Updates from March, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 18:08 on 2020-03-29 Permalink | Reply  

    Everyone held a press conference Sunday. The good news from François Legault and Horacio Arruda is that although COVID-19 numbers are up, they’re not rising as fast as they have in some other places, and there were no new deaths since Saturday.

    The mayor said there will be more police patrols and potentially more fines if people break public health orders.

    I’m a little confused by the CBC piece, which quotes top public health honcho Dr. Mylène Drouin as saying “there are currently six areas with 50 or more confirmed cases. They are Côte Saint-Luc, Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, Plateau-Mont-Royal, Ville-Marie and LaSalle.” But then later it says “Côte Saint-Luc is considered by Montreal public health officials to be among the “hot zones” in the city, along with Côte-des-Neiges, LaSalle and Parc-Extension.”

     

    • qatzelok 19:09 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      Perhaps it’s because Cote-Saint-Luc has a much smaller population than the arrondisements mentioned, that 50 or more cases translates into a much higher rate? Anyway, who in the world goes there that doesn’t live there?

    • Kate 20:26 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      qatzi, some people may go there to attend religious services.

      I was mostly concerned about Park Ex being named in the second passage, although not the first. It too has some religious establishments. I’ve heard of events being held at one of the Greek churches until fairly recently.

      Normally if someone’s religious beliefs cause them to forego medical care I figure it’s their funeral, but with a disease like COVID-19 it endangers everyone if people ignore social distancing rules. Right now it’s especially dangerous if religious ceremonies attract people from different parts of town, and then send them back home possibly with viral hitchhikers.

    • qatzelok 20:36 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      How is it possible to police this? Are the police going to be breaking down the doors of religious buldings to catch worshippers “in the act” of not social distancing? Seems like it would create a huge backlash.

    • Kate 20:45 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      Cops will have to talk to the communities. In Côte St-Luc they’d have to cast an eye on synagogues on Saturdays and holy days. Passover starts April 8 – I’ve seen pieces about how people will only be able to hold a seder with the people they’re already in the house with. Easter is on April 12 and Greek Orthodox Easter is a week later. I have no idea when Hindu and Sikh holy days are, but those affect Park Ex too, they’d have to know, and keep an eye on the temples and make sure people weren’t gathering.

      Nobody wants to be the boss man who breaks up a religious service, but it’s got to be done.

    • Brett 20:46 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      I’m wondering if the police will enforce this using the same technique they used with the rail blockades.

    • JP 01:05 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      I’m Hindu and my family goes to one of the temples in Parc Ex. As far as I’m aware, the temple is closed and has been for a while now. There are no official gatherings or events taking place.

    • Kate 08:22 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      Thank you, JP.

      Brett, the situations are not comparable.

    • Brett 09:43 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      I’m not so sure the situations are that different, Kate. We know that this virus came from overseas, and we also know that the hotspots in Montreal for this virus are in neighbourhoods that have a higher proportion of immigrants (Park Ex, CDN). What if, when confronted with a large gathering of minorities for religious or other reasons, the police let it slide for fear of being accused of racism?

    • Kate 09:55 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      They will not. There is no basis of comparison for a pandemic vs. the supposed importance of a pipeline.

    • walkerp 11:01 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      Brett, where to begin. Are you trolling, because that is some serious bullshit question you are asking on many levels.

    • vasi 11:03 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      The synagogues in Cote St Luc have also been closed for quite awhile. I think we’re seeing echoes of the large get-togethers from before the quarantine. Combine that with the return of a lot of snowbirds, and the very high number of seniors….it’s not a good recipe. But as far as I know, nobody there is insisting on having religious meetings despite the risk.

    • Brett 11:44 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      Not a bullshit question. The rail blockade in St Lambert was kept despite being illegal and the only reason the protesters left was because of extremely cold weather. Why were the protesters there so sure they weren’t going to face consequences from the police? And what’s to stop people from ignoring the police in this situation?

