Campaigners for the climate have set up an encampment on the Place des Festivals. Among other things, they want to point out how quickly government moved to cope with the pandemic, thus demonstrating it can respond to crises if there’s the will.
Updates from July, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Three of the oldest houses on the island of Montreal will be restored. All three are on the western end of the island. Two were bought by Montreal, one by Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, and all three will be fixed up and become park features in that end of town.
Ian
I’ve driven past both the ones in the west island several times and have wondered what’s up with them… interesting to know. The little white one on Gouin is sort of on the way to Parc Cap St-Jacques & is already on Transport Canada land (nice waterfront property, too) according to the signs on the fence around it so converting it to a park seems like an easy thing to do.
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Kate
A customer captured on video a scene Saturday afternoon when a man refused to wear a mask inside a Tim Horton’s in Villeray, and workers called police. He’s been charged with obstructing police after refusing to leave peacefully on their request.
In general people here are supporting the mask law, but some doofs in the Beauce held a demonstration against it on Saturday. Evidently they don’t read the world news: we’ve had the largest single-day increase in Covid cases now, worldwide. Have they already forgotten how fast the virus spread from China to Iran to Italy and the whole world? The United States is seeing scary numbers, and they’re on our doorstep. We have evidence that, by taking a few simple measures, we’re keeping it at bay: this is no time to announce “the pandemic is over” because of what pandemic means: an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of people.
Raymond Lutz
And this: SARS-Cov-2 virions don’t need to be embedded in saliva droplets to stay infectious. At first (for few months), researchers hypothesized that large droplets (100-300 μm) were responsible for respiratory transmission (hence face shields and 2m distance). Though now we know <5μm micro-droplets (emitted during normal speech) eventually dry out (in a few seconds, depending RH) but virions keep floating in the air, for up to 16 hr (!) and maintain their integrity. Covid-19 is now considered an airborne disease: the infectious agent stay afloat and can travel long distance in favourable airflow. see “Persistence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in aerosol suspensions” referenced in this regularly updated covid page: https://nursesunions.ca/cfnu-research-summary-on-covid-19/
Kate
New Aaron Derfel twitter thread about a surge in cases among younger people in the Plateau. As FNoMTL observes, “we need to gauge horniness levels for the data to make any sense.”
Raymond Lutz, that’s not happy news.
Ephraim
Did anyone notice that the girlfriend who is filming starts to cough. In fact, you can hear a LOT of coughing in this video. If anything, listening to all the coughing in this video sort of proves the point in the other direction.
Dhomas
I think they may have actually sprayed the pepper spray, which is why people were coughing.
I think the girlfriend had a point. “Pour un masque!” He’s willing to get arrested and resist arrest for a goddamn mask. Was it worth it? Wouldn’t it be easier to just put on a mask?MarcG
I assumed he was mentally ill in some capacity.
MarcG
You can hear the “pshhht” of the spray shortly after he holds it up to the guy’s face.
Ephraim
I look at mask wearing as a variation on Pascal’s wager. So, if it doesn’t really work, you’ve lost so infinitely little…
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Kate
Masks are now mandatory in all indoor publicly accessible places in Quebec. (Journalists keep writing “public places” forgetting that stores, restaurants and bars are not public places.) Owners of these establishments can be fined if they don’t insist, which is making some of them fearful.
Michael Black
I think it’s more that they are trying to phrase it. “Private space” sounds more like at home and they want to make the distinction that you don’t need to wear masks at home, and the rules aren’t mandatory when walking outside.
About a month ago, CFCF tv had a story about the himeless in Cabot Square, and prefaced it with something like “For most members of Montreal’s Indigenous community…” . Surely trying to phrase it, but taken literally it means all are homeless. I will eventually email them about it.
But then everyone uses “community” to define a smaller group, rather than as a verb. It almost seems like they can’t say “people”.
Kate
I was going to make a comment about the decentralized nature of, for example, the Montreal Black “community” but I find that’s quite the hot topic here this week. Le Devoir’s Christian Rioux (Xavier Camus calls him that paper’s Mathieu Bock-Côté) wrote an op‑ed chiding Montreal’s Haitian community for feeling Black, for (he says) emulating Black culture from the U.S., and bracketing both Quebec and Haiti as oppressed nations together.
