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The AN-225 landed at Mirabel on Friday evening, bringing masks and other PPE from China.
TVA has some brief video of the landing. Here’s a tweet of the takeoff from Anchorage, and another, and another tweet with a photo showing its scale relative to a few regional jets.
Someone posted another video of the landing later on Youtube.
The STM has various post-lockdown plans but the head of its biggest union isn’t satisfied, for example, that wearing a mask won’t be obligatory. “Notre meilleur client, c’est la COVID-19, c’est lui qu’on transporte le plus,” Gleason Frenette is quoted as saying.
(It’s a curious name. I wonder if M. Frenette knows that possibly the most famous fictional bus driver for at least a decade was played by Jackie Gleason?)
Nominative determinism
Who will be providing all these “mandatory masks”?
Two more bars were firebombed overnight in the northeastern corner of town.
Are all these fires self inflicted to get insurance?
I doubt it. These are mostly crappy little hole-in-the-wall café bars, the insurance wouldn’t come to much.
If you read the piece, you’ll see Daniel Renaud thinks it has to do with these joints being places illicit drugs have been sold. He clearly doesn’t know, nor do the police, exactly what’s going on, but I suspect it’s a microeconomic glimpse of what’s happening everywhere: the bars can’t open, the owners are in debt to whoever it is supplies whatever drugs it is they sell, so a domino effect comes into play, the mobsters want their money, the dealers can’t actually move any product, and can’t collect on debts they’re already owed. So the mobsters deliver “messages” although even they must be aware there’s no liquidity in the system right now, licit or illicit.
Like the Quebec government, the mobsters want things opened up and business returned to normal. But you can’t get blood out of a gatepost.
Update: The price of cocaine is way down.
Fire bombings seem to be a feature of the Montreal underworld, do they occur in other parts of Canada? I follow the local news in various cities in the US and the world, but bar flambé is sort of a poutine, understood only by locals.
Not sure, TC. Gangs used to dynamite each other’s clubhouses, and I recall reading that it was partly because they didn’t have access to serious firearms here (also some of them had connections to the construction industry, which gave them access to dynamite). But it seems clear from the new federal firearms laws announced Friday that it hasn’t been so hard to get hold of assault weapons here, although it seems they mostly get used by dangerous nutbars, not by gangs.
A new virus testing centre is opening in Montreal North, a hotspot for new contagion, and a mobile clinic will be starting Sunday there and in St-Michel, which is also afflicted.
Anglo school boards are taking a position they will reopen only when they feel it’s safe, and not when the Quebec government ordains it. Here’s an example where having a school board to stand between schools and government is working for the anglo side.
Prisoners may be let out of Bordeaux Jail if the outbreak of Covid there gets worse. It’s not as if we don’t know that if you have Covid in a confined population, it gets worse. It’s not a done deal yet, though.
The city’s two big cemeteries are dealing with a rise in burials coupled with the need to limit the size of gatherings. The story mentions Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, but presumably implies Mount Royal, the contiguous non-Catholic cemetery, is doing the same.
Hi i only speak English only my name is Helen I need some help please my lover fiance name is Carl Patterson Jr he is a inmate in Bordeaux Montreal Quebec very worried and concerned I haven’t heard from him over 2 weeks he 60 years old I love him so very much I care about him wanted him to know that I love him so very much and you please get this message to him thank you so very much
I’m sorry, I have no way to get any message inside Bordeaux.
The health minister has given the OK for health workers testing positive for COVID-19 to go back to work before ending their formal quarantine.
Deaths from the virus in Quebec cracked 2000 on Friday, with 2,022 as the official number.
Is this an active population cleansing program inspired by smallpox blankets?
That plan needs to be re-thought. It doesn’t sound like a good idea.
I agree with Alison and Janey here. I can’t believe the health minister thinks this is ok. I think there should be a “lottery” whereby all politician’s names go into a hat. Every so often, there should be a draw. If their name gets picked, they’ve got to spend a week working at a CHSLD.
You weren’t imagining it: April was unusually chilly.
Good, it made staying inside a little more bearable.
One reason I’m annoyed that they’re rushing the re-opening is I suspect if we’re patient for a few more weeks, we might be able to salvage something of the summer. Just re-opening playgrounds and the odd terrasse would be great. But unless the government changes their mind drastically, I worry we’re setting ourselves up for round 2 just at the height of hot weather.
Collège Ahuntsic has decided to change its sports team name from “Indiens” to “Aigles”. Item reminds us McGill ended the “Redmen” era recently but hasn’t yet announced a new name.
Since the McGill team names shouldn’t reference a color or a gender, or even a species (lest they be accused of being speciesist), I suggest “achromatic carbon-based units.”
I’m here all week, folks.
“The Units” would be a great team name.
@Blork I’m not sure which logical fallacy that is but it’s definitely one of them
@MarcG, give me some credit. There are at least three logical fallacies at work there.
@Blork: maybe it’s the combination of “red” and “men”? I mean, McGill’s official colours are red and white. How does everybody feel about the “Whitemen”?
No?
Does that feel… uncomfortable?
Then maybe there’s more to it than colour and gender.
Blork 21:39 on 2020-05-01 Permalink
I’m not an airplane fanatic (or at least not in a serious way) but I actually understand how airplanes fly. Not just intellectually, but physically, as I used to fly gliders in my younger years, where it’s a nice mix of “think” and “feel.” But that AN-225 boggles the mind. My brain cannot account for its ability to actually lift off. I feel like I’m looking at some CGI hoax. I regret not being able to see it in person.
Kate 22:48 on 2020-05-01 Permalink
It does have six huge engines, and the body, while large, is mostly hollow.
Alison Cummins 00:31 on 2020-05-02 Permalink
With its round belly and frontward wings it looks like a living flying thing. Charmingly birdlike or terrifyingly pterodactyl-like or a bit of both.
Raymond Lutz 11:56 on 2020-05-02 Permalink
Thanks for the video, Kate. The most impressive moment is https://youtu.be/GePob34Mnbc?t=110 when taxiing the pilot rev’s up its engines to turn (with reverse trust on the other side?) The Antonov almost spins on itself!
Hervé 03:15 on 2020-05-03 Permalink
Loading and take-off, from the same Youtube channel as that last link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LdooTc3KyY
Kate 19:27 on 2020-05-03 Permalink
Thank you, Hervé!