An outbreak of Covid among its staff has forced the Native Women’s Shelter to close.
Updates from May, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Ville-Marie is waiving fees for terrasses in an attempt to lighten the financial burden on suffering restaurants.
david100
Awesome! Now waive or privatize inspections, greatly loosen all rules around booze and all sorts of other things: all restaurants should get a temporary full license and be allowed to serve takeaway cocktails or bottles of all sorts; open container rules are nuked in toto; business hours of operation should be completely unregulated for the foreseeable future; and – of course – pretty much every possible square meter of poorly used street/parking lot/park space should be available for restaurants to set up outdoor terrasses.
These measures could supercharge the recovery in restauration/hospitality, and make for a great summer.
DeWolf
I like all of those ideas david100 except privatizing or waiving inspections. That sounds like a disaster in the making. Why would you want to compromise food safety? And surely there will need to be inspectors who make sure there is adequate space between tables.
Kate
That was pretty much my response too.
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Kate
There was an anti-lockdown protest Sunday morning in Montreal, and then these geniuses went to Quebec City and joined others to demonstrate at the National Assembly about how the lockdown “attacks their rights and liberties.” They’re apparently also afraid of vaccinations.
We could laugh (bitterly) and leave these Einsteins to their fate, but unfortunately we risk sharing space with them any time we leave the house. It’s not just themselves they’re putting at risk, it’s all of us.
Update: good photos from TVA including a sign saying “J’accuse Justin Trudeau d’incitation à la haine contre son peuple!!!” showing that overuse of exclamation marks is a sure sign of lunacy, whether on a sign or online.
david100
Was better when we didn’t have access to US television/media.
Kate
Was that ever true? There were US TV channels when I was a kid – WCAX Burlington and WPTZ Plattsburgh – and before that I know Montrealers could pick up American radio, because my dad was a fan of the Boston Red Sox long before the Expos were thought of. And before that, the New York Times and other U.S. newspapers would’ve been brought here by train.
david100
When I grew up in the late 1980s and 1990s, I distinctly recall that we suddenly had a flood of American teevee channels. Including Plattsburgh and – unless I’ve gone crazy – somewhere in Michigan?
But there’s nothing even remotely comparable to what we have now. I have an off-island cousin who knows A LOT more about the minutia of US politics than he does about Quebec or Canadian politics, which amazes me (and forget about local or even regional issues, aside from property tax and traffic). That’s not the sort of thing that was possible until fairly recently, without an enormous amount of work.
Kate
It’s true that some folks here feel that U.S. politics is more interesting – worse, more important to follow. Yes, it affects us, but not directly, and since we can’t vote there it’s somewhat academic to follow it.
I worked with a guy fairly recently who found my interest in local politics laughable. He lived in town but didn’t vote in city elections, then he’d go on to complain about things his borough did or didn’t do. I told him I’d got things done (minor street-level repairs and things, but stuff that can really affect a neighbourhood if they’re not fixed) by emailing my borough councillor – and he didn’t even know who his councillors were! But he didn’t want to know, and insisted it was useless to know, all while complaining about borough-level issues and listening to U.S. news radio in the office in the morning.
Mark Côté
Ready access to US news is only really a problem because of the revocation of the FCC Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which directly led to the extreme partisan reporting that is commonplace now, which in turn feeds into some of these conspiracy theories.
Ephraim
Lots of things infringe on my rights. No drinking and driving infringes on my rights. Are they saying that’s okay too? At some point, you have to decide what is the greater good… passing around a disease or driving and killing people… I mean, let’s be realistic, less people die by drunk driving accidents… does that mean that we should just allow drunk driving… NO. And the same is true here. You don’t have a right to kill people.
Laura
That’s the beauty of democracy. You can can choose to stay home until there’s a vaccine. This virus is here to stay and life has to go on.
Chris
>No drinking and driving infringes on my rights
Which right? I don’t see “driving” in the Charter at all. I do see freedom of assembly though.
>You don’t have a right to kill people.
Not directly, but indirectly you sorta do. Driving your car emits pollution that kills people. Mining rare earth metals to build your smartphone kills people. As you said, you have to decide what is the greater good. There are good reasons to keep the lockdown and there are good reasons to end it. Different people have different life situations. For some, the pros and cons balance differently.
Kate
Laura, I don’t know you. You’re making remarks here with assumptions but no substance:
That’s the beauty of democracy.
Nothing to do with democracy here.
You can can choose to stay home until there’s a vaccine.
Two points here:
If work resumes generally, what happens to people with existing health conditions and many people over 60 who would choose to stay home, but can no longer get benefits enabling them to do so? That is not a choice.
There’s no guarantee we’ll ever arrive at an effective vaccine. In addition, work is already under way to scare gullible people into refusing it if we do.
This virus is here to stay and life has to go on.
In other words, a lot more people have to accept that they, or people close to them, have to die so you can get a haircut or have dinner on a terrasse. Is that correct?
Chris
>In other words, a lot more people have to accept that they, or people close to them, have to die so you can get a haircut or have dinner on a terrasse. Is that correct?
1.3 million die every year from motor vehicle crashes, 6 million die prematurely every year from air pollution, all so you can drive around in a cushy motor vehicle. Is that correct?
Kate
I don’t know who you’re addressing, Chris, but I don’t drive.
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Kate
Public health announced 307 more COVID-19 cases in Montreal since Saturday’s count, and 42 more deaths.
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Kate
Monique Mercure has died at 89. She was born in Montreal in 1930 and her career sparkled through decades of stage and screen in Quebec.
Hers is the second notable entertainment death here this week. Renée Claude died Tuesday at age 80. Claude is said to have died of Covid, but it’s not clear yet whether the same is true of Mercure.
ProposMontreal
Kate, thanks for mentioning some of these french legends to your readers. I twitter important english death and i get a lot of flack for it. It’s hard to join the solitudes.
Kate
PM, I sometimes think I don’t do enough along those lines. But thank you for noticing.
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Kate
The city’s state of emergency has been extended to May 21. It’s been in effect since March 27, and the city has now made it easier to extend it in blocks of 5 days without calling the whole council to vote.
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Kate
Sunday is the 378th anniversary of the founding of Montreal – at least, by the French as a fortress called Ville-Marie, in 1642. As the Wikipedia will tell you, the island had a life before 1642, didn’t become a city till 1832, and elected its first mayor the following year. So 1642 is a mild piece of casuistry, but is generally accepted as true.
david100
This is neither here nor there.
There’s an urban legend at McGill that the site of the Hochelaga village was approximately where the Arts Building now sits, and I’ve seen/heard it debunked all sorts of times. The Arts Building, for those who don’t know, was originally the McGill College building, and the west side was Molson Hall, and east side was Dawson Hall. These, with the newer Moyse Hall form the Arts Building as it was renamed back way before my time. That grand entrance, of course, is nothing more than a hallway now.
Anyway, if you look at the Marsan and Linteau histories of the city, the McGill/Hochelaga urban legend starts to make some sense. The area outside the “walls” where the first nations people weren’t allowed, was blocks away – darkly marked by the 720 expressway these days. But poorer people lived outside the walls, and the walking trails (such as what became Sherbrooke, the Cotes, RL/Dorchester) show the major commercial/other paths. I saw some exhibit years ago at the McCord that documented the McGill site as where First Nations would trade or even base camp when they came into town.
Obviously, we’ll never see an archaeological dig on McGill’s campus. But it’s interesting to wonder if that whole history might actually be true (or true-ish).
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