McGill University is doing a kind of penance for the fact that its founder owned slaves, by supporting research into the lives of the seven enslaved people. A paper about them with recommendations for transforming the “harmful and exclusionary racial climate of McGill university” in future is available on the Black Canadian Studies site.
Updates from July, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A pedestrian was struck and killed on Park Avenue at Milton, late Monday night. The accounts given say the driver of the pickup had the green light.
It’s the second pedestrian fatality at that intersection this year. A man was killed there in February.
Update: The unwieldy iheartradio news site adds that the pickup belonged to the city and also lists this as the 15th pedestrian death on the island of Montreal this year. I’ve been noting them, and had only got to #9 (see map). After mid-March I saw none recorded at all till last week.
Douglas
I passed by that intersection yesterday and saw those homeless people walking back and forth across the street. That’s sad. I think I know which one of them it was.
Chris
Kate, might I suggest that “had the green light” is not the best description. Reading only your summary, it could be that both the motorist had a green light and was turning right while simultaneously a pedestrian had a green light and was going straight (a “right hook”). Having a green light does not automatically give someone the right of way, more information is needed. Of course, reading the article, it seems in this case the motorist did have the right of way, but that’s not always so.
Uatu
The intersection has been problematic. The pedestrian lights are too fast from what I remember and the shelter that was from Atwater is now in that church so there’s even more pedestrian traffic now.
Bert
Chris, “had the green light” was what was said on the CBC yesterday. I am not sure if it was the formulation of the host or a quote from the police comms person.
But I do appreciate your pedantry!
Chris
It’s a common formulation to be sure. But it can lead some to make the following logical error: motorist had green therefore motorist not at fault. But that does not necessarily follow.
Blork
According to the photographs of the scene, the truck was going straight, not turning.
EmilyG
I think I heard on the radio that she was an Open Door client (or another shelter.) So sad.
Not sure if any of the articles mention that.Michael Black
If she did visit the Open Door, they may post about her, and maybe even hold a small memorial. They do it at the Native Women’s Shelter and I think at Resilience, and ai think at the Open Door in the past, but David Chapman moved to Resioience and he was a big force at the Open Door.
Resilience posted something about closing on weekends (except keeping meals and some other things going), while they “restructure” but no specifics.
EmilyG
Some information on the victim in Le Devoir. A homeless Inuit woman and member of the Open Door shelter.
https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/583298/montreal-unie-inuite-sans-abri-happee-mortellement
Michael Black
The woman killed was Kitty Kakkinerk. The Open Door had a memorial on Friday, I forgot to get back here and post the details.
On Tuesday the 4th at 2pm there will be an event at Cabot Square for her and another woman, Dinah Matte. Organized by Resilience, and the Native Women’s Shelter.
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Kate
La Presse’s Mario Girard wrote an op-ed on the weekend tersely headlined La lutte s’organise about wheeling and dealing going on well in advance of the November 2021 municipal election with the intention to destroy Projet Montréal.
I have to say, a lot of people really hate Valérie Plante. She’s getting blamed for things that are not within her purview as mayor, of course, but there are many people for whom she can do nothing right. A lot of the most vituperative commenters are women, so sisterhood is not exactly coming to her aid.
I’m curious to know what paragons of mayoralty these folks are comparing her to. Coderre’s showboating, Tremblay’s lack of grip, the forgettable era of Pierre Bourque, none of these people collected the constant shrill grievances that I see directed at Plante. So much so that I’ve wondered whether Ensemble hasn’t devoted some of its budget to some offshore service of the sort that have undermined other forms of democracy in our time.
walkerp
Hard to say how much of this anger is exaggerated by the internet effect. She does fall into two groups that tend to create disproportionate hate, working against the car lobby and being a woman in power. On top of that is the general attack on cities from conservative forces, which is particularly pronounced in Quebec. I would like to see a decent poll on her popularity from among the actual citizens of Montreal.
Ian
Well to be fair she can’t expect much solidarity from women given how she threw Sue Montgomery under the bus… and hey, as Luc Ferrandez constantly pointed out, PM isn’t anti-car, they are pro-urban planning… just a very distinct version that makes it more complicated to have a car.
Regardless of how you look at it, this is the first mayoralty in like, forever, that hasn’t been clearly on the take and only interested in business. The first progressives in power. With that comes the burden of being the first progressives in power in that they need o quickly learn to compromise and recognize their limitations as well as their opportunities – which I think Plante has done well. I’m not convinced that a lot of city functionaries aren’t still on the take, but I don’t think Plante is one of them.
@Kate on your list of our stellar past mayors you forgot Applebaum, who has the distinction of being the first anglo mayor of Montreal in a century or so and also the first to be prosecuted for abuse of power while actually still in office.
Bill Binns
I gave her the benefit of the doubt early on and 5 minutes later she announced every city council meeting would begin with a “land acknowledgement” and I was out. Five minutes after that pretty much every single person I know in the city despised her and her party for the Mount Royal access road disaster.
She has also traveled the world as mayor (as her predecessors did) which I see as expensive and unnecessary. I really wish the media would do a better job of tracking the travels of politicians. I jumped off the Coderre train when he airlifted half of the city’s bureaucrats to Haiti to…….. What did they do exactly?
