Global has laid off longtime anchor Jamie Orchard.
Updates from August, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The Canadiens’ Brendan Gallagher is out for rest of the series with a broken jaw after a cross‑check to the face by the Flyers’ Matt Niskanen in the closing minutes of Wednesday’s match. Niskanen wasn’t penalized at the time, but has been suspended for one game. Explanations from the Journal about the consequences of Gallagher’s departure from the “bubble”.
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Kate
The city has awarded a $20-million contract for the reorganization and spiffing-up of Phillips Square. This may seem like a lot, but it’s a bargain compared to the original $50-million plan floated at the start of 2019.
PatrickC
Free wifi in Phillips Square? Now that’s a good idea.
Kevin
This is just part of the project that was originally budgeted at $50 million.
The final tally is not known, but it be at least one year late.Davis787
Truly amazing to me, like if “have to see it to believe it” sort of thing, but apparently Brivia’s project is funded, has sold well, and is under construction, so that giant parking lot is effectively on its way out. I love Phillips square the way it is, and don’t want to see yet another of our squares get the “planning majors” treatment (looking at Cabot and square Saint Louis, even if it worked well at Dorchester, etc). But it’s clear even to me that with the jump in residents now and over the next half decade, uses will shift.
Kate
Thanks for the clarification, Kevin.
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Kate
Aaron Derfel can be confident he’s doing real journalism, as defined by the adage “Journalism is printing what someone doesn’t want published.” François Legault has dogpiled on Derfel for the third time this summer, although it’s not entirely clear in this piece what the premier has taken exception to, save that he feels Derfel’s tweets are biased against his government.
Ian
Some folk hate scrutiny. To single out journalists by name, though is chilling.
EmilyG
Derfel has written a thread in response:
https://twitter.com/Aaron_Derfel/status/1296570592498536449Kate
Jonathan Montpetit tweets: Let me get this straight… Legault shows up to a legislative hearing today, says Anglos watch too much CNN, dumps on The Gazette and its health reporter, and then is like, Why don’t they love me?
Thanks for the link, EmilyG!
EmilyG
Maybe Legault didn’t like this article of Derfel’s? (from a month ago.) https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/analysis-legault-fuming-behind-scenes-over-quebecs-pandemic-response
Again, I think Derfel was just reporting on what was happening, not trying to insult anyone.Kate
Gazette editor-in-chief Lucinda Chodan also steps up to defend Derfel and spell out why it’s disturbing that Legault is singling out a specific journalist for blame.
Raymond Lutz
“singling out a specific journalist for blame”? It’s a start! Then you raid the reporter’s home to find out his sources (Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O’Neill) or you arrest them already under false charges you later drop (The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal) or you simply let them rot in an embassy. Everything’s fine!
Kevin
Josée Legault with the column.
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/08/21/francois-legault-au-pays-des-anglosdavid192
^ Good review.
Kate
Not sure I’m with Josée Legault on her second point, “on trouve chez les Anglo-Québécois un sens tissé serré de la communauté.” Really? More than anyone else around here?
JP
@ Raymond Lutz, not sure if it’s relevant here, but the case of Patrick Lagacé being spied on by police also comes to mind. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/journalist-patrick-lagace-police-surveillance-spying-1.3828832
Kevin
Kate
Isn’t that common for most minority groups?Kate
Kevin – what, you mean a sense of community? My point is that I have never felt a sense of anglo community. I was born here, I’m an anglo, is anyone going to give me a job or help me out simply because of anglo solidarity? No, because there isn’t any.
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Kate
A maximum of 250 fans will be allowed to watch matches of the Impact starting next week at Saputo Stadium.
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Kate
The headline on the CBC site says Montreal port workers and employers at an impasse but the lede says talks were supposed to resume Thursday, and then that “replacement workers” (i.e. scabs) would not be brought in. TVA stresses that businesses still want Ottawa to step in even though the feds have indicated they’re keeping their distance.
The workers have made some concessions, agreeing to move 477 containers of sensitive materials. Curiously, this Radio-Canada piece conflicts with the CBC piece, saying “briseurs de grève” may be brought in.
