In contrast to the Little Italy SDC’s rejection of pedestrianization for its segment of the Main, the Mont-Royal Avenue SDC is going for it – all the way from Park Avenue out to Fullum, which is an even longer stretch than was usual for the summer street sales. The closure to traffic should start next week, and will involve spacious terrasses.
Updates from June, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
CTV has an interesting piece on a day at Trudeau airport and how businesses there are just hanging on with only 50 flights a day in a place where there are usually 600, and uncertain prospects for the future.
-
Kate
People who think Sunday’s protest was some kind of mindless party in emulation of the United States should read this Gazette op-ed about what the protest was really about, especially with François Legault continuing to maintain that there’s no systemic racism in Quebec.
Does Legault naively think systemic racism is something written down in an official manual? It is not. It’s an entire culture’s worth of hints, jokes and remarks. It’s an older police officer indicating to his younger partner that a couple of black youths walking along in a “nice” neighbourhood should be stopped and questioned. Once that younger cop stops asking “Why? They haven’t done anything suspicious” the meme has successfully reproduced itself. This is why it goes on existing and why it’s so hard to stop it, and why it’s systemic, no matter what our premier thinks.
Alison Cummins
There’s an awful lot of racism in Quebec, and not a lot of consciousness that it’s a problem. I think the dominant narrative that anglos oppress francos has a lot of french canadians completely oblivious that they could possibly ever be punching down.
EmilyG
I forget whether it was Legault or someone else who at one point said that there’s no Islamophobia in Quebec.
Alison Cummins
(I’m NOT saying French Canadians are more racist than other people. Just that they often tend not to be aware of it or to be self-conscious about it. Wasps are plenty racist but they tend to be aware of their position in the dominant culture, and to try to soft-pedal it.)
Max
One need only peek into any one of the myriad fire stations or firetrucks about town for visual confirmation that we have a big problem. I can’t believe it’s 2020 and we still haven’t had a public inquiry into the hiring practices of that klannish branch of the SPVM.
Blork
“Does Legault naively think systemic racism is something written down in an official manual?”
Yes, I think that’s exactly what he thinks. Him and countless others. People (mostly white) who simply cannot understand the basic concept that our social systems are way, way more than our official policies.
qatzelok
Racism is normalized by American mass media, and not by the former CEO of an airline (our premier) or laws about what you can wear to work for the government. And yet mass media is nowhere criticized here. In fact, mass media gets to accuse everyone else, especially the less wealthy “classes.”
How ineffective.
Meezly
On the same page as Alison. Quebecois society is in many ways more culturally sophisticated than Anglo culture, but when it comes to grasping the insidiousness of systemic racism or general wokeness they seem to 15 years behind. Take Robert Lepage and Béatrice Bonifassi in their defense of SLAV. It took them a long time to “get” the fact that what they were doing was incredibly disrespectful, and they belong to the intellectual elite! A lot of this has to do with the history of English rule – many Quebecers do identify with other oppressed peoples, not realizing that they have been perpetuating varying degrees of ‘harmless’ racism that comes from being in a dominant race/culture. It’s a kind of cognitive dissonance.
As a political leader, Legault is playing a dangerous game. I would like to say he shares this cognitive dissonance as Lepage, but as Kate said, he knows what he is doing. He’s not being as outrageous as Trump, but saying that there is no systemic racism in Quebec IS legitimizing systemic or institutional racism (which has been normalized as it’s been ingrained in every one of us). Mass media (American or not) is a part of that system, esp. when they are owned and controlled by corporate or state that want to maintain the status quo. I’m thankful that the French and English media are calling out this hypocrisy.
qatzelok
Meezly, what I was also suggesting was that it’s important to remember that mass media is owned and operated by the 1%. They have used it to get their sheep (viewers) to react a particular way on many an occasion. Agit-prop. Advertising. PR campaigns. Etc.
And that this particular series of well mediated riots after a well-mediated atrocity, might lead to martial law in the USA, which is exactly what a failed elite want right after they’ve bankrupted the system.
So whatever our media does (like point us to rioting as an immediate and hyper-real solution) is possibly part of the elite’s strategy for social control during an economic collapse. Instigate rioting, instigate riot control, use pandemic as backdrop for total repression of dissent.
I might be wrong, but this looks plausible to me.
Tee Owe
I think Qatzelok makes a valid point – look for postponement of the US election on account of civil disturbance – be (very) careful what you wish for here. Not sure I know what the better alternative is but I can be scared too. IMO we lack a unifying leader just now, a Martin Luther King, a Nelson Mandela, someone we can believe in – maybe I’m just having a weak moment
JaneyB
Racism here in QC seems more overt to me and the SPVM really needs to work on its relationship with people of colour. Still, I’m not convinced QC is more racist than in TO. In TO, people are very indirect; in QC, people say what they think so communication style is an issue.
Systemic racism and implicit bias is certainly a real thing here and elsewhere in the country but there are other factors in play here in QC that don’t exist in the rest of Canada. Many people in the regions here have very limited contact with Montreal and with other races. Often, they can be uncomfortable even visiting Montreal (or Ottawa) because they see it as full of English (which they don’t speak) and ‘others’ so their racism/ignorance is harder to break down. Also, Francos here, including in Mtl, see themselves as historically victims and that is accurate; their relationship to other marginalized groups really is more parallel. I think it’s just willfully blind to assume Lepage, for example, is operating from the same assumptions as his analogues in English-Canada. He speaks English but his cultural universe is very different. Lastly, QC’s status as a minority in the country and preoccupation of its own cultural survival is going to make integration of immigrants a very different project than it is in Toronto. It is simply harder to be self-protective and open. It has to be done, and the faster the better, but the method will not look like Toronto’s.
david88
“Lastly, QC’s status as a minority in the country and preoccupation of its own cultural survival is going to make integration of immigrants a very different project than it is in Toronto. ”
Excellent point.
