CBC has a video from Kent Nagano as he leaves the city where he’s directed the biggest orchestra for 16 years, but was stopped by circumstances from holding the farewell concert that had been planned. A live concert is to be streamed Thursday and he is expected to conduct here once more at least.
Updates from June, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Brief note here that my iPad is working again. A friend with a newer Mac, newer OS and newer iTunes gave it the old one-two.
Blork
Lucky you. Apparently iPads are in very short supply right now. A friend is trying to get one and can’t locate one anywhere in Montreal. I think she says Apple is taking six weeks to ship.
Kate
I do feel fortunate, although I’m a little concerned how it got into the bad state it was in. It’s been treated with kid gloves and nothing weird or experimental has ever been done to it.
MarcG
Hardware fails like bodies. It will probably go for a little bit longer but you might want to put some money aside for next year when it kicks the bucket.
mare
I ordered my new iPad on Sunday and UPS said this morning it was going to be delivered this afternoon. It didn’t, but it hopefully will tomorrow. So waiting six weeks seems like a stretch.
(Yes, I was inspired by Kate’s post although mine died weeks ago and was 7 years old. Almost bought a second hand one in January, but thought $350 for iPad Pro plus pencil and keyboard case was too much. Stupid me. Currently iPads on Kijiji are very rare and really expensive. )
Meezly
“$350 for iPad Pro plus pencil and keyboard case” Damn, I would be kicking myself too!
Spi
I wouldn’t be, at that price it was almost certainly a scam. In all likelihood, it was either a cheap knockoff or a stolen iPad that probably would have been reported stolen and locked, thus completely unusable.
So unless it was from someone you personally knew and could certify the origins of you avoided being scammed.
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Kate
Some folks in boats have been getting too close to the whale and may be fined by Canadian authorities.
Meezly
I kind of hope they do. The whale may be in some distress and last thing she needs are human dolts getting too close just to satisfy their vanity. People in general just have no respect for wildlife.
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Kate
Police have nabbed two men they allege are prolific criminals with a slate of arson and theft charges against them. CTV doesn’t name them, but slips up and quotes one of the cops as mentioning a certain Lapointe.
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Kate
The Sisters of Sainte-Anne, in Lachine, are coping with a Covid outbreak that has killed six of them already, and both residents and workers have caught the virus. Item doesn’t say what the average age is, but it must be pretty advanced.
As of today, the number of Covid deaths in Montreal broke 3000 to hit 3,016, officially. On the main blog site, the numbers are updated daily in the sidebar.
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Kate
STM buses will board by the back door for at least another three months.
Max
In case anyone’s curious about the commuter trains, I haven’t seen an exo inspector on the Vaudreuil line in months. It’s been nice to save a few bucks on the monthly pass, but more importantly I appreciate being able to travel in virtual solitude compared to the buses. I might even tour the rest of the network this summer, for the badly needed shits and giggles.
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Kate
At least two cabbies serving the airport have died of COVID-19.
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Kate
Philippe Schnobb wants metro security to be given the powers of special constables, which means they could act more like regular police but also be accountable to the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes. Like other police-type forces, metro security has a record of racial profiling, as described in Christopher Curtis’s article.
Not everyone is thrilled with the notion of making these guys more powerful so they can be accountable after the fact. Should they not be accountable now?
Andrew
From last year, but accountable to these guys?
126 cases and 0 criminal charges: Is Quebec’s police watchdog doing its job?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/126-cases-and-0-criminal-charges-is-quebec-s-police-watchdog-doing-its-job-1.5140810Kate
Good point, Andrew.
Jack
@ Andrew thanks and by the way this is what systemic looks like.
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Kate
Exo is forecasting a loss of half its train and bus ridership as of the September rentrée.
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Kate
A man who tried to bring a guitar back to Steve’s music shop after Sunday’s looting has been arrested. Other guitars stolen by casseurs on Sunday have been returned to the shop, although it sounds like some were broken and some are still missing.
Max
“Aw, this one’s broken. I guess you can have it back”.
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Kate
As you might not expect, business groups are in favour of closing Ste-Catherine Street to cars.
Jack
In my experience a minority of businesses are against these changes. I can speak to the de Castelnau project which took 3 years and a referendum to get half done, a pandemic completed the job.
Most business owners I spoke to could see nothing wrong with making the space more people and bike friendly.
Two businessmen made it their clarion call to maintain the status quo. They were willing to invest time and money to push this project back. The very emotional appeal to controlling parking spaces and maintaining the hegemony of the car were central. I asked both of these businessman where they lived and how they got to their businesses. I often wondered if their own personal frustration with traffic and parking had more to do with their campaign then finance.
In Little Italy the owners of Milano’s dont live in Little Italy.Ian
While I can certainly see your point I wonder if any of the business owners on Ste Kitty actually live downtown…
Also worth noting with a lot of businesses, the founders may have been local but often their kids will move somewhere else. A great example is all the Greek businesses in Mile End, most of the Greeks moved to Laval a couple of generations ago. Does that make them less “authentic”? It does seem to be what you are implying.In any case parking downtown has been a joke for years, I seriously doubt pedestrianizing will have much effect on business one way or another, but at least it might make walking downtown a bit more pleasant.
Uatu
People seem to enjoy themselves when they close down st. Catherine for the annual side walk sale. Who knows, maybe if the street is big enough for social distance people might just like to walk around. And after all these months of isolation it’s more attractive than an indoor mall
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Kate
As I observe below, a lot of people are not wearing their masks properly. Somewhere online I saw the observation “seeing how people wear masks, I begin to understand why birth control fails so often.”
Alison Cummins
My sister-the-doctor sent me this: https://coronavirus-social.com/en/post/21502286/i-hope-youre-all-staying-safe-and-healthy-in
Seems relevant.
Raymond Lutz
Thanks Alison, I would have hard time finding this one back! Here’s another pedagogical one et inspiré par le même organe (PS: are guys obsessed by dicks or are they funny by themselves? This is rhetorical, don’t answer)
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/gaj2a3/wear_your_mask_the_urine_test/
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