CBC pulls up from its archive a story about how it used to be illegal to deliver bread on Sundays and Mondays.
Updates from May, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Montreal’s universities are already expecting fall term to launch as distance learning, possibly with the exception of things like lab sessions that can’t be done that way.
Ian
CEGEPs too.
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Kate
Ste-Catherine Street will be pedestrianized this summer between St-Hubert and Papineau, and between Bleury and St-Laurent.
DeWolf
So… exactly the same as every summer, just without the festivals.
Kate
True. It’s funny, the section between Bleury and the Main is always so clogged up with festival junk that I wasn’t even thinking of it as an open pedestrianized space.
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Kate
People are still grocery shopping without cease as the pandemic continues. I’m not surprised: many folks who would’ve bought lunch away from home or picked up takeout for dinner a few times a week are presumably doing a lot more food prep in their own kitchens. CP is evidently also amused at the booming sales in condoms.
Ephraim
Most of the Loblaw’s brands now have the PC Express up to date. For those who are really in need because of their underlying health, not all the stores are doing contact free pick-up. In particular, the Provigo on Parc and the Maxi on Masson are not contact free, both require you to walk into the store. The Provigo on Rachel didn’t honour it’s time slots (by a few days) but most of the others are up to date and honouring their dates. Maxi stores do NOT do substitutions, but the number of missing items is surprisingly low (Romaine and Greek Yogurt were the only things missing from a large order). Provigo does, but they can be hit or miss… like regular soda instead of diet soda… not a good substitution for a diabetic! So use the comments to specify substitutions are remove the options. Oh and watch quantities… I thought I was order a package of 6 corn… got 1 corn instead 🙂
Some of these grocery clerks are pure saints. I don’t know how many times I have wanted to slap someone… like the man who touched every single package of meat in the case.
Blork
Well, people gotta eat. I was going once a week, and to only one store, for the first while. Tried pre-ordering and pickup at IGA but that was such a shit show (and ended up giving me the most close contact with people I’ve had since all this began) that I abandonned that as a tactic.
Last time I went was 13 days ago, and I was determined to get enough for two weeks. Looks like I pulled it off, as we’re just now running out of milk and there’s even still some viable lettuce in the fridge (I am seeing iceberg lettuce in a different light now).
I’ll be going again tomorrow, and hopefully will be able to get a two week supply again. The only real problem is if something is out of stock; I might not want to wait two weeks for OJ or eggs or whatever. Also, I’m pretty spoiled and I cry like an eight-year-old if I don’t have a constant supply of fresh basil, cilantro, and parsley.
Kate
Blork, you could get basil, cilantro, and parsley plants this week and grow your own all summer.
Blork
Oh, I plan too, at least for basil and parsley, but they won’t be ready to start harvesting until some time in June. I haven’t had much luck with cilantro. It tends to take it’s time, then it all comes into bloom and goes to seed really quickly.
Ephraim
Get yourself an Aerogarden. (You may want to build a 3 sided carton box to cover it, if you dislike the light, since it’s on about 17 hours a day.) There are other brands… like click&grow, but kits often appear in AZ’s warehouse for under $100 for the 6 pod unit. And get the herb garden. You get weeks and weeks of herbs all year long, except when you decide it’s time to clear it all out and start again. We did basil all winter and just kept on trimming. We actually have two, one growing herbs and another growing tomatoes and jalapenos. As they get larger, though, you have to top up the water about once every 2 or 3 days.
Blork
Nice tip, Ephraim, I’ll look into. I’ve seen a few such things in the past and they’ve always been either too small, too large, or too complicated. This one looks pretty good. (I do good year-round with basil, as I get those living pots from the grocery store for $5 and they last a month or so in the pantry window. The cilantro ones never work out so well though…)
Kevin
Blork
That’s because cilantro is nasty and trying to kill you so you shouldn’t eat it anyway.Blork
No cilantro allergy here. To the contrary, I break out into hives if I don’t get cilantro in my meal at least every second day.
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Kate
With the withdrawal of Alexandre Cusson from the race, Dominique Anglade will be acclaimed head of the Quebec Liberal Party. She’s the first woman and the first person of colour in the position.
qatzelok
She’s also the umpteenth political leader to be “borrowed” from the private sector.
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Kate
François Legault has floated a further delay beyond May 25 to reopen schools and businesses in Montreal.
The city’s blue collar workers were back on the job Monday but unsettled about the situation in the city, especially for their number who have existing health conditions. (At a guess, a fair number of these workers live off-island.)
Deaths in Quebec passed 3000 Monday, and Montreal’s are likely to pass 2000 this week.
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Kate
Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet tries to make hay over Justin Trudeau’s pandemic worries about Montreal. But Trudeau is not only prime minister, he’s MP for one of the city’s poorest ridings, and he’s entitled to express concern about us.
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Kate
Noticed recently that Concordia is producing a slick online magazine called The City. It has a sheaf of pieces up. My main beefs with the design is that the pictures are REALLY BIG on a desktop monitor, but chiefly, that they need to put a date on the stories, along with the credit line.