Maxim Baru
There’s a lot of Plante animosity I can’t speak to and know nothing about. But if it would be interesting context: from the corner of the organized activist scene, for lack of a better word, (housing, immigration, urban dev, organized labour, etc) there’s quite a lot of animosity now. Leading up to her election Plante went around to a lot of these groups (directly or through delegates) and made a lot of promises. There was nothing her and her people were not already aware of regarding what was and was was ‘not within her purview as mayor,’ including the things which might have been formally in her purview but were likely outside of it as a consequence of informal power relationships. Without going into detail in the context of this blog comment, the manner and speed in which she reneged on some of her most high valued commitments signalled to many that not only was she not capable of delivering the goods, but also that she had not intended to do so. While this sector of society may seem narrow, it would be misleading to dismiss them because while only a few personalities raise to mass prominence, the base of these communities is rather broad, and when it comes to elections, forms a critical pool of free labour and mobilization come election time for progressive candidates. Without them, it’s unlikely progressive candidates can win elections.
Marco
I like Plante. She was elected on promises to improve public transit, reduce rush hour traffic and make areas closer to downtown more family friendly. All of those boxes have check marks beside them. Of course, she’s a left-of-center politician which means the right wing hates her and the left wing will always be disappointed. Against a backdrop of years of corrupt and wasteful administrations, we haven’t seen headlines like “Mafia connections”, “water meter contracts”,”Formula-E”, or “granite ‘stumps’ on Mount Royal” in the news lately either. If her greatest sin is that she tried putting a stop light at the top of Camillien Houde then she’s in for a second term for sure.
Su
I have come to the conclusion that what most people want is a Mayor like Mayor Demers in Laval.
A strong suited deceptive gentleman willing to ignore science in order to please his businessmen developer handlers. There is nothing we can do about it. Most people love cars and condo developments more than peaceful natural spaces…so that is what they vote for.Su
“offshore service of the sort that have undermined other forms of democracy in our time.”
That would be dreadful. But surely we can feel secure that our authorities would never allow such incursions. I mean it’s not like we are Moscow or Ukraine for heaven’s sake!EmilyG
It seems to me a lot of West Islanders don’t like her. I think they see her as anti-car, and/or get mad whenever she does something they think is harmful to the suburbs, or something that they just don’t like.
I think part of the West Island animosity is that there are places there which were formerly cities but then became part of Montreal (and weren’t successful at de-merging, so are still technically Montreal) and they don’t want to have to always play by the City of Montreal’s rules.
Some of those people even go so far as to want to bring back Denny…. wow. (mostly the people griping about anti-car things.)david292
I’m a bit disappointed that Valerie Plante has given in to some of the kook anti-growth element in the party, when the party was literally founded and led through its first city-wide elections by a pro-growth urbanist. She’s moved to impose inclusionary housing mandates that sound good but that really mean zero growth. She’s let the neighborhoods reign on zoning, which sounds good until you realize that their anti-growth policies dump housing demand onto other areas and lead to massive gentrification.
I wish too that she were more politically powerful in Quebec, and that she were more ambitious, but come on.
Overall, it’s unquestionable that she’s the best mayor we’ve had in my lifetime.
JaneyB
Big fan of Plante here. Not perfect but not at all corrupt. She’s the best mayor we’ve had in my lifetime as well. Due to the anger from the Right and the disappointment on the Left, I am make a note to donate to PM and work on Plante’s next campaign. I don’t know who the Left think they will be able to support if not Plante and if the Right thinks it will find a non-corrupt candidate to back, I’ll eat my hat.
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Kate
I’m beginning to see articles about long, difficult recoveries from Covid, including this one about an STM transit security guy who has not fully recovered, four months after testing positive.
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Kate
The SPVM relies on fewer surveillance cameras than police in many cities, and they don’t plan to install more.
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Kate
Longshoremen at the Port of Montreal have begun a four-day strike.
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Kate
SPVM agents seized what they describe as half a million dollars’ worth of illicit drugs this month in Lachine. The list shown seems a little lightweight. Nine grams of hashish and less than a kilo of cannabis, a few grams of this and a few grams of that, and one blotter of acid? Plus, I didn’t think Viagra, Cialis or Xanax were exactly illicit, although I suppose they might count as such if you don’t have a prescription.
Ian
Well cop math has always been based on the highest possible estimate, usually something along the lines of calculating the drug seizure at street value assuming all quantities are broken down into the smallest possible unit, so if it’s 20 bucks for a quarter gram of heavily cut bar coke, multiplied across a kilo suddenly you’ve made a pretty impressive bust.
That said JDM has noted drug prices have gone up in the pandemic… https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/06/27/la-covid-fait-exploser-le-prix-de-la-coke-a-montreal
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Kate
Despite grumbling on social media, Metro reports that a lot of folks like the new Bellechasse bike path; Le Devoir reports on the surge in cycling’s popularity even among folks who’d never used a bike before.
Ian
One inaccuracy worth noting – “Les axes est-ouest cyclables étant peu nombreux à Montréal, Mme Lareau considère que la rue de Bellechasse était «toute désignée» pour être aménagée ainsi.” This is patently untrue, the van Horne bike path is only one block from Bellechasse for a good portion of its route, and goes almost the entire length of the Plateau from St. Laurent to Iberville. While the Bellechassse route is indeed very nice it is hardly the only lengthy east-west route in the area – and the Van Horne path is completely protected from any other traffic besides joggers.
