The Présence autochtone first people’s festival is opening Friday with film screenings at the Fine Arts cinema and performances both live and online.
Updates from August, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A social funding campaign for the public markets was completed within 48 hours. Jean-Talon in particular has been afflicted by the lack of tourists, for whom it’s on the beaten path.
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Kate
Metro, the newspaper, will save a few bucks by not publishing on paper till September. I have to say that I hope they continue existing, because for a small media outlet they do a damn good job covering important city stories that are overlooked by the bigger boys.
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Kate
An alleged mafioso, Nicola Spagnolo, was arrested Thursday in Laval over a murderous attack in Old Montreal last weekend. TVA bluntly calls Spagnolo a puissant mafieux in their version and hints that there may be another recent act of violence to his account.
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Kate
A man in his 80s was found in critical condition in an NDG apartment on Thursday, apparently the victim of an attack, but details are not forthcoming.
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Kate
The Quebec coroner is sounding an alarm on drug overdoses. There were 23 deaths in Montreal in July linked in some way to street drugs – and most of them were stimulants, not opioids.
Max
I imagine the suicide rate is through the roof these days too. But that’s not something you’re likely to read about in the media.
Kate
I wonder whether the city’s public health would even reply if asked about it.
Kevin
There has been some modelling that suicides may go up because of the rise in unemployment (at least one paper out of University of Toronto, but it’s a mathematical projection).
It’s just too early to tell. We haven’t had unemployment like this in a century, but this time our government reacted pretty damn quickly to provide people cash, and there has been a LOT of talk about mental resilience etc…
Kate
Global reports on a chef who has killed himself: the pandemic basically obliterated his business. But the number of suicides will have to be studied in retrospect to see what the excess numbers look like.
Max
Here’s a really depressing story about an over-achiever NYC ER doctor that cracked under the strain. From the New York Times about a month ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/nyregion/lorna-breen-suicide-coronavirus.html
I’m not doing so well myself these days, but hey, at least I’m not in Beirut.
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Kate
MUHC workers have been picketing to demand universal bonuses for everyone working in health services.
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Kate
A Concordia professor is being condemned for using the N-word in class. But this is the thing: the professor was talking about a book published in Quebec in 1968, a book with historical weight, translated as White N** of America.
Had the professor used the word as a slur or an expletive, yes, of course outrage would be reasonable. But the title of a book is the title of a book. It doesn’t mean the professor meant anyone disrespect. Was she really meant to either never mention the book (which I presume was relevant to the matter at hand), or call it “White N‑Words of America”? Admitting that as a white woman I may be totally wrong here, isn’t context still important?
In any case, the professor has issued a fulsome written apology, although students are still demanding she be banned from teaching that class again. They are also demanding mandatory diversity training and other measures.
thomas
Referencing this book is what got Wendy Mesley suspended from the CBC.
Also, why was the book given this translation? It seems to be ratcheting up the language from the French original. Was it to be provocative?
Michael Black
It’s Pierre Valliere’s book. It’s what got Wendy Mesley in trouble.
If people are actually offended by the word, that’s different from people thinking some might be offended. And it’s hard to tell what this is about. I’d like to know why the book came up in a film class.
There is reason to be troubled, but not by the word (in this context). It’s almost “cultural appropriation”. It was not uncommon for white people to claim a similarity with Black people in the late sixties. I have a book titled “Student as…” I’m sure there were other book titles, but white people often wanted to be seen as ” oppressed”, suggesting their lives were the same as Black people. Nobody could be as tough as John Lewis, but white kids often wanted to feel they were in the same situation.
I think it still exists to some extent. People wanting to rush to the barricades every time native people have an issue. What’s happening in Portland, Or seems to be similar. Or when the students were stomping around eight years ago, they were not oppressed the same way Black people in segregation were oppressed, and neither was it the same thing as being stopped by the cops for no reason. I’ll never forget Daryl Grey saying they’d planned a demonstration (I think it was after Treyvon Martin’s killing) but cancelled bevause of what was happening with the students.
People should be more outraged by that behaviour than a word on a fifty year old book.
Kate
Those were provocative days, Thomas. Two years before the October crisis. I’d say Vallières intended the full negative impact of the word in French so the English version was an accurate translation of his intention.
Jebediah Pallindrome
So I was taking a history course at Con-U back in `18 and a Francophone student referenced this book by its title and the prof said something like “nowadays it’s probably best to be a little more delicate, you can try saying N-word as that would be considered more appropriate for an academic environment” and the student replied with something like “I had no idea that would be offensive, thank you for letting me know.”
Good teachable moment, and everyone just moved on. That prof was really on the ball.
MarcG
“back in `18” kicked me right in the old-man balls, thanks
mare
Speaking of racial slurs, anybody knows what came of this: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/quebec-considers-removing-n-word-from-11-place-names-1.3184317 ?
Did they do a study and then nothing happened, comme l’habitude ?
Kate
mare, this piece from last month claims the names are still there on Google, but I searched for both forms of the N-word (English and French) on Google maps and they turn up nothing. For example, if I search for the Lac à Ti-Nègre mentioned there, it shows me a Lac Honoré-Gélinas. Maybe Google just did some quick housecleaning.
mare
Kate, thanks for the update. A cursory search yesterday didn’t yield any results. Just banning them from Google maps seems like a partial fix, but it’s something.
Kate
Also, the official Quebec toponymy site finds zero place names using N**, either in English or French.
Grace
Grace
THOMAS… in answer to your question about why this came up in a film class…. may or may not answer your question…..
Glancing through Concordia’s mandatory film studies courses toward an MA reveals three required courses, one of which is Methods in Film, which is listed among Russell’s offerings. She is slated to teach that course this coming term.The course description states that “Assigned readings will include film and media criticism, theory, textual analysis, and cultural studies approaches to cinema; and explore the history of the discipline of film and media studies. In addition to technical and practical matters, the course helps students develop productive and original research questions by examining notable issues in the field.
“Course materials examine the ways that film history, criticism, and textual analysis have been and can be written, encompassing a range of ways of seeing, interpreting and understanding cinema and the moving image.” In addition, “The course also works to facilitate an esprit de corps within the M.A. class.”
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Kate
Wednesday evening the OSM held a drive-in symphony concert at the airport. Tickets cost a hundred bucks per car.
EmilyG
I look forward to the day when concerts can again be attended by people who don’t drive.
What an odd age we live in.
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Kate
It’s been a gradual transformation, but all STM buses will be returning to front boarding and payment of fares on Monday.
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Kate
A La Presse op-ed has lavish praise for the changes made in Montreal’s street fabric since the lockdown.
Yet another outcry against a
bike pathbus lane, this one on Queen Mary Road.Joey
It’s a reserved bus lane, not a bike path, on Queen-Mary.
jeather
I can’t figure out what the bus lane on Queen Mary (which very, very desperately needs one — and it has 3 sets of parking spots because it is a divided road! lots of room to give up) is going to do. Will it be eastbound in the morning and westbound in the evening? I’d love to know more.
Kate
Thank you, Joey.
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Kate
Two young men were shot in Ahuntsic Tuesday night, not seriously wounded, no further details.
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