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Updates from November, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• Kate 23:07 on 2019-11-27 Permalink | Reply  

  REM excavation near the Black Rock, where the inscription clearly states that the remains of 6000 immigrants had been buried there, has found – whaddya know – some bodies. Note that the rock’s inscription also says “preserve from desecration” – which doesn’t include sending bones for analysis or grubbing up more in hopes of verifying what we already knew: a lot of people died and were buried in that area.

  I’m also curious who died and made this guy Fergus Keyes the point man for all the Irish in Montreal. “The REM informed him of the discovery on Monday morning… On Tuesday, he got a second call … [Keyes] heaped praise on REM officials for being sensitive to the community’s concerns about the sanctity of the site…” What? I mean, what? They just punched a hole through a burial ground and grubbed up some bodies but, oh, it’s OK, they called up Fergus Keyes and he gave them his blessing!

  I have relatives under that rock. Leave them the fuck alone.

  Kevin and Tim F are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Tim F 23:34 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    Is this the same guy who was kvetching about naming the REM station for Bernard Landry? Because I was asking myself the same question.

  • Kevin 23:58 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    For years, Fergus has led a group that has been pushing to create a park around the Black Rock. That’s why he gets called

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• Kate 21:58 on 2019-11-27 Permalink | Reply  

  The long legal saga of the would-be developer of Meadowbrook ended this week as the appeals court upheld a 2017 ruling that rejected a $44M lawsuit against Montreal.

   

• Kate 13:59 on 2019-11-27 Permalink | Reply  

  The city still wants the $268,000 that Michael Applebaum received on his abrupt departure from his position as interim mayor in 2013. He maintains he has a right to it.

  dwgs is discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • dwgs 17:18 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    Grifters gonna grift.

• Kate 13:43 on 2019-11-27 Permalink | Reply  

  This fall, archaeologists have been investigating a pipe kiln found under the Jacques-Cartier bridge. But its existence can’t have been a surprise. A couple of summers back I took an tour of the city’s archaeological storehouse, and one of the things we were shown was clay pipes similar to the ones shown. We were told how the eastern part of Old Montreal (as it’s called now) had several pipe producers. Clay pipes were cheap, so men would smoke them till they broke, then throw them away – often down latrines, where they’ve been found in considerable numbers during excavations.

   

• Kate 13:35 on 2019-11-27 Permalink | Reply  

  The Anjou cult that’s in the government’s eye these days has refused to give up a list of its kids, demanded by the education ministry, basing this on freedom of religion and privacy laws.

  Meezly is discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Meezly 12:31 on 2019-11-28 Permalink

    Interesting. Was trying to read up on Mission L’Esprit-Saint and saw they had a measles outbreak a few years ago. You’d think that a health risk would be enough for the government to step in. I guess no one died. Perhaps the holy spirit is protecting them after all 😉

• Kate 13:32 on 2019-11-27 Permalink | Reply  

  It seems almost inevitable that contracts being written for station designs along the blue line extension are coming in higher than originally expected.

  Kate and Bill Binns are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Bill Binns 14:51 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    And so it begins. The Laval stations set the bar pretty high for fantasy budgets and schedules but they are getting an early start on the bloat with this one. Really have to wonder where all these surprises are coming from since the Blue line extension was studied to death for over a decade.

    If I remember correctly, the Lavel extension more than tripled it’s budget and went three years over schedule. If that happens again, this may be the last extension to the metro ever.

  • Kate 21:59 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    It’s bound to be so. Standards are so much higher now even than when this saga began. Safety standards, environmental standards, accessibility standards, it’s a different world even from when the initial blue line opened, let alone 1966.

• Kate 13:30 on 2019-11-27 Permalink | Reply  

  Tuesday evening, there was a brawl in a New Bordeaux parking lot and a young man was stabbed. Not much else has been given out about the incident.