    • Mark Côté 14:34 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      Why do you think they were sure they weren’t going to face consequences from the police? Activists get arrested all the time. And groups of people of colour get broken up and arrests made all the time as well. I can’t even believe I had to type that…

    • walkerp 14:34 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      Brett, you seem to really believe what you write, so I will take the troll bait. All of your assumptions are wrong. The protestors chose to leave because they felt their message had been sent. They were not sure at all that they weren’t going to face consequences. They were scared as shit about the police. We still don’t know why the cops didn’t come in and crack heads and kill people like they did at Oka, probably because it was a very tenuous and complex political situation and for once they realized it would make things worse. Do make an effort to understand the history of the First Nations in Canada, particularily the violence they have and continue to suffer at the hands of the police.

      And then what does any of that have to do with this situation? Are you suggesting that it is only non-white people who would be breaking the rules of the lockdown? And that then the police would be too scared to bust up a bunch of immigrants doing some weird ceremony because of being called racist?

      Who do you think is most likely to be breaking the rules? Who do you think is most responsible for the community spread?

    • Chris 15:40 on 2020-03-31 Permalink

      >Nobody wants to be the boss man who breaks up a religious service, but it’s got to be done.

      It’s interesting to observe Israel’s reaction. Over 50% of the cases there are ultra Orthodox, even though they represent just 10% of the population.

      See for example: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-s-ultra-orthodox-jews-face-coronavirus-devastation-they-need-face-masks-1.8728283

      Choice quote: “… Yaakov Litzman, Israel’s minister of health, believes that this is going to end with messianic intervention.” We shall see! 🙂

  • Kate 10:17 on 2020-03-29 Permalink | Reply  

    La Presse talked to a selection of people whose work continues despite pandemic controls. Urbania describes how Dollarama was declared an essential service.

    The city has closed its dog parks till further notice, and Quebec has closed bed & breakfasts and other tourist facilities. Hotels are still open.

    Radio-Canada notes the first Cree COVID-19 patient, who’s isolated in a downtown hotel often used to house Cree people who come to Montreal for medical treatment. He hadn’t been home to the Cree territory in awhile.

    Four men in the immigration detention centre in Laval are maintaining a hunger strike begun by 30 inmates some days ago. They want to be released, although there’s no specific news saying they’ve been exposed to COVID-19. (Nobody wants to be locked up, but if there’s no virus in that place, wouldn’t it be safer to stay inside for the moment?)

     

    • LJ 11:10 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      Closing the dog parks has resulted in some people letting their large dogs run amok without leash in other parks. While I have some sympathy for their plight, it can be annoying or intimidating to others (for example, those with small kids or those who walk their cats through the parks). It is amazing how temporarily blind these dog owners can become when they do not want to be considerate to others.

    • Alison Cummins 11:14 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      Large dogs really do need to be walked, and young dogs really do need to run whether or not dog parks are closed.

      There’s a way to make this work. Time-based rather than space-based restrictions.

      Dogs can run around in the park off-leash between 6h and 7h30 (for instance). Otherwise, nope. The rest of us make our decisions.

    • David100 12:35 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      Release them back to their home countries.

    • dwgs 13:44 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      Hear hear! Wolfhounds back to Ireland, Bulldogs to old Blighty, Malinois to Belgium…

    • Michael Black 14:59 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      Wait, dogs have been here since time immemorial. They took over when horses disappeared. I’ve read some doubt, but the claim is that horses came back when they immigrated with the Spanish. But no similar story of dogs coming over with Columbus or the Mayflower. You can’t send them back if they have no ties to the old country.

      Besides, dogs wouldn’t do well on their own. They have no sense of wilderness, and are too nice to compete with wild dogs and wolves.

      But I think dogs are having their own problems, and not just the closing of dog runs. They gave up the pack a long time ago, so their “pack” becomes people, but they still need dog contact. Suddenly all they can do is glance across the street at other dogs. At the best of times, there are people who will cross the street with their dog, it’s never clear if they worry about their dog or the other dog. Now it’s the norm, are they avoiding people or the dogs? And dogs can be oblivious to some things, they know they afen’t getting that needed dog contact, but don’t know why

    • Kate 18:00 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      Michael Black, I believe dwgs was doing a masterful détournement of David100’s xenophobic barb and not seriously intending that dogs be sent back.

      Is there actually evidence there were horses here before Europeans came? As I understood it, horses were domesticated on the Eurasian steppes a few thousand years ago, but didn’t come to the Americas till the Spanish brought them. Dogs, however, or so I’ve read, accompanied the first humans who came over from Siberia, so they were already here when Europeans showed up from 1492 onwards.

