Updates from July, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 19:12 on 2020-07-05 Permalink | Reply  

    A bunch of Covid headlines came in later on Sunday.

    It’s the worst year in a decade for forest fires in Quebec and Covid is partly to blame because people fled to isolate in their cottages, and they’ve been burning trash out there. Another heat wave is coming this week and the open fire ban has been expanded.

    Kids are feeling the stress of isolation and dropped links with school. This will give researchers material for study for years.

    Clubs are allowed to reopen now, with limitations, but customers of a popular Dix-30 bar have already caught covid, so we’ll see if that was a good idea.

    Urbania reports on how things are working at gyms.

    In a few weeks, real testing should tell us what the true rate of Covid infection is. (Those two links are English and French versions of the same CP story.)

    Two thirds of Canadians support closing businesses again if a second spike becomes apparent.

    This is a locked New York Times piece, but there’s more and more evidence that Covid is contagious via airborne particles. …Same story on the Guardian.

     
    • Kate 18:36 on 2020-07-05 Permalink | Reply  

      A luxury car-based protest called Driving While Black rolled through Montreal Sunday on the eve of a new SPVM policy about “random” verifications of drivers. Two convoys converged near Namur metro.

       
      • david1828 18:50 on 2020-07-05 Permalink

        They should be doing 100% more cat stops on everyone, using speed and red light radars to send tickets automatically, and generally doing far more to increase safety on the roads. Would be ironic if these racialism protesters actually got the cops/government to do a better job cracking down on dangerous drivers.

      • Kate 19:19 on 2020-07-05 Permalink

        If they stop people for poor driving rather than their skin colour it will be better for everyone.

      • Ephraim 19:59 on 2020-07-05 Permalink

        Does this HELP in any way with making the streets safer, or just taxation and busy work? It is often done as a way of collecting tax money in the US (until they set a ratio to stop police from setting up speed traps) and busy work to make it appear that they are working, when there just isn’t enough police work to do…. Nothing convinces us to cut the police budget than a report saying that there wasn’t enough work to do.

      • steph 07:05 on 2020-07-06 Permalink

        If the police ticketed with the motivation to make the streets safer, we’d all be driving 10km under the limit and doing 5 second full stops. They don’t do this because it would end their ticket revenue. Ticket quotas are designed to maximize longterm revenue.

      • david282 14:12 on 2020-07-06 Permalink

        They don’t do it for two reasons:

        1) there’s not enough police on the road to deter this behavior;
        2) the police are indifferent to this type of dangerous behavior and do the minimum level of enforcement required by their bosses.

      • Ephraim 16:05 on 2020-07-06 Permalink

        They don’t do it because those laws are unenforcable and don’t actually provide results.

      • davdi1823 02:56 on 2020-07-07 Permalink

        More cops on the streets, photo radar on the highways/arterials and for red lights/blocking the box, stiffer penalties. That’s all you need.

    • Kate 09:29 on 2020-07-05 Permalink | Reply  

      Three guys got stabbed or beaten in two connected fights in eastern downtown early Sunday. One of the men is still in serious condition.

       
      • Kate 09:20 on 2020-07-05 Permalink | Reply  

        A company that produces smoked salmon and other fish products has been processing it in revolting conditions, with several recalls of products over the last year from fear of listeriosis. Smoked salmon is one of my favourite things and I’ve eaten some of their products as a treat. Never got sick, mind you.

         
        • Kate 08:50 on 2020-07-05 Permalink | Reply  

          A major water main broke near the approach to the Jacques-Cartier early Sunday.

           
          • Kate 08:49 on 2020-07-05 Permalink | Reply  

            Some Kahnawake folks are working to keep the Mohawk language (Kanien’kéha) alive even though only about 10% of the community speak it fluently.

            I’ve been doing some genealogical research for a friend, and have found from time to time records of baptisms and marriages in the 19th and early 20th centuries in which the person has a Mohawk name, in addition to the Europeanized name they were also given. I’ve noticed that in Montreal, Mohawks often went right to the source, and had baptisms done at the cathedral.

