Three men have been charged as accomplices in the killing last month of a 19-year-old in Ahuntsic.
The woman accused of killing her six-year-old daughter in July was already on the radar of the DPJ but that didn’t help.
Updates from September, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The Journal has a blog, and on Friday it’s defending Valérie Plante making, essentially, the point that a lot of the criticism of the current administration is coming from suburbanites, or those of a suburban frame of mind.
walkerp
Enfin!
The problem is that all these ideologues making their extremist arguments leaves no room for nuanced critique of the Plante administration. There are issues but we can not address them when it becomes OMG I have to walk three blocks to my home on a beautiful September day because bike fascism!!!
I honestly suspect that aside from the usual extremists using social media to amplify their ideology, there are bots and fake accounts also adding to it. Small scale here, but that’s how they work, sowing their dissent in every media angle and crack where they identify these kinds of conflicts going on.
Can we please get some real data and can “journalists” please base their analyses and opinions on that, rather than some cranky asshole in St-Anne de Bellevue and the six trolls who liked his tweet?!
Ian
Let’s not forget that this pocket of the internet is its own little echo chamber, walkerp, despite that you think that people who disagree with you are assholes…
I know it might blow your nuanced mind but not everyone in the Plateau think Plante is doing a great job – for a variety of reasons.walkerp
I’ll repeat it for you Ian, because in your haste, you either skipped over or did not absorb the first line I wrote:
“The problem is that all these ideologues making their extremist arguments leaves no room for nuanced critique of the Plante administration.”
dwgs
I would say that since Ian made a reference to “your nuanced mind” that he actually did absorb your first line.
It’s more than just Gazoo editorialists and car crazed ideologues who are thinking that the current administration should consider a bit of a tweak in their approach.walkerp
Just to be clear, I have my disappointments with this administration and have acted on many of them, particularly the softball field strongarm maneuver by Ferrandez. However, this simplistic scapegoating is extremely dangerous, especially coming from supposed progressives. There is a real risk that we get some fake centrist government that appeases the car addicts and gets back in hand with the corrupt construction industry (which is clearly still there, but somewhat weakened).
I have yet to hear a real, nuanced critique with an actual understanding of how the city’s political structures work.
Here are the bullshit arguments we are getting. It’s not that the concerns aren’t real, but why is Plante always the target (partly because that is the leader’s role, but more because she is a woman and perceived as “green”):
-downtown is dying (um, covid plus been going on forever)
-construction everywhere (always been this way, plus her administration had the courage to take on necessary infrastructure projects that Coderre punted on for short-term gain)
-traffic wah all because of crazy bikers (always been this way, and people who actually live here vastly prefer having bike and pedestrian safe neighbourhoods)There does seem to be a real problem with consulting and communication (although I have never had an issue with it in our borough). How much of that is Plante’s fault and how much of it is the borough councillors? Again, nuance and detail.
And finally to address your point about the electric charging station, Ian. It’s an error, but what is the real impact? And how is this Plante’s fault. Is she supposed to go back and fix centuries of bad infrastructure and organization in 3 years? This is a city that routinely has construction jobs that dig into a gas line because they did not have or look at the plans of the gas lines. Have you ever managed a large project as a bureaucrat? It is possible that somebody overlooked that electric station in the planning phase. Or is it more likely that the did see it and either the analysis suggested it is much more cost effective to remove it later or that the company that was responsible for removing it has a long list of other jobs to do and so it will get done later? Or maybe even that they were supposed to and screwed up and emails are going back and forth right now? If you have ever managed a project at any scale, you know that things go wrong at every level and the larger the scale the more that happens. I am not excusing these errors. They are bad and particularily bad in the east coast and perhaps worst in Canada in Montreal. There is a culture here of shitty, lazy corrupt work, especially in the construction industry. It’s terrible and needs to be fixed. And PM shares some of that responsibility. But to place the blame for that kind of error entirely on their shoulders is simplistic and ignores the complexity and rigidity of the existing structures and culture in place.
Did you call the city and ask them about it? You might be surprised, that 311 line often has actual answers. Our streets were not getting properly swept last summer and I phoned them and the person told me that they had a shortage of the large cleaning trucks because repairs were behind and had first not cleaned our street and then sent us a smaller one that couldn’t do the job properly. I called a few times throughout the summer and this year we have a big one again. Likewise for blocked drains. Much more satisfying than ranting and raving about it online, I can tell you that. Let us know how it goes.
