There was a demonstration Saturday at Bordeaux jail against the over‑representation of Black and Indigenous people in the prison.
(Wouldn’t it make more sense to demonstrate at the Palais de justice?)
Updates from June, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Montreal and Toronto had the fastest population growth in major North American cities last year.
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Kate
The new bridge will be completely closed on the inbound side this weekend, and some other bits and pieces are also closed, as noted in this piece.
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Kate
A fire in Tétreaultville overnight destroyed two residential buildings. TVA has the pictures.
Some really smart dudes showing off their guns and probably stolen money on Snapchat were raided by the police tactical squad at a party this week. There were six arrests and the men will face weapons charges. (As they like to say on reddit: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.)
A man delivering a parcel Friday morning in Rosemont apparently got into a fight with the resident and was stabbed. There’s probably more to this story than we’re told here.
Chris
Re: Snapchat guns: why do the media write such stories but not actually include or link to the video in question?!?
Blork
Likely because it needs a Snapchat login to see, and requires linking to a specfic person’s account, and such walled-garden links are against publications’ policies.
Blork
…but would it have killed them to include a few screen grabs?
Chris
IIRC news media are exempt from various copyright laws, they could probably just copy the video from snapshat and host it themselves. But yeah, a few screengrabs would do.
Maybe they’re wanting to protect privacy, innocent until guilty, etc. But these people posted the video publicly, so…
Kevin
Chris
Maybe you are thinking of fair use doctrine? But that typically allows a few seconds of video from a newsworthy event posted by someone else.
Chris
Kevin, perhaps that’s what I’m thinking of. If so, it sounds like it could apply in this situation, no?
Kevin
Chris,
It would apply. But without knowing anything about how La Presse works, I can see several reasons why they don’t have photos:
1) the post is gone
2) division of duties at the newspaper (i.e. the writer’s not allowed to grab the photos from snapchat)
3) The writer heard about this after the fact and wrote the story, and never even saw the snapchat post in question.and so on
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Kate
Police are handing out fewer fines every week to people breaking pandemic guidelines.
Elite sports training facilities will reopen Monday.
The pandemic has cost public transit an estimated $165 million over the last three months.
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Kate
Food trucks can resume on July 8, but since they never became a very useful or interesting feature of the city, it’s hard to believe this will make much difference.
JoeNotCharles
On the other hand, maybe the new environment where going into a restaurant is fraught will finally give them their chance to shine.
Ephraim
Maybe if they finally figure out that if you have a schedule, it’s inviolate. I gave up after the second time of going and finding no truck. Not going to waste my time if they can’t be bothered to keep their commitment, either.
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Kate
A retired SPVM police officer who specialized in gang issues was assaulted at his home in Lasalle on Friday by a group of men. There have been four arrests.
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Kate
The perky statue of James McGill on the campus he endowed is the subject of a petition demanding its removal. (The caption to this piece is quite at odds with the main story. In case it gets edited, the caption goes on to say “The contribution Anglophones and minorities made to building Quebec are being omitted from a new history course, critics say.”)
While the Macdonald monument in Place du Canada is from 1895, the McGill statue is relatively recent, dating from 1996. I remember at the time the informal posture of the figure was praised for its evocation of character. Nonetheless, it has to go.
(Have a look at the house belonging to the guy who made the McGill sculpture.)
Chris
No one from centuries, or even decades, ago had the same morals as we do today. And our morals of today will be frowned upon in centuries hence. I could well imagine them wanting to tear down some statues in the future: “Did you know so-and-so owned an automobile!? Didn’t they know it will killing the planet!?” “Did you know so-and-so ate meat!? Didn’t they know animals are sentient!?” What’s normal today may be considered reprehensible in the future.
But imperfect people can still make good contributions to society.
Montreal has a park named after Mahatma Gandhi and he was an anti-black racist. Universities in Africa have taken his statue down. And while searching for that link I see than in the last few days people are now pushing for the same in England.
No one is perfect enough it seems.
Matthew H
An easy solution is for us to stop putting up hagiographic sculptures of individuals, especially politicians. Figurative “statue of a famous person” sculpture usually makes for boring public art anyway.
qatzelok
Is it really enough to just remove his small statue, or should the name of the university be changed completely? Maybe it could be renamed Kondiaronk University?
