Clare Bronfman has been sentenced to nearly seven years’ prison for her role in the Nxivm case – a longer sentence than prosecutors asked for. She’ll serve it in the United States. Bronfman’s connection with Montreal is through her father Edgar Bronfman; Clare’s sister Sara was apparently also involved with Nxivm but has not faced charges.
Updates from September, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
My doorbell rang just now, and someone was standing outside with a face shield and a clipboard. Assuming nobody would be doing this now unless it was something official and serious, I opened the door. I didn’t have a mask on – I was interrupted eating dinner.
It was some guy canvassing for Oxfam.
I did not give him hell, but what? The government has declared the city a red zone, and they still have people pestering folks at home for donations?
MarcG
I had firefighters with no masks on come by a week ago to make sure I had smoke detectors installed. I’ve taken to yelling at/through the glass pane in my front door but the people on the other side can barely hear me. I kind of wish I had a mailslot.
GC
I understand your frustration, Kate, but I’m sure lots of people are doing things today because they are still technically possible and not allowed tomorrow. Which is silly. The virus isn’t waiting for October 1.
Kate
MarcG, did you communicate with the fire dept. about that? I had firefighters come by a couple of months ago (which I recall posting about) but the one who came inside had a mask on, at least.
GC, well exactly.
MarcG
I didn’t call anyone. They didn’t come inside, just stood at a fair distance from the door after realizing I gave a shit and took my word that I had just replaced them all with the 10-year lithium battery type.
JP
I’m surprised Oxfam would still be having people going door to door…do they really get any donations out of that method during the pandemic and particularly, when we’ve just entered…red!?
To be honest, I really avoid opening the door for people I don’t know, kind of like the people who don’t answer calls when they see a number that they don’t know.
Very very few people should be knocking on my door if I don’t know them. In the past (pre-covid), we’ve had Jehovah’s witnesses, kids selling chocolates or cookies, and window cleaners trying to sell their services…It’s extremely annoying. Door-to-door tactics will not work for me. I understand kids fundraising, but to be honest, my parents never allowed us to sell chocolate door-to-door (they didn’t think it was safe and they weren’t willing to come with us). They’d just buy one or two of the entire packs…and we’d be eating that chocolate for weeks…
More related to the post, the agent from the city of Montreal, who came to our place in August to test our water for lead was masked. If she hadn’t been, I would’ve requested that she wear one.
walkerp
I think we are being a bit alarmist here. Somebody standing at your door, masked, keeping their distance has a very low chance of contagion.
Jonathan
I think it is still ok to knock on someone’s door and talk to them. It’s just not allowed to have them enter their house. This makes sense to me.
Oxfam and all those organizations still need money to function, and they have now COVID relief efforts in their countries of intervention. Many of these countries are worse hit economically speaking than Canada and Quebec (and often without the resources/welfare systems we have). So why wouldn’t they continue?
There are a lot of folks who are still working like before and have a lot of travel money they can burn!
Kate
Why wouldn’t they continue?
It’s an ominous time. At the best of times, who likes to be disturbed around suppertime by someone asking for money? But right now, with people out of work – I don’t have a day job myself, having had it go away mid-March and not come back – do they really think this is the time to try to squeeze money out of people?
Right now, with heightened alarm and despondency in the populace, the assumption is that someone with a clipboard and a lavalier ID could be an official who has a legitimate reason to speak to you. I simply didn’t credit that a charity could still be sending its minions around to hassle people in their homes, which is one reason I opened the door.
In the background of my thoughts once I saw who it was is that Oxfam is one of the most notorious charities for hanging onto its takings; it’s also been in a scandal in Haiti where its workers were caught out paying for sexual services. They would never get a red cent from me, even if I had stacks of cash to burn.
steph
It’s just like the restaurants and bars getting one last push. The red zone dangers only starts October 1st – Covid was asked to wait.
GC
I wonder if some organizations have stepped up their door-to-door canvassing, just because they know more people are at home.
Mark Côté
Note that Oxfam and all the other big charities outsource canvassing to marketing companies. I doubt Oxfam has any control over these day-to-day activities.
On another point, I used to think that Oxfam was actually “one of the good guys” up until the horrible stuff in Haiti. I didn’t realize there were other systemic problems with them.
Kate
Mark Côté, the systemic issues are with Oxfam UK, which is the parent charity – it was originally the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief. I don’t think the Canadian branch has been as corrupt, but it’s still Big Charity.
