The city has bought a slab of the remaining east-end forest near the edge of the island, although there’s a row of houses between it and the back river. Item says it’s the site of a waterway but there’s no sign of it on the Google aerial view or map.
If you scroll southward you’ll see a whole chain of penal establishments, ending with the Pinel Institute.
The mayor thinks the city is ready to reopen businesses.
Quebec now says people can gather outdoors in groups of ten from three households while retaining the two-meter rule, as of this Friday.
There is no date for the reopening of Verdun beach.
They can say what they want but unless it is being enforced this kind of pronouncement means nothing. The parks have already been packed for weeks and hardly anyone is being serious about physical distancing, let alone wearing masks.
It looked to me like these were the rules they were basically already enforcing this past weekend–at least in Parc Laurier. I saw cops wandering around the sea of people sitting in groups. For people who were closer than two metres to each other they verified that they actually lived together.
What exactly is being relaxed here? Were they previously more strict about gatherings in parks? Has Montreal been less strict than other areas of Quebec?
I for one see this as a signal to double-down on my personal precautions. Whereas a week ago I felt like most people were taking measures and therefore things were relatively safe, next week I’m going to see Montreal as a teaming pool of Coronazombies.
Im taking these announcements seriously.
I’ve stayed away from my extended family almost completely. Other than once time driving to someones house and talking to them from the sidewalk.
Due to this annoucement, two other family groups and me have planned a backyard bbq this weekend. I would not have done that if the recommendations hadn’t changed.
I don’t get it.
What is the point of reopening without a plan for contact tracing?
What was the point of closing down in the first place if there was never going to be a meaningful plan for reopening?
>What was the point of closing down in the first place
To prevent the health care system from being overwhelmed, and to give time to learn better ways to diagnose and treat patients. It wasn’t to stop everyone from eventually getting infected. Most likely scenario was, and still is, that the virus will work its way through most of humanity, but the damage is minimized by spreading that out, instead of having it all at once.
I hear you, Faiz. I’ve also not had any gatherings–even ones in the park with distancing–since March. My point was just that this seems to be the way a lot of people were already behaving, with implicit police endorsement. Maybe it’s just making it official, at this point.
I’m with Alison. A plan for contact tracing should have been given as much weight as flattening the curve during the initial shutdown. The premier is only starting to mull over a contact tracing system NOW! It’s inevitable that a second wave will occur with a reopening, and with the summer weather Montrealers will be desperate to get out of the city and vectoring all over the province and beyond, so why not implement measures that can help prevent new outbreaks from spreading?
“What was the point of closing down in the first place if there was never going to be a meaningful plan for reopening?”
This is precisely the kind of question a lot of skeptical people who are otherwise deeply involved in social movements have been posing since the start. It was clear as day at the start that, surveying the landscape of actors on the chess board, quebec civil society has been completely cucked. By which I mean the housing committees, citizens groups, unions, etc. And the only organized, effective player was the business community. And that they did and have gotten their way in this situation. while i think we straight up lost this round, if anyone wants to have a seat at the table next time around (which we all know will come) dedicate a significant portion of your life, time, and money into authentic civil society orgs that will allow enable you to be organized enough to exert pressure on the situation. do it today. join the local housing committee and give 30% of your week to them. join a union. do anything that will turn you into a constituency worth being a part of.
Fine and dandy, Maxim Baru, but spare us tough-guy expressions like “cucked” OK?
Yeah, I stopped reading at “cucked.”
Seems like people at this point have been sufficiently informed so as to make their own decisions on best/safest practices. That’s all we can ask – can’t be locked up forever.
It was never about an individual getting sick, it’s about the spread and whether the resources are there to handle the surge.
I don’t care if I die tonight in my sleep, though the Virus is more likely an agonizing route to that point. But if I get it, I’m likely going to be a burden. Too many like that and the doctors and nurses wear out, and supplies run down, and more minor cases may become more serious.
I don’t know where the solution is, but it isn’t just about individual responsibility because it was never just about whether an individual takes a risk.
Ste-Catherine Street between Metcalfe and Atwater will become a pedestrian mall on weekends this summer and will have extra room for pedestrians the rest of the week. Sections of St-Denis and de la Commune will also get the treatment.
Makes sense.
The Journal made a visit to one of the bus-based testing clinics.
A Bordeaux inmate hospitalized with Covid has died of the illness. He was 72. Numbers at the jail are not good.
