Le Devoir says 800 nurses have quit in Montreal since March. Double shifts, cancelled vacation time, who can blame them?
Updates from August, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Workers at the Port of Montreal have signed a seven-month truce to end the strike and keep working while hammering out a new contract.
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Kate
Apparently it’s now 50 years since people started drumming around the Cartier monument on Sundays.
DeWolf
When I was commissioned by the Gazette to write about the tam-tams in 2003, I found it very hard to nail down precise information about when they had started. They seemed to exist in a weird time-space void in which they had always existed and would always exist. I finally managed to interview an old-timer—maybe Michel Séguin himself? I’d have to check the archives—who explained the origins. Even so, it’s still not widely known how, when or why they got started.
Michael Black
In 1983 or 84 Leslie Lutsky mentioned to someone that this thing was happening, and we went by, I think we were going somewhere anyway. And there were a few drummers, a few dancers, and a small audience, maybe just those that could fit on the benches. It was a small thing.
I can’t remember when it got big, or when it became big enough to be mentioned almost like a tourist attraction.
Jebediah Pallindrome
I may have a lead on someone who claims it dates back to earlier, like the 1960s, and is West Indian in origin.
Kate
Jebediah, that’s interesting. Are similar outdoor drumming circles a tradition somewhere in the Caribbean?
Jebediah Pallindrome
Gonna find out. From I’ve learned so far the guy who may have got the whole thing going is super fascinating and still lives in Montreal. The story I’m hearing is he and his friends went to the mountain to start drumming because their garage was too small!
DeWolf
It’s possible there were multiple drumming groups that converged on Mount Royal. Back in 2003 I interviewed someone who said there was a group that started drumming in Place Jacques-Cartier before migrating up to the monument.
From what I was told, it was in the 90s that it became a big thing and people started selling stuff (including beer) around the tam-tams. The city cracked down and by the early 2000s it had established the permit-based market that existed until the pandemic.
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Kate
Here’s where not to drive this weekend and an expansion on the details in La Presse.
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Kate
A man who was habitually hanging around Verdun metro station, following, and in some cases assaulting women, has been caught and charged after some of his targets created a Facebook page to warn others to look out for him. He’s been released on bail.
david192
Of course he has been released on bail, it’s not like he’s a violent mental case who’s super likely to re-offend or anything.
Dhomas
Look, I agree that he’s (allegedly) a menace. One of my friends’ girlfriend was accosted by him in recent weeks, so I’m really glad they caught him. That said, there are reasons the justice system works the way it does. I’m sure if someone was falsely accused, we’d be pissed if they were jailed unnecessarily. Innocent until proven guilty, right?
david192
I really don’t know all that much about criminal procedure, but I can tell you that by the time a person gets to a bail hearing, they’re already in the soup. And that the judge is supposed to consider a bunch of factors and several of those factors – including the likelihood that the guy will continue to offend, continue to cause a danger to the public, etc. – run strongly in favor of keeping this scumbag in custody.
JaneyB
Hundreds of women have been harassed for years by this guy and he gets released on bail? Where have the police been all this time? It’s not a secret that weirdos haunt the metro stations.
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Kate
Claude Charbonneau, rounded up for two recent homicides, got up in court Thursday and admitted he’d done the killings. Charbonneau is 61, so he’s not likely to see daylight again. This piece explains that while he wanted to plead guilty right away, a technicality means he can’t even do so till he’s seen in Superior Court, which deals with murder cases.
What this story doesn’t explicate at all is why a 61-year-old man killed these two men, aged 68 and 80. How police knew Charbonneau was responsible for two murders in different neighbourhoods has also not been explained in the media. Maybe he left a note.
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Kate
Here’s an oddly unfocused CTV piece on a team of lawyers who help homeless people deal with tickets – there’s clearly a lot more to be said about the whole issue, but a headline like People experiencing homelessness in Montreal can rely on legal aid when fined makes a sweeping statement which I doubt is even remotely true for everyone.
In any case, what’s the point of ticketing people who obviously can’t pay, and who can end up in jail because of unpaid tickets? I’ve looked back through news stories about intentions to change this practice, but it doesn’t change. Two years ago, Christopher Curtis cited a study that showed “the homeless accounted for roughly $15 million in unpaid tickets over a 15-year period in Montreal. Processing the tickets through the court system often costs more than the value of the fine itself.” So it’s not like the city’s collecting any revenue from this practice. With policing and jailing, and the damage to human beings, it creates a net loss.
Continuing to ticket the homeless pushes people without resources into a deepening hole they know they can never climb out of. This is clearly a practice we need to rethink, and one of the arguments against “policing” as a front-line method of approaching people who don’t entirely fit into our lockstep society.
david192
It’s very true that people in the least fortunate stations in our city have a very high level of access to gratis legal services, that’s one thing.