That said, I ride that particular path regularly, it’s great, but honestly – and I say this as a bicyclist that is also a driver – the bike paths take up so much of the street that I don’t see why the city doesn’t just close down the street to car traffic altogether. Bellechasse, if I recall correctly used to to be two ways with parking on both sides and is down to one lane headed west, no parking. I don’t see the point. Making Bellechasse bikes-only would allow them to get rid of all the extra road hardware, too, to improve access for emergency vehicles.
All that aside, free vignettes for people with with reduced mobility sounds like a great idea in ALL vignette neighbourhoods, TBH – as does resident-only parking on residential streets. If you want to park on a residential street with vignettes, you should have to buy a vignette. I’ve got NY, NJ, & CT plates all up & down my street even though the border is closed to all but dual citizens.
walkerp
When you say Van Horne, do you mean the path that goes along the railroad tracks? Because Van Horne stops at St-Laurent. Does everybody call that path the Van Horne?
Ian
I’ve always heard it described as the Van Horne bike path because that was the old Van Horne rail line. Does it have another name?
Alex
I have heard it referred to as the Chemin des Carrieres
Ian
Ah interesting, that would make sense too given the route the street takes.
I guess this is as good a place as any to ask – does anyone know of a good app for navigating Montreal’s bike paths? I know Google Maps has the option to show bike paths but I don’t think there’s any way to prioritize bike paths…
EmilyG
You mean the Réseau Vert?
Ian
Clearly there is a lack in consensus 😀
But yesEmilyG
Ah, okay. I guess I was just looking for clarification.
It’s a nice path. I walk along it sometimes (watching out for cyclists and others.) It’s the fastest and safest way for me to get to the grocery store.Benoit
@Ian ; yes, Google Maps does prioritize bike paths if you chose the cycling option when searching for an itinerary
Ian
hm I must be doing it wrong, I can’t seem to specify that. I’ll figure it out. That said, are there any apps that are specifically based on the Montreal bike path network?
Benoit
Ian, try this bike itinerary, for example, from Marché Jean-Talon to Marché Atwater :
https://www.google.ca/maps/dir/March%C3%A9+Jean-Talon,+Avenue+Henri-Julien,+Montr%C3%A9al,+QC/March%C3%A9+Atwater,+138+Avenue+Atwater,+Montr%C3%A9al,+QC+H4C+2H6/@45.510196,-73.6174824,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x4cc919136130849d:0x5c1098d838d87981!2m2!1d-73.6148902!2d45.5361095!1m5!1m1!1s0x4cc91a7858a4d60f:0x90bc8afed83bdfcb!2m2!1d-73.576477!2d45.4794197!3e1Dhomas
Years ago, I used a separate app for bike routing. I don’t know if it still exists since it was in the days before Android and iOS completely took over the smartphone market (I was using Windows Mobile and BlackBerry at the time). But Google Maps has greatly improved since then, and I no longer need a separate app. You can even set up your profile (on Android, not sure about iPhone) to make your commute default to routing by bike and all other routing by car (or vice versa). Google Maps will even now tell you the elevation of different routes so you can avoid one that has too much uphill, for example. The only problem is that it has not always been up to date with new paths.
Ian
I see what you mean – though I’d be more inclined to take Guy to the deMaisonneuve bike path then City Councillors to Sherbrooke as those are the least steep inclines …I’m no lycra warrior seeking out the hills haha 🙂
Ian
// addendum for clarification – I read that map as going form Atwater to Jean-Talon, that route does make good sense going downhill.
@Dhomas I had noticed the elevation, that’s a nice touch. I know Google is great for remembering routes. As far as navigational apps go, Waze is very good at being up to date – but is only for cars, sadly. If I’m just charting my own routes I think I’ll probably stick with a more bike-specific app like Strava.
mare
In general Google Map for bikes it pretty good, and tries to keep elevation change at a minimum. But it doesn’t take in account roadwork closures, and its pretty frustrating to use our confusing and not wel connected, and terrible indicated bike path network. If you haven’t been somewhere before expect surprises.
Case in point: I searched a few week ago for the best way to go from downtown to the South shore and then to the Champlain bridge. It sent me over the islands to the Victoria St-Lambert locks. Unfortunately those were closed so I had to go all the way to the Jacques Cartier bridge. After scaling the very steep Jacques Cartier bridge entrance and arriving in Longueuil it sent me through St Lambert (Not wrong, but when I searched again to find a connection to the bike path along the river it sent me all the way back to Boulevard Thimens. I carried my bike down the stairs and I didn’t go that far East, but found a pedestrian bridge over the 20 near the police station. Not ideal but better than nothing. (Longueuil really needs to connect some bike paths and put up signage.). Anyway, a bit later I got hopelessly lost again at the North Side of the Champlain where the perfectly indicated multi-use path abruptly stopped at a roundabout on Nun’s Island without any further signage. Google Maps didn’t know where to go either. It was dark by then but thankfully there was another electric scooter that wizzed by and that I followed, and after having to take some big detours and loop backs, I ended up at the other side of the old part of the Champlain bridge where the bike path continued. (Why didn’t they put the multi-use path also on the West side? Detours are very frustrating for cyclists, especially bike commuters.)
Then into Griffintown along the canal, and then into old Montreal where the bike path was blocked by condo- and road construction (without any indication) at least twice, and I had to find my way to find the bike path again.
