No case of 2019-nCoV coronavirus has yet been diagnosed in Quebec, but the health ministry has designated two Montreal hospitals to look after any outbreak here, the Jewish General for adults and Ste-Justine for kids.
Updates from February, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Because of a poor, penny-pinching decision made during the Coderre era, the city has to pay $3.7 million in lost overtime to its firefighters.
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Kate
Tyendinaga Mohawks have blocked the rail lines at Belleville, between Montreal and Toronto and also Ottawa and Toronto, in support of the We’tsuwet’en First Nation in British Columbia, currently trying very hard to block a pipeline project and recently coping with an incursion by the RCMP trying to push them off the land.
Following the We’tsuwet’en story is outside what I can do with the blog, but you can follow the Ricochet Twitter feed if you’re interested, as they’re doing a better job following this story than any mainstream media.
JaneyB
Once again, I’m thinking the Indigenous people here might be the real functioning Senate of this country.
Raymond Lutz
L’argent est le nerf de la guerre. If you want to appear in RCMP databases as a terrorist group sympathizer, please consider donating to the Unist’ot’en land defenders!
It’s Standing Rock NoDAPL state warfare all over again, with en prime an unconstitutional press freedom violation. Merci, Justin!
Chris
Train travel is one of the more environmentally friendly ways to travel. An odd choice for a protest target. And the choice is not explained.
qatzelok
The first controlled genocide of First Nations people by the Canadian government was the mass murder (by Gatlin gun) of the Metis of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. And this genocide was perpetrated to build railways.
This makes it appropriate on one level to block the trains – as a reminder about our history of ‘doing things like this.’
Raymond Lutz
Thanks for the pertinent history evocation qatzelok! First Nations eradication was the preferred test bed for revolving machine gun experimentation in US too!
The 2016 Standing Rock Sioux blockade against the Dakota Access Pipe Line through their unceded territory had also an historical background: the Wounded Knee Massacre where 300 Indigenous Peoples (mostly women and children) were mowed by Hotchkiss guns in 1890.
dwgs
Well Chris I’d say it’s probably because a) the rail lines cross their territory b) it’s pretty easy to do c) as pointed out above their is a long history of the railway disrupting native lives and d) it’s effective.
What virtuous eco-protest would you suggest?John B
In North America trains aren’t actually that great for the environment.
As for why block a rail line in Ontario: that rail line is often blocked to protest things on a national scale. It’s a really important rail line that carries huge amounts of goods. Disrupting it hurts, and that’s the point of protest.
Chris
qatzelok, the perpetrators of those crimes are long dead. Yeah, I guess it’s a reminder of history, but people of the present are not responsible of the actions of others in the distant past. Shall we also condemn today’s Mohawk people for defeating the St. Lawrence Iroquoians and taking their territory? No.
dwgs, I guess, though I’m not convinced by your (d). Train passengers and train companies aren’t the ones building pipelines and aren’t the ones that need their minds changed, seems odd to target them. If the main point of their protest is pipelines, then target egregious users of what the pipelines carry. How about blocking a highway full of single occupant cars? Especially ones where a viable alternative exists. i.e. block a highway in a big city where people could be using transit instead. Those people need convincing to stop using so much fossil fuel, thus reducing the need to build more pipelines. Forcing someone to fly from Montreal to Toronto instead of taking the train just wastes more gas.
John, huh? That link shows trains have the 2nd lowest CO2 emissions among public transit options. I’m afraid there is no Montreal-Toronto Tesla service. And disrupting goods transport will convince Jo Average to push the government to allow less pipelines? Or to support the RCMP clearing them out?
mare
As far as I understand the reason they made the blockade there is that the railway tracks are in the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, so the Ontario police (and maybe the the RCMP too) have limited jurisdiction. Setting up blockades on the 401, despite being more related to the oil-issue, will be met with swifter actions by the authorities since it’s not within the reservation.
thomas
If the goal is to pressure the government of BC this seems a very indirect pressure tactic. The RCMP’s actions in this case are wholly controlled at the provincial level.
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Kate
A UQÀM lecturer who’s worked for indigenous groups and has accepted an academic bursary meant for indigenous students has been unmasked as not indigenous at all, in an echo of the Marie-Josée Parent unmasking a few months ago. Like Parent,
Marie-Pierre BousquetAlexandra Lorange may have believed family legends about her indigenous background.simon harel
Like Parent, Marie-Pierre Bousquet may have believed family legends about her indigenous background.
Bonjour, vous avez mal lu, M.-P. Bousquet est prof à l’UdeM. Parent est chargée de cours à l’UQAM. Bousquet s’interroge sur le malaise que crée l’auto-identification autochtone en milieu universitaire, c’est tout. Les deux personnes n’entretiennent pas de relations de travail et Bosquet fait une remarque de nature générale. Merci.Kate
Merci, Simon Harel!
simon harel
Au plaisir,
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