Sikh truck drivers who didn’t want to have to wear hard hats when working in the Port of Montreal had their case turned down by the Supreme Court Thursday. The highest Quebec court had ruled that safety trumps religious freedom in this situation, and that ruling now stands.
Updates from April, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
In lighter news, a body was pulled out of the river near the clock tower, Thursday afternoon.
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Kate
A third CHSLD patient attendant has died of Covid, this one in Cartierville.
The Jewish General is dealing with two distinct outbreaks.
Georges Laraque has been hospitalized with the virus.
Some people have actually proposed deliberately catching Covid in the spirit of the old chickenpox parties people held before a vaccine was developed. There are five good reasons not to do this.
Aaron Derfel’s twitter thread of the day looks at outbreaks in hospitals.
Here’s an upside to the lockdown: people say they’re getting better sleep because they can match their own sleep cycle, not the boss’s.
Ephraim
Two more good reasons, they have noted a small percentage of younger people having a stroke. And there is at least one report of a lady in Italy who has tested positive for over 60 days… an inadvertent typhoid Mary. From what I understand, they won’t let her out until she tests negative. See https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/the-italian-model-who-keeps-testing-positive-to-coronavirus-two-months-after-diagnosis-c-996498
Brett
The Covid party article is clearly clickbait. Seriously is anyone seriously suggesting this? If anything, from now on it will be morally unacceptable to let either yourself or your child out of the house if either of you are sick. Expect absences due to colds to go way up. Not sure if universal sick pay will follow, though.
Kate
Brett, if you google for “coronavirus party” or “covid party” you’ll see there are people doing this. There’s even a wikipedia page.
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Kate
Community gardens will open gradually starting May 4, and the city is gearing up to encourage more urban gardening generally, plus a practical vegetable plot at the botanical garden.
Chris
Too bad the legacy of the automobile has left most of the soil in cities too contaminated with lead (from when it was a gasoline additive for decades) to grow food in.
Ian
Asphalt leaching is a big issue too, and is ongoing. For stuff like tomatoes unless you are doing container gardening the whole city is basically brownfield.
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Kate
François Legault is already hedging his bets that Montreal is ready to reopen.
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Kate
CTV has some striking video of a motorcyclist speeding on a ramp, hitting the side railing and flying over it. He didn’t die but he’s probably not feeling great this morning.
Blork
“Speed may have been a factor…” Yeah. And dumbassery was most definitely a factor.
Alison Cummins
I love that the bike just kept going as if nothing had happened. Like a horse that goes under a low tree branch to scrape off its rider.
MarcG
They’re lucky they didn’t hit that sign. Does anyone have a psychological profile for these people? Death wish? Need attention? Some chemical imbalance that makes it hard for them to find excitement? I can’t relate.
Blork
Actually, if he had hit the sign he might be less injured because it would have ba-doinged him back onto the road instead of going over the edge. (I think those signs aren’t very rigid so there’s a high boing factor.)
Kate
If you keep watching, you’ll see one of the cops hop over the barrier not too far past the spot where the guy went over. So he must have hit hard, but he didn’t have too far to fall.
Alison Cummins
Yeah, need for stimulation seems to be there. Lots of young men get really antsy. I don’t begrudge it them: it takes all kinds. That’s why humans stated doing so well when we started living in larger groups and could pool our strengths.
Possibly also a reaction to confinement. And if someone’s taking their bike out for the first time in the spring they may not realize how out of shape they are.
Blork
Kate, where he went over it was high enough for there to be a lane passing under. But the second part of the video is from about 30-40 metres ahead, where the embankment comes up to the same level as the road he went flying off of. But were he went off was definitely farther back, over a road.
Blork
According to the article the guy had no license or registration for the bike, so this was higher on the dumbassery scale than just Covid-cabin fever.
Jack
I always crack up when motorcyclist complain about how much their insurance cost.
Kevin
No licence, unregistered bike. Jack it’s your taxes paying for his recovery, not the piddly $300 a year I spend insuring my motorcycle.
dwgs
My first thought was ‘stupid young guy’ too but in the report they say he’s 35. No licence, unregistered bike tells me that there’s a very good chance that he was inexperienced. I drive that ramp regularly and the curve on it is not well designed, it’s pretty sharp and the roadbed isn’t banked into the curve as you would expect. Changing lanes from the inside to the outside on any curve can be tricky as well. I’m also not convinced he was trying to cut the truck off, I think he went into the curve with too much speed coupled with inexperience and he just missed the turn. He’s lucky he wasn’t a half second later, he would have driven into the semi.`
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Kate
A beautiful house dating from 1916 was demolished this week in east-end Mercier, near Parc Bellerive. Item says it was too decrepit to be saved. I don’t doubt the trees on the property will also be razed so something more profitable can go up on the lot.
Alison Cummins
My grandparents’ house in upstate NY was built in 1916. They moved into it in 1947 and my grandmother was disappointed from the start—she’d have preferred something more modern and convenient. (My great-grandmother chose it when my grandmother was in the hospital, probably having a baby.)
It was a wonderful house to visit as a child. There were high ceilings, a banister to slide down, spooky rooms to visit (attic, old servants’ quarters, coal/root cellar).
There was one downstairs bathroom leading off the kitchen with a bathtub that was added in a 1950s renovation, an upstairs bathroom with bathtub shared between the master bedroom, the kids — of which there were 11— and my great-grandmother. There was also a toilet and shower in the servants’ quarters.
When my grandmother died and my grandfather moved in with one of his eight sons—early 2000s—he had been paying $900 US per month to heat the place.
It had wood clapboard that had to be regularly repaired and painted. It was gorgeous—brown with pink, blue and cream detailing.
There was no room on the lot for more than two cars, so it was hard to sell as student housing: all those students would have had lots of cars.
So I agree it’s a beautiful house, but I get that it had done its time. Some beautiful things are ephemeral.
The sad thing will be when it’s replacement is ugly.
Jack
By the way Parc Bellerive is beautiful. Well served by a bike path that isn’t too trafficked. Which is of course understandable seeing as about 5 km is oil tankers and a refinery.
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Kate
Six vehicles were put to the torch overnight in an industrial part of St‑Léonard. Police find it suspicious.
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Kate
People are worried about the general reopening in Montreal North, where the number of virus cases has been rising fast. There are also outbreaks in hospitals, sometimes in sections previously judged to be free of infection. Other medical procedures are getting sidelined in the panic.
Le Devoir looks hard at how poorer people are more at risk for complex reasons and editorialist Michel David examines whether people will maintain a right to distance themselves if jobs open again in places they judge unsafe – for example, high school teachers in Montreal North ordered to show up for work, even though there will be no students to teach.
La Presse says (in a piece not framed as an op-ed) that Quebec is not ready to reopen, based on WHO guidelines.
Ephraim
We aren’t really ready. NZ is ready. They are flat and they have contact tracing in place. Quebec should be reopening by region with regional travel restricted. Places like Bas St‑Laurent and Gaspe are ready to open. Montreal, not so much so.
Max
The Globe and Mail reports that our designated hospitals are pretty stressed out. Waiting another few weeks before reopening anything in Montreal would seem to be prudent.
Chris 13:15 on 2020-05-02 Permalink
Fitting that this ruling came now, a period where safety trumps not only religious freedom, but the freedom to assemble, the freedom to travel, the ability to sit in a park, to have a job, to earn a living, to go to school, etc. Something poetic there. 🙂