Chris
I’ll vouch for the 311 part. I’ll often report potholes, clogged drains, broken streetlights, and the like, and amazingly they are almost always fixed within a month. Try it.
Dhomas
I use 311 all the time, to great effect. I live Anjou but right on its border; the other side of my street is MHM. So the garbage pickup wasn’t taking place for a while for the 2 houses on my street because of this. A call to 311 fixed it by the next pickup date. My house was also not considered eligible for vignette parking because that department considered my house to be in MHM. 311 fixed that, too. There is a cul-de-sac near my house blocked with concrete bollards on what would otherwise be a contiguous street. Some drivers were driving up on the sidewalk and halfway into my neighbour’s front yard to bypass the cul-de-sac. A call to 311 and a few weeks later there was a pole next to the sidewalk to prevent drivers from performing this dangerous maneuver. I could list many more examples.
Ian
I also call 311 often, usually just for info. I’m not sure why Walkerp would think a grouchy old man like me wouldn’t be calling the city all the time haha
mare
@Chris,I assume you refer to the Montreal 311 app, and not part? On iOS it’s just called Montreal, which is a bit far fetching, but I can confirm that reporting broken lights, garbage piles etc works very well. In my case never as long as a month, but several days (street light in park) to a week (a pile of branches that were cut by a city crew when a big branch fell down, but then left to rot on someone’s flower patch for two weeks). And you can complain anonymously, without getting a “serial complainer”-flag on your file.
(I assume the Android version works equally well.)
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Kate
The city has a plan to make the road environs of 24 schools safer in terms of traffic, with wider sidewalks and better traffic lights. No doubt critics will simply see this as another indication that Valérie Plante “hates cars.”
CBC says “Since 2017, more than 80 children have been struck and killed by cars near their schools in Montreal.” Can this be true? Eighty kids killed?
Blork
There’s no way that’s true. 80 kids killed in three years? No way.
Kevin
There is no fucking way 80 kids have been struck and killed by cars in Montreal in the past three years.
We’ve only had 88 deaths in Montreal in that time frame.
The SAAQ tracks this by region, by age group, by whether they were in a car or walking or on a bicycle.
In the entire province we’ve had just over 70 pedestrian deaths each year since 2017. (It was 44 to 60 from 2014 to 2017).
Since 2014 there have been anywhere from 314 to 362 deaths per year on all roads in Quebec — whether people in a car, on a bike, whatever.The SAAQ also provides deaths by age group in their annual statistics.
0-14: 16 in 2017, 7 in 2018, 10 in 2019.
15-24 is where the number jumps: 78 in 2017, 47 in 2018, 44 in 2019 — which, again, includes all deaths in the entire province.https://saaq.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/documents/publications/bilan-routier-2019.pdf
Spi
It’s wrong, CBC is citing the city of montreal press release which states: “Rappelons que depuis 2017, plus de 80 enfants ont été impliqués dans une collision dans un “environnement scolaire” sur le territoire de l’agglomération de Montréal.”
Incredibly poor journalism, (there is no equivalent english news release) they’ve since corrected their mistake.
On the actual topic, they need to stop accomodating of driveby dropoffs. All these measures around the city to discourage car use and they can’t be bothered in the most obvious and impactful place to do it?
Kate
Spi, thanks. Indeed CBC have corrected their phrasing since I quoted them above.
Kevin
Spi
During the pandemic all schools are encouraging parents to drop their kids off in order to minimize exposure to Covid on buses.Spi
@Kevin, we’re in the city, the vast majority of people could walk their kids to school if they found the time but they’d rather rush through their “busy” schedules. There was a news report last year about children documenting dangerous driving behaviour near their school, almost the entirety of it by parents dropping their kids off by car.
Kevin
Spi,
Why do you assume that everyone lives within walking distance of their school or their workplace?My daughter’s school was a block away from my house — until the school expanded and it’s now 2.5 km away, and it’s nowhere near where I work or my wife works. And there’s no way she’s biking there because the roads between my home and the school are terrible. *I* won’t ride on them because they’re unsafe, even if there is a new bike lane most of the way.
walkerp
For many people, it is a choice. They just don’t realize it or refuse to make any changes that would benefit their fellows, the planet and most likely themselves.