I alerted Google Maps about the closed St-Lambert connection at the time, and I included a few links to newspaper articles about the closure. I didn’t have time and energy (in more than one way; all that looking for directions uses a lot of phone battery charge) to let them know about all the other pitfalls. Just checked, it *still* get the route over the islands, almost a month later, Unless it’s openend again (anyone here knows?) that’s quite disheartening.
mare
BTW, the Bellechasse bike path is great, but the also new super-wide bike path on both sides of rue Christophe-Colomb is amazing. It goes all the way from the underpass near Parc Laurier to the 40, without any detours. Not very well known is that if you go South the bike path continues on Christophe-Colomb below Laurier park in the South direction, all the way to Cherrier. Combined with St-André for going North, it’s a viable alternative to the overcrowded and narrow Brebeuf bike path.
nau
The Victoria bridge locks had people cycling over them this weekend. Reading online looks like they’ve given over one of the car lanes to bikes until the rebuild is done. Also, if you do Pont Champlain again, the shortest route towards the island of Montreal from that roundabout on Nun’s Island is to go left once you’ve crossed Rene Levesque Blvd. (the road at the end of the Pont Champlain path). Go left along the sidewalk and then for a short while on the street (Rue Jacques-Le-Ber) until you get to Chemin de la Pointe Nord (about 150 m from the roundabout). There is a bike path on the northwest corner of that intersection that will take you under the 10 to Nun’s Island Bridge. I imagine the signage will get better once all the condo construction in the area is done.
mare
Thanks nau! Glad the locks passage is open again.
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Kate
Numbers show that while young Quebecers from the regions may be attracted by the urban agglomeration, they’re not choosing to live on the island as much as they once did. A couple of suggestions are made here, and it’s likely that changes made for the pandemic – notably a lot of online learning – will only increase the tendency for students not to feel any need to live near an urban campus. But that had already begun, with universities and even CEGEPs spinning off satellite campuses.
But the surge in rental costs and the housing crisis, as suggested, must be huge. For young people accustomed to the sparse landscape of rural and small-town Quebec, Montreal’s more far‑flung suburbs might feel more like home, and offer more affordable housing, than the dense streets of Rosemont or Villeray. (So why move closer to the city at all, I would tend to ask.)
The decline in the number of immigrants, as promised by the CAQ, has also reduced the number of people coming to live on the island. Lionel Perez, of course, blames Valérie Plante.
Em
I can’t help feel that this could be a good thing in the long run. A handful of big cities (led by Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal) can’t continue to sustain the bulk of the country’s population growth forever, and it puts big strain on infrastructure, housing prices, traffic etc.
The optimistic scenario is that some smaller cities start becoming more vibrant hubs with more jobs and cultural offering, thanks to an infusion of new people living and maybe even starting businesses there.
The pessimistic scenario is that everyone will want to move to old-school suburbs and worsen urban sprawl.
Ephraim
In some ways, I agree with Em, but I actually think that we (Canada) needs to sit down and plan a few cities, from the ground up, including public transit, before the city is laid out. Planned growth is better than unplanned. But in the long run, people will still gravitate to large cities because they promise higher growth and wealth.
Kate
I’d have to read up on the existence and success of planned cities, but do you have any confidence they could be real cities rather than simply rows of residential housing with a mall or two somewhere nearby? We can’t build real neighbourhoods any more, so I have my doubts we can create a real city from nothing.
I suppose with the consequences of the pandemic, what you need to do is design condo buildings where each condo unit has not only a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, but also a dedicated office room with broadband for online work and Zoom meetings. I wonder if that’s already on the drawing board somewhere.
DeWolf
“Lionel Perez, of course, blames Valérie Plante.”
I did a double take when I saw that passage in the article. He blames her 20-20-20 policy for pushing people off the island, but the policy doesn’t take effect until next year. So who knows.
Getting lost in the story is that Montreal is not actually losing population – in fact the island’s population is higher than it has ever been at 2.052 million.
Em
@Ephraim I like that idea, but right now I’d settle for any kind of urban planning at the regional level to start, vs the unsustainable free-for-all that exists in many of the cities just outside Montreal (and sometimes within it too).
Ephraim
Kate, think of cities like Brasilia, Canberra, Islamabad, and Washington DC. If you take land and don’t start until after you own the land, you can plan everything, before you parcel it out. You can build tall with green space. Yes, over time it will change, but you can set up the streets, the commercial, industrial and hospitals, etc. You leave extra space for future. You put all the cables underground, etc.
Ian
Brasilia is hardly a shining example of urban planning, it’s considered a failure of urban planning despite having been planed form the ground up by futurist visionaries… who were totally out of touch with the needs of the population.
https://www.curbed.com/2019/6/7/18657121/brasilia-brazil-urban-planning-architecture-designFor that matter TMR was a planned city and it’s not exactly a shining example of anything but NIMBYism.
Em
Irvine, California is a planned city that seems to get named to lots of “best cities” lists, athough I admit I didn’t find it any nicer than many other organically-developed cities in California. It’s designed around the university and does have a balance of industry, shopping and green space.
EmilyG
Also, this isn’t quite the article’s topic, but I think it’s related – many people around my age (late 20’s to mid-30’s) who grew up in the West Island are choosing to live off-island in places west of Montreal. Especially those who have children.