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Kate
Since the city can’t magically create more parking spaces downtown, instead it’s launching an app to help people find available spaces.
Joey
They’ve also negotiated (and are working on more) street-priced spaces inside empty parking garages, which is about as close to magically creating more parking spaces downtown as you can get…
DeWolf
I can understand complaints about parking on the Plateau, because it can be difficult, but parking downtown is ridiculously easy as long as you don’t expect to find a spot for free. There are literally thousands and thousands of underground spaces. Even in normal times it’s not hard to park downtown.
Mark Côté
Weird contrast to the stories of how deserted downtown currently is and how much more it will become…
Ian
Agreed 100% with DeWolf, even if you just google “parking near me” you see all the lots downtown and even before the pandemic it was fairly easy to find spots any time. There’s even free street parking to be had in some parts of downtown, depending what time of day you’re there. You may have to walk a couple of blocks but big deal.
Kevin
I think the issue is locating these underground spots. The on-street lots are well-marked — but not the ones under buildings.
Thibault
@kevin going south on Berri after rue Ontario there is a big sign showing the name and the realtime available parking spots for three nearby parking lots. I didn’t look too closely but one of them I know is an underground parking lot. There must be more of these signs around the downtown.
Joey
But the indoor lots are very expensive during working hours (note they often charge by the quarter-hour). Evenings and weekends are a better deal, with rates more or less in line with outdoor metred spaces, assuming you’re staying around for at least a couple of hours.
Ian
Many, actually. All the big parking lots have signs all over indicating that you re coming up to one from kilometres away, and once you’re there you can see if it has spots or not. I think the point of this app is more that some of the less well-known parking garages that aren’t normally part of the big green P system are now being shown, like hotels, etc.
FWIW this already exists though, there are I’m not sure why the city has to get involved with an app… you could use parkopedia for instance – there’s also an app version of aprkopedia. Unless this is all just an exercise in optics, I suppose.
Plus, as Mark points out, there are tons of parking spaces downtown these days.I think we just found another way the city could have saved some money in these troubled times.
Joey
@Ian the city needs to be involved in the app because they have negotiated cheap rates in certian buildings and you need to enter a code in the app to park there. Also, my experience this summer (weekly appointments in the Sun Life building during office hours) has been that street parking has been extremely scarce in that part of downtown. I’ve often thought, circling around, that the office buildings probably had dozens of empty spaces that could be madea avilable, glad to see it’s happening.
Ian
I concede the point as you’re right, thee are lots of parking spaces going unused in private corporate garages. That said, I never have a problem finding parking downtown – though I might have to walk a couple of blocks. It’s certainly a lot easier than finding parking on a residential street in a stickered neighbourhood on a snow clearing day.
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Kate
Retail outlets are seeing the most workplace Covid outbreaks in town. Eighty cultural venues are being closed by the red alert. Our new lockdown is news on NBC.
jeather
Retail outlets, which remain open. This information was presumably known to the government when they closed museums but not stores.
Kate
There’s a rationale here, which is that people spend a few minutes inside a store, but longer periods of time inside theatres, libraries and museums. Except for the retail workers, of course.
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Kate
A bus driver in Terrebonne had her jaw broken in an attack by an irate passenger on Saturday, when she asked him to put his mask back on. The bus had no security cam.
MICHAEL JIVOTOVSKY
This animal must get a maximum sentense for attacking and injuring 1. A woman, 2.An older person, 3. A person on duties. All media is to follow up!!!
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Kate
A lot of Wednesday’s stories are on the theme of the unfairness or inconsistencies in the government’s October lockdown rules. It will be bad for mental health. People running arts facilities find their closure, while retail stays open, is not fair, and restaurant owners are in shock. It’s going to be rough on tourism in Charlevoix. François Legault is being urged to explain his rationales and anti-maskers are preparing to demonstrate in Lafontaine Park on Wednesday evening to defy the mayor’s request not to hold gatherings.
It feels in some ways like a lot of folks have turned into angry, defiant teenagers. How do you explain to presumably rational adults that this is not an unfair act against them but a measure against a force that has no will nor agenda, but only its own internal viral logic?
Update: 838 new cases over the last 24 hours.
Ephraim
Hard on tourism? Lost almost every reservation in a day…
Kate
You mean this time around? Or during the first wave?
