How will the public health department cope when there’s a heat wave and a pandemic at the same time? It’s likely to happen this summer, although it’s hard to believe when the temperature’s stubbornly stuck in the single digits. We’ve had night frost warnings for days and there’s another one posted for Tuesday night.
Updates from May, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Details here on which bits of autoroutes 40 and 15 will be closed over the long weekend – yes, the May Two-Four is almost upon us, although the vagaries of the calendar mean it’s being marked on the early side this year.
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Kate
Aaron Derfel delivers another Twitter thread, this one on differing virus outcomes in different parts of town, depending on public response and on income.
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Kate
The United Nations is accusing the housing corporation Akelius of abusing the human rights of tenants in Montreal and Toronto.
Meezly
Interesting. I did not realize these types of investigations fall into the UN’s purview, but good on them for taking on a multinational corporation and exposing their unethical practices. Based on the article, it will take several weeks for federal governments to review the report, but here’s hoping that the proper authorities will be able to mete out justice.
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Kate
As of Tuesday, more than 2000 people have died, officially, of COVID-19 in Montreal.
Chris
Did you forget to link to something?
Kate
The numbers are in the column on the right and they come from Santé Québec. But here’s one story and here’s another and the real news is that the “reopening” of the city may be delayed, but we don’t know yet.
Chris
Ah, I see. On mobile that side thing is not visible.
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Kate
A man who’d been director of buildings and installations at McGill has pleaded guilty to fleecing the university of more than $350,000 in construction materials and fittings that he used on two houses he owned.
dwgs
That’s the Mcgill way, make the problem go away quietly and rely on your friends in the Anglo media to make sure nobody digs around too much. At least that’s when profs or senior management get caught. Lesser humans are summarily fired.
qatzelok
Having worked at Concordia for a while in the past, I would say that our education and health care systems suffer from both lack of funding AND internal pillaging by the well connected.
Get rid of this mafia parasitism and the price of education and health care will go down, and job openings will become more democratic.
dwgs
This had nothing to do with organized crime. This was one individual renovating his house at McGill’s expense. He wasn’t protected because he was well connected, this is just the way that McGill does things. The institution lives in mortal fear of being publicly embarassed. Whether that is because they are afraid of alumni giving less or just old school WASP reluctance to air dirty laundry is open for debate.
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Kate
The Gazette tells about the Hasidic balcony chanting and how they’ve sweetened the situation with cookies and pastries. Of course there are some in Outremont who still don’t like it.
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Kate
The Journal is messing with my head this morning, with the headlines Montréal est parmi les pires villes de la planète – a headline they’ve had close to their heart for awhile – but at the same time the op-ed headline Trudeau a raison. Truly the pandemic works wonders.
QMI also gets the headline Montréal vue comme la peste par tout le Québec, a cite from a comment they saw somewhere, but clearly another cry from the QMI heart.
The last link I had to the city’s state of emergency had extended it to May 11, so I asked on Twitter if anyone knew whether it had been extended. Several people told me it was now May 16, as it’s being extended in five-day chunks, but I don’t have a link on this, for looking.
Meezly
It’s heartening to see Quebec media relying on proper data and being so rational. Now if only the Legault gov’t can do the same. At least, the media is onto their propagandistic ways: https://www.lapresse.ca/affaires/202005/11/01-5273162-publicite-45-millions-a-cossette-pour-construire-limage-du-deconfinement.php?fbclid=IwAR3cvfJoXm0A74suzinmAPr0g_GcuUgt9IxE2XxeJoBTgM_-Sbxxwaenmf4
Raymond Lutz 08:23 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
“it’s hard to believe when the temperature’s stubbornly stuck in the single digits”… Kate, I understand your sentence is a stylistic device… Am I wrong?
Those current temperature anomalies are the hallmarks of arctic climate collapse… https://twitter.com/kevpluck/status/1260175035496566784
PS: Climate scientists have run out of shades of red for coloring extremely hot regions so now they’re using shades of brown for f*cking hot. A vast portion of the pole is now 11C hotter than normal.
CE 08:45 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
It’s going to be tough for people without AC who are now going to have to spend the summer working from home.
Kate 09:55 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
Raymond Lutz, I write complicated sentences sometimes, and often have to make myself rewrite them before I post. But I didn’t think I was being overly stylistic there. And I’m in no sense claiming that, since it’s so cold out, climate change is not happening.
CE, I predict a run on fans.
Chris 10:53 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
Personally, I find the contrast between the covid emergency and the climate emergency fascinating.
For covid, we have curtailed freedom of assembly, freedom of travel, restricted religious practices, self-inflicted mass unemployment, crashed savings, we have bread lines, we’ve expanded the surveillance state, etc. etc. etc. But barely a peep of protest, from either the streets, unions, companies, or opposition parties.
Yet for climate change, we do something like add a measly carbon tax that increases your car’s gas by 5¢/L, and half the country is up in arms!
It’s fascinating.
EmilyG 12:03 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
And heat waves have already killed many people, and made others sick.
Maybe tangential, but –
I read an article recently about a sci-fi writer (in the US?) who wrote a story about a hypothetical scenario where a heat wave killed many people not having sufficient air-conditioning/cooling methods. I thought to myself, it’s real, it already happened here.
Chris 13:31 on 2020-05-13 Permalink
And of course manufacturing and operating more air conditioners will consume more energy and thus increase carbon emissions and thus cause more heat waves. Vicious cycle. 🙁