CTV looked into why police arrive at mental health calls – sometimes with fatal results. The basic answer: 911 dispatchers are trained to call in the cops.
Updates from June, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
St Patrick’s church, right downtown, was raking in $300,000 a year on parking fees from its space facing Lagauchetière.
Challenged by the city to pay property tax on that space, the church took the issue to Superior Court, where the ruling went in its favour. But now that HEC is putting up a huge building in that area, the church won’t be renting out parking any more.
(A curious point about that church – the main front door faces south onto the parking lot, but is never used. It’s the back of the church that faces René-Lévesque, and visitors only use the side doors.)
Patrick
Well, not quite never. My mother’s funeral was held in St. Patrick’s some years ago, and we followed the coffin out the main doors. But I don’t know what happens in a regular Sunday.
Kate
Ah OK. I guess it is used on ceremonial occasions. I’ve never been on a regular Sunday, but I’ve occasionally stepped inside to look around, and I think the last time I was ever at a mass (besides a couple of funerals) was when my folks inveigled me into going with them to Christmas mass there years ago. The “front” door was never open.
MarcG
I was supposed to meet my now-partner at St Patrick’s for our first date. She was sick and I sat through the service wondering where she was. Beautiful place. I went in and out the side door on the SW side.
Chris
I sure hope the city appeals.
“si un stationnement «sert au moins en partie à l’exercice du culte public», il peut bénéficier d’une exemption de toutes ses taxes foncières.” What insane reasoning. I’m sure Scientology is happy. Just hold one religious service and leave the building vacant 364 other days a year. It was partially used for religious purposes, so hey no taxes at all!
Churches should pay the same taxes as other businesses. Just because they’re selling lies and not trinkets shouldn’t get them any exemption.
Ian
Unless the law that makes churches tax exempt gets changed, if the city appeals this case it’s just throwing good money after bad.
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Kate
An STM bus driver was seriously injured Monday morning in Montreal North in a collision with a truck. Photos show how badly the front of the bus was damaged.
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Kate
The monument to Dollard des Ormeaux in Lafontaine Park was graffiti’d up with the word ASSACIN overnight in an anticolonialist gesture.
Chris
I almost (not really) wish someone would do similar to Gandi’s bust, to see how the media and twitterverse would react differently.
The National Post has a defence of Gandi, with points like:
“[His] racist views reflected the staid British education and values of the time in which he was raised”
“… put them in context of the period and the systems in which he was raised”I agree with those points! I don’t get why they *don’t* get applied to des Ormeaux, Mcdonald, McGill, etc. who’s world **centuries earlier** was unimaginably different from ours.
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Kate
Restaurants in town are seeing different recoveries, some with better success than others – but wouldn’t this always be true?
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Kate
A counter-petition is circulating to keep the name of Lionel-Groulx for the crossover metro station.
jeather
I’ve been betting that we will rename things based on not-good anglos, but only anglos, and I continue to believe this is true. (Stop renaming things after people at all, that would be easier. I don’t object to Oscar Peterson as a name for LG station, but I really think we need to just use geographical features for a bit.)
Michael Black
That’s okay from a mainstream perspective, but where does it leave under represented people?
If they were left out in the first place, then now they’d not have a chance. It might even seem a bit deliberate (not from you), close the door before new names can come in.
I think it’s way more important to make change than tear down statues. Yes, some of those statues directly affect some people, but a lot of this seems to come from third parties outraged, rather than people raging because they are affected.
James Streer in Winnipeg is named after James Ross, I think just because the family had enough clout. But he was also chief justice in the Red River government (aka the provisional government). And the son of a Syilx woman. That’s way more important than pulling down a statue. Aunt Jemima’s street was renamed to Elgin (I assume after the Lord), and she had self-esteem issues. Imagine being ashamed that her mother was Syilx.
This Metro station name is somewhat different since it’s both a pulling down of an old name, but also putting up an under represented person.
But renaiming, or naming, is just a tiny part of what needs to be done, and other things are way more important.