The only thing that’s been surprising me is how lax everything got over the summer and into September. There was never an “all clear” and reports kept emphasizing how most people who could work from home were still doing so, but it seems like a lot of people went back to business as usual. And now look where we are.
jeather
They hide the data, make rules that don’t seem to make sense other than “keep as much business running as possible”, and then are surprised they get pushback? They obviously learned nothing from the “We’ll stop sharing daily numbers” fiasco.
I think a lot of people would be much more willing if the rules felt like they were based on actual public health concerns and not that mixed with a lot of politics (in both the economy and masking in schools), where politics mostly wins over public health. (Again, it’s the exceptions which are weird, not the closures so much.)
DeWolf
I don’t think restaurant owners are being petulant by arguing they are being scapegoated. It’s fair to ask why restaurants, theatres and libraries are closed, for example, but not gyms, offices and shopping malls. And none of these places have been linked to major outbreaks in Quebec – unlike schools and workplaces, which along with private parties and weddings seem to be the real culprits.
As jeather said, this government has begun to very quickly squander any trust it had because its decisions do not seem to be rooted in any transparent public health data. The leaked public health recommendations associated with the new colour codes were quite different than what has actually been implemented, which once again suggests that the government is letting political concerns override advice from doctors.
You can blame people for loosening up over the summer, but the government has arguably more blame for sending out the message that things were pretty much over. There wasn’t an “all clear” but there might has well have been. Allowing bars and restaurants to open their indoor areas at the same time as terrasses was a strange decision to make when other places like Toronto and New York held off on indoor dining for several more months. 250-person gatherings was just insane. That doesn’t even touch on the mystifying decision to allow kids and teachers to sit in crowded classrooms together without masks. If people have no clear leadership, you can’t blame them for improvising their response to a situation.
Now we have a 28-day confinement in which people are allow (expected!) to go out to work and school, but prohibited from doing anything fun. It’s like a zombie version of life. It all makes me worry that, if we get to the end of this 28-day confinement and the government announces that, actually, it needs to be extended again for another few weeks, and then another few weeks—and oh, by the way, libraries are still unsafe to use, so buy all your books from Costco—even responsible people are going to start behaving badly. It’s one thing to ask people to follow clear rules for a specific period of time, but quite another to ask everyone to follow rules that don’t make sense for who knows how long.
DeWolf
I see in the news today that libraries will be allowed to operate contactless borrowing services, so I guess even the government saw how absurd it is to close libraries while keeping shops open.
Michael Black
I’m thinking someone slipped, maybe because libraries are a foreign thing to them.
As I mentioned, the Atwater Library changed their page pretty fast to show it was back to pickups only. The Westmount Library didn’t change, but they never went back to letting people browse the stacks, so there was nothing to change.
So either they were premature or the “rules” just weren’t clear. Had many libraries gone back to letting people browse? It’s more like someone just didn’t put a clarification in abiut libraries closed.
Em
The message is that we need to avoid social gatherings, since too many people have showed they can’t and won’t keep it small and do it safely.
It sucks for the many bars and restaurants that were being careful and following rules, as well as the cultural sector and all the people who have been very careful. I wish they’d just enforced the rules instead of shutting them.
But the government did try a softer approach to see if people would adjust their behaviour, and last weekend showed once again that people won’t get it. I was genuinely frustrated to see so many massive parties, including two where people had tied a bunch of boats together and were singing/screaming/blasting music as dozens of people crowded on the decks.
They don’t want to hear it and they don’t care.
Michael Black
Was that your letter in the Gazette this morning, about the boats in St Anne’s?
Kate
jeather, DeWolf, Michael Black: you all make good points. Thank you for thinking about this and writing about it on my blog.
Em
@Michael If you’re referring to me, it was not me who wrote the letter. The parties I witnessed were in Boucherville by the nature park.
Ian
So I can go to a “massage” parlour because it’s a “personal care” business, but I can’t go to the Musée des Beaux-Arts to see the post-impressionist show. My youngest daughter is in class with 25 disease vectors all day with no mask, but we can’t send her to the home of a friend from the same class after school so I can take her older sister to a doctor’s appointment. Gatherings in parks are ok, but not backyards.
Makes perfect sense, of course. /rolleyes
It’s no wonder people are ignoring these edicts, and I say this as someone who has been faithfully trying to follow the edicts and then some… clear, consistent signalling would really help here. I question this government’s efforts to inspire confidence.