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Kate
The city’s main educational service centre, the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal (CSSDM) – which I suppose is the body that has replaced the CSDM school board now that boards have been abolished on the French side, adding one more initial in its name but, I will bet you, exactly the same fonctionnaires in the same jobs – is short of 500 teachers as the school year is set to begin.
Ian
Hm I can’t imagine why people aren’t just leaping at the opportunity to become a primary or secondary school teacher. Even under non-pandemic conditions at entry level it is a job with high qualifications, lowish pay, high stress, and little respect. You don’t even get a specific school to work at until enough people retire that you are eligible for one of the limited number of permanent postings. Imagine working at several schools each week in a school district as big as the CSSDM without even the promise of a job next school year.
Kate
That’s a good point. They just said they wouldn’t allow CHSLD workers to split their shifts between different locations, because it was likely one of the factors that caused such a surge of covid contagions in those places early on. But mightn’t shuffling substitute teachers around different schools risk a similar effect?
Ian
The thought also crossed my mind. If you sub 2 classes a week it’s not just inconvenient, it’s an exponential exposure risk.
walkerp
Actually, I think a ton of people got let go from the CSDM and the new “service centre” is significantly less staffed.
Kate
Well, that’s something.
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Kate
Eight people have been arrested in a drug bust as the city deals with that wave of drug overdoses reported throughout the summer, including 29 fatal ones.
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Kate
One of the suggestions made to the city towards cleaning up its environmental act is to charge for garbage pickup – presumably by weighing it. The official line is they’re studying how to do it but not intending to start doing it before 2025.
Ephraim
When this is often done, people become very creative with their disposal… leaving trash in city parks, alleyways and dumping it where it doesn’t belong. People drive out to the countryside in the UK and just dump stuff rather than pay to get rid of it.
Ian
Out in the country where the dumps charge by weight, people often just burn it. I’m hoping that won’t be a problem here, haha
CE
I can imagine a lot more garbage being put in the recycling and compost (which both have too many things that shouldn’t be in them already).
I grew up in the country and we burned anything too big to put out on the road to be picked up. Vinyl siding, furniture, countertops, all on the fire billowing black smoke. The back roads were littered with fridges and washing machines and other appliances because people couldn’t be bothered to drive out to the dump.
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Kate
After several delays, the Biodome is set to reopen at the end of the month.
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Kate
The mayor has asked the urban campers along Notre-Dame East to pack up and move but they’re refusing. TVA says they’re enjoying the freedom they have in the tent city and don’t want to obey the restrictions of a shelter like the old Royal Vic. They’ve been given till the end of the month to clear out; even if the mayor doesn’t want to get heavy with them, she can simply wait till the weather does it for her.
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Kate
Cities in Quebec are not permitted to run deficits, and Quebec is not allowing any Covid exceptions, so Montreal may have to borrow to pay its bills. Lionel Perez is quoted as being happy that Quebec is cracking this fiscal whip.
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Kate
It’s now possible to find out from the STM’s mobile site how crowded the next bus will be so you can make decisions accordingly.
Heliomass
Good to see it available in Transit App too. It’s pretty cool, I wonder how they generate the data?
Kate
I am inquiring into that, Heliomass.
walkerp
I had the same question. Maybe swipes? But how do they know when people get off?
james lawlor
I believe that most of the buses have passenger counting devices installed above the front and rear doors. (small metal boxes with a plastic screen on the bottom). They count the entries and exits when the doors are open.
They are part of the iBus project (https://www.initse.com/frde/projets/projects-north-america/montreal/).Kate
Thank you, james lawlor.
Chris
The buses are full of cameras too, a little bit of software could easily detect and count people’s faces pretty accurately.
dwgs
Yeah, that’s what we want, cameras with facial recognition on every bus, wonderful idea. Ironic that you of all people would float an idea that would send people running back to their cars.
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Kate
Quebec’s culture minister only learned about the Sulpicians sacking their archivists from reading Le Devoir, and she tweeted a response that she would use her ministerial powers to preserve the materials, although the question whether the whole collection will be nationalized is still open. Quebec’s also got dozens of smaller religious orders with their own archives that need to be stashed somewhere.