The more important response to your point is that there’s a threshold level of support for alternatives to policing that drops substantially when the public learns that the same behaviors performed by two individuals – one placidly earning his 60k a year, the other collecting welfare and spending most days in a park – result in different penalties by design.
It’s a tricky balance to strike that sees money well allocated but also keeps the people paying the bills onside.
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Kate
A 19-year-old Montrealer has died of Covid, as cases rise across Canada in people under 30. Update: The identity of the young man who died has been released.
Quebec has taken a hard line that only the very sickest kids can be excused going to school in person this fall. (Quebec has also abandoned a program offering school meals in some of the poorer neighbourhoods.)
Ten percent of the trainees in the three-month program Quebec launched to quickly train a lot of patient attendants for CHSLDs have quit the program, but I don’t think that’s shocking. Better they wash out of the program when they foresee that kind of work isn’t for them, than take a job and walk away from it.
La Presse says that notaries have been swamped, with people keen to write or amend their wills, people buying and selling houses, and disgruntled couples doing paperwork for divorce.
La Presse also finds that, if a proven vaccine were offered, only 40% of us would go get it right away, and a hard core of 15% would never get it.
david192 18:42 on 2020-08-21 Permalink
Say what you will about the wisdom of their decisions, it takes a lot to walk away from a career, financial security, and the rest.
Michael Black 18:59 on 2020-08-21 Permalink
It was an existing issue. It was in the news last summer, mandatory overtime. I asked one nurse about it, she said “my kids won’t let me”. Another nurse came most mornings at 6am, but one Sunday she appeared in the afternoon. I assumed she’d changed shifts, so I asked “you like this better?” And she said yes. The next morning she was there at 6am once again. A really long shift. It happened again a few weeks later.
Another nurse, I guess somewhat higher in the hierarchy, ended up doing some weekend shifts after her week shift, to fill in.
They really are very independent, capable, and problem solvers.
Kate 20:28 on 2020-08-21 Permalink
david∞ – it’s possible some are only walking out on the public sector. There’s demand from private companies for qualified nurses.
Élize Du Pauer 22:30 on 2020-08-21 Permalink
Maybe Aaron Derfel scared them away?
david192 03:21 on 2020-08-22 Permalink
I think you have to be right about that, the numbers cited are out of sight and would represent a catastrophe for the profession. But the article focused on women who just straight up wanted out, with no real plan other than that, or so it seemed to me. Not an easy choice.
dwgs 09:28 on 2020-08-22 Permalink
Our friend who is an ICU nurse at the Jewish came very close to quitting. She was going to take a few months off to recover and wasn’t worried about finding another position. Management started giving out some days off just in the nick of time.
steph 08:45 on 2020-08-23 Permalink
I’m shocked by how toxic their work environment is.
Kate 10:29 on 2020-08-23 Permalink
Nurses are expected to work extra hours all the time, on demand. Who else would put up with this kind of stress?
My sister was a nurse, and I have two friends who also have sisters who are nurses. They are not easy people to deal with, because they learn on the job how to both manipulate and browbeat other people into doing what they want. And they learn this because it’s been done to them.
I couldn’t do that job for five minutes.
jeather 13:34 on 2020-08-23 Permalink
I had to be in the ICU at the Jewish around the end of spring and I was really touched by the kindness of all the nursing staff.
Kate 13:37 on 2020-08-23 Permalink
My impression is that nurse behaviour to patients and their families can differ a great deal from their behaviour to family, friends and partners. Not saying that this is universal, but I’ve seen it in the 3 examples I mention.
mare 14:54 on 2020-08-23 Permalink
Nurses in Quebec have no bargaining power to change their work situation. You’d think the nursing union can call a strike but they can’t because they’re essential workers. There is a minimum staffing level required and guess what: they’re below that minimum in (almost?) all workplaces at all times. So quitting is their only recourse to signal that their work situation is terrible. But that of course makes the situation worse for their remaining colleagues.
Long hours, low pay and chronic understaffing. Currently aggravated with serious health risks and the resulting extra stress.
All factors interconnected in a self-perpetuating way, impossible to be changed without political will. We can call them heroes all we want, it doesn’t change a thing.
Maybe it’s time to wear camo outfits and red face masks.
Uatu 15:13 on 2020-08-23 Permalink
The nurses union sold out their members when they didn’t follow through on their strike back in the 90s when union head Jennie Skene caved to Lucien Bouchard. Why? Who knows? Maybe he promised something that would happen after his next referendum in the new independent QC. All I know is that all my family members and friends who were nurses were rightfully pissed and those who could retire or quit did with disgust at their own Union.