Dear old Agent 728 has been stood up by the Barreau du Québec in an attempt to have the prosecutor in her assault case disciplined. Not only that, but her attempt was called frivolous, abusive and without foundation.
Updates from August, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Metro, which doesn’t usually make mistakes like this, illustrates a piece about Plateau borough’s plans to revive St-Denis Street with a photo of the street at the corner of Jarry – two boroughs north, in Villeray.
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Kate
Marvin Rotrand has succeeded in getting police use of facial recognition software on the agenda at city hall. But I think in the long run that government and/or police use of the technology will pale beside private use for commercial exploitation.
Ephraim
When you look at how the Chinese want to use it… it’s more than chilling…
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Kate
Tenants of those contentious apartments on Côte St-Luc Road want a referendum on the project to evict them, tear down their homes and build something fancier. Bill Steinberg continues to polish his reputation as one greedy guy, with his “let’s put it in perspective, these developers are going way above and beyond what’s required.” It’s not only about money, you putz.
Ephraim
Even if it isn’t, the tenants should have bonded together to buy the building and formed a cooperative. It’s unfortunate, but the deciding factor is ownership above all else….
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Kate
Airbnb abruptly shut down one of Canada’s most prolific Airbnb listers, AJ, based in Montreal, but like some kind of multi-tentacled alien beast, many of the listings popped right back up under new pseudonyms.
Ephraim
There is at least one more guy in Montreal using a stock photo and a fake name, changed his name after the last CBC report, he’s now known as Seb.
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Kate
The city has announced an intention to write its communications in a more gender-inclusive fashion – always trickier in French than in English.
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Kate
One of the selling points of building a new hospital was that all the rooms would be individual, and it’s turned out to be a good idea, reducing the transmission of infections at the new Royal Vic, although not C. difficile.
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Kate
I’m not sure what the Institut du Québec exactly is – it’s clearly some sort of economists’ platform, but it has no Wikipedia entry (in either language) and its political bias is not known to me.
Anyway, the Institut has a report (PDF) saying Montreal is doing pretty well, economically, compared to the rest of Quebec, but is held back by having too many unskilled workers.
(The secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.)
Kevin
The Institut du Quebec is overseen by the Conference Board of Canada and HEC Montreal.
Jack
It is run by HEC and Conference Board of Canada. It used to line up against the Institut de Rechearche sur le Quebec which said everything was Canada’s fault.
CE
Wasn’t there a story a few weeks ago about a deli not being to find employees because the workers are *too* skilled and not willing to take on manual work?
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Kate
Valérie Plante spoke up for Benoît Dorais on Monday in the affair of Dorais’ speeding ticket. Plante pointed out that Dorais admitted his fault and didn’t pull a Denis Coderre by trying to leverage his clout to get out of the jam.
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Kate
The administration of the four major farmers’ markets quit their posts at the end of last week, and the wording of this brief piece suggests there’s more of a story here. Note the citing of Lionel Perez insisting the markets are failing, even though commenters here have observed that they seem to be doing fine; I’ve been to both the Jean-Talon and Maisonneuve markets recently and they were as busy and lively as they always are on weekend afternoons in summertime.
Something is going on, but the full story is not in this article. Clearly there’s more to this thing than the abolition of a few parking spaces around Jean-Talon, at least.
Update, sort of: CBC picked up the story but with no more information than TVA had.
Jack
Wow that is big. The city signed a 30 year lease with them during Coderre’s tenure, maybe its about pulling the plug on that, just guessing.
Jack
Radio Canada just said a police probe has been asked for and the board resigned because many feared for their physical safety. I think the story is going to develop further with a lot of fingers pointing not to farmers but the long standing families who are ” grossistes ” at the Jean Talon market. Having run into them frequently during the 5 years it took to get the weekends car free for a few hours. I am not surprised. But we will see, early days.
Jack
Kate
Thank you, Jack. It doesn’t sound good, but what if it’s a double bluff, and management wants to make the grossistes look like the bad guys so’s to get them out of the way for something more slick?
Maybe not.
Jack
I think with the city leaking the auditors report says that they have had enough of intimidation and violence that have allowed the grossistes ( the middle aisle banana sellers) to decide who rents what and pays what in the central market. I got into the campaign to pedestrianize the market when a U de M student was manhandled on a public street for asking people to sign a petition limiting car traffic in the market. We organized some tables to have people sign the same petition the weekend after. We were greeted by guys who looked like they worked as roadies for Motörhead. Since we were too many they were nice enough not to beat us up. One guy gave me a piece of paper and pen and asked me to write down my address, seriously. So I recognized pretty early on what a healthy work environment it must be in that market. I think the city has had enough.
Kate
Metro says police are now investigating, which suggests credible threats have been made.
Blork
I find it a bit odd that all four of the main markets are administered by the same board. While I recognize that there might be “strength in numbers” or “economies of scale” advantages, the big disadvantage is that it means all four are essentially the same, and any corruption in one will be seen in all. If they were run independently then maybe there would be a better chance of them being more distinctive.
walkerp
Man, the rot in this city just never ends. Is this just these grossistes or are there bigger players behind them?
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Kate
La Presse’s Isabelle Hachey writes a passionate piece on how newspapers safeguard democracy.