Kevin
Don’t forget: the government told schools they *weren’t allowed* to force kids to wear masks in a classroom.
Ephraim
@Kate – The first time, it took time for people to cancel, they had hope. This time, all cancelled quickly. Not that it’s really much in the way of reservations… so little that even with them, I qualify for CERB/CRB.
JaneyB
@Ian – Good points. If the govt wants people to follow the protocols, they have to make sense eg: max 5 people outside, distanced, both parks and backyards. That is doable. They should make all the school classes 12 kids only and make them and their families into a bubble. We have tons of empty commercial space and all of that could be commandeered for these tiny classes. The emerging hodge-podge is too messy to follow or even enforce.
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Kate
Mayor Plante is losing her patience with anti-maskers and with people holding parties and gatherings, but all she can reasonably do is explain that people have to hang on a little longer. One address stays together, she says, advising us to turn down invitations to socialize.
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Kate
It’s not a Montreal story, but it’s unignorable: an Atikamekw woman recorded racist insults thrown at her by nurses as she lay on her deathbed in a Joliette hospital Monday night. One of the nurses has been fired, but François Legault still won’t say the phrase “systemic racism.”
I see there’s to be a protest march at 1 pm Saturday starting at Émilie-Gamelin.
Meezly
“..but François Legault still won’t say the phrase “systemic racism.”
He really dug himself into a hole. To say it would be to admit he had been completely wrong to deny systemic racism from the start. But to keep denying it now makes him look like a provincial fool, as this story has made national, if not international, news.Jack
It’s been a year since the Viens Report came out describing how Quebec’s First Nations are systemically sh_t on by pretty much every institution that purports to protect them in Quebec. Viens’ report called it systemic racism. That report of course has already been shelved and systemic racism exists everywhere in Canada except here. Isabelle Hachey writes it better than I could.
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2020-09-30/7-minutes-12-secondes.phpMeezly
It made international news.
Kevin
Amir Khadir shredded MBC today in a panel on LCN. Even the moderator had to tell MBC’s strawmen arguments were silly.
Ian
When you pair this with Bill 21 and inconsistent covid-19 messaging, Legault’s daddy knows best act is starting to wear kind of thin. I hope that he steps up. We need a leader, not a paternalistic, dismissive chauvinist.
Tim S.
Isn’t this just straight up racism? Wouldn’t systemic racism be more like underfunding health care for First Nations, or discouraging them from entering health care professions? I bring this up because systemic racism, as I understand it, is really hard to deal with – solutions often take a long time and might be subtle and indirect. By focusing on things that should be ‘easier’ (like getting people to stop using insults) we get to pat ourselves on the back and let the harder stuff fester.
Not that this excuses Legault or anything.MarcG
For anyone interested in what Kevin is referring to https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/videos/6196173082001
Ian
Thank you, I was looking for that.
Wow, MBC the “intellectual”. Transparently fallacious.Tim S.
And now I watched the video and realize that the point of the exchange is that the terms don’t matter.
Meezly
@Tim, think of it this way. If Joyce Echaquan did not live record what happened, those nurses would have gotten away with killing her. The ‘system’ would have protected those nurses, and Echaquan would have been another statistic.
“Wouldn’t systemic racism be more like underfunding health care for First Nations, or discouraging them from entering health care professions?”
A history of government sanctioned racism (thank you JAM) against First Nations people has resulted in our current system where First Nations people are discouraged from being healthcare professionals and are afraid to enter hospitals as patients. It has also allowed white people like nurses and the police to mistreat First Nations people with impunity.
If you can’t properly identify a problem, you can’t fix it.
If you can’t properly identify a problem, you can’t fix it.
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Kate
walkerp commented below about this: Quebec is going to let us connect to the federal COVID app within a day or two.
Now I’m looking forward to the sparks that will come off the Journal de Montréal opinion pages in the next couple of days. Already Tuesday, Denise Bombardier opened her column with:
« Le gouvernement Legault nous ment, nous cache des choses. » Voilà ce que pensent et disent trop de Québécois.
No survey or poll backs this up, she’s just trying to undermine confidence in a government she doesn’t like much. Given that her own paper ran a piece earlier this month about how François Legault’s popularity remains high, she’s blowing smoke.
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Kate
The city is asking young people to follow Covid rules, since private parties seem to be a major site of contagion. Experts are worried that the surge in infections in younger people will rebound again on older folks, whom we now know are much more vulnerable to its effects.