    • qatzelok 20:39 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      About dogs, Michael Black: “They have no sense of wilderness”
      That’s because their instincts were bred out of them through inbreeding to create decorative toys for humans.
      I find this sort of parallel to what modern man has done to nature generally.

    • Mark Côté 21:19 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      There’s a lot of evidence that dogs basically domesticated themselves, that the less fearful wolves hung around human settlements for the scraps and eventually were integrated into human society. That is of course not to say that we haven’t done quite a number on the species through inbreeding (and other terrible things), but a lot of the particularly weird and unhealthy breeds are fairly recent, comparatively.

    • Mark Côté 21:27 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      And TIL that, yes, in fact, horses actually evolved in North America.

      “1-4 million years ago, Equus, the modern horse, debuted in North America. It stood approximately 13 hands tall with the features of a standard horse. Equus had a long neck and legs, with a single toe.

      Equus originated in North America and spread throughout the world. Equus fossils have been discovered on every continent except Antarctica and Australia.

      Evidence suggests that Equus migrated to Asia a million years ago. They went extinct in North America about 11,000 years ago but survived on other continents and many years later returned to their continent of birth.”

    • Kate 23:00 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

      Very interesting! But they were gone from North America before people arrived.

    • Alison Cummins 02:14 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      Horses were gone 11kya but people started arriving about 16kya — or possibly even earlier, it’s hard to tell. There was overlap.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_the_Americas

    • dwgs 08:42 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      I have two dogs and taking them for one very long walk each day is what is keeping me sane. Most dog walkers are crossing the street to avoid contact but every once in a while we meet someone who will let the dogs say hello. Most leashes are about 1.5 metres long so the owners maintain a 3m distance while the dogs socialize.
      qatzelok, it sometimes seems as though there is no joy in your life whatsoever.

    • Kate 11:46 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      Alison, it seems (after a cursory look around) that the issue of whether people interacted with those archaic horses is not settled archaeologically, but that some folks are making the claim they did, from cultural nonscientific motives. However, it’s a provable fact those horses died off with a lot of the other American megafauna around 10,000 years ago.

      My guess is that if people interacted with those horses at all, they ate them, they didn’t ride them. But that may not be provable either way.

    • Alison Cummins 12:15 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      Kate,
      Agreed. Horses weren’t domesticated until 6kya, and they were milked and bled, not ridden.

      Michael Black,
      Dog contact is one of my reasons for having two dogs.

      My little dog is good with dogs and I let her approach as much as she wants and as much as the other dog and dog-boss are comfortable with. Dog contact is good!

      My big dog is not good with dogs. Or rather, she is fine with dogs at an appropriate social distance who are ignoring her. I do not allow other dogs to approach her. She sits, I place myself between her and the other dog, and I explain limits to the owner.

      But even I, a pro-dog-contact dog-boss, will occasionally cross the street to avoid a dog if I don’t think I’ll be able to give my big dog enough social distance. Sorry, guys.

  • Kate 10:02 on 2020-03-29 Permalink | Reply  

    In response to vandalism at Vietnamese temples, and the temple Huyen Khong in particular, a Montrealer from that background explains how the temple functions in his culture and pleads for help in finding the culprits.

     

    • Alison Cummins 12:57 on 2020-03-30 Permalink

      In my neighbourhood. Very depressing.

  • Kate 09:15 on 2020-03-29 Permalink | Reply  

    The STM union is accusing the transit commission of making people come to work and put them at risk, when there’s little work to be done.

     

    • Kate 09:04 on 2020-03-29 Permalink | Reply  

      An earthquake rating 3.6 centred on Mascouche shook the urban area at 3:21 on Sunday morning.

       

      • Francesco 09:38 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

        We were wondering why we both woke up around then. Normally I hear or feel them and guess correctly but not this time. Thanks!

      • Deegan Stubbs 09:44 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

        COVID19, earthquake, what next? Locusts?

      • Max 10:40 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

        “Minor flooding” started in Sainte-Anne’s this week.

      • JaneyB 11:16 on 2020-03-29 Permalink

        Ah..I felt that over in Verdun. I also thought ‘locusts’.

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