Nice New York Times piece on the 40 years of L’Express.
Updates from December, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
CBC reports on the cycling/walking path on the new bridge – text and video.
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Kate
There’s now cell service at Radisson and Honoré-Beaugrand, so only the six stations at the western end of the green line remain to be linked up.
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Kate
Except for that song I have no idea why the media are fixated on the requirement for a white Christmas, but they are. For those of us who get around on foot, it’s great to have no snow.
EmilyG
A lot of people are weird. They want snow for Christmas, and then they hate snow for the rest of the winter. Maybe they should pick a side?
jorgh
Because snow looks beautiful for Xmas? And the white brings some light in an otherwise dark season? And back before climate change made what used to be winter really unpredictable and wildly varying, snowy weather was fairly regular and enjoyable at this time of year. I mean, I know without snow, they tend to call it a “green Xmas”, but it really looks grey or brown at best.
Blork
Ha ha ha! Laughing because I was listening to Iggy Pop’s version of “White Christmas” when I read this.
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Kate
CBC’s list of what’s open and closed over the holidays. Also from the Journal.
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Kate
A man in CDN-NDG has won a racial profiling case against the SPVM in which two cops were found guilty of 16 ethics violations. The decision may yet be appealed.
Ephraim
Not far enough.
The contents of a citizen’s phone is private property and asking to see a citizen’s phone should require a warrant. The interaction with the phone should be required to be under video surveillance. And deletion of any of the content should be considered theft. A policeman, should be henceforth immediately suspended for any interaction with a citizen’s personal phone. This has got to stop. Data is protected.
The citizen should have immediately locked his phone, in any case. As which point, the police would have had no way to access the telephone. But the fact that they interacted with his telephone, should lead to immediate suspension, if not firing. This won’t stop until we have strong enough laws in place to ensure that the police can’t do a coverup. In fact, when asking for a citizen’s phone, they should immediately need to notify a citizen of their right of refusal and that they may lock it until a warrant is issued.
Max
The thought that these two dicks will likely keep their jobs infuriates me. They really are accountable to no one but themselves.
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Kate
I hadn’t seen any particular complaints about delays on the orange line, but CTV says although there have been some they’re being figured out and the eventual reason is a good one: more trains are being added to that line, and a new algorithm for keeping them properly spaced is being developed.
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Kate
I just spent $140 on my cat, bringing her shots up to date and also getting her chipped, which I hadn’t done previously, in accordance with the new law – plus $20 in taxis to and fro.
Then I went online to create an account with the city, for which I had to:
- photograph my health card
- photograph a recent bank statement
- photograph the document proving she had been chipped
They already have on file a document proving she was spayed, several years ago, which is fortunate because it was done by a rescue organization and I don’t know where my copy is.
At least this part of the city website does work properly. After jumping through all these hoops, I found I had to pay a grand total of $5 for all of next year, because of exemptions for chipping and sterilization, otherwise it’s $33, although what kind of person would be sufficiently law-abiding to get a permit for a cat which they had neglected to sterilize, I do not know.
The vet told me his record for finding chips in a cat is three. I think you could write a novel explaining how that had come about.
…Aaaand now the city sends an email saying some information does not correspond, but is not explaining what’s wrong. I’m going to have to spend part of my afternoon going over to Ogilvy Avenue in person after all, aren’t I?
….Here we go. At some point I had identified myself as Kate while my legal name is Catherine and the system didn’t like that. One trip to the borough office and it’s all good.
I’m adding here to complete the story: a month after I did all this good-citizen paperwork, I got a letter from the borough reminding me I had to pay for a permit for my cat. I had to go on Facebook and type at somebody in the borough to clarify that I had paid up for the year, and they apologized for the error. Makes you wonder how reliable their systems are for anything else.
Ephraim
Your health card? NO! The law does not permit anyone outside of the health industry to see your card or ask to see it. And that includes the city. I think you need to speak to the Quebec Ombudsman immediately. No one, not even the city has a right to see your health card. It is NOT legal ID for anything other than healthcare. The same is true of a driver’s licence… they can ask to see it, but unless they are in the car industry, they don’t have a right to write down the number… and that includes a bank.
