Although police said the man who attacked a priest during a service at St Joseph’s Oratory didn’t have a political motive, there was a police presence during Sunday services there. Whether this was to reassure the public or whether police are concerned the attack wasn’t necessarily the act of one isolated nut is not clear.
Updates from March, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
STM is tweeting that three quarters of the buses grounded late last week are back in service but there still may be some slowdowns Monday morning. La Presse has some details.
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Kate
Taxi drivers held a meeting Sunday in advance of a general strike Monday. They’re pushing for the withdrawal of Bill 17 meant to create a legal framework to allow Uber and other ride-sharing systems to offer services lawfully in Quebec – a change they say will end their industry and destroy their livelihoods.
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Kate
A demonstration against racism and against CAQ government policies on immigration and secularism was held Sunday afternoon downtown, with hundreds marching peacefully through the streets.
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Kate
Residents in eastern Montreal are not happy with the poor air quality from industrial activity in the area.
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Kate
Anjou councillor Lynne Shand is making a name for herself this weekend with a Facebook rant against an emergency doctor who looked after her in hijab. Toula Drimonis has more of her online ranting.
Update: Valérie Plante has schooled Shand on Twitter; Shand maintains she is “realistic” – totally ignoring the distinction between individual choice and institutional endorsement of religious symbols. As they say in French “elle persiste et signe.” Bye-bye, Ms. Shand.
Faiz Imam
@steverukavina: “Anjou borough mayor Luis Miranda tells CBC he finds Shand’s comments “unfortunate”, but that for now he’ll keep her as part of his team and let voters decide”
That’s not good enough. I hope outrage here builds steam because her comments are completely unacceptable.
We need to take a stronger stance and we need to do it fast.
Because if you really believe in the great replacement conspiracy, the only logical end result Is violence, and we have already been too close to that to let it happen again.
Kate
Faiz Imam, from something I read or heard today I don’t think there’s a mechanism in municipal law for dumping a duly elected councillor. But the next municipal election is still pretty far off, so I don’t think Miranda should get to wash his hands so fast. He could at least chuck her out of the Anjou party and make her sit as an independent.
Update: Luis Miranda says it isn’t in his power to fire anyone from Équipe Anjou. That seems odd. A party leader should be able to chuck any member out who openly expresses views incompatible with the party’s principles.
SMD
An online petition calling for her to resign already has over 2,000 signatures: http://www.change.org/p/luis-miranda-démission-de-la-conseillère-lynne-shand-pour-propos-racistes-et-islamophobes.
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Kate
The statue of Queen Victoria outside McGill’s Pollack Hall was covered in green paint, but nobody has yet claimed the act or delivered a manifesto.
Would’ve gone better with last weekend’s parade.
Faiz Imam
We are seeing an increased consciousness of Imperialism and Canada’s role in empire, I expect all signs of it that are actively venerated in the public sphere (distinct from being taught as part of history) will be both critiqued and vandalized till they are removed.
Kate
I think there’s a distinction between a queen and a politician like Macdonald, though. She was born into her situation and while she became a figurehead during a colonial time – and probably held some of the prejudices common in that time – she was not a politician or otherwise ambitious. She didn’t have to be.
In addition, I don’t know of any quotes or cites from Victoria expressing xenophobia. Not saying she was a saint, just that having the statue there is a reminder to us of a historical time when our feelings were different and kings and queens were to be honoured. There’s also the Square Victoria statue and the one that’s somewhere in the MUHC hospital (used to be at the Vic), as well as Edward VII in Phillips Square. Should they all come down?
(As a woman, I have always had a slight soft spot for seeing Victoria up there looking regal, regardless of any other factors. How many statues of real women do we have?)
Macdonald, on the other hand, didn’t become prime minister by random chance, and once in power, he was in a position to act on attitudes we now find unconscionable toward Canada’s aboriginal people – including the Métis – and immigrants from China and elsewhere. He was our first prime minister, but he established this country on a basis of intransigence and mercilessness toward difference, so I think that statue does need to come down.
Kevin
I received a 600-word document from people claiming credit for this act of vandalism.
It seems their main objection is that people weren’t very nice in the past, and they blame figureheads for the actions of every single individual.
Chris
Kevin, lol, nice summary! Did they explain why the colour green? Does it symbolize something, or was it just on sale?
Are there any statues of Mahatma Gandhi in Montreal? I’m temped (not really) to cover it in paint as an experiment, to see if the media and twitterati would cover it differently. The University of Ghana managed to get rid of their status of that racist, so could we I guess.
JaneyB
I still say better to add statues nearby to tell the story of those who were colonized instead of removing the offenders. The new configuration can then provide an opportunity to think about the bad deeds and increase awareness.
Ian
That would be a great idea. I’d love to see more statues in the city, too, especially representing marginalized histories.
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Kate
Nova Bus is promising quick delivery of new parts for the city’s hybrid buses garaged last week after a recall over a steering system glitch. There have been no reports so far of any incident caused by the problem; other towns have been inconvenienced but the problem has affected the STM most.
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Kate
Daily Hive claims to have a rundown of how much money you need to live alone in 2019 in this city.