Clément
There is a “Published date” way at the bottom of the articles
Blork
It’s pretty slick. You do get bylines when you click through to a story, and you get the publication date at the bottom of the story. What this tells me is that the site is designed to ensure maximum clicking and scrolling, which is a red flag for people over 40 but is “web savvy” to people under 30 (web savvy from the publisher’s POV, not the reader, but for such savvy publishers, readers are not people, they’re just impressions, so the more you get the better.)
Kate
Hmm. thought I saw one with no date. But if this stuff wants to be taken seriously as journalism, it should have the date up top.
denpanosekai
Dates should definitely be at the top of each article AND on the main page.
Joey
It’s a bit misleading to say “Concordia” is producing this… it’s really students from the journalism program (along with faculty):
“The City is a digital, multi-media magazine created by upper-year students in the Department of Journalism at Concordia University for The Digital Magazine class, under the supervision of faculty and staff members in the department. The City strives to tell the untold and hidden stories of Montreal and its surrounding areas. The reporting aims to be as balanced, fair and professional as possible.”
http://thecitymag.concordia.ca/policy-documents/
There’s a 2019 edition. Kudos to these students for putting together something so slick, presumably at very low cost.
Sean
No RSS feed?! Blasphemy…
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Kate
Is it safe to take public transit at a time like this?
I’ve noticed that while, earlier on, there were general warnings that masks don’t necessarily work to stop transmission, now everyone talks as if they do.
Alison Cummins
Masks definitely slow transmission.
1. They keep your filthy paws out of your face. This stops you rubbing virus into your nose and stops you smearing your face goo on things other people might touch.
2. Homemade masks are fairly good at capturing droplets (mostly what leaves your face). This is where “my mask protects you, your mask protects me” comes in.
3. Homemade masks are not so good at filtering aerosols (what’s left floating around in the air after droplets fall to the ground). They offer some protection in this direction but not a lot.
Masks must not be wet. They must cover as much of your face as possible.
If everyone wears a mask, passengers on public transport should be ok. Drivers… less so.
Alison Cummins
Excellent article on evaluating risk:
https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-themAlison Cummins
Question to anyone who knows this stuff:
When scientists say it takes 200–1000 virus particles to cause an infection, what does that mean exactly?
Is it that our bodies are pretty good at neutralizing virus particles and there’s only a 1/1000 chance of a lucky particle making it all the way into a cell? Like it only takes one sperm to cause a pregnancy, but the chances of any given sperm making it to an egg are so low that a sperm count of less than 15M/mL can be a fertility problem?
Or does the virus need a critical mass of infected cells to propagate? Like a little virus patch that can spread, vs a single infected cell that can be easily identified and neutralized?
jeather
The former, Alison, more or less — we are good at fighting off infections, but we have a limited number of white blood cells, so the more virus particles you have in your system the more likely some of them can continue to propagate before the WBCs kill them and the cell they are in.
Tee Owe
Nice explanation Jeather – I like Alison’s fertility/sperm count analogy, might use it in teaching. Important to not confuse those first-line WBC with the antibody immunity that we all hope for, that comes later, if we’re lucky
Alison Cummins
Kate, thanks, but there’s no thought to complete. Just stray words, possibly from an aborted paragraph.
Alison Cummins
Thanks, jeather! That makes sense.
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Kate
People who supplement meager incomes by cashing in cans and bottles are having a rough time since stores stopped accepting returns. It’s clearly better that they’re not handling containers that other folks have been drinking from, but it’s still harsh.
DeWolf
Last weekend Peluso on Beaubien set up a return station on the sidewalk outside and La Presse reported that some supermarkets are doing the same.
dwgs
We usually have three, sometimes four people who work our street for cans. I know one of them a bit and I stash mine beside the porch where he knows to look for them. They were piling up so I put them beside the sidewalk instead and they’ve been there for the better part of a week untouched. Pre Covid they wouldn’t have lasted 4 hours.
Kate
Thanks for the deets, DeWolf.
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Kate
Radio-Canada talks to Dr Fabrice Brunet, director of the CHUM, about COVID-19. Brunet mentions young patients with no existing conditions who have had strokes, and how the virus can manifest with neurological, digestive, heart and skin problems, as well as Kawasaki disease in kids. The virus apparently sheds not only by droplets but in pretty much anything excreted by a human being, including tears. This is for the few commenters here who keep insisting on reopening our society to fix the economy: Dr Brunet knows we’re not yet close to the end of this pandemic.
david1099 22:36 on 2020-05-11 Permalink
That’s the Montreal I remember. Though it has never been easier to get a bottle of wine than a loaf of bread! (that’s another story!)
Patrick 20:37 on 2020-05-12 Permalink
This brought back memories of the POM delivery trucks that used to deliver to our house, not just bread but little tarts and other goodies. I’m sure a lot of kids would like to have that kind of service during the lockdown.