Probably because it’s still physically close enough, and similar enough, to the West Island, but I heard housing prices for places just-off-the-West-Island are lower. Less expensive to get a little box made of ticky-tacky there.Ian
There is a trailer park in Vaudreuil and there are some parts of Rigaud mountain where it’s straight up farmland with bad cell reception. One of the things that I very much like about Montreal is that you really don’t need to drive that far out of town to basically be in the country – and the drive from, say, Ste Adèle to Sainte Anne is about the same as from Mile End to Ste Anne. Considering that one floor of a triplex in Mile End is about 450k you can get a pretty nice place for a lot less basically in the country, not even the burbs, and still be well within a decent commute. When I worked downtown I worked with a couple of guys that came in from Hawkesbury – which sounds crazy until you realize that in Toronto, by contrast, a 2 hour commute by train each way is totally normal, and southern Ontario is solid city after city with no country at all from Toronto’s lakeshore all the way to Barrie. When I lived in Toronto, I knew people driving in from Kitchener.
I mean let’s be real here, i it takes a minimum hour and a half to get from Mile End to Ste Anne, if you work in Ste Anne, unless you really like living in the city there’s not a lot of incentive not to live west of Dorval and if you do, you will have a car, and then you may as well live off-island… and this is the thing… not everyone likes living in cities. I grew up in the country and I am never doing that again, but for a lot of city folk there is a romantic draw to the notion, much like how so many kids pick up and run off to BC for a few years before they skulk back miserably.
Patrick
@Em, Irvine is OK in some respects but very car-centric. As with the planned cities Kate mentioned, shopping is restricted to a very few areas. I have friends who live in the fairly dense faculty housing neighborhood there, and they cannot walk or bike (by any reasonable measure) to a market, or even a convenience store. On the other hand, would a dep survive in the neighborhood, given the probable rent and the low foot traffic? I doubt there is a solution to this dilemma unless governments intervene in the property market to keep rents low for essential services.
Kate
Just spotted this item about a Hong Kong property tycoon who wants to build an entirely new city for HK expats to live in, in Ireland.
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Kate
Someone shot a gun in DDO Sunday but nobody was hit.
How do people even know? Occasionally I hear what I think is small fireworks being let off, nearby, but I’m not confident I’d be able to tell gunfire from a pétard.
Dominic
To be fair, they did find a bullet casing
Kate
Afterwards, yes, when the police had been called. But I’m not sure if I heard the bang-bang of a gun somewhere nearby that I could tell it wasn’t a firework.
MarcG
Or a car backfiring. I always tell myself that a gunshot would be louder than whatever I just heard.
Kevin
Compared to a firecracker, gunfire sounds a little flat. It doesn’t carry on as long.
And if you call 911 to report gunfire, they’ll ask how you know the difference.
Blork
@Kevin; depends on the gun. Shotgun, rifle, and pistol all sound different.
Kevin
Blork
True dat. I’ve only heard pistols being fired in a city.
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Kate
A driver who attempted to drive in the wrong direction on the Met on Sunday evening will face charges.
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Kate
A two-week grace period is over, and masks are now mandatory on public transit.
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Kate
Anyone wants to know what systemic racism looks like can read this story from Repentigny in which one set of teenage boys playing pickup basketball is fined $1,500 each, while another set – playing the same game on the same day in the same place – is let off with a warning. No prizes for guessing it’s the Black kids who got ticketed.
walkerp
Just so infuriating. Note this: “But she also acknowledged that police were responding to a call from a civilian about Black youths playing basketball”. What is the Quebecois name for Karen?
If you have ever wondered why there are tennis courts but no basketball court at parc Jeanne-Mance, here’s a clue.david232
Who knows the real story. I can believe that some Repentigny cops busted some kids they’d been dealing with repeatedly and finally hammered them with the big fine, when maybe they’d have chased them off yet again if they hadn’t been Haitian. I can also believe that this kid is lying when he claims that a group of whites were not ticketed for doing the same just 15 minutes later.
We’re all primed to believe the worst about francophones and cops and people from Repentigny, but we don’t know.
walkerp
No, we’re all primed to believe that black people deserve whatever cops do to them as evinced by your ignorant comment.
david232
Kids break the laws repeatedly, get fined. Said kids claim – without evidence – that whites were doing the same thing and didn’t get fined.
Online poster 1: Perfect example of how awful our society is.
Online poster 2: Maybe our society is awful, this story could be true, it could be false, we don’t know.
Online poster 1: A comment like this means that you believe cops should target blacks, you’re part of the problem, your comment offends me.Great!
Kate
I can’t get my head around the sense of fining teenage kids $1,500 for playing a game in the outside air. Granted, Quebec keeps changing the rules, but the item notes “non-contact sports were authorized a few days earlier and, that day, small outdoor gatherings were allowed.”
These kids have to challenge those tickets. With any luck, a sensible judge will cancel them, but who knows how this will go. I hope CBC reports on how it pans out. I can’t imagine what would’ve happened to me had I come home at 16 or 17 to tell my folks they had to pay a $1,500 ticket for me.
Michael Black
Change is about balance, and enpathy helps to rebalance.
Racism shouldn’t be defined by someone spewing hate, but by the people who suffer from it.
I’ve said it before, my great great grandmother Henrietta wrote in 1853 in Red River that she’d not go to Canada because she was concerned about being an “uneducated dark half breed look among the fair & accomplished ladies”. She’s wrong on both accounts, but racism makes people distrust themselves.
Racism isn’t a single incident. It keeps happening and grabs ahold of someone. It colors how people see the world. If it happened before, there might be legitimacy this time, but that feeling of being targeted is very real. It’s not “opportunity”.
Black Lives Matter is about that racism, not just the tip of the iceberge of brutality and death. It’s not just about initial racism, someone must be a criminal because they are black or native, but how it is handled. No need to apologize because criminals don’t need to be treated nicely, and too.much force is okay because they are criminals.