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Kate
Blue tags identifying public trees with their species, age and social benefits will be appearing around town this summer.
Dhomas
THAT’S what those are! I saw one of those signs on a tree as I drove down the street and I thought it might be one those “treated for ash borer” signs. Now I know. (I was going to swing by on my bike later to investigate, but maybe I’ll just see it next time)
Ephraim
Wow… now even the trees need name tags.
Kate
Ephraim, in the botanical garden arboretum the trees have species tags, and I don’t mind that – it’s informative. These blue tags are a little more intrusive, but still educational.
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Kate
TVA describes the brief career and pathetic death of a petty criminal of Laval who sounds like a minor character in a series.
walkerp
“Connus comme « les frères Denis », les deux hommes accumulent les crimes depuis leur adolescence, sans toutefois faire preuve d’une grande ingéniosité.”
Ouch.
Kate
I also liked “lorsqu’ils entendent les noms […], la grande majorité des policiers lavallois lèvent instinctivement les yeux au ciel.”
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Kate
Two commercial buildings were apparently set on fire overnight, one in Ahuntsic and the other in St-Michel.
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Kate
Latest studies show there’s no lasting antibodies from Covid, although there’s still some hope that other elements in our immune systems might step up instead.
Groups protecting the homeless are expecting a second wave as our emergency rooms are near capacity.
Can gay saunas actually operate while respecting distancing rules? It’s in doubt.
EmilyG
I thought the lack of antibodies thing was much more common in asymptomatic people than those who had symptoms?
At least, I think I read that in an article, but I’ve seen a lot of articles lately and I don’t remember quite where it was.Ephraim
NYC health suggests glory holes… https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-sex-guidance.pdf
mare
The CBC “no antibodies” article has a not so subtle slight of Quebec.
“Some countries such as Sweden and at least one Canadian province have previously suggested that one way to control the spread of COVID-19 is to allow most of the population to get infected in a controlled fashion to generate “herd immunity.”
We won’t name Quebec, but we all know which province we’re talking about, don’t we? The link of course goes to an old article about Quebec.
ant6n
Well “at least one” means there could be more provinces 😉
Kate
mare, you may have become un vrai québécois if you’ve begun to feel it’s a slight to Quebec to simply state a detrimental fact openly in the media.
John S
To follow up, a recent preprint from a group in Sweden has reported robust T cell responses (different from antibodies) in asymptomatic contacts of patients who had COVID. Many of these responders had no antibodies at all. Antibody measurements may not be the best measure of immunity, They’re just easier to do than T cell studies so they have had more press. Immunity post COVID19 exposure may indeed be a reasonable expectation.
JaneyB
@John S – very interesting. It’s hard to stay aware of just how fresh this research is. We’re basically seeing the expert debates in real time and trying to make sense of it with the average person’s limited biology knowledge. I will stay hopeful 🙂
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Kate
SPVM officers of colour have written to their own police brotherhood asking them to stop their denial of systemic racism.
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Kate
A sociology student writes a Le Devoir op‑ed defending Lionel Groulx with the heady introductory statement that the movement to rename the metro station for Oscar Peterson issu de l’anglosphère.
david282
Oscar Peterson was great, but he was an anglophone jazz musician, whose family immigrated from the Caribbean, and who lived 2/3 of his life in the US and Ontario.
Lionel Groulx was a towering figure in the historiography/myth-making of the quiet revolution and modern Quebec, an intellectual giant in that realm.
It makes perfect sense that a bunch of people invested in the intellectual firmament of the Quebec state would consider re-naming Lionel Groulx station in favor of Oscar Peterson to be coming from a totally anglophone place. Just as it makes sense that anglophones – especially transplants from Canada – who have no idea who Lionel Groulx is but read something in the Gazette about how he was anti-semitic, would call for him to be canceled, and replaced with someone they do know about, and rather like.