   

• Kate 09:14 on 2019-11-27 Permalink | Reply  

  There’s a Canada-wide test of emergency alert systems planned Wednesday afternoon. Quebec’s phones will go off at 1:55 p.m. but you only get the message if you’re on LTE rather than wi-fi.

  Update: Other people in this workplace had their phones go off, alarming them. I was able to explain quickly. Mine, although on LTE, and with the ringer on, was silent. (Provider is Fido.)

  paul, Kevin, CE, and 4 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Max 12:12 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    If you’re out and about you get the alert, but if you’re chilling at home or the cafe you don’t?

    Isn’t that a rather glaring shortcoming of the system?

  • Blork 12:21 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    This is speculation, but I suspect that means you won’t get it if you don’t have a phone signal or if you’re using a non-cellular device such as an iPad that’s wifi only. After all, even when you’re on wifi with your phone, you’re still connected to the cellular network, so in theory stuff from that network should come through.

    The above is speculation based on a certain amount of logic. However, that doesn’t guarantee it’s correct. It might be such that if you have your phone set to not receive “data” when you have wifi connected (so as not to use data from your data plan) that this signal does not come through. And yes, that would be a shortcoming, and even though it makes no sense it might still be the case.

  • Blork 12:24 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    Update: from the CTV article, quoting the public security minister:

    “…not all cellphone users will receive it: only those with cellphones that are capable of receiving text messages and which are connected to an LTE network at the time the emergency message is sent will receive it.”

    So that implies my speculation is correct and that the only phone users who won’t receive it are people with really old phones that can’t even receive text messages or people who are out of service range.

  • jeather 15:00 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    Even knowing it was coming it was very startling. Oddly no one else in my office got it.

  • Blork 15:08 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    I got it and most people around me did too, but at least one did not.

  • Kevin 15:42 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    I’ve never received one of these alerts on my phone.
    My speculation is that it’s because my carrier doesn’t know what kind of phone I use.

  • John B 16:07 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    I didn’t get it either, also on Fido, and like Kevin my carrier doesn’t know what phone I use, so maybe that’s why?

    I’d like to get them, though. If an asteroid is hurtling toward the earth I’d like to know. There’s a link to a list of compatible phones on the alerte.gouv.qc.ca website, but it only gives an AccessDenied message that looks like it’s from AWS… https://www.enalerte.ca/mobilite/

  • CE 17:29 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    Didn’t get it either and I had my phone in my back pocket all afternoon as I needed it for the job I was doing. I didn’t get my phone from the carrier so that seems to be why.

  • Kevin 17:38 on 2019-11-27 Permalink

    @John B
    Sadly, nobody will ever know if something is hurtling toward the earth. We look at too little of the sky – – and what we do look at is now subject to light pollution from tens of thousands of Elon Musk’s satellites.

  • paul 14:05 on 2019-11-28 Permalink

    Anyone else find it funny that the message was bilingual…
    …for many I am sure the test emergency message created another emergency!

• Kate 09:08 on 2019-11-27 Permalink | Reply  

  I don’t often blog sports results, but when the Canadiens lose 8-1 to the Bruins, it’s sort of news. Lots of headlines about humiliation and embarrassment, lots of analyses of what went wrong.

   

• Kate 08:58 on 2019-11-27 Permalink | Reply  

  A Subway branch in Lachine was firebombed early Tuesday and it turns out another branch under the same owner, in Mirabel, was firebombed at the same time. TVA talked to Jayson Mtanos, who’s only 21 years old and has owned other franchise restaurants in the past, although if the article’s charge that he closed some without paying his workers is true, he still has a few things to learn.

   

• Kate 08:54 on 2019-11-27 Permalink | Reply  

  Although his hat is not in the ring, a poll found that the Quebec Liberals would prefer Denis Coderre over either of the two people vying for leadership of the party.

   

• Kate 08:48 on 2019-11-27 Permalink | Reply  

  Someone shot at three young people in a car in Rivière-des-Prairies near midnight Tuesday, wounding two, one critically. No arrests yet and no details on the motive.