Montreal poet Kaie Kellough has won a prestigious poetry prize.
He’s my neighbour! Very happy for him.
The book is a very good one.We were on a panel together at the Blue Metropolis festival last year, and I was impressed with his personal qualities as well.
Makes me realize I have no idea what “good poetry” is like in our time. I design poetry books sometimes and I make it look great, but I never know whether it’s good.
Police are evidently not too concerned about drivers dooring cyclists. The number of tickets handed out for this action, never high, have been declining for two years.
I’d like to see this compared with the number of actual incidents of dooring. Has that gone down too? If so, that’s a good thing and it shows that the ticketing was effective in putting dooring “on the radar” so to speak of drivers.
We need to make that Dutch door opening technique (that I think I learned about from Mare here) compulsory to get a license. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD50tVXIXB4
One thing that may also have helped is that over the past couple of years many bike lanes now have a door zone buffer that reduce the risk of dooring. It’s not perfect but it gives cyclists several more inches to avoid open doors.
A more extreme example is Milton Street, whose counterflow bike lane was expanded last year by replacing all parking on the south side of the street, with a big painted buffer between cyclists and oncoming traffic. We may see something similar when the notoriously bad St-Urbain bike lane is widened this summer.
Incidentally, this topic reminds me of something I saw on Wellington Street in Ottawa, where the entire dooring zone has been painted with a hatched pattern and the words “DOORING ZONE – ZONE D’EMPORTIÉRAGE” which weirdly makes dooring sound like an officially sanctioned activity.
There was also a big advertising campaign about dooring around the same time as the new bike lane spacers came into effect. I’ve also been noticing a lot of double wide paths in places like Verdun, NDG & the Point, I imagine they must help. Even Westmount’s bike paths like the one on Cote St Antoine are getting safer.
Milton is still a bit of a mess for bicyclists but getting rid of parking on the counterflow side was a good idea – the street was just too narrow for bidirectional paths & parking on both sides especially given the insane levels of foot, bike and car traffic in that area. My kids and I used to walk along there going to school every morning and even just trying to cross the streets on foot was a bit freaky – especially when dealing with small children.
My girlfriend was doored two years ago and didn’t want to call the cops since the driver had been nice with her, but she still had injuries to her knees and arms and was shocked by the event. Being kind of a hardcore militant on those issues, I convinced her to call the police station. They shunned her by saying there was nothing they could do, as all the officers were occupied elsewhere and she and the driver had left the spot.
I suspect she’s not the only one who had that kind of experience. Collisions that happen when riding a bicycle are just not taken seriously by the police, even less if it happens in car-centric boroughs.
That Dutch door technique was how I was taught to open my car door back in driver’s Ed in high school. Does no one teach that anymore?
Regarding the police response, what Alex L describes is pretty conventional. You can’t expect the cops to spend much time on an incident long after it happened, when the parties involved have left the scene, and there are no serious damage or injuries.
Aside from people’s indignance over anything involving cars, the reality is that you either get the cops there at the time it happens or you move on. Dooring, as bad as it is (and it is bad) is almost always an accident (meaning the driver didn’t intend to do it). That doesn’t make it not a problem, but you can’t treat it like a drunk-driving thing or a pre-meditated assault. So if the cops aren’t called to the spot, or if there isn’t a third-party witness, then it becomes a “who do you believe?” scenario. And frankly, given the way cycling and cars is such a hot button topic, with all of the hysterics and grandstanding that goes with such thing (on both sides), it’s hard to believe either party unless there’s a witness.
@Blork and yet if two cars are involved in an accident (and nobody is seriously hurt), nobody summons the police, they never get involved and the insurance companies sort it out based on testimony from the involved parties. We need a similar protocol for accidents involving cyclists, including ones where the cyclist is the “victim” and ones where the cyclist is the “perpetrator” (e.g., if a cyclist knocks over a pedestrian).
Just posting this checklist here https://saaq.gouv.qc.ca/en/traffic-accident/event-of-an-accident/
@Kevin. Ha! The SAAQ (and the police) thinks road accidents are only road accidents when there are car(s) involved. I had a bike-pedestrian accident and “No, you’re not covered under the SAAQ insurance” despite paying for that insurance through my drivers license and car registration. I was transported away from the scene to the hospital in an ambulance, but the police didn’t make a report even though they were at the scene. Never found out who the kid was that ran onto the the bicycle path and that I managed to avoid hitting. I took a bad fall, landed on my head (fortunately I was wearing a helmet; it even broke). Had lots of medical costs, inability to work and loss of income, but could never claim them since the police hadn’t taken any names or witness reports. To this day, 16 years later, I still have physical impairments because of that accident. But no car, no accident. The SAAQ seriously told me that if I had hit a parked car I *would* have been in an accident, and they would have paid. Next time I’ll try to think about that advice.