Uatu
I read this quickly and imagined the sulpicians being sacked medieval castle style
Michael Black
Well those historians like to sack history. I discovered another article about my family that was published last fall, and when I wrote the Manitoba Historical Society, they didn’t take the hint and send me a copy, just offered to send an issue of the magazine fir $20, or I couid join the Society for fifty dollars and get access.
Chris
A quick search of the Manitoba Historical Society suggests they probably have close to zero money, so…
Kate
Michael Black, could you request a loan of the item through the library system?
…Actually, I could get it for you, it’s only $12. But I don’t know where to send it.
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Kate
The city has restated its intention to work toward zero waste by 2030. There’s going to be incredible pressure over the next couple of years for industry, business and governments at all levels to abandon environmental aims to speed recovery from the economic effects of the pandemic, so it’s good to see the city still has it in focus.
Dhomas
It looks like our federal government might be leaning in the same direction with respect to a “green” recovery: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/18/canada-justin-trudeau-bill-morneau-covid-19-green-recovery. I know it’s not municipal news (or maybe it is as JT is an MP in Montreal ;), but I’m very curious to see how this will play out.
Dominic
@Dhomas I’m seeing news about this coming from the United States that if Biden wins, the back-to-work solution can and should be the proposed Green New Deal.
Canada should do the same, or even lead it.
EmilyG
I’m in a Facebook group for my neighbourhood, and many of them complain about how nasty Rosemont smells on Mondays (compost day.)
I know that’s a disincentive to many people in the neighbourhood to use the composting service. Maybe the city can work on this issue.Kate
There are a couple of tricks: rinse it out weekly, after the pickup; put a layer of brown bag paper, compostable egg cartons or other dry compostable materials in the bottom; make sure you put the bin out every week – don’t let the contents ferment longer than that. But there’s no denying that on hot days the bin can get a little ripe, and if someone knocks over a bin and spills “essence de compostage” into the street, it isn’t pleasant.
Another trick, if you discard a lot of fish or meat refuse in there, is to keep those scraps in your freezer until compost day, rather than letting them fester at ambient temperatures for a week.
Blork
Over on this side of the river (Longueuil) we’ll be getting compost bins in September. Regular garbage pickup will be reduced to every two weeks. I already have a compost bin in the back yard that’s just for veg scraps, but apparently the municipal compost can handle some degree of meat and shrimp shells, etc.
I am expecting smelly days. It will also involve some planning in terms of how to do it. If we just dump the day’s scraps out there every day it will stink and get torn open by raccoons, so I guess it will be a matter of keeping it in the fridge or freezer until pickup day.
walkerp
We had full-on maggot explosion during that heat wave. I felt super embarrassed and cleaned it out in the middle of the night before the pick-up. (That was gross.) Then I saw my neighbours doing the same thing and realized I was far from alone. Those poor people working the pick-up must have had a brutal week.
EmilyG
Rosemont is especially bad for stinky compost days, though.
A friend of mine said that on Mondays, it smells absolutely terrible in Rosemont. I was skeptical, thinking, “really, how bad can it be? Just a little compost smell?”
Then I moved to Rosemont. My friend is right.MarcG
Maybe Rosemont has a higher participation rate than other boroughs. On my block in Verdun I see only around 3 compost bins for 15 residences.
Chris
Maybe people in Verdun have more yardspace and are doing their own composting?
Kate
Chris, have you ever walked around in Verdun?
Meezly 09:28 on 2020-08-21 Permalink
A decade ago, when Global News was still going strong, a good friend of mine worked closely with Jamie Orchard as a news producer. I got to hang out with the evening team a few times, they were a great group of people. Jamie would buy her coworkers a round of drinks when they had a good show. She truly loved her job.
Ian 11:24 on 2020-08-21 Permalink
Like Steve Faguy says on Twitter, “Pretty shocking that Global would lay off an anchor like this who has been with the station since it launched.” Indeed.
Michael Black 12:08 on 2020-08-21 Permalink
But I didn’t see anything about a replacement. They have to have somebody, so either hire someone starting out (and hence a lower salary) or it wil be anchored by someone in Toronto, like the late newscast.
Blork 15:23 on 2020-08-21 Permalink
Just a context check: Orchard was one of “dozens” of journalists laid off by Global because they are in a dire financial situation. She’s not a one-off or targeted layoff. Still surprising.