Updates from March, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 23:05 on 2020-03-03 Permalink | Reply  

    I’ve not seen this reported yet in mainstream media. The Asian community is being targeted, presumably because of coronavirus. The points below were posted Monday by Louis Le, whose page is not open to non-Facebook users, but he encourages people to pass the news along.

    • 3 weeks ago, the Quan Am temple got vandalized by a hooded individual that smashed the lions head at the gate with a sledgehammer. It got attacked again as of recently.
    • Chinatown’s gate lions got hit yesterday.
    • Thien Ton’s temple got hit yesterday.
    • Huyen Khong’s temple has been vandalized twice recently.

    Narcity, not a source I usually cite, reports the story with saddening pictures of damaged and destroyed artifacts.

    The Quan Am temple in Côte-des-Neiges, Thien Ton in Little Italy and Huyen Khong in Rosemont are all Vietnamese Buddhist institutions, so the vandals clearly can’t even distinguish between China and Vietnam. Also, according to the latest data I can find, Vietnam has 16 cases of coronavirus compared to China’s 67,000 (not that the numbers would justify any abuse).

    Update: Wednesday morning, Radio-Canada covers the story and says police are treating the vandalism as a hate crime.

     

    • Kate 22:57 on 2020-03-03 Permalink | Reply  

      Some bricks fell off the façade of Dollarama on Park Avenue Tuesday afternoon. That block between St-Viateur and Bernard is a well trodden one so it’s fortunate no one was passing by at the time.

       

      • Ian 14:56 on 2020-03-04 Permalink

        Saw that on Twitter, I was literally across the street at the time it happened. Scary.

    • Kate 21:12 on 2020-03-03 Permalink | Reply  

      Plans are afoot for the expensive conversion of Canada Malting in St-Henri. Social housing is definitely on the agenda in what’s traditionally been one of the city’s poorer neighbourhoods. More detail including the transformation of the silos into server rooms, which could provide heat for the housing. But the community group needs more money and support from the city to reclaim the industrial site.

      Update: Two groups have competing visions.

       

      • Ian 14:58 on 2020-03-04 Permalink

        Anything would be more useful than condos for the yuppies but that is some seriously polluted land, it had its own spur line and everything…

    • Kate 20:42 on 2020-03-03 Permalink | Reply  

      The single patient diagnosed with COVID-19 in Quebec has been taken to the quarantine unit at the Jewish General.

      CTV reports on hoarding of supplies as fears are stoked about what may be coming.

      Patrick Lagacé wrote Tuesday about how he’s not afraid of coronavirus. But are people afraid of the illness, or of its social and economic impact?

      So I’ve put a few more supplies up in my freezer and my pantry. If there were some sudden arbitrary shutdown of our lives for two weeks, I’d at least be eating. If the crisis were to last longer than that, the whole thing would be bigger than anything I can prepare for.

       

      • Chris 09:54 on 2020-03-04 Permalink

        My coworker was at costco last weekend, and said they were sold out of masks, sanitizer, and kleenex.

      • Blork 10:38 on 2020-03-04 Permalink

        I think most people are misunderstanding the talk about stockpiling two weeks worth of food. Nobody in authority is expecting any sort of societal shutdown. The “two week supply” is for things like:

        If you or someone you live with gets sick, you’ll be asked to self-quarantine for two weeks.

        If you or someone you live with gets exposed to the virus (via a coworker, friend, etc.) you’ll be asked to self-quarantine for two weeks.

        If you or someone you live with flies home from a hot zone (currently Iran, for example, but who knows where it will be next), you will be asked to self-quarantine for two weeks.

        It’s not about some apocalyptic shutdown of society, although plenty of people seem to think so.

      • Blork 10:45 on 2020-03-04 Permalink

        Related: travel. Just yesterday I heard of two families I know who cancelled their trips due to complications around Covid-19. One trip was to Mexico and the other’s was to California.