MarcG
I agree with Matthew, enough with the famous human worshipping.
Kate
It’s been a tradition for centuries if not millennia in the west to put up statues or large memorials to people of note. Until recently, I don’t imagine anyone thought that emperors and kings had to be free of flaws before they put up a statue. But now we do.
In the future this may be considered a new era of iconoclasm, but go for it.
Denise
If people are so offended by the university he paid for, maybe they should just close the university and everyone can go somewhere else.
Unless they are planning to pay his descendants the money back. I mean, you’re willing to use the university he paid for, but you want to pretend he didn’t by taking the evidence he paid for it away.
GC
Denise, if we’re going to acknowledge that he paid for it we can also acknowledge that some of that wealth that paid for it came from slave labour.
Alison Cummins
In order to make the “genocide/slavery/rape was socially acceptable at the time so committing or promoting genocide/slavery/rape can’t be held against them” argument you need to first establish that *all* their contemporaries thought that genocide/slavery/rape were ok at the time. That *nobody* was raising objections, That repugnance towards genocide/slavery/rape was not an emotion that was within the human repertoire at that time.
Unless you can establish that – note that their contemporaries include the people subject to genocide, slavery and rape – then whoever is under discussion had both the “genocide/ slavery/rape are bad” and “some people complain about genocide/ slavery/rape but they suit me so I’ll say they are good” options available to them. And they chose the latter.
jb
University must at least do a major rebranding, racist symbolism also exists on its flag
Kate
Does it? I see 3 birds, 2 crowns, and a book which reads “In domino confido” which, since it expresses faith in a God, could be construed as unfair to those who are not believers. Can you explain the racist symbolism?
The motto that goes with the flag, which is based on the university’s arms, is “Grandescunt aucta labore” which means “By work, all things increase”. A bit smug, but it’s not quite “Arbeit macht frei”.
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Kate
Plateau borough is cutting bike locks when bikes are locked to trees or urban furniture. Folks who’ve asked for more bike racks feel betrayed.
DeWolf
Locking a bike to a tree can seriously damage the tree and cause it to die prematurely. But the city really should allow cyclists to legally attach their bikes to parking signs, stop signs, etc. because there are atrociously few bike racks available. Their distribution is super wonky too. Sometimes there will be half a dozen clustered all together and none for several more blocks.
Kate
I agree.
Chris
I agree parking a bike on a tree should not be anyone’s first choice.
But lots of things “can seriously damage trees”. Salting sidewalks, paving all around them, planting them in tiny holes, never watering them, polluting the atmosphere, etc. To say nothing of how many have been cut down to build roads and parking for cars. All that’s fine, but god forbid you attach a bike to one!
You park a car illegally? You get a ticket attached. You park very illegally, you get towed, and you get an app helping you find your car. You park a bike illegally, it’s just stolen by the city.
Sigh.
Ephraim
There is a video of someone taking off the no parking signs and just pulling the bike up. Gone in less than 3 minutes. There is a video of someone just pulling the sign up from the ground and gone in less than 30 seconds.
mare
And I’ve seen a tree being sawn down to liberate a bike.
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Kate
“Forget the blue line” says Treasury Board chairman Christian Dubé, now that Bill 61, with its hefty expropriation measures, is on hold.
I don’t believe this. Plans were being made for the blue line before the CAQ came along with the big stick of Bill 61. The bill might have saved the government a few bucks, since it includes provisions to make government expropriation unchallengeable, but blue line extension plans were already under way long before the government dreamed up their big bill. The line does not depend on it.
Kevin
Ya know, in a real emergency the government can prolong the session. I mean, it’s not like the government stopped it for several months partway through or anything…
EmilyG 21:54 on 2020-06-13 Permalink
Not if people can’t get to the Palais de justice. It’s a long walk from the bordeaux.
Kate 22:49 on 2020-06-13 Permalink
Presumably they somehow got to Bordeaux.
Amanda 22:38 on 2020-06-14 Permalink
From the info I saw, the point of the demo was to make noise outside Bordeaux to show support and solidarity with prisoners who are locked down due to Covid and therefore now have even less communication with the outside world.