A woman has been charged with killing an 83-year-old man whose body was discovered on March 29. The Journal says he was probably killed on March 20, but I didn’t see the story reported till charges were brought this week. The accused has a complicated legal history, expanded on also in La Presse (that third paragraph is a doozie).
Updates from April, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
Montreal has renewed its state of emergency; public health’s Mylène Drouin said Wednesday the peak infection rate is near but we need to continue vigilant. TVA says the peak is here.
-
Kate
The city has requisitioned four hotels to house the homeless, and may need to add more. This piece contrasts Toronto’s decision to buy hotels with Montreal’s more temporary measure, but says city hall may proceed with buying these requisitioned hotels later; also, experienced workers with the homeless are seeing new faces as people lose jobs (or, as I suspect, are ejected from isolation by disgruntled friends or associates).
More meals are also being provided for the homeless.
Has it really taken a pandemic for society to look after the homeless properly? And will this continue after the pandemic passes – whenever that is?
CBC news at noon briefly touched on an issue I hadn’t considered: there may be more homelessness after the pandemic. They didn’t enlarge on the issue of economic consequences, but we’ll be having them.
david99
But of course the article doesn’t say which hotels they requisitioned.
Alison Cummins
This reminds me of the “brother-in-law on the couch” vision of the apocalypse made famous by non-gun-wielding doomsday prepper Sharon Astyk.
http://sharonastyk.com/2007/08/19/the-brother-in-law-on-your-couch-vision-of-the-apocalypse/
In the past most of us had little private space inside the home; we’d have to go outside for that. If economic downturns means consolidating housing but we can’t leave the house, old models of how to cope don’t apply so well.
-
Kate
The city has tried to trim Sue Montgomery’s sails by reducing her mayoral powers, but a judge turned them down.
John B
That article appears to name the two harassed employees. If their names are now public, is there any reason to keep the report secret?
walkerp
Why is the city coming down so aggressively on her?
Kate
We don’t know, walkerp. Either journalists don’t know, or they’ve heard rumours they can’t substantiate. I suspect it’s the latter.
Ian
In the past, the kind of suppression tactics we are seeing here were used because somebody in power wanted to keep somebody quiet, usually to hide corruption.
What little has been openly shared definitely hints at corruption in the tradition of the former mayor of CDN.
It seems patently obvious to me, really, and the aggressive silencing tactics from the city do nothing to persuade me otherwise.
WE CAN’T TALK ABOUT IT NOBODY TALK ABOUT IT
Um it’s already been talked about
WE CAN’T TALK ABOUT THAT EITHERAlison Cummins
So the theory is that Montgomery is corrupt and that the city is trying to get rid of her quietly so we don’t think about corruption?
Wouldn’t it be easier to prosecute her openly?
walkerp
No, the theory is that the bureaucrats at the NDG borough office are corrupt or at least inefficient to the point of negligence and when she started poking at them, they cried harrassment.
The question is why Valerie Plante is coming down so hard on her. That is where the corruption angle becomes so worrisome. Is there some pressure on her to shut Sue Montgomery up?Ian Rogers
Well for example, there are people that had been working at the borough under Applebaum, who we know was directly connected with property development related corruption. A senior bureaucrat tried to railroad Montgomery into letting a condo group take over the Empress theatre property, claiming they already had a contract to do the work…
“After touring the building, I realized it could not be saved. I asked for a professional audit of the building and the senior bureaucrat told my chief of staff we should have the result of the audit in August and that there was a contract.
It turned out there was no contract, and there was no audit. He tried to blame an underling, and I said, ‘No, it’s your responsibility’,” Montgomery recalls.This is of course one of the “anonymous” people being protected that complained about Montgomery… in an audit of the workplace that Montgomery herself ordered… it’s all very fishy.
Strangely most of the mainstream media has been avoiding getting into anything but the Senior Times of all places has been very forthcoming:
Projet Montréal disappoints in failing to support Sue Montgomery
walkerp
Thanks, Ian, for summarizing that so nicely. It all makes so much sense up until the point where Plante’s administration is coming down so hard behind this bureaucrat.
Tim
Who published that quote from Montgomery, Ian? I didn’t see it in either of the links in this thread.
GC
Thanks for that link, Ian. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but… Just the fact that the person was supposedly guilty of harassment but still offered another job by PM…
Ian
My bad, Tim – I was referencing Senior Times again : http://www.theseniortimes.com/abandoned-by-her-party-determined-n-d-g-c-d-n-mayor-montgomery-seeks-justice/
Tim
Thanks for the link. The following quote is telling: “I meet with the director general every week, I say these are the files, where are we on this? Then there is a follow-up email, which they are not used to.”
-
Kate
Silo 57 has a series of nice photos of a largely deserted city.
Eater has photos of closed bars and restaurants in the Plateau.
GC
Part of me wants to wander these deserted areas with my camera, as well. But I’m trying to be a good citizen and stick to my own neighbourhood unless I have a really good reason.
Kate
GC, yes, me too.
Blork
I had a really good reason to drive into town last week. I didn’t linger, or explore as I’d like to have done, but what I did see was surreal. On the one hand it was no quieter than a Sunday morning, but it was weird to see it like that on a Wednesday at 11:00AM. Driving past the COVID-19 testing site at the QdesS was spooky. The construction site on McGill-College (REM station) seemed to be even more barricaded than last time I saw it, but there were virtually no people or cars around.
-
Kate
A woman died in a fire in DDO around midnight last night. Lots of photos of firefighters outside the building, in the Journal.
There was also a suspicious fire in the Daou restaurant in Villeray. Nobody was hurt, but people living upstairs have to find somewhere else to live, in the middle of a pandemic.
Reply