I once had Videotron ask for my SIN number. I called Quebec Consumer Protection Bureau. They faxed them a copy of the law to remind them that this was not allowed. The call that followed from Videotron was quite entertaining… it was like I had shot them right through the heart, I apparently was the first person who hadn’t capitulated… and they didn’t know how to process the transaction without violating the law. Supervisors of supervisors were needed.
Kate
Ephraim, the health card was one of the alternative photo IDs because I have no driver’s licence.
EmilyG
Having the right ID can be tricky. I don’t drive anymore, but I keep my driver’s license up-to-date just so I can use it as ID. I do have a health card and other forms of ID, but it seems that the driver’s license is one of the ones that’s suggested the most to use as ID. Which sucks.
Bill Binns
Ahhh the Kate/Catherine thing. This Bill/William sympathizes. My wife once bought me an expensive international plane ticket under “Bill”. Was a near disaster and a huge pain to straighten out.
I got my dog licenses in person and was somewhat impressed with how quick and easy it was. I would still prefer a system where you can just buy them at any pet store. I certainly wouldn’t be crazy about throwing jpegs of my ID onto the internet. Maybe the city is doing this securely but it seems like an unnecessary risk for a pet license.
Ant6n
Just always use your real name everywhere, properly spelled.
Kate
I got my name properly spelled at the vet’s, but they managed to misspell the name of my street AND the name of my cat. And I had to intervene to stop the receptionist recording my email address as at hotmail.com too.
jeather
Good thing I’m not a scofflaw with three (exclusively indoor except the balcony which they are unable to escape) unlicensed cats, that sounds like a huge pain.
Kate, microchips in cats are known to migrate, even down their legs though often to nearer by places. Apparently the solution is to have the vet check for a microchip each time.
Ian
I still find it peculiar that there were no cat licenses in the Plateau until the dog ban was attempted. Still feels like a money grab.
Ephraim
@Ian – The dog ban doesn’t work… they just get a dog walking licence to get around it.
Kevin
@Ant6n
😀Kate
jeather, I will ask the vet next year to make sure the chip has stayed in place (between her shoulderblades).
Ian, cat licenses are a scam, but the fines are shockingly high if somehow your cat is picked up and you haven’t registered them. I would be curious to know whether anyone has ever been fined for this, and whether the city tags have ever helped bring a lost cat home.
mare
I found a dog once and after one call to 311, the owner called me to pick her up. I never see signs on hydro poles with “dog/cat found” only with lost dogs and cats.
Kate
That’s good to know, mare.
Before city tags, vets used to sometimes give out rabies shot tags for cats. When I lived in the Plateau, one day my neighbour rang my doorbell to tell me my cat was outside crying to get in. My cat was home, but a gray cat – similar in looks to mine – was on the ground-floor window ledge, meowing. She had a vet tag, and a phone call to the vet resulted in her owner rushing around to reclaim her. Apparently that cat had been missing for weeks.
So I guess it does sometimes work.
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Kate
In the metro, there are a couple of teams of agile and able people – the parcoureurs – who work while the system is running, analyzing problems, dealing with crises, and inevitably taking risks while doing so. The physical requirements are so demanding that they get regular sight and hearing tests to make sure they can continue.
Nobody got hurt during an incident in September at Côte-Vertu, but management evidently became aware at that time of the sheer peril involved in doing this job, so the work has been suspended and the very job description may be retired or modified to make sure nobody gets hurt or killed doing it.
JaneyB
Fascinating – the secret life of the metro system!
Kate
JaneyB, I remember a piece a few years ago – I think it was when Andy Riga was covering transit for the Gazette – which talked about these teams and how, unlike most maintenance workers, they would walk in the tunnels while the system was running, because often they would spot problems with trains or tracks before they’d manifested in more obvious or damaging ways. It was a good piece but I no longer have the link.