        But here’s the thing: it’s not because either of those places is boiling over with Covid-19 cases. It’s because all the STUFF around travel is more complicated now, including:

        -> The risk that you will fly with someone on board who has Covid-19, which will complicate TF out of your life for a couple of weeks because you might have to self-quarantine WHILE ON VACATION and again when you get back.

        -> The risk that your return flight will get delayed or even cancelled if there is an outbreak in the location where you travel to.

        -> This is a big one: the increasing chance that you won’t be able to get travel health insurance for your trip, or any other kind of insurance.

        So that’s what’s going on. It’s not that the virus itself is causing all this disruption; it’s all the infrastructure that we take for granted that’s getting disrupted because of perceived risks (risk of illness, risk of disruption, risk of financial losses, etc.)

      • Kate 12:33 on 2020-03-04 Permalink

        What you say, Blork. I’ve seen Americans online going on about supplies of water and having no electricity, whereas a two-week “house arrest” scenario is what I’ve been considering. I rarely have more than a week’s worth of food supplies in the house, as I’ve mentioned, so I decided to be a little more providential, just in case.

      • Chris 12:18 on 2020-03-05 Permalink

        And with today’s JIT inventory, it’s doesn’t take too many people stocking just a little more for places like Costco to run out.

    • Kate 14:15 on 2020-03-03 Permalink | Reply  

      The new awnings on St-Hubert are up. I haven’t yet been by to take a look, but would be curious to hear of any impressions.

       

      • DavidH 14:43 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

        It’s a lot flatter than the old one so I wonder if the glass will remain clean enough or become grimy with dust and pollution settling over time. The gap between the awning and the facade is pretty big right now. Makes me wonder if there isn’t a part that hasn’t been installed yet. The whole piece reflects the lights from the store very well. When shop windows use colour lights, the whole awning reflects it. Visually, that could be fun and break the monotony or it could look really kitschy real fast.

        It feels a lot airier than the previous one. The wide sidewalk certainly helps too. A huge problem with the old one was the pigeons and their droppings. This one seems to have fewer spots the birds will like but it’s hard to tell from the ground. I think swallows would love all those angled beams but they might be too slick for them to use.

      • CE 14:57 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

        A friend of mine who works on the Plaza told me that one of the major motivations for changing the awnings was that pigeons could easily sit in them. The new ones are supposed to be designed in a way that there is nowhere for them to sit.

      • Kate 23:23 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

        The old awnings also had a problem with ice and snow building up until gravity got the upper hand, and a big slab would detach and slide off all at once. Even a little sun at the right angle on a cold day could do it. I saw it happen a couple of times, back when I was working nearby. You didn’t want to be under those slabs when they dropped into the street.

    • Kate 13:56 on 2020-03-03 Permalink | Reply  

      Quebec is putting a billion simoleons into Montreal’s roads over the next three years. The vast majority of the money is for bridges and tunnels.

       

      • Kate 13:53 on 2020-03-03 Permalink | Reply  

        A new provincial dog law is now in force, but there doesn’t seem to be much to it. “Local officials could choose to enforce strict regulations or do nothing at all in event of an attack” is the summary on CTV, which also gives a link to a PDF list of the city’s dangerous dog list, a faintly comic listing of a hundred dangerous animals with names ranging from Bambam to Einstein.

        CBC specifies a few more rules, notably the requirement to report bites, both of people, and of other dogs brought to the vet’s over a bite.

         

        • CE 14:01 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

          I’ll make a point of keeping an eye out for “Fatty” any time I’m in CdN-NDG

        • CE 14:04 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

          I’m curious about Chico, the potentially dangerous chihuahua in Saint-Léonard.

        • Kate 14:10 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

          !!

        • JP 20:24 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

          Interesting that some neighbourhoods are more represented than others. I wonder if that’s proportional to the population of the area or if there are other factors.

        • Ian 15:12 on 2020-03-04 Permalink

          TIL bulldog is Bouledogue in French.

