First it was the little forest in RDP, then the linear park along the Turcot. Now Hochelaga-Maisonneuve has announced a new little park in the older part of Maisonneuve. The land used to belong to an order of nuns, whose onetime convent building adjoins it.
Updates from May, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The lockdown has led to an increased demand for pet animals. I hope the SPCA and any other rescue groups are emphasizing to adopters that if you adopt for when you’re home all day, having a pet can be different if you go back to work away from home all day, and you need to think ahead about that.
Audra Moreno-Rogers
Very true! Its a wonderful thing to adopt a pet. You get a loyal loving friend for life. However in return they depend on you to love, feed, house, and care for them for life. Not just during the time that you need physical and emotional contact during a quarantine. Self isolation is tough for many and they naturally may seek outside connection. But we all must seriously consider the ramifications of our choices, be they logical or emotional. Adopting a pet is the same as adopting a child. This is a life long commitment. It comes with the opportunity for many amazing and fulfilling additions to ones life.
However it also comes with a great deal of personal and potential financial responsibility. This should not be entered into lightly. Pets just as people are not disposable. The commitment is real. How often do we hear about a pet found to have diligently stood by its owners deceased body? Or an animal that willing takes a mortal would to save an officer or other person? On instict and bond alone. Consider the gravity of that. It is never a question by the pet. No it is proof of loyalty, too and beyond the end. Take a moment to process that. It’s absolutely astounding. It seems nowadays the norm is people sacrificing others to save their own skin. It’s as if chivalry of one’s soul has been forgotten. Sacrificed as the selfish pursuit of personal wealth has bff become the acceptable societal norms. The new way we gauge ones personal value.
Can you then understand the gravity and rarity of that loyalty? If so, then by all means go apply to adopt a pet With that said responsibility should equally be distributed to the shelters. They must correctly vette potential adopters. Which means taking responsibility for the life of the pet should the placement not be appropriate or fail.
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Kate
There will be highway closures starting Thursday evening and stretching into the weekend.
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Kate
The Environment Canada weather forecasting centre in Place Bonaventure has been shut down for at least two weeks because of a Covid outbreak among its staff.
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Kate
A linear park is being planned for the Turcot, but there’s only a vague reference to the initially promised foot and cycle bridge that would link NDG and St-Henri.
david1202
They should be re-covering the old main street Decarie section, doing a Japanese-style silo on everything else, and planting a huge forest once it gets to the old rail yards, such that in 15 years, we can’t even see (or hear) that there’s a free way there.
Jonathan
David1202 – do you mind elaborating what a Japanese style silo is ?
Kate
david22
In Japanese cities, you often see roadway/highway sound barriers that silo the freeways, blocking sound and obscuring their view. This isn’t exclusive to Japan, you see it many countries, including the US and all over Europe, but it’s highly uncommon to Canada (in fact, I’ve never seen it). Greatly reducing the sound and sight of cars whirring past will do a lot to let us feel like these freeway adjacent spaces do indeed form part of our communities, and can be re-integrated into them.
Kate
There are barriers in some spots. I know someone who lives in Beaconsfield, where the 20 is walled off in places, but it’s a bit of a patchwork.
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Kate
The mayor has unveiled the strategy for reopening stores with direct access to the street. There will be inspectors checking for physical distancing, although it doesn’t sound like masks are going to be made mandatory, nor plexiglas barriers.
Day camps will be allowed to open a month from now, with limits on group sizes.
TVA has a list of what is and isn’t allowed, when and where.
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Kate
The monster plane AN-225 will be touching down at Mirabel again Sunday, with another massive shipment of PPE.
John B
Looks like an AN-124 was here yesterday too. That we need the worlds largest aircraft to make regular runs to keep PPE in stock here underlines how bad the situation actually is.
Faiz imam
I find it odd that they are using such a specialized aircraft though. The Antonov is usually used for cargo that cannot be shipped any other way.
Sure its a big plane, but two 747s carry more, and wouldn’t they be cheaper? There are literally thousands of them out there.
I guess not?
Spi
There’s a multitude of reasons, it could be a way of getting priority treatment at the airport “look we have the world’s biggest cargo carrier waiting on the tarmac, get it filled up and gone” vs the probably dozens of 747. There were 2 planes bound for Canada that had to depart empty because their cargo was being held up at the airport and they needed to fly out.
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Kate
L’actualité’s Alain Vadeboncœur ponders the possible risks of reopening Montreal’s businesses and other activities starting next Monday. Vadeboncœur is also a doctor, head of emergency at the Institut de cardiologie de Montréal.
Aaron Derfel reports that at St Mary’s Hospital, one out of five ER patients ends up testing positive. Derfel doesn’t explicitly state this, but this seems to be among everyone presenting at the ER, people there for other reasons – not only those with typical Covid symptoms.