The best response to the column is from Fabrice Vil, who used to write for the paper, but unfortunately it’s on Facebook. (Did I say the best? This might be the best.)
Bock-Côté is already taking position as the real victim, as usual.
Chris
There’s practically no such thing as public spaces anymore. Parks, sidewalks, … can’t think of much else in the city.
Kate
In a sense there never was, Chris. I would add libraries to the list, at least in non-pandemic times, as places run as a collective benefice where anyone can spend time. Hospitals too, although few would choose to hang out in them if they didn’t have to.
Kevin
You’d be surprised how many people choose to hang out in hospitals.
Michael Black
The Royal Vic has way more attractions than the Montreal General.
Kate
The old one does, Michael Black, but the currently operating Vic is elsewhere.
Kevin, is that true? You mean malingerers, people with Munchausen syndrome? Or just people who come in off the street and wander around?
MarcG
The Royal Vic at the Glen site has a Satay Brothers sister restaurant in the basement. I wouldn’t go just to eat there but it’s provided a little bit of joy during necessary visits. They also have a lot of historical medical stuff displayed around the building.
Kate
Hm. I did not know that. The only time I’ve set foot in the new Vic was one day I found myself needing a bathroom when I was at Vendôme station, so I trudged through the deviously complicated tunnel into the hospital to find one.
Uatu
These days no one’s allowed in the new Vic unless you’re an employee or have an appointment. Pre pandemic we used to get everyone even sometimes homeless wandering into the cafeteria collecting cans or even eating scraps off trays and someone had to call security.
Kevin
Kate,
There are a lot of regulars who visit the ER. And loads of people who show up on a holiday because something has been bugging them for 3-4 weeks but they can’t be bothered to call their family doctor or go to a walk-in clinic, so they show up at an ER and sit around all day for stuff like renewing prescriptions.Kate
Kevin, if the hospital recognizes regulars at their ER, without actual emergencies, do they try to redirect them to clinics or family medicine practices in the area?
Kevin
Kate,
They get the “call your family doctor” lecture, they get told they’re at the end of the list (because going to an ER is not first-come first-served), but these people just do. not. care. or they are Karl Piklington-level stupid.Kate
So basically, an ER is running a real emergency department (accidents, heart attacks and so on) alongside a non-official walk-in clinic for people incapable of organizing themselves any better. It figures.
Alison Cummins
There are supposed to be walk-in urgent care clinics, but in practice you usually need to make an appointment the day before—if they have spots. Which they usually don’t.
My family doctor is at a CLSC which takes walk-ins in the morning, so I do that. Other people’s family doctors never take walk-ins.
The government manages health care costs by restricting the number of doctors, with the result that there are not enough doctors. If you want to see someone today (say, you think you have shingles and you want to get an antiviral before the effective window closes, or you’re disorganized and clean out of meds) you pretty much have to go to the ER.
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Kate
At first I thought these brief items were about the same incident, but no: a man was stabbed on Place Émilie-Gamelin Friday evening and a suspect was arrested; a man was stabbed Saturday morning in the village, no arrests. Nobody dead.
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Kate
The origins of a pink house on top of the old Canada Malting site in St-Henri have been debated on Instagram and Twitter and have now made it to the CBC site. Obviously it’s not really a house – somebody painted an old industrial element as a prank – but CBC implies that someone’s living in it. However, if they find anything out about it, won’t that person risk being charged with trespassing?
ProposMontreal-Martin
I have done some urbex in there many many years ago and it was NOT easy to get up there. I’m pretty sure it’s even more difficult now. So yes, I’ve been wondering since it’s been painted, who did and how without being spotted.
MarcG
The owner of the building used to weld weird stuff into the fence to make it harder to access – things like old wire, hunks of steel, basically any old junk he could find lying around – which made for an interesting piece of outsider art, but sometime in the past year or two it seems like part of the fence disappeared and it’s now much easier to access the land around the building. Google streetview is from 2014 so you can see the old fence https://goo.gl/maps/8t8crx14N2btm7J59.
John B
Isn’t the pink the colour of the neighbouring bar, or their logo, or something similar? When it was originally painted I remember seeing something like that somewhere.
Matthew H
There are two painted sheds, one pink and one red. I think the CBC article is a little tongue in cheek, there’s no way anyone is actually living there. I added the Canada Malting Silos to Atlas Obscura a few weeks ago, with some photos.