That time forty years ago when the undercover cops disappeared so one could threaten me with a beating, maybe it was only a threat because I am “white”. I don’t know. But the weird thing is that my “white privilege”, somewhat dubious given all the times I was stopped while walking along busy sidewalks, comes from racism. “Let’s be white, it’s simpler”. Whatever happened to my family can be amplified when it comes to the distant cousins and Black people. Nobody should wish to be somebody else.
Dan
@David at this point I assume you’re adding a random number to your name every time you comment here so that one day you can plausibly deny it was you who spewed all the racist crap that you do on this blog.
Ephraim
Those kids need to not just challenge the tickets, they need to open a file at the commission. When the commission is so inundated with these files… they might do something. I’ll make you bets that the chief of the station is already in process to get those tickets cancelled and apologize… just to keep them from taking it to the commission. But that’s where it needs to go… where they can look at the calls of the day and see if there was discrimination.
Meezly
I was half expecting davidxxx to say that there are no black people in Repentigny, period.
Uatu
Why the fines? Didn’t Christian Rioux say that Haitians were the noble blacks unlike the uncouth ‘muricans? ;P
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Kate
Downtown restaurants with massive rents to meet are facing closure with no tourists, office workers or students to support them. Article doesn’t say, but it seems likely that a good neighbourhood restaurant with lower rent and regular takeout and delivery business is more likely to weather the pandemic.
david232
It’s a shame that Sergakis is a landlord, as it would be nice to see his businesses culled. Cage aux Sports = blight à Montreal.
Ephraim
Sergakis does NOT own La Cage aux Sports, that’s Sportscene group and George Durst. CVE: SPS.A
Spi
I’m not sure how one would get stations des sports and cage au sports mixed up.
Ian
By never going to either of them or really even spending much time int eh neighbourhood, one might suspect.
That said, are there really “neighbourhood” restaurants downtown anymore?
Kate
Ian, what I meant was, I’d back a neighbourhood joint like Romados or Chalet BBQ to weather this interlude better than a downtown establishment that’s constantly just making rent, bills and payroll.
Ian
Oh yeah for sure. A place like Lester’s or Snowdon Deli that owns the building is going to be totally fine. I suspect Chalet BBQ owns their building, no idea about Romados but it would make sense, too.
I’ve noticed a ton more restaurants on delivery apps, too, which is great – I’m enjoying being able to get food from downtown restos up here in Mile End where otherwise the Chinese food pickings are slim.
Kate
Any recommendations for Chinese nosh, Ian? Around Villeray I can get sushi or Vietnamese or that vague area of pan-Asian food where pho and pad thai are on the same menu, but real Cantonese food, nope.
Ian
On SkiptheDishes I’m seeing a lot of the old Chinatown restaurants, I’m not that much further south than Villeray so they may deliver to you too…
david292
I stand guilty, I admit, of having no clue of the difference between Station aux Sports and Cage aux Sports.
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Kate
A man fell into the rapids at Cap St-Jacques on Saturday and his body has not been found. There have been a lot of drownings in Quebec so far this summer.
Sunday morning they were still looking for him. Some reports say he was swimming, but this one says “it’s still unclear how the man ended up in the water.”
Update: Media are saying that a body was pulled out of the river later Sunday but that police were not prepared yet to say whether it was the same man seen falling in.
Second update, mid-Monday: police have confirmed that the body is indeed the man who had the mishap at Cap St-Jacques.
Ian
I’ve been to parts of Cap S-Jacques where you could quite easily fall into the rapids trying to navigate the shore. My guess is he fell in, goofed around a bit since he was already wet, then got caught up by the current.
david192 13:35 on 2020-07-28 Permalink
If you believe there’s a “harmful and exclusionary racial climate” at McGill university, you’re obviously totally out to lunch. But worse – how will you ever survive in the world if you’re so far gone that the hand-holding rainbow of life at McGill stresses you out as this bastion of oppression?
Jebediah Pallindrome 14:03 on 2020-07-28 Permalink
And yet, the name stays…
Also, it’s not just that he owned slaves, it’s that the economic system he made his fortune off of was itself entirely dependent on the slave trade.
McGill traded slaves as part of his business – there are records of these transactions.
And what do we think McGill was getting in exchange for all those beaver pelts? Tobacco, cotton, sugar… products that were cultivated by slaves.
When we think of the slave trade we tend to think about SPain and Portugal. The British made the Iberians look like slave-trading hobbyists. The Brits industrialized the process.
The university should change its name. We hold on to these things not because of tradition or memory but because some words sound better than others. McGill sounds distinguished. The idea of some enterprising Scot wearing a tricorner hat fits our romanticized Anglo-American perspective on settler colonialism.
Some scholars think the McGill family may have kept one servant as a defacto slave after the Wilberforce laws went into effect.
These were not nice people; they didn’t want ot be your friend. Why commemorate them in perpetuity?
EmilyG 17:08 on 2020-07-28 Permalink
The racial climate of McGill was quite harmful and exclusionary when I went there, but I didn’t realize it at the time.
Kate 18:19 on 2020-07-28 Permalink
I never went to McGill, Emily. Can you give some examples of how it manifested?
Blork 18:25 on 2020-07-28 Permalink
Just a note regarding Jebediah Palindrome’s statement “the economic system he made his fortune off of was itself entirely dependent on the slave trade.”