JaneyB
The large number of ER patients testing positive even when they came in for other things has been noticed in other ERs, notably in NYC. A respiratory specialist/ER doc (Richard Levitan), working in NYC, noted that people functioning with stunningly low oxygen saturation rates seemed to be a surprise crazy feature of covid and is flying basically undetected until its acute phase when people can barely breathe. People are coming in for normal ER things, get routinely tested and are found positive. In his hospital, they found that most of the regular ER type arrivers were covid-positive. He wrote a fascinating article on this in NYT (paywalled, clear your cache). He has also done video pieces for CBS etc. He was talking about this a month ago, btw.
GC
Is this the one, JaneyB? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-testing-pneumonia.html
It is an interesting read. I think one of the scary things about it is how quickly people go from showing symptoms to dying. That article helps maybe explain a bit why that happens.
Alison Cummins
When I read that article in April — or maybe a similar one — I ordered pulse oximeters for us and for my father. Still on backorder.
They are a made-in-china product and China needs them all for themselves.
JaneyB
@GC – yup. That’s the one. I’m following Levitan’s twitter feed now.
@Alison – I found a pulse oximeter on ebay.ca, based in Texas. Made in China, like all things. It came in 3 wks instead of the normal 4-6 from China. Ebay is full of China listings. They are widely available. Amazon.ca, on the other hand has messy/flaky sellers (tried that first). There are also some apps for iPhone, fitbit, Samsung; most are iffy but there’s one out that seems reliable. I can’t remember where I read it though plus I have too-old tech.
The Jewish General is involved in piloting another tech tool that would be a great asset for telehealth services in general. Don’t know if it’s here yet. Derfel’s link: https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/jewish-general-set-to-roll-out-game-changing-app-in-coronavirus-battle/
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Kate
Work on the Met with jackhammers and other noisy equipment between Christophe-Colomb and L’Acadie is being done in the evening until the wee hours so the road can be open to traffic in the daytime. People living in adjoining neighbourhoods are not happy.
I live a couple of blocks down and haven’t heard a thing yet.
Joey
This is insane.
Alison Cummins
Joey, right? Use the lockdown. “We’re in covid-lockdown until we have our case numbers down and trained staff up so that we can do contact tracing. In the meantime, full speed ahead on the Met in daytime!”
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Kate
A strong police response to an incident earlier this month, when an Indigenous woman was having a crisis on Cabot Square, has resulted in a human rights complaint.
david1202
I’m, of course, highly unsympathetic to wacked out druggies going publicly nuts and, of course, equally unsympathetic to the police doing make-work by getting a dozen officers to take said wacked out druggie into custody.
But isn’t the true crime here than they pulled down, rather that reconverted, the gloomy children’s hospital building?
Michael Black
She said she wanted to kill herself. David Chapman of Resilience talked to her for a while, and she finally agreed to go to the hospital. But when he called for an ambulance, all the cops and dogs arrived. Arrest wasn’t part of the scenario, but they showed up in force.
Whether or not she was on drugs, it may be a reaction rather than cause of her being homeless. And the people who hang around Cabot Square can’t be dismissed by categorizing them all together. The Inuk woman I gave a donut to two years ago seemed sober , and it wasn’t the only time I saw her. They can’t all be seen as tragedy, but so much was taken, so much was lost.
dwgs
@david0 that’s a strange take for a guy who in the past has claimed that to be all about keeping housing affordable. Lucky for you if you’ve never been exposed to life at the margins of society, it usually isn’t pretty but the people who inhabit it feel and act like any other person. Plenty of well off people have episodes where they overindulge and threaten to self harm as well. The only difference is that they get sent quietly to rehab or a psychologist or the drama just happens behind the walls of an expensive home rather than in a public park.
Kate
dwgs, Michael Black, thank you both for countering david1202’s cruel comment.
david22
I don’t know – for me, “cruel” is deliberately gentrifying Cabot square instead of turning that hospital into a place these down-and-outs could live, as I was raving about back when they closed, prepared to sell, sold, planned to demolish, and demolished.
david22
And I’d add that “cruel” is letting some wacked out druggie live on the streets and disturb the peace (and commit crimes against people) because of some guilt we feel based on her race, situation, status, whatever. This person shouldn’t be on the street in any way if they’re a harm to themselves, others, or the public peace.
Kate
The fate of Cabot Square is neither here nor there. You’re calling a vulnerable person by a nasty phrase, and I don’t like it.
This “wacked out druggie” – as you persist in calling her – is a displaced person. But she is still an adult and generally regarded as having the right to make her own decisions in life, even ones that other people may see as unwise, until she endangers others or herself.
We (I speak for white people generally here) have never done well when we claimed the right to decide how people from other cultures were to live their lives, and I don’t think we should try to reassert that right. Our failing as a culture is in not learning how to listen and learn from other cultures but, as here, to send in the troops.
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Kate
Crime numbers overall are down by about 30% compared to last year between mid-March and mid-May, although break-and-enters on businesses are up.
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Kate
McGill researchers asked for volunteers to test an experimental Covid vaccine and people are showing up for it.
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Kate
Bixi did well financially in 2019 but whether this will tide them over the lockdown is uncertain.
Meezly
My membership is expiring in a few days and I was debating whether to renew. So I think I’ll just renew, just because!
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