Raymond Lutz
Elle cite une devise du Washington Post … Beuark! Les media mainstream sont les gardiens de la démocratie? Ils peuvent aussi l’empoisonner…voir “How Washington Post Led Us Into Iraq War https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=30&v=XTRIEMoHwto
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Kate
Two stories about roadwork malaise today. A man who opened a restaurant on Bishop Street just before the lengthy STM dig began is suing the city, claiming he was advised everything would be tickety-boo on the street for the foreseeable, but says he was misled.
A dépanneur owner in Little Italy has had his store blocked by sidewalk repairs all summer and says he’s often had to close up early because he felt it was dangerous for his customers to get across to his front door.
TVA notes that although the city is planning to hold public consultations on what to do about all the empty storefronts, lowering property tax for commercial spaces is not on the cards.
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Kate
Developers who had their eye on some of the remaining wetlands in the West Island now plan to sue the city for claiming the land for the big new west-end park.
(Interface note: Le Devoir has switched to posting massive photos as the link to every story. I see why they might: the web is a visual medium, and they’ve got good photographers. But it’s a paper that has always led with the word, so I think on the whole they’ve gone too far.
While on web design: La Presse recently changed its typography, using the strident Verlag Black for headlines, above the relatively wispy Calluna serif font for text. Not a marriage made in heaven – I predict it won’t last. They need to find a better balance. Somebody call Lucie Lacava.)
Joey
From the Gazette:
“The lawyer’s letter notes that in June 2015, Projet Montréal, then under the interim leadership of Luc Ferrandez, published on its website a statement claiming the project’s promoters were ‘linked to the Mafia’.”
Faiz Imam
This was always going to be the next step once the city announced their parc, in fact the developers have been threatening a lawsuit for years.
We have to hope the city has their arguments in line, and/or has the money to solve this.
By going out and making a big splash about the parc, the city has burned the retreat strategy for any future administration. Going back and developing that land now would be a huge political poison.
Like Formula E, its the right thing to do, but it might also come with high cost.
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Kate
A young man from France started the city’s first electric bike delivery system a year ago, and it’s going well, even in advance of the city’s own plans to create an electric delivery hub at the old bus terminal. But I have doubts about putting an electric bike with 150 pounds of trailer onto the bike paths. Isn’t this a vehicle with more momentum than bike paths were conceived for?
Blork
Probably, although hopefully he rides it slowly (under 20) to compensate.
And as you well know, the bike paths are full of larger vehicles; non-electric delivery bikes (those ones with the huge box in the front), electric cargo bikes piled up with three or four kids being taken to school, mobility scooters of all sizes. I guess we just have to adapt to it. I suppose it’s not much different from city streets — designed primarily for cars — being full of delivery vans and cube trucks.
CE
Just saw one near the Jean-Talon market. The box is pretty big and a bit unwieldy looking. I can’t imagine riding a bike, even an electric one, very quickly with that thing hitched to the back.
I ride my bike (non-electric) with a sort of trailer on the back about 3 times a week for work. I’m much more careful on my bike when that thing is attached than when it isn’t.
Faiz Imam
Yeah, cargo bikes are in many ways the indicator species of good urbanism. They only make sense when there are good paths, when density and urban fabric are of high quality.
I’ve read some studies of how UPS, fedex,etc are using cargo ebikes in European city centers, and overall they are pretty compatible with normal bikers.
Blork
A few years ago those front-loading cargo bikes started showing up, particularly downtown. I used to see many every day but lately it seems like I see fewer (not sure why). I’m talking about ones like you see here:
https://bikepacking.com/news/larry-vs-harry-bulitt-short-film/
I suspect those aren’t a big problem because the cargo capacity probably isn’t that high. But the cargo trailer in the story Kate linked to is much bigger, and can carry up to 400 pounds, plus the weight of the trailer (another 150 pounds). That’s big, and I wonder how quickly he can stop or deke around obstacles.
Blork
Side note: I’ve been seeing a number of these “long tail” cargo ebikes around. These are the ones where you can fit 2, 3, even four kids on the “long tail.” These bikes are pretty big, and they can go fast, so it’s a bit scary when you see some dork on a bike like this motoring his kids down the de Maisonneuve bike path at 28 kph.
There are pictures in this article. The ones I’ve seen tend to have child carrier type seats bolted on, unlike in the pictures in the article. I’m pretty sure I saw one fitted with four carrier seats, in two rows of two (back to back).
https://www.vpr.org/post/e-bikes-are-catching-hilly-vermont#stream/0
JaneyB
They could really help with beer delivery. I lived on Marianne in the Plateau for a while and soon realized that all the deps needed to be replenished with a separate truck that carried every brand they sell – incredibly noisy with the normal massive trucks. Sales are not that huge in deps so small delivery by bike could really help.
david100 01:32 on 2019-08-22 Permalink
Worth a try. Can’t tell if those are jail blues, but if that’s what she looked like in the slammer, I very much doubt that she had many problems.
Tim 08:33 on 2019-08-22 Permalink
@david100: she never spent any time in jail. Instead she was given a full pension (which usually requires 30 years of service) after just 19 years.
Kate 10:11 on 2019-08-22 Permalink
The force just wanted to get rid of her, without too much of a fight.