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Kate
Not only are city ERs overwhelmed with flu and gastro patients, a pipe burst at the CHUM, causing difficulties there. The CHUM is asking people to avoid its ER entirely.
Update, late Monday afternoon: seems the CHUM problem will not be resolved for several days.
Here’s a clue: if you have flu or gastro, stay home.
Kevin
Or a cold, or just can’t be bothered to make an appt. with a doctor, or you skipped your appt…
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Kate
TVA lists half a dozen city news dossiers likely to feature in 2020.
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Kate
Mirabel hasn’t had air traffic controllers since 2008, but they’re going to be back because air traffic has been growing. Mirabel had 90,000 takeoffs and landings this year, compared to 240,000 at Trudeau. Still, that’s a fair bit of activity.
Bill Binns
For once the stunning ineptitude of 70’s Quebec politicians has had a positive (although unintended) result. They left us with a huge cargo airport we have given to Fed Ex so that our salad bowls and welcome mats can be more efficiently flown in from China every day.
Kate
Bill Binns, you’re not exaggerating that most of those planes are FedEx?
Brett
Seems a good mix of CargoJet, UPS, FedEx, and the usual suspects.
Kate
Oh, good info, Brett, thanks. If you’re a plane enthusiast, can you tell us how 90,000 takeoffs and landings compares to world airports? Obviously Mirabel is no longer on lists of regular airports, but there must be listings of general aviation hubs?
Bill Binns, the other shoe dropped: Mirabel was a federal project, not a Quebec one.
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Kate
Radio-Canada has a feature this week on the days when Montreal was a capital of disco.
On a somewhat less frivolous theme, they also look back to 45 years ago when the heart of Brother André was returned to St Joseph’s Oratory after being in the hands of thieves for almost two years. Who they were, and how the return was managed, remains a mystery.
Lawyer Frank Shoofey, mentioned for his involvement in getting the heart back, was murdered a decade later, a killing that was never solved.
Also I’m wondering why they’re calling Brother André a thaumaturge.
Most of the Gazette’s pieces this week were Christmas fluff, but there’s also a rather grim photo from 1963 of investigators working on parts of the plane that had crashed in Ste-Thérèse in late November that year.
The Centre d’histoire piece this weekend shows a 1937 painting by Adrien Hébert of a tabagie of the era, and reminds us how ubiquitous tobacco advertising used to be.
Ian
Thaumaturge just means miracle worker. Remember he got beatified for curing someone’s cancer in the 50s.
Kate
Ah OK, I pictured it more as an alchemist or wizard.
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Kate
There was a murder in an apartment in eastern Rosemont Saturday evening. Police have not yet specified whether the victim is a man or a woman, but Radio-Canada makes it homicide #23 on the island. I had been counting 21 till now, so I will check up.
There were two other attacks overnight that stopped short of murder.
Bill Binns
Rosemont is weird. You don’t see the crackheads and various street people that make Hochelaga and St Henri the wonderful and diverse communities they are but Rosemont has (comparatively) lots of gun and knife crime, arson etc. My neighbor from 2 doors down was executed in his car in Rosemont last year.
Kate
And yet most of Rosemont is row after row of quiet and peaceable residential streets. I don’t know what the sociological quirks are that cause the issues you mention.
JaneyB
Heard from some knowledgeable local a few years back and apparently the biker gangs moved from Verdun (and elsewhere?) to some part of Rosemont.
Ian
Rosemont-Villeray have been a hotbed of that sort of thing for well over a decade now.
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Kate
The SPVM has noted that no cyclists have been killed on Montreal’s streets this year; CTV counts 24 pedestrians down, which is a lot – the worst record in ten years.
Ian
So does this mean we can slow down on fixating on making infrastructure as safe as possible for bicyclists, and start focusing more on pedestrians? Stop signs at every crosswalk with full stops for bikes and cars both, enforcing the no parking too close to a corner laws already on the books, and reducing the size of trucks allowed in mixed commercial/ residential neighbourhoods would be a great start.
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