The Santa Claus parade has been cancelled – this, plus the recent announcement of universities continuing with distance learning after Christmas, are indications that projections don’t see the virus losing its grip anytime soon.
There were 799 new cases over the last 24 hours.
jeather
How do we know what is a major source of contagion? The only data we have, from that one day in Quebec, almost half the cases were from work. A lot of the new rules would be far more palatable if they gave more details about transmission instead of just the numbers.
walkerp
A scientist from McGill on CBC today reiterated that indoor private parties were the biggest source of the latest spread. That being said, I agree, it would really help us all better understand and modify our behaviour if we could see actual data. It may be that 70% is from private parites, but may also be that 5% comes from something we were doing and then we would maybe stop doing that.
On the flip side, I think most people do not pay attention at the same detail level, which is why you have to make big blanket policies. They are simple to follow and so most people will follow them. This is also what the scientist on the radio said.
jeather
I’ll follow the rules, but I’m not going to agree that I agree they are the right rules, especially not based on “some scientist said X on the radio”. Yes, I would trust actual scientists with data, but not politicians, even ones who are also scientists, not anymore.
I think restricting private gatherings is almost certainly the right move, but I don’t believe that keeping some businesses open, while closing libraries and allowing kids in school to go around maskless is sensible.
walkerp
One of the arguments Legault made is that a big factor is duration of time. Since people spend an average of 10 minutes (according to him) in a retail store, but two hours in a theatre, that is why it is okay to keep the former open and shut the latter.
Oo the libraries it does sound like at least one is still allowing for reserve and pickups. I hope that gets clarified.
But yes in general, I would like to see the data they have an how it connects to the decisions they are making.
Related, they just said they are going to approve the use of the federal tracing app. Install away those who haven’t already!
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Kate
Various media tease out the impact of the red alert: The Gazette, CBC, Radio-Canada. Answers to 10 questions in Le Devoir.
jeather
So if you live alone, you can have one visitor at a time? This is nice for people who live alone but rather absurd for transmission purposes.
Spi
Actually, you shouldn’t be having anyone over, you’re allowed to have 1 person if it’s a necessity. Like an emergency plumber, health care provider etc.
jeather
No, it’s made very clear, you are allowed a visitor from another address if you live alone.
Tim S.
From what I got from yesterday’s press conference, I think Spi’s interpretation was the intention. How it’s written or enforced is another thing.
Michael Black
From the government page, “a single visitor from another address for single individuals”. I’m thinking that means the same person each time. I thought I read an interpretation that it’s about a couple that doesn’t live together, but if someone is alone, it’s clearly about having one visitor.
“Libraries are closed”, but does that mean completely, or not even pickups? I guess we’ll see when libraries update their pages, hopefully soon. Wait, the Atwater Library already changed their page, “back to phase 1” which they say means staff will collect selections and you pick up at the door. It was only two weeks ago that they started letting people in.
Joey
Seems pretty clear the intention was to not drive people who live alone (again) into total isolation. If you live alone and your human contact is going to be severely diminished, the benefit of allowing you to have a single visitor over to your home outweighs the (low) risk that you will make each other sick. While I think many of us may extrapolate that we can have plumbers, housecleaners, etc., over if we are home alone (or maybe if we are out of the house while they are working), I don’t think that was the intention of this particular exception.
Also hopeful that libraries are allowed to offer the reserve-and-pick-up service that has been the norm for the last few months…
CE
A couple of my friends who live alone are interpreting this rule as allowing them to be able to choose a friend who is allowed to come over for a visit. If I lived alone, I would do the same.
DeWolf
1+1 for people living alone is a good exception to the rules. It would be perverse to be so single-minded in the fight against Covid that you end up causing an epidemic of health issues related to social isolation, which include depression, low immune function, heart problems, dementia, alcohol abuse and suicide.
jeather
I think that the “you can have one person who you allow over, and who in turn allows you over” is the intended interpretation. We’ll see.
They also carve out exceptions for individuals providing services and labour for planned work, aka housekeepers and electricians etc, unrelated to the single visitor.
Michael Black
It’s a balance. Even in the spring, some things went on. We have to get food if nothing else. Anything can be abused, but one person visiting isn’t the same as a crowd.