             
            • EmilyG 10:01 on 2020-07-05 Permalink

              I would think that some Kahnawake folks are working to keep their language alive BECAUSE only about 10% of the community speak it fluently.

              From the article:
              “Without our language, we’re not really unique, we’re not our own people,” said Karihwanó:ron Immersion School principal Joely Van Dommelen. “We need our language. It’s part of our culture, so we need to get that back.”

            • Kate 11:17 on 2020-07-05 Permalink

              Agreed. Ten percent is a tiny population to recover from and it takes a lot of determination.

            • steph 07:08 on 2020-07-06 Permalink

              “Without our language, we’re not really unique, we’re not our own people,” Do french-canadians understand this sentiment?

            • jeather 11:27 on 2020-07-06 Permalink

              Other languages have been brought back from the brink with community involvement, it’s entirely feasible to imagine that it could have a much higher fluent population if everyone is in on teaching it to children. I hope they’re successful.

            • Kate 11:52 on 2020-07-06 Permalink

              jeather, which ones? Hebrew becoming a spoken language in Israel is probably the biggest success in this area, it seems to me.

              Saw a piece on the weekend about Gaelic at risk in Scotland, but all the Celtic languages are barely hanging on around the margins of the British Isles and northern France.

              North American indigenous languages have been at risk for generations. It’s so difficult for all these languages when English is perceived as the language of work and the future.

            • Mark Côté 12:02 on 2020-07-06 Permalink

              There have been some revival of Niçard/Niçois but yeah still not very popular.

              Also CBC now has a podcast in Cree.

            • MarcG 12:02 on 2020-07-06 Permalink

              Here’s a Scottish Gaelic meetup group in Montreal for anyone interested in learning it with other beginners: https://www.facebook.com/groups/140267550474969/about

            • Alison Cummins 13:48 on 2020-07-06 Permalink

              Radio used to be a way to help keep a langage alive. I remember Peter Gzowski interviewing the first cree-language radio baseball sportscaster. He had to invent a lot of vocabulary. What’s a baseball bat in Cree? (Definitely not a “stick” because a man handling his “stick” has a not-suitable-for-radio meaning.)

              What would be the equivalent today? YouTube? Video games translated into indigenous languages? Indigenous-language subtitles on dominant-language television and movies?

              Or is radio still a thing? I don’t even know.

            • GC 17:21 on 2020-07-06 Permalink

              Thanks, Mark. I think that slipped by me, but it’s interesting to even just hear what the language sounds like.

            • david1823 03:08 on 2020-07-07 Permalink

              You can keep a language alive by just actually trying to keep a language alive.

              This place used to offer classes in English and may still (website may not be super up to date but something tells me that most of your instructors will probably still speak English): http://www.nativemontreal.com/fr/programmes-services/cours-de-langues-virtuels-adultes.html

              Very tough to get in, or was back a few years ago, because the slots went so quickly. Online now, which is not so great for the language learning process, but could accommodate more people?

          • Kate 08:43 on 2020-07-05 Permalink | Reply  

            Circus performances will be cropping up randomly around town, unannounced.

             
            • JoeNotCharles 10:28 on 2020-07-05 Permalink

              Somehow this seems more nightmarish than the orchestra popping up randomly…

            • Kate 10:53 on 2020-07-05 Permalink

              Indeed. If I’m walking along Ste-Catherine Street and a clown pops out at me, I am gone.

            • JaneyB 12:30 on 2020-07-05 Permalink

              Love the idea of these spontaneous performances!

              I saw a guy on a unicycle yesterday. I’m not sure that’s circus though; could just be Montreal in the summer.

            • Ian 09:24 on 2020-07-07 Permalink

              Or even in winter in my neighbourhood

            • MarcG 10:39 on 2020-07-07 Permalink

              @Ian: Young woman with no helmet in the Sud-Ouest?

          • Kate 08:42 on 2020-07-05 Permalink | Reply  

            I posted when the boil water advisory began so now I have to post that it has ended in part of MHM and Anjou.

             
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