Not true. That is true in much of the U.S., particularly the south, where cotton plantations — the largest drivers of the economy in the 19th century — were entirely dependent on slavery. But the economy of Canada in the 18th and 19th centuries was almost entirely based on fur and timber. While there were scatterings of slavery in those industries it is false to say they were entirely dependent on slavery. McGill also made much of his fortune from land speculation.
An idiot will take my comment as some kind of refutation of anti-slavery but all I’m doing is pointing out facts. In particular I’m pointing out the erroneous attribution of a situation that applied in one place but did not apply in the place in question. Just because this is a hot button issue that doesn’t mean we can just make things up, or paint with a too-wide brush that blurs important distinctions.
Chris 10:16 on 2020-07-29 Permalink
>When we think of the slave trade we tend to think about SPain and Portugal. The British made the Iberians look like slave-trading hobbyists.
It’s curious, and perhaps telling, that you only think of European countries as the slavers. The
Arab Slave Trade started before, ended after, and was larger than the European Atlantic slave trade. Yet it’s hardly ever discussed, or even known.
Humans enslaving humans was a near-universal historical phenomenon, practised in all regions, by all races. (I say “was” but remnants remain, note the map for where.)
While there is room for improvement here in Canada, we must also not lose sight of the fact that we are currently one of the least racist places anywhere on Earth, anytime in history.
Meezly 10:45 on 2020-07-29 Permalink
@Blork, I don’t think that’s what Pallindrome meant. If you read further:
“And what do we think McGill was getting in exchange for all those beaver pelts? Tobacco, cotton, sugar… products that were cultivated by slaves.”
So what Pallindrome was getting at was that the economic system that McGill relied on was the global demand for products from the American South. He made a good part of his early fortune by exploiting resources from Canada in exchange for goods produced by plantation slave labour.
McGill was stinking rich. In Wikipedia, under the Legacy section, he is described as “a fur trader, slave owner and land owner.” As if “slave owner” is some mark of distinction. I feel gross reading about him.
Jebediah Pallindrome 17:02 on 2020-07-29 Permalink
@ Blork –
I invite you to consult the following, as these are the sources I based my statements on:
1. Frank Mackey – Black Then & Done With Slavery
2. Rosalind Hampton – Black Racialization and Resistance at an Elite University
Even Stanley Brice Frost’s exceedingly laudatory biography of McGill mentioned both his ownership of enslaved people and his direct involvement in a global economic system principally based on industrial slavery. Brice Frost also points out that McGill was indirectly involved in compensating for enslaved people lost during the American War of Independence.
In other words, McGill was involved in slavery in nearly every way possible: direct ownership of other people (somewhere between 7 and 11, Indigenous and Black), indirect slave-trading and trading in goods that produced, cultivated and/or trapped by enslaved people.
I understand full well this is unplesant but I can assure you what I said was factual and grounded in recent academic research. When I was in CEGEP nearly 20 years ago my Canadian history prof made much the same point: we didn’t have the same kind of chattel slavery that was practiced in the Southern American states and in the Caribbean. While this might be for the most part true, it omits the basic economic foundation of the 18th and early-19th century British Empire. Consider as well that the Wilberforce laws were explicitly omitted from applying to India so that this source of free labour could be somewhat maintained.
Consider as well: I wouldn’t tolerate even one minute of slavery, regardless of whether I was picking cotton or working as a domestic servant. The idea ‘our’ slavery wasn’t as bad because it was mostly indoors is a peculiar distinction.
If someone tried to enslave you, you’d be justified in using lethal force to prevent this occurence. Whether you were to sleep indoors or out wouldn’t matter.
Our society has come a long way; our institutions have not.
EmilyG 21:01 on 2020-07-29 Permalink
Kate: In response to your comment, I’ll explain some of the racial inequities/issues that I now see looking back at my time at McGill (2003-2007.)
–In general, courses/studies being white-centered, in many instances (a bit hard to see or even determine because that’s more of a lack of diversity than something being overtly racist.) This includes music, anthropology, culture, and ethics courses, from what I saw during my time there. For example, in learning about other cultures in anthropology, it was often from outsiders to those cultures who had studied them and/or compared them to other cultures, rather than people actually from those cultures.
–A specific instance: discussion of a song from an opera only in terms of how the character is being portrayed, with no discussion about the fact that this song was stolen from a First Nations culture without permission.
–Another specific instance: looking at a piece of music where a Western composer imitated the music supposedly from an “Arab village.” A student familiar with the kind of music the composer was trying to mimic said that his imitation sounded ridiculous.
–In general, rampant ignorance about cultural appropriation, especially among music composition teachers. A lot of this still goes on in the “elite” world of fine arts today, with artists and composers thinking they can take what they want from any culture they want “because it inspired them.”
–Overly-gendered language, little to no discussion of trans people in a sexual ethics class, and general perpetuation of the idea of gender being a binary. (Perhaps only tangentially related to race issues, but worth noting maybe that many non-Western cultures have less restrictive/harmful ideas surrounding gender, and that the gender-binary is sometimes considered a colonialist/patriarchal idea by marginalized cultures.)
A lot of these problems, I only realized recently, looking back on my time at McGill and knowing all that I’ve learned, and had to un-learn, since then.
It was a less-aware time for a lot of us, myself included.
I think some similar issues still go on at McGill but I’m not as familiar with what goes on there today.
Kate 08:59 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
Emily, thank you for the detailed exposition.
looking at a piece of music where a Western composer imitated the music supposedly from an “Arab village.”