One problem is that I don’t think the resurgence is just from “we don’t care”. Things get shut down, and then people want “normal”. So a month will stop the virus, hopefully, but then I figure the same thing will happen again. And the cooler it gets, the harder it may be, since things will have to be indoors. At least during the summer much if the crowding was outdoors.
jeather
It isn’t that I think the rules are bad, necessarily, but I no longer have faith in the government — they are obviously interested in keeping businesses etc running, and does that mean they are allowing gyms and hair stylists and bookstores and office buildings because they are safe, or because they want the economy to keep going? I have been very careful, and I will continue to be very careful, and I will follow the rules, but that doesn’t mean I believe that the rules are well justified on public health grounds.
dwgs
jeather, I had the same response when it comes to schools. What reason is there to leave them open other than to allow parents to keep working? Close them for 28 days as well, see if transmission drops, then open one thing at a time staggered by 3 week intervals.
Joey
@dwgs The reason is that in-person learning is, by and large, better than distance learning (especially since most public schools are unlikely to be able to offer excellent distance learning, or to handle the transitions). Keeping kids home has a real, largely negative impact on kids – not just their pedagogical development, but their need for socializing, for maintaining a “normal” routine, for keeping close with their friends, etc.
Given this, and given that public health authorities have concluded that, to date, the cases that have been observed in schools have not led to significant outbreaks and are not a major factor in the recent spike, it makes sense to try and keep them open and see if the situation improves, rather than close them when the evidence suggests doing so is unlikely to bring the number of new cases down.
dwgs
I’m largely in agreement Joey, I have a very active 14 year old and this has not been easy on him, I’m worried about his mental state but… Restaurants and bars open in late June and things stay relatively stable. Schools go back the first week of September and three weeks later we’re spiking. I’m not saying that’s the sole reason but it’s enough to ask questions. See also, https://twitter.com/Aaron_Derfel/status/1311134498491371521
Ian
One thing nobody seems to talk about much is co-parenting families.
The vast majority of kids in my daughters’ classes have divorced parents with co-parenting plans. So if those families are allowed one “visitor” in each household and the kids travel between each household, that basically exposes them to not only their parents but also their parents’ new partners, and one visitor per household. Now, if those partners also have kids from previous relationship and are also co-parenting, suddenly we are talking about exponential exposure.
This is no made up for argument scenario, I literally know a few people who in exactly this situation, only seeing their own kids, their ex, their partner and their partner’s kids… basically being exposed to upwards of 6 households all the time, just by simply having their kids over every other night and alternate weekends. Add one allowed outsider into the mix and now it’s 12 households automatically plus whatever exposure those individuals might have through their parenting arrangements, easily another 6 each – so we go from 6 to 36 easily.
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Kate
A man who worked in Montreal North as a high school counsellor is on trial for having used a child as a sex slave over a period of years, starting when she was eight. I hope her mother faces charges as well.
Meezly
May Sylvain Villemaire be punished to the fullest extent of the law and get his comeuppance in prison. What circumstances did the mother have to compel her to do this unimaginable thing?
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Kate
There was an unusual attack Monday night in a park in St-Michel, where some kind of irritant gas was used on two victims, one of whom also got stabbed, non-fatally.
dwgs
My kids tell me that it isn’t unusual for certain kids to carry pepper spray these days. Those collapsible batons also.
Kate
Except we don’t have such a violent society – or do we, under the radar? Are girls carrying pepper spray to counter sexual harassment?
Blork
We have (at least to some) the PERCEPTION of a violent society. What do kids see on the web, TV, movies, etc? To a 15-year-old, what they see on screen isn’t very much separate from what they feel is their real life. The media is boiling over with displays of violence and strife, and it’s very easy to see that as representative of reality. Bearing in mind that the media still largely follows the “if it bleeds it leads” doctrine.
Of course not just teenagers are susceptible to this, but I think in general they are so more than the population at large.
…there’s also the issue that such weapons are easier to obtain now than they were a generation or three ago.
Ian
Violent crime is down decade over decade since the 1950s.
In the 80s I knew a lot of girls that carried knives and mace and even then most of them never had to use them – but those that did were glad to have them.
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Kate
A study of the Covid genome prevalent here finds it came almost entirely from Europe and the Americas – not Asia.
Ian
No real surprise there – not only does Montreal have a smallish Asian population, but we already knew the first cases were almost all from people coming back from ski trips over spring break.
walkerp
Didn’t the virus originate in China? The ones that came here also came from China but took a stop in Europe and the States?