Speaking of which, there’s a petition to the National Assembly to review the rental board’s aims and improve its accessibility. It may be futile in this CAQ era, but you never know.
Blork
Articles like this are pretty silly and don’t really mean much. Fortunately the tone is also silly, so it’s at least consistent.
Spoiler: the amount they arrive at is $2,218.58 per month/ $26,622.96 annually (after income tax). But that amount assumes:
• Downtown appartment.
• At least one dinner out, a brunch or two, and a couple of movie nights per month.
• 2-3 drinks at a bar once per week.
• Gym membership.
• About 10 lattés per month.None of that is excessive, but you could easily lower that amount by not living right downtown, not going to movies, not buying expensive lattés, etc. So the idea that you NEED $2218 a month is a bit spurious. It’s also weird that the article seems to think this is expensive.
On the other hand, the article isn’t about what one actually needs to survive. It’s more about what a millennial from Ontario would need to have a reasonably fun life as a downtown Montrealer.
mare
The minimum you need for other Canadian cities according to the same website (with a lot of the same stock photos):
Toronto: $3,582.24 per month/ $42,986.88 annually.
Vancouver: $3,355.80 per month/ $40,269.60 annually
The Calgary story is apparently not finished yet.So Montreal is super cheap with its “MINIMUM* of $2,218.58 per month/ $26,622.96 annually.
(I live much cheaper, I’m just doing my taxes. But I’m not a 30-something and I don’t drink coffee and don’t party.)
Blork
I hate to get all “back in my day…” (that’s a lie; I actually love doing that!) but my first few years in Montreal involved:
• Very shitty apartments, not downtown (OK, the first was in the McGill Ghetto, but that was less than a year).
• Maximum 1 dinner out a month, and Arahova on St-Viateur was as fancy as it got.
• Zero brunches ever.
• Zero gym memberships.
• Zero lattés.
• Drinks maybe once a month max, beer only, and only a few.For two years my monthly budget for entertainment/drinks/non-grocery store food was less than $20. A month. This was late 80s/early 90s, not the 1940s. I do not recommend living like this. The only upside was it made me more sympathetic towards panhandlers and petty thieves.
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Kate
The CAQ is kindly funding the east-end beach in Pointe-aux-Trembles whose MNA is one of the island’s two CAQ representatives as well as minister for the Montreal region. Quebec is ponying up $5 million for the project expected to take until 2022.
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Kate
As the Radio-Canada writer here observes, enthusiasm here for baseball peaks with the Blue Jays exhibition games played here at the stadium in springtime; it’s a series of brief interviews with people concerned about the potential profitability of returning a professional team to this city.
Fact is, baseball is declining in popularity all over. Putting up an expensive stadium here would be a hobby for a few billionaires, with the public purse inveigled into footing the bill. A stadium that would stand empty most of the time. Please let us not be idiots about this.
Kevin
The contract Mike Trout just signed is a nail in the coffin of this silly exercise. $426 million over 10 years.
The best paid hockey players get a quarter of that.
There will be lots of baseball news over the next week, but I want to hear these people explain how baseball in Montreal will be able to afford these salaries
Uatu
It would be good to see how many young people are interested since they’re the future fanbase to keep a franchise viable. Right now the only ones who are enthusiastic are nostalgic baby boomers and rich speculators.
Faiz Imam
While I’m super against the expos coming back, I have to push back a little bit on this hate.
I’ve gone to my share of blue Jay’s games in Toronto, and I know the league data pretty well. The Jays games are very full and lean extremely young and very multicultural.
In a city where sports tickets are unaffordable, baseball is realistically cheap.
This is an older article, but it reflects what I’ve seen:
While baseball doesn’t belong in Montreal, the sport is in a period of transition and I’d say it’ll come out of it just fine.
Kate
“Hate” is a harsh word. I simply think it’s a bad idea.
Chris
Baseball is too slow and boring for today’s attention span.
GC
I’m actually a fan of baseball, but I still want us to be realistic about the viability of another Montreal team. We tried it once and it failed. What reason is there to think it will be more successful a second time?
dhomas
I am fully against this project. I don’t think a single red cent of public money should be spent on it. However, the whole “we tried it before and it didn’t work” narrative is a poor argument against it. Nothing would ever improve if we stopped trying after every failure. Failure leads us to get better by figuring out what doesn’t work. Unfortunately in this case, I’m worried that the folks who want to bring a new MLB team to Montreal have learned that they need more government incentives to make this second go-round work.
GC
I agree with you to a point, dhomas, but we try something different the second time or there’s no point. What’s going to be done differently this time?
Josh
Kevin – the thing is the TV money. The TV contracts are worth a lot more now than they were in the Expos’ day, across the board. Small cities like San Diego and Tampa, where they don’t sell out, are able to sign big stars to large contracts because of their regional TV deals. Also: Revenue sharing exists in a way now that it didn’t when the Expos left (the case of the Expos was in fact part of the impetus to change that structure).
This information is all out there for anyone who wants to actually do some research!