Jack
Lionel Groulx was Quebec’s first professional, credentialed historian. He produced an enormous corpus and founded Universite de Montreals history department. He was an important historic figure.
This is what is named after him in Quebec…a mountain, a college, a Theatre, High Schools, Elementary schools, countless streets etc. I think their is a probably a hundred markers of this mans existence all over Quebec.
Oscar Peterson born and raised in Little Burgundy, recognized world wide as one of the greatest jazz artists of all time is celebrated in official Quebec with a small park.
The reason why is as david 182 put it “Oscar Peterson was great, but he was an anglophone jazz musician, whose family immigrated from the Caribbean,” That but is crucial in understanding how this debate will be joined.Benoit
I think it would be much less controversial if the sections of Saint-Jacques or Saint-Antoine st. that are in Little-Burgundy were renamed Oscar-Peterson instead of the metro station.
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Kate
The city’s state of emergency has been renewed for another five days, giving us a solid emergency state dating from March 27.
Le Devoir created a photo essay inquiring into whether we’re keeping our distances, but – for legal reasons, I assume – the photos have all been run through a Photoshop paint daubs filter or the like to anonymize the subjects.
Matthew H
That photo essay… wow. It’s some kind of crime against photojournalism. There are ways to anonymize photos that don’t involve running them through an impressionist Photoshop filter from 1995….
Phil M
In Quebec, there is a right called “Droit de l’image,” which states that a person’s likeness or image cannot be used without their consent. I’m not sure how far it extends in news media, but in order to avoid potential law suits, you’ll often see photos and videos of people in public that crop crop below the neck. At least this is a little bit more creative.
Philip M
This is also why you’ll very rarely, if ever, see paparazzi photos of celebrities in Quebec. And considering how many big movies shoot in Montreal (pandemic notwithstanding), you’d expect to see plenty of them, but it almost never happens, unless they’re posing with fans, or someone randomly snaps a shot with their phone.
Kate
The test case was Aubry vs. Éditions Vice-Versa in 1998. A woman challenged the publication of her image in a magazine, for which she hadn’t given permission. There are well defined exceptions, like being caught in a crowd scene in public – they’re explained here.
Many people here have come to think it’s illegal even to take pictures of other people. I’ve been caught out doing this a couple of times and there have been scenes – people don’t listen when you explain it’s perfectly legal to take a photo. Of course the definition of “publication” has changed a lot since Aubry vs. Éditions Vice-Versa, and I don’t know whether that’s been challenged yet in court.
Blork
Here’s the law explained in English, for our Toronto readers. 🙂 https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/capsules/your-right-to-control-photos-and-videos-of-yourself/
Odd note: in the first example of exceptions, it says (in both EN and FR versions), “You are in front of a historic monument or public place, such as the Eiffel tower…”
Why invoke the Eiffel tower? If this is a Quebec law, then what happens in another country is irrelevant. Why wouldn’t they use a local reference?
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Kate
La Presse has a list of more obscure features of interest around town, since most of us won’t be travelling this summer.
Radio-Canada looks at downtown Montreal and its situation, including a vast new building under construction for the Banque Nationale.
Another site under transformation (for the second time) is the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde which is slated to get a whole new glitzy frontage.
Small towns are cringing from having Montrealers visit en masse. One day we’re told that people want tourism back, the next, that the idea frightens them.
Kevin
Ah, there have Always been people in small towns afraid of Montrealers. Nothing new there.
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Kate
Fires caused by smokers using flowerpots as ashtrays are on the rise. Incredibly, since January this year, 125 fires have been started here in this way.
Ephraim 06:40 on 2020-06-30 Permalink
How could we help the situation… make half the cops social workers or…. just a wild thought, have cops wearing cameras, so that they can go over the interaction with a social worker who will teach them how they could have improved the interaction. But no… cameras are bad… we couldn’t possibly do that.
JaneyB 14:38 on 2020-06-30 Permalink
We definitely need cop-social worker units. We have other hybrids like nurse-practioners. This definitely needs to happen.