Kate
walkerp, it did, but I suppose the implication is that there was a mutation somewhere along the way that’s like footprints to a geneticist.
Ephraim
@walkerp – There have been a number of mutations. The current mutation we are seeing seems to be more contagious but less deadly. The March mutation (614) increased infectivity, which is what lead to the lockdown. But from what I saw of the graphs, the Chinese original came to Canada and quickly died out. In Quebec, more than elsewhere, we saw cases come from Florida and France…. hence the March break connection.
See https://nextstrain.org/ and National Geographic has an article on how they track and why they track in March.
Raymond Lutz
also: “Research led by the University of Barcelona showed the presence of the virus in samples of wastewater in Barcelona in MARCH 2019, and infections were present before knowing of any case of COVID-19 in any part of the world. ”
Meezly
It’ll be interesting to see whether these new facts become common knowledge and supplant fake news. Hopefully corona-racists will take heed and leave Asians the f*ck alone.
jeather
Surely the racism will just move to “where do you think the virus came from before it hit Europe”? Racism isn’t logicked away.
Meezly
Sadly, in many cases, it does not, but that’d be a bit defeatist. Education can help to mitigate racism.
Uatu
Have you seen these idiots? One of them was caught on video harrassing a young girl he thought was Asian. She was actually Cree and he actually told her “to go back where you come from”
jeather
I think education can help, but I don’t think “most cases in Quebec came from Europe or the US” is the kind of education that will help for the people who blame Asians for covid.
Meezly
I cannot deny covidiots and coronaracists are in a class of their own.
Ephraim
To quote Gilbert and Sullivan, “Let the punishment fit the crime.” When you don’t wear a mask where required, or you wear a mask incorrectly, you shouldn’t be fined, you should be required to work in a COVID ward for a few days. I’m sure they need someone to help with cleaning floors and washing bedpans. And they don’t need to wear protective clothing or a mask while there… it’s a falacy? Walk in without a mask! Frankly, I don’t know many people that wouldn’t be moved by seeing someone in ICU on a ventilator face down.
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Kate
Concordia and the Université de Montréal have decided to maintain distance learning through the winter term. Neither McGill nor UQÀM have made any announcement on this yet.
Dwgs
Mcgill is pretty much a done deal. From what I understand they were leaning towards distance learning but wanted to see what other schools were doing and would announce mid October. At this rate I doubt they will wait that long.
Jack
I find Zoom a miserable way to teach. How do students feel about it at the University level, can someone chime in.
DavidH
@Jack, I’m on my second zoom class. Both are seminar graduate classes where a small group of people discuss the research. We have the occasional guest researchers or field experts joining us. It’s definitely easier to get guests to pop in virtually than it was in physical rooms.
It’s working for me because I’m self-motivated and the subject matters lend themselves to that form. I would hate to do math in this format for example.
I’m not sure I would have fared well 25 years ago when I first entered University. A lot rests on your self-discipline and personality. it’s very hard to stay engaged more than 2 hours online. I don’t think undergrad classes with dozens or even hundreds of students must work very well. Having people’s home phones ring and kids entering the room also interferes a lot. The limited access to the libraries and institutions’ archives is what is bogging me the most at this point.
CE
I had a couple classes (not university) that were finishing up when the pandemic was starting so I only had to do a few Zoom classes. I hated it. I couldn’t stay focused, I was constantly distracted by other things on the computer, and the sound quality and all the flashing around between different cameras gave me a headache. I also found it very unpleasant to try to talk; it felt unnatural for everyone to have to take their turn. If I were in university this year and had to do all my classes online, I would be trying very very hard to defer.
I also can’t imagine having to do classes, write papers, and study all in the same place. When I was in university, I had a dozen or so different places around the city/campus where I would do different tasks. I did maybe 20% of my work at home.
DeWolf
For me, one of the best things about university was the seminars – small classes with fewer than 10 people, usually three hours long, where you could really get into an in-depth discussion about the topic you were studying. That’s where I learned the most, especially since I was shy and the professor had to push me to participate. If those seminars had been a nightmarish collection of glitchy Zoom calls I wouldn’t have learned half as much.
That doesn’t even being to touch on the social aspect of university. I met my wife and almost all of my closest friends during my undergrad and master’s studies. That obviously wouldn’t have happened if my classes were online. I feel bad for kids whose time at uni has become a glorified correspondence course.
dwgs
And it’s official, Mcgill will be online for the winter term.