Well, to be fair, it is the Société de l’assurance AUTOMOBILE du Québec. I don’t expect the SAAQ tp pay if I crash into a utility pole while riding a skateboard. Their mandate AFAIK isn’t to cover “road accidents” it’s to cover AUTOMOBILE accidents, and that mandate comes out of the high cost of car ownership plus the specific dangers they create.
Otherwise it’s just an accident, like the skateboard example, or if I fell out of a tree onto the road.
I’m not saying it *should* be that way, but it is. Maybe there should be some kind of expanded coverage for bicycles. At a minimum that would require bicycle riders to be licensed (do we want that?). Then what about skateboards and wheelchairs? Segways? (etc. etc.)
I still have chronic shoulder pain from a bike/ped accident about 25 years ago (I was the cyclist, but I maintain it was not my fault). I fell to the ground and hurt my shoulder. The guy I clipped (stepping out from between parked cars while not looking) seemed to have a sore shoulder too but at least he stayed on his feet. Him and his buddies were yelling all sorts of anti-cyclist things at me until I suggested calling the police, then suddenly everything was fine, just a sore shoulder, blah blah blah. Turns out my front wheel even dented the door of the car I was passing (not sure how that happened), and I’m pretty sure it was his car. If I’d had any inkling I’d still be aching 25 years later I might have insisted on calling the cops, although I don’t know what good insurance would have done me then (the bike, oddly enough, was not damaged).
BTW, @Joey, you’re talking apples to my oranges. Your example is all about insurance, vs. what I was saying was about police and pressing charges or whatever.
>but you can’t treat it like a drunk-driving thing or a pre-meditated assault
For the latter I agree. But is dooring really so different from drunk driving? In both cases, it’s an ‘accident’ (“meaning the driver didn’t intend to do it”, as you defined it). A drunk driver *doesn’t* intend to hit anyone, but he *did* choose to drive a car while drunk. He should have known the latter makes the former more likely. Likewise, a doorer *doesn’t* intend to hit anyone, but he *did* choose to open his door without looking properly. He should have known the latter makes the former more likely.
Chris, drunk driving is a crime whether you hit anyone or not.
True, that’s also a substantial difference.
Blork 19:08 on 2020-05-20 Permalink
The Ruisseau Pinel appears in Google Maps (non-satellite and satellite) for me, except there’s nothing there in satellite view. In map view there’s definitely a blue line between 87th and Amrand-Chaput that starts at the river then goes south as far as “Viafax” and then turns east and snakes all the way into the industrial area at Maurice-Duplessis and Olivier-Lejeune. Maybe it’s some kind of subterranean waterway? How weird.
Kate 20:24 on 2020-05-20 Permalink
Could be. But a ways west of there, there’s Ruisseau-de-Montigny park which really does have a little waterway running through it, emptying into the back river. There would’ve been a lot more of these, I think, except we’ve got used to the idea that it’s one big indivisible island and the rivers only run around it.
Hervé 06:59 on 2020-05-21 Permalink
Could they be talking about this stream here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/45.66490/-73.54174
Visible here: https://goo.gl/maps/xMUhEdWZr6nRFAxf7
Kate 09:02 on 2020-05-21 Permalink
Hervé, that’s the one. Thanks for finding it!
MarcG 11:09 on 2020-05-21 Permalink
That’s the same thing Blork was talking about, unless I misunderstood something.
MarcG 11:11 on 2020-05-21 Permalink
You can see a little bridge going over it here https://goo.gl/maps/xo1nMawuLWgD27x68
MarcG 11:29 on 2020-05-21 Permalink
… although there’s still no literal “link” between that chunk of forest and the Pinel river, maybe they mean it in a broader ecological sense.
Blork 12:30 on 2020-05-21 Permalink
Yeah, that’s the same one visible in Google Maps. I didn’t think to go into Streetview because Satellite view shows nothing. Nice work!
david1202 21:11 on 2020-05-21 Permalink
We need the province to start buying units secretly and demolishing them without explanation, only to spring a bunch of giant new parks on us, sufficiently before the election.