Dan Philip, who headed the Black Coalition of Quebec for 40 years, is retiring from the post to be replaced by Max Stanley Bazin, described as a lawyer. On looking him up, I found this article from 2015, which says Bazin no longer practices.
Update: Metro also notes Dan Philip’s retirement.
A man who lived partly in Montreal and partly in Lebanon was killed in the Beirut explosion on Tuesday. A lot of folks in Montreal have family connections there.
Update: On Facebook, the mayor posted a photo of the three city hall flags at half mast and a statement about honouring Wednesday’s day of mourning.
Explosion video is bananas:: https://www.axios.com/beirut-explosion-video-storage-facilities-3090405f-3103-4038-8e4b-da2cd6a471ec.html
I spoke this morning to a man I was working with till March, who’s been here for decades but has siblings and other family in Lebanon. He says many people are injured to some extent because so many windows were shattered. Two of his nephews were hurt but none of his folks are dead.
It’s already fairly bucketing down as I type, but tropical storm Isaias is expected to bring even more torrential rain Tuesday night into Wednesday.
Two thirds of people surveyed in Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie are in favour of bike paths. And this is TVA admitting it!
La Presse has published a response to last week’s sour Montréal, je te quitte! screed. Pascal Henrard points out that journalists like negative stories – that someone hates a new bike path or a new park is more edgy and newsy than how much people like a new thing. Le bonheur écrit à l’encre blanche sur des pages blanches. (Henrard doesn’t go so far as to theorize that journalists writing these sour stories are giving readers permission to also hate, giving them a focus for their hate, but I could go on about this.)
Update: Toula Drimonis responds to Montréal, je te quitte!, specifically, the writer’s complaint that the city didn’t do enough to give him copious free parking everywhere he might want to go.
This might be ass-talk, but I think about how a generation ago, the usual line from media-savvy and progressive-minded people was that mainstream media always favored mainstream ideas because it assured larger readership numbers for the sake of advertising. So the mantra among the up-and-coming new media people was always to “go behind the story” and to find alternative perspectives and to highlight the less-told, “unheard” voices.
FFwd a generation, and now those people ARE the mainstream media. Given that the previously unheard are heard too much now because of social media, blogs, and other less commercial forms, the way for the mainstream media to “go behind the story” is now to present views that are counter to the majority of the noise from social media. So, for example, if social media is full of people saying they want more bike paths, the mainstream media will feel they’re doing the responsible media thing by voicing the “unheard” schlubs who complain about parking and don’t like bicycles.
Progress! (Sarcasm.)
(And the advertising part takes care of itself, because it’s now about getting clicks not regular readership, and inflammatory and/or click-baity headlines take care of that.)
Another thing to consider is that probably people aged 55 and over are less likely to be riding bikes so it doesn’t benefit them personally. This purely anecdotal evidence is based on my own experience of riding those paths, and noticing the ages of the people around me. Certainly skews towards families with younger kids, or people in their 20s and 30s that seem to be in a bit of a rush to get where they are going. There are a few older riders like myself but not nearly as many.
I wonder what the demographics of the surrounding neighbourhoods are, i.e.; do they skew young?
Rosemont elects Projet councillors, Québec solidaire MNAs and the only remaining NDP MP on the island of Montreal. Must be something in the water.
So does Mile End (well, Liberal MP this time, sadly) and half the population is Hassidic – voting patterns alone don’t tell us a lot about demographics.
I always think of Rosemont as the Portland of Montreal. Maybe it’s just me. But it really gives me that kind of vibe.
And Portland is also known as The City of Roses, so further connections…
And there was a direct rail link to Portland from Montreal, albeit not from RosePatrie, but from Bonaventure station.
Oh wait, The Grand Trunk went to that other Portland, in Maine.
There’s a Montreal angle to the Perseverance Mars rover, as one of the engineers involved was born here. The mission took off successfully last week and is scheduled to land there in February.
Verdun General is adding a new 36-bed Covid wing. It’s going to be a prefab, meant to handle the surge of new cases expected later this year.
Two people were seriously hurt Tuesday when they crashed their car into a truck trailer parked in a lot in St-Laurent. Police are trying to figure out how this happened.
David732 22:00 on 2020-08-04 Permalink
That article strongly suggests that he no longer practices because he fell into some sort of situation (drugs, mental decline, booze, laziness, women, gambling, etc) that caused him to stop doing work for which he was paid, possibly because he was unable to do so. He was never reinstated after he was disbarred.
Not such a great record, here:
“Bazin, qui le représentait lors du procès « n’avait tout simplement pas pris connaissance du dossier, même de la façon la plus élémentaire », précise le document.