Mark Côté
I’m currently teaching a course at McGill right now. It’s the first time I’ve ever done this (I’m a software-development manager) and I haven’t been in university in 20 years, so I don’t have much to compare with, but it’s definitely weird. And I say this after having worked from home full time for over 8 years and now again for the last 6 months, most of that time managing a distributed team.
The challenges I’ve heard of and experienced are
- It’s very hard to tell how engaged the students are during class. Sprinkling some questions and breakout-room discussions has helped (this is actually the same as was done in person in previous years), but when I’m talking I can’t tell if people are following me or not. That said, I would probably have been a lot more nervous standing in front of a class of 60+ students than talking over video, at least given that I don’t have much experience in teaching.
- Courses have had to be rejiggered because big midterms and finals don’t work well in a remote setting—they are stressful and (supposedly) prone to cheating. The thought is that if you have a giant test worth 40-50% of your grade and you are all by yourself with the Internet handy it is going to be very hard to resist the temptation to do a bunch of googling and/or talking it over with your friends. (Maybe this is a sign that big tests are just not an effective way to evaluate students, but that’s another topic).
- Instead we have been encouraged to try other things. This course already had a project and some hands-on “labs” (basically short practical exercises). So I ditched the big exams and replaced them with a few short tests and a short research paper.
- But what this means is that the work is more uniformly distributed over the semester. Some students are really struggling with this, as it means, with 4 or 5 courses, they have multiple tests and assignments every week. The theory is that if you are keeping up with the course you shouldn’t really have to do any prep. This is still a big adjustment, though.
- The lab assignments used to be done in the tutorials, in person, and were timeboxed at an hour. This is much harder (basically impossible) to do now, especially given that we have to support asynchronous learning (for students outside of Montreal). Whereas in the past some students wouldn’t be able to finish a lab in an hour and would get only part marks, at least they were done and could move onto other things. Now some students can (and do) work multiple hours to complete them, even if their grade at the end of the course would only be marginally higher. We’re still debating what to do about this.
This is just a smattering of what’s going on. It’s not easy… but it’s also new, and there’s a pandemic that is affecting students’ mental health at the same time.
Mark Côté
Ergh my bullets got eaten; sorry for the wall of text.
Kate
Mark, I’ve tried to guess where the bullets go – let me know if I buggered them up.
Ian
I have taught 8 for-credit 60 hour courses (CEGEP) since lockdown in March, and while it’s not ideal to not be able to see what everyone is doing and have a classroom atmosphere simply by virtue of us all being there in person, all my courses are essentially computer labs anyhow, so it’s not as big a jump for us as it might be for other disciplines.
My students definitely appreciate that my classes are being recorded every day so they can easily refer to them later online (they expire after a few weeks). I personally very much appreciate not having to commute. I create a class environment by running the class following agile methodology including standups, very much like my experience of working on a distributed team. All of my tests are open book and the largest proportion of the marks I give are project based so it’s actually a good thing if students try to figure stuff out using the internet since that’s what they will be doing in the field once they graduate. We have been told to accept late work with no penalty to accommodate people working in less-than-optimal home office environments, so timeboxing is no longer an issue. I think in many ways this is better than regular on-site classes.
Like I said though, I realize that this shift has been harder for some disciplines than others.
walkerp 21:02 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
Well deserved. I hope she serves every minute and it is hard time.
Let’s hope this is a turning point that signals the beginning of the end of the 1% con artist
Tim 23:50 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
Can you provide other examples of “1% con artists”? Bernie Madoff? Gwyneth Paltrow and her BS wellness company? Those are the first two names that popped into my mind…
walkerp 07:02 on 2020-10-01 Permalink
The biggest concentration is in Silicon Valley. Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, Adam & Rebekah Neuman of WeWork are the two biggies. You can stretch that to include all the techbros (many of whom come from wealthy families) and who business model is basically ripping off existing social and economic structures with “disruption”. And of course the ur-con artist of them all, Trump.
Tim 09:36 on 2020-10-01 Permalink
I’m with you 100% on the hubris of silicon valley.
Blork 12:04 on 2020-10-01 Permalink
Side note: apparently Elizabeth Holmes’s defense team is considering an insanity defense, claiming the environment in Silicon Valley is so toxic that she was unaware it was “wrong” to lie to investors.