          I find it interesting that in more working class neighbourhoods there are far fewer listings, like people know better than to rat their neighbours out to the cops over their pets. I have friend that lives in the Point, her dog has been attacked by other other dogs 3 times. She didn’t call the cops. They didn’t call the cops. One time her dog got attacked by a little off-leash terrier, and that little terrier got shaken like a rat and died. No blood. The terrier’s owner was a gentrifier, called the cops in tears, full report were done by the cops, animal control, and an assessment was carried out on the dog because it bit. In the end everyone agreed the dog was not at fault, so did not have to be put down, but needs to wear a muzzle. Because some yuppie didn’t know how to control her own dog then went and called the cops.

      • Kate 13:45 on 2020-03-03 Permalink | Reply  

        A man who allegedly posed as a police officer to enable his aggressions on women around the north end has been arrested, and police want to hear from anyone else who may have been victimized.

         

        • Kate 09:03 on 2020-03-03 Permalink | Reply  

          I looked in vain for an indication that this rather vapid piece in La Presse was an advertorial for the Société du parc Jean-Drapeau, but it sure reads like one.

           

          • Clément 15:38 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

            Well, it is in the “Opinions” section and the author is not a regular contributor. On the other hand, he doesn’t seem to be connected the SPJD. Probably doing a favour for someone.

          • qatzelok 18:13 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

            It’s not well-written enough to be an advertorial.

            Confronted with the “vapid piece” as you call it, the reader(you and I) is confronted with the limited ability of his words (the author’s) to convey anything other than the uneventful passage of time spent reading them.

        • Kate 08:52 on 2020-03-03 Permalink | Reply  

          Most media currently have a piece about how the Jewish General is ready to cope with a possible influx of COVID-19 cases.

          CTV looked at what transit agencies are doing about sanitizing – it’s mostly about Toronto – and TVA says it’s seeing face masks in the metro. I was out and about on the weekend and saw no masks. I went to a dim sum restaurant and a big Asian grocery on Saturday, and they were as crowded as is normal on the weekend and nobody was wearing a mask. And I was out Sunday taking the metro and walking around here and there downtown – lots of people, no masks.

           

          • Meezly 11:12 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

            Yesterday on the bus, I saw a young caucasian woman with a stylish black face mask. It looked like it was made of fabric, so it can be washable. I couldn’t help thinking how the fashionable clothing co.’s are going to jump on this trend.

          • CE 11:17 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

            I was out and about all over downtown yesterday and saw only one person wearing what looked like a very thick and expensive mask.

          • Ephraim 11:17 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

            I really wish they would put out some PSAs about wearing a mask if you are sick, ONLY. Because if you are healthy and wearing one…you are doing it wrong. And as always, I avoid those with masks, because I presume they are the sick.

          • Michael Black 11:58 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

            The CLSC nurse that just came to take blood for a test didn’t take any extra precautions.

            In two weeks I have an appointment at the General, I wonder if anything will be different then.

            People die all the time, I almost did at the end of March last year. There’s a difference between taking precautions and constantly worrying. I’m vulnerable but I don’t plan anything special unless it becomes an actual epidemic here.

          • Spi 12:34 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

            We’re pretty lucky that this is only hitting us now and not 4-6 weeks earlier when we were still in the midst of flu season, coughing and sneezing people everywhere would have driven up the paranoia and mask wearing.

        • Kate 08:38 on 2020-03-03 Permalink | Reply  

          A man was shot non-fatally near Côte-Vertu metro Monday evening. The suspect is a tall man in dark clothes, good luck.

           

          • JP 20:17 on 2020-03-03 Permalink

            I think the police presence really needs to be amped up around there. There was another shooting close to that station not too long ago. This didn’t even happen that late in the night. I live equi-distant from Cote-Vertu and Henri-Bourassa metro stations. People always think Cote-Vertu would be the safer of the two, but I often feel safer at Henri-Bourassa.

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