Would this by any chance be Ketelbey’s “In a Persian Market”? (I know – he isn’t classical, but he did compose for orchestra.) I discovered awhile back that the piece was rearranged by Taraf de Haidouks for a different kind of musical ensemble. It reminded me of how, when the stories from the 1001 Nights first became fashionable in Europe, new stories were written there (or collected elsewhere by Europeans, the provenance isn’t always clear) which found their way back into the collection and are now considered typical parts of it, like the stories of Aladdin and Sinbad.
What I’m saying is, when it comes to the arts, it isn’t illegitimate to claim “inspired by” and it isn’t only Westerners who get inspired by the “exotic” but it goes perfectly well in the other direction too.
EmilyG 09:22 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
Kate –
It wasn’t Ketelby, it was a bit less obvious than that because it tried to be more “authentic” – a piece by Gunther Schuller, from a longer piece inspired by the art of Paul Klee.
Many marginalized cultures argue that it doesn’t go in the other direction, because Westerners oppressed their cultures and then just took whatever elements of the marginalized cultures they wanted, without permission or context. The issue of cultural appropriation has to do with the relationship between oppressed cultures and oppressor cultures – it isn’t just one culture using elements of another.
“Without permission or context” is important to note here. Often Western artists have just used songs/art/instruments/clothes/etc from marginalized cultures, when those parts of their culture are sacred, or only used in certain circumstances, or only meant to be used by certain cultures or even certain people from the culture. Westerners just stealing those things is incredibly disrespectful at the least.
This article explains it well: https://everydayfeminism.com/2013/09/cultural-exchange-and-cultural-appropriation/
EmilyG 09:31 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
And here’s an article specifically about the song from the opera that I mentioned, which also explains cultural appropriation and mis-use well: https://www.coc.ca/coc-news1?entryid=19315
JaneyB 09:36 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
@EmilyG – thanks for those notes. Though it might be difficult for profs whose training was purely Eurocentric to become expert in the heritage of other civilizations, it’s helpful to know that even just referring to the original cultural context (of the inspired composition, for example) could help open up space for discussion and be invitational for students of that heritage to share their experiences. That’s definitely do-able and also enriching.
I have some trouble with the notion of cultural appropriation though because I see culture as dynamic and artists as constantly inspired by their experiences – some of which will include exposure to other people and their heritage. For cultures that are more restrictive and/or use art in a highly codified, ritualistic way, seeing any influences of their culture expressed by outsiders will probably be understood as theft. Maybe just referring to that different way of seeing culture would be more sensitive but at the end of the day, artists in less-ritual cultures will likely not stay inside their ancestral influences. This is especially true with the mostly mixed people of the Americas who are constantly interacting with other mixed ancestry people and also typically cannot reconcile genetic heritage with their embeddedness in another location. Really, as a mixed North American, which heritage is actually mine? Or even more profound: Is heritage even possessable? (In many Indigenous cultures, stories are often strictly owned but land is not, for example). Or…maybe making just noting those differences would create a less exclusionary atmosphere. A huge topic, for sure!
EmilyG 09:59 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
JaneyB –
Yes, artists can, and will, be inspired by other cultures. The important thing is doing enough research on the context, and asking permission (especially when there is some doubt as to whether it’s okay to use something.)
Western art and music and culture, for a long time, hasn’t really thought much about the ramifications of just taking things from the cultures it colonized/marginalized/oppressed. This is a large factor in many Westerners/white people today not realizing the harm that cultural appropriation can cause.
White people/Westerners have had the privilege and the luxury of being able to ignore the issue of cultural appropriation and the harm it causes. Other cultures don’t have that.
JaneyB 10:34 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
Emily G – I’ll agree with you that marginalization has been/continues to be a problem. Still, I don’t see how a Western artist could ‘ask permission’ because (from another perhaps feminist or marxist discourse of power) who speaks for that other culture? Likewise, who articulates ‘harm’ has been done and what is it? The notion of ‘harm’ is not as definable as one would hope. ‘Harm’ in the West is often a legal thing and has the potential to be quantifiable and compensated for. If it means something more like obnoxiousness or contempt, for Westerners, that’s just a fact of life in a pluralist society and not manageable in any way. Few people would argue that no damage has been done by colonization or that marginalization is over but these are huge and likely unsolvable issues that express real limitations within these discourses of anti-oppression. I think it’s important to engage challenges to the status quo but there are likewise oppressive structures and relations within the oppressed (and within the oppressors!) that are relevant. The White as bad, Other as good is another binary opposition that needs unpacking, imo.
EmilyG 10:52 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
As to who speaks for other cultures, culture-bearers can. They can be sought out if Westerner artists want to be respectful and ask permission or ask/learn about the culture.
Who articulates that “harm” has been done? Not all cases of cultural inspiration, borrowing, or appropriation are alike (and note that those terms are all very different from each other,) but if non-Western cultures* speak out about this harm being done to their own culture, I think settlers should listen to them, especially settlers who have benefited from the appropriation of their culture.
*I understand that people who don’t want to acknowledge harm often try to use the argument that “well, one person from another culture expressing their opinion doesn’t speak for the whole culture!” The people arguing this point often also don’t want to listen when it’s many members of a culture talking at length about how a thing is harmful to their culture.
And the concept of “intangible cultural heritage” is important to learn about.
Colonizers continuing to think they can use whatever they like, without permission or context, continues the harm of colonization.