Alison Cummins
Tee Owe: “look for postponement of the US election on account of civil disturbance – be (very) careful what you wish for here”
Ever since the last election I have thought that secession was plausible. The country could divide up into north, west and south, or something. Not a prediction – I don’t know enough about american politics to predict anything – but a possible way out of the standoff. If the election is postponed…
-
Kate
Here’s a map showing when masks will be distributed at metro stations this week.
-
Kate
Last week we read that the visit of a single doctor from New Brunswick into Quebec and home again caused an outbreak of Covid in his previously unaffected NB community.
Now we have this: Her parents live 80 metres away but she can’t visit. Why? The Quebec border.
Why do the media keep running stories about the pathos of pandemic restrictions? Once you militate for one exception, everyone can feel like they’re an exception, and the whole thing falls down.
Bert
I wonder why the decision to call it the Quebec border? It is the New Brunswick rules and authorities that seem to be imposing the restriction.
Kate
Bert, that story is being told from the New Brunswick side, so it’s probably natural for the writer (and readers) to think of it that way.
Matthew
The story is from CBC New Brunswick. If you live in New Brunswick, you refer to the border with Quebec as the “Quebec border”, not the “New Brunswick border.” Otherwise you could be talking about the border with Nova Scotia, for example. It’s just how people phrase things.
Kate
Jinx, Matthew.
-
Kate
Daycares are open again in Montreal. Here’s what’s now allowed to be open.
-
Kate
I was not at Sunday’s protest, so bear with me that the only reports I have are from the mainstream media: CBC says that after a peaceful march, a smaller group became more aggressive, with some windows being broken and fires set. There were eleven arrests. TVA solicited vox pops from undefined persons not happy with how this latter part of the protest eventually went. All reports, however, emphasize that the event was a peaceful one till things went sideways later.
Photos of the main part of the march from Le Devoir.
Chris
It’s pretty standard for all protests to have a small number of troublemakers, agitators, black bloc, or whatever you want to call them. Always interesting to observe which media focus on them, and which don’t, and how that correlates with their editorial slant wrt the topic being protested.
David1187 20:30 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
They should think more strategically: Italian-employed Haitian gangsters will think twice about firebombing your business based on a partial ownership of the limited company holding title if they have to park, walk, and walk back, as opposed to stopping in front.
Short sighted!
hamza 22:27 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
that’s an interesting ‘just-a-joke’ comment to be made in this day and age
david001 22:46 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
The several decade long Italian gang wars, with their Haitian and biker underlings (also multiple battles) are something super well known, and not something that has yet been folded into racist analysis, but I think I see how we could.
Anyway, the point is that when you’re coming to Montreal from Saint Leonard, Saint Laurent, or Montreal North to fire bomb a Montreal business, having easy access to stop/stand/get away is essential. Fire bombing is physically more difficult if you have to park somewhere in the neighborhood, secure your vehicle, go commit your crime, return to your vehicle, then return to one of these Cicero, Illinois circa 1930-style suburbs.
So that progressive moves on pedestrian issues are likely to lead to fewer gangland crimes, with the consequence of fewer businesses and homes lost to arson, deaths (rare, but do occur), police and fire calls, etc.
david001 22:48 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
There wasn’t some sort of joke about how these people only drive instead of walk, or about where they all live – it’s a straight up joke about how it’ll be harder for them to continue the arson spree where the getaway is more difficult because of pedestrianization.
Kate 22:51 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
Jokes are funny, david. This wasn’t.
david001 22:53 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
Onion headline: “Mafia representatives complain they’re foiled from gangland arsons by pedestrianized streets.”
Funny!
Kate 23:03 on 2020-06-01 Permalink
Let it drop, David.
CE 10:04 on 2020-06-02 Permalink
I wonder what the plan is for the 97 and 11 buses.
qatzelok 10:07 on 2020-06-02 Permalink
Speaking of mafia, it looks like it’s not easy for the Jeffrey Epsteins of this world to extort our mayor into doing what the car industry wants her to do right now.
Mind you, the Pharma industry seems to be in charge for the moment, but the Automotive industry waits in the shadows.
Kate 10:45 on 2020-06-02 Permalink
qatzelok, do us all a favour and leave your idées fixes at home.
Meezly 11:31 on 2020-06-02 Permalink
I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I think a pedestrianized Mont-Royal will be wonderful, and as a cyclist non-car-owner, it would make it much more pleasant to visit businesses there. On the other hand, I live on Villeneuve, and closing Mont-Royal to cars will just redirect cars to the streets on running parallel on either side.
Ian 11:46 on 2020-06-02 Permalink
I guess one result will be that it makes the pedestrian traffic much more local – I don’t mind walking as far as, say, Boyer but that’s about a half hour from where I live. I certainly won’t be walking all the way out past Papineau let alone Fullum to do any shopping. It will certainly make the stretch between St Larry and St Denis more pleasant though, the sidewalks are too narrow there at the best of times.
I also wonder about whether the buses will continue to run, I was a bit surprised that little detail wasn’t addressed in this article.
qatzelok 12:49 on 2020-06-02 Permalink
@Kate: “leave your idées fixes at home.”
Oh, I agree with you. I was just following up on numbered Davids’ great work in this thread.
Jonathan 14:43 on 2020-06-02 Permalink
I read somewhere that buses will still be allowed.
Ian 16:20 on 2020-06-02 Permalink
It will be interesting to see how buses running will not interfere with an extended street terrasse – though to be fair the buses could just be rerouted along St Joey for the summer.