L’« incompétence » de l’avocat était telle qu’un juré a fait parvenir une note au juge pour questionner le déroulement du procès.
« L’incident n’est pas banal et représente sans doute une première au Québec, sinon au Canada », précise le jugement.
. . .
M. Bazin a été radié de l’ordre pour une période de deux ans en 2011.
Le conseil de discipline lui a notamment reproché de ne pas s’être présenté à la cour pour représenter certains de ses clients, entraînant l’émission d’un mandat d’arrestation contre l’un d’eux.
Il n’aurait pas non plus suivi les cours de perfectionnement que le Barreau lui avait imposés, « vu ses lacunes en droit ».
Kate 10:30 on 2020-08-05 Permalink
David∞, it wasn’t necessary to extract and spell out the details about Mr. Bazin’s troubles. I linked the story so anyone sufficiently interested could check it out.
In fact, I suspect the Black Coalition was Dan Philip, and that without him it may simply cease to exist in favour of more recent groupings.
Dan 10:41 on 2020-08-05 Permalink
David can never resist an opportunity to spout his unfounded, racist assumptions about a POC in the news.
Michael Black 10:49 on 2020-08-05 Permalink
I was surprised by a story a while back where the Coalition was mentioned but someone other than Dan Phillips was quoted. He definitely is the organization, though more concrete than something I mentioned recently. I did see him on TV more recently, and he is looking old, though that’s since ly because I haven’t seen him on the news recently.
It won’t be the same, and time will tell how things go.
david232 10:54 on 2020-08-05 Permalink
Yeah, Dan, I have it out for POCs in the news. Thanks for your contribution.
Back on planet earth, I have a professional interest in lawyers behaving badly. And “unfounded”!
You obviously don’t read French:
“Bazin, qui le représentait lors du procès « n’avait tout simplement pas pris connaissance du dossier, même de la façon la plus élémentaire », précise le document.
Translation: he didn’t even have the most elementary familiarity with the case, let alone familiarity sufficient to defend his client.
« L’incident n’est pas banal et représente sans doute une première au Québec, sinon au Canada », précise le jugement.
Translation: this is egregious, a first in Quebec, and possibly all of Canada.
M. Bazin a été radié de l’ordre pour une période de deux ans en 2011.
Translation: he was disbarred in 2011, for a period of two years (after which he could apply for readmission).
Le conseil de discipline lui a notamment reproché de ne pas s’être présenté à la cour pour représenter certains de ses clients, entraînant l’émission d’un mandat d’arrestation contre l’un d’eux.
Translation: In its order, the bar discipline board noted that in some cases, he didn’t even show up for court to represent his clients, which in at least one case led to an arrest warrant being issued against one of said clients.
Il n’aurait pas non plus suivi les cours de perfectionnement que le Barreau lui avait imposés, « vu ses lacunes en droit ».
Translation: he also didn’t even do the legal education units ordered by the bar to correct his lack of legal knowledge (ie. pertaining to the things that he kept doing wrong).
Then the guy didn’t bother trying to get his law license back.
A lot of racism there!
Kate 12:32 on 2020-08-05 Permalink
david∞– yes, we got the story, you don’t have to keep copying it to your comments.
Dan 12:33 on 2020-08-05 Permalink
Thanks so much David, but I am perfectly bilingual. Funny I didn’t see a translation of the part about drugs, booze and laziness – oh right, cause there was absolutely no mention of that and just your own unnecessary, and IMO, racist assumption.
David838 14:44 on 2020-08-05 Permalink
That’s the assumption about every lawyer when he/she goes off track. It’s drummed into you in law school, professional responsibility lectures, CLEs, etc. Literally, those things are the reason pretty much every otherwise normal attorney ends up going off the rails, white or black, 90% of cases in front to the bar court, that’s the reason.
Michael Black 15:51 on 2020-08-05 Permalink
But what relevance does this have to the organization? Leading it, you’ll have lawyers working for you, not in court handling the case yourself. Knowing the law is useful, it helped the Black Panthers, but not having a license isn’t that important.
Kate’s right, someone new leading the group is more likely to be a problem because they aren’t Dan Phillips than any problem in their past.
david25 18:04 on 2020-08-05 Permalink
It’s remarkable when a semi-well known civic organization hires a 1%er of attorneys – namely, the disbarred – to run the organization! Mazel tov and bon courage to them, but I think it’s perfectly worth commenting about.
And again, people can look up how people end up making the sorts of repeated violations that result in disbarment, and it’s not pretty. If it’s new behavior, there’s an underlying issue, that’s usually pretty dark.