Kate
Nice work, Matthew H.
Ian
I have climbed up there myself about10 years ago, it’s not that hard – didn’t require any special equipment though the building has deteriorated a lot since then. I know a couple of urbex folks that actually made a zip line from the silos to the main building. I don’t know who painted the little house pink (which is awesome IMO) but it’s not as much of a feat as you might think.
EmilyG
Yeah, I haven’t seen much mention of the red one.
Andrew
The article mentions “christmas lights” but it was actually a fairly sizeable and fully decorated Christmas tree. Someone carried it up there and back down again when the season was over, you can even see a guy wire in this photo:
Michael Black
That was thoughtful of them, taking down the decorations after Christmas
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Kate
A young man was killed on his bicycle in Westmount a month ago, and it seems odd it wasn’t reported anywhere till now. And this piece is mostly about a tony Westmount street and its traffic problems.
Police are quoted here saying this was the first cyclist to die in a collision with a vehicle on the island of Montreal since September 2018.
Michael Black
No, I saw the story before. Either in the Gazette, or maybe I saw it in the news, probably CFCF. And a few days after tge actual incident.
But this CBC story is lengthier, with the parents and mostly about the cyclist who was killed.
Chances are pretty good that there won’t be another cyclist killed on that street, and certainly not in a ?long time. it’s a quiet street that can’t get much traffic, look at the map. Far better to deal with ongoing problems, than patch this one up. Good to see Lambert’s ghost bike group is present.
Kate
The only news reference I can find from last month is this CP story on the site of the Vancouver Province saying a cyclist was injured on Forden Avenue. Usually there’s a little more notice taken of cyclists killed in traffic here, when it happens, and not a month later.
DeWolf
There was quite a lot of discussion about this on the Vélo d’hiver Facebook group, but I can’t recall the news sources and the FB search function is awful. It seems to be back in the news because Westmount is going to rearrange the street to calm traffic.
Michael Black
The CP story was definitely at the Gazette site, I haven’t realized it was a month ago. I’m pretty sure it was actually in the paper, but maybe it was just the website.
Keep in mind that Daniel Lambert pops up any time there”s an opportunity, seemingly printed up some organization name as needed. Westmount, NDG, Montreal, I think sometimes the name includes pedestrians, but not always.
So he seems to be driving this. He reacts, but reacts to an incident rather than knowing the ongoing situation. He’s no expert. I really don’t know why the press doesn’t challenge his ghost organization. He’s just some guy who is noisy.
Changing corners piece by piece will never save cyclists.
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Kate
The Supreme Court has ruled that Sivaloganathan Thanabalasingham will never be tried for murder in Canada. Thanabalasingham, a refugee from Sri Lanka living in Montreal, had already done time for domestic violence against his wife, Anuja Baskaran, when she was murdered in 2012. He was arrested and charged, but was later set free after five years of pre-trial incarceration in 2017 based on the Jordan ruling on the delay of justice. He was deported back to Sri Lanka immediately.
Now the Supremes have ruled that even if Thanabalasingham comes back to Canada he will never be tried here for the murder. There’s no indication he plans to come back – as I understand it, the situation in Sri Lanka has changed in the meantime – but I can’t help wondering if he’s found a new wife, and how she’s doing.
Alison Cummins
My father’s new wife has been studying for her canadian citizenship test. She was intrigued to learn that in Canada the interdiction against murder is universal and absolute, with no carve-outs for spouses.
Chris 14:08 on 2020-07-19 Permalink
Yup. Humans are really bad at long term thinking. If peoples’ short-term health is endangered then we have people clamouring to surrender freedoms to fight the virus. But when our long-turn health is endangered, meh, I couldn’t possibly give up my SUV or start using a reusable coffee mug, you’re just asking too many sacrifices! Imagine an alternate universe where cops haul someone out of Tim Hortons for failing to bring a reusable mug!
Ian 07:45 on 2020-07-20 Permalink
It’s ok Chris, with climate change coffee will probably no longer be a viable crop.
Besides, without SUVs how will all those cops get from their off-island homes to the police station so they can hop in a police issue cruiser or SUV and go bust heads?
Kate 10:25 on 2020-07-20 Permalink
I won’t want to live on this planet any more if coffee becomes non-viable.