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Kate
The most recent head count of the homeless in Montreal was taken last April, but for some reason the results haven’t yet been released. They’re expected next week, and Pierre-André Normandin tells us the numbers are predicted to have risen since the only other such census, taken in 2015.
It wouldn’t surprise me. As I’ve recounted before, I volunteered for the 2015 census, and by chance it was an atypical evening downtown. A big student march was also taking place that night, with a pervasive police presence on the ground as well as helicopter surveillance, so that a lot of folks would’ve been lying low and not answering nosy questions from people with clipboards. The resulting numbers in 2015 were bound to have been on the low side for this reason.
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Kate
Like an elevator ascending an inclined tower, costs to upgrade the Olympic stadium are sliding inexorably upward.
Ephraim
Looking for someone actually surprised by this news….
Frankie
It should be demolished, although the disruption it would create in the area during the demo, not to mention all that concrete, rebar and everything else in there ending up in landfills, would be an environmental mess. Maybe sell off pocket size chunks of it for 10 bucks a piece? What’s an extra 10 bucks to finally own a piece of something you have been paying for for decades?
Faiz Imam
Honestly, there are so many markets, fairs and festivals that we could use that space for. Unfortunately under the current system the rental costs are prohibitive, but from what ive’ read, a key part of the renovations is to make it much easier to rent the floor or a small part of the stadium.
Given how much of a winter city we are, i’m always surprised we don’t make better use out of what is the biggest climate controlled volume of space in the city.
Hopefully once it gets renovated, we can come up with more community events and such to make use of it in the winter months.
dhomas
@Frankie: The Big O has been paid off since 2006. It’s time to put the tired “Big Owe” trope to rest. The total cost was just shy of $1.5 billion (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Stadium_(Montreal) ). We spend a whole lot more elsewhere (the Turcot alone is costing almost $4 billion, plus whatever overages they can tack on).
I only wish they would make better use of the space.Kevin
We’re still spending at least $30 million each year on annual maintenance, plus hundreds of millions every few years on roofs.
And now they want a billion dollars to renovate it, after which it will remain, as always, unsafe to use in winter.
Stop throwing good money after bad and let it die.
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Kate
A young woman was hit by an STM bus Friday evening as it turned down a detour off Jean-Talon necessitated by the work on Pie-IX. Her condition has been upgraded from critical to stable.
Two men were stabbed in a Plateau brawl after bar-closing time Saturday morning, not fatally, and several arrests ensued.
Claude Grou says he will soon be back on the job. Grou, 77, stabbed during mass at St Joseph’s Oratory on Friday, wasn’t seriously injured. The suspect, Vlad Cristian Eremia, has given police no reason to suspect any political motive; Eremia had previously been accused in a case of criminal harassment although cleared of the charge. The Journal link includes video of the incident.
Update: Eremia has been charged with attempted murder and will also be given a psychological assessment.
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Kate
Taxi drivers plan a protest for Monday all over Quebec against the proposed new law.
steph
any word on the value for the medallion buyback?
steph
to answer my own question:
“The aid for taxi permit owners will vary depending on where they work.
It will range from $46,700 per permit for owners in Montreal, to $2,800 for an owner in Buckingham in Western Quebec. Owners in Quebec City will get $32,800.”
Chris 18:36 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
That article doesn’t say anything about motive. Last I saw, no motive was yet known. Did I miss them somehow ruling out political motivations?
Kate 21:41 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
Chris, I saw something early on about cops ruling out political, religious or “terrorist” motives. Friday, the Journal said “« C’est un geste isolé d’une seule personne », a toutefois confirmé l’agente Caroline Chèvrefils, de la police de Montréal” and Radio-Canada “Pour le moment, rien n’indique que le suspect fasse partie d’une quelconque organisation.” But by the next day, Saturday, La Presse was saying “dont on ignore les motivations.” The suspect has been sent to Pinel for evaluation which suggests to me that the police picked up right away that the guy may be mentally unsound.
Chris 23:14 on 2019-03-25 Permalink
geste isolé d’une seule personne -> does not mean the motive wasn’t political.
not part of an organization/group -> does not mean the motive wasn’t political.
mentally unsound -> does not mean the motive wasn’t political.
No doubt the cops know more than we do, but I don’t yet see that political motivations can be ruled out.
Kate 07:10 on 2019-03-26 Permalink
They may find the attacker was fixated on the Catholic church or its priests – or even that specific priest – for some personal reason. Is that political? Don’t forget, the order associated with the Oratory has had to pay out a lot of money after sexual abuses stretching over decades. The man who was attacked is, as far as I know, free of any suspicion in that matter, but he may simply have been available when the attacker decided to act.
Raymond Lutz 07:40 on 2019-03-26 Permalink
Are les Gilets Jaunes terrorists? Was Polytechnique massacre a terrorist attack? La question est importante car depuis le 11 septembre, toutes les nations occidentales ont passé des lois _particulières_ qui ont pour prétexte de lutter contre le terrorisme mais vise essentiellement à permettre une surveillance accrue des citoyens écologistes ou altermondialistes, cf Misguided Spying and the New Zealand Massacre – Consortiumnews.