedestrian (because they need to be rolling at a certain speed to be effective) and the ice has to be just thick enough to not damage the road surface?
What kind of goldilock scenario were these things purchased for exactly?
Kate 09:23 on 2019-01-27 Permalink
On Facebook someone describes watching the machine chew up the ice on a hilly street and apparently it’s very efficient, but you know how Facebook is – I can’t find the item any more.