Wearing a mask is a small example of much greater and worse changes we are all going to live through (and what is going to be way way worse for our children) if we don’t stop climate change.
Tim S.
On one hand, a lot of people who drive their kids to school could probably walk. On the other, those “busy” schedules aren’t filled with fun stuff, they’re an outcome of the fact that you need two full-time incomes to raise a family, and even that won’t get you far in the city these days. Much of our wasteful “convenience” society is a reflection of that. If we want to consume less, we need to give people more of their time back. (I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this the past few months, while trying to figure out sourdough starters and so on).
@ Kevin: I think we’re in the same boat. Having moved to be walking distance to a school, I just had to drive 6km, round trip, because my daughter forgot her lunch.
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Kate
Notes on where not to drive this weekend. More notes.
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Kate
The Journal allows a columnist to write a screed entitled Au revoir, Montréal! saying Valérie Plante is wrong not to allow motorists absolute domination of the city, which he calls a “foutoir.”
DeWolf
“Je ne suis pas résident de Montréal. Je ne le serai jamais.” Ok, cool story, bro.
Dhomas
You know, if he actually lived in Montreal, he’d be able to get to all those places he likes without a car. Christophe-Colomb, St-Denis, Mont-Royal, Ontario street, they’re all pretty close to each other.
Beyond this guy’s story, this is something many people don’t consider when choosing a place to live. They like to own their own little chunk of land off the island because it’s cheaper to buy and taxes are lower. But then they like to complain that traffic to Montreal is sooooo bad. You made your choice…Kate
I agree. As a non-driver, all those areas are easily within my reach by metro or even by bus. If I still cycled, I could get to any of them by bike just as easily – and if I used a Bixi, I could also slot the bike in and forget about it. Suburban drivers want their cake and everyone else’s cake too.
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Kate
At the beginning of this pandemic summer the Botanical Garden said it would turn over more of its area to food production, and so it did: the harvested vegetables have been going to four food banks around the island of Montreal.
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Kate
A man on probation has been charged with the shooting of two men in a Lasalle bar this week. Among his probation conditions was that he shouldn’t go to bars.
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Kate
We’ve known for years that the patchwork of different transit systems around Montreal means there are 700 different possible fares within the metropolitan area. There’s been talk before about simplifying this, but now the ARTM says it’s going to create four zones and four types of pass to simplify the whole thing.
Right away, looking at the map in this piece, it makes no sense to me. Evidently they’re still thinking in terms of “distance from the island of Montreal” as the dominant fact of life, so that distant suburbs on the edges are all jammed into 4, and Longueuil and Laval are bedded down together in 2. It seems to me the zones ought to include contiguous suburbs, rather than categorizing the zones in terms of distance from town. The whole south shore should be 2, Laval and the couronne nord should be 3. Don’t ask me what to do with Repentigny and Vaudreuil – I don’t believe those places really exist.
Jonathan
There really is a lack of detail in that article. I hope for and what I am assuming that there will also be a price based on how many zones you cross. So that if you stay entirely within zone 3, then the cost would be the same as those on the island of Montreal who purchases a Zone 1 fare (so 90$ for a monthly pass). If you live in Rosemere but work in Laval, you would pay a pass based on 2 zones (so $144 a month).
Jonathan
https://repensonslamobilite.quebec/
That’s the website for the consultation mentioned in the article.
Kevin
Jonathan
Close. They’re proposing that a single-zone pass would be $90 for the island, and $100 for the other zones.
There’s a chart which I don’t have a link to which indicates the price would be for how many zones you cross.Jonathan
Sorry for yet another comment. It seems that what I mentioned above is the approach. If you see page 2 of this document, there is a simple chart: https://repensonslamobilite.quebec/media/default/0001/01/cbcff9534c8a78b5bb9d6c95f2f5a54cf9e92976.pdf
david25
Man, when the REM comes online with a pass like this, it’s going to radically altar the spatial psychology of the city. The idea of zipping from McGill or Griffintown to UdeM is just radical, truly wild. Same with the idea of getting to nun’s island or Sainte Anne de Bellevue (ish) by rapid transit.
The blue line is going to be a lot more useful, no question. (Now if they would just extend it to Montreal West.)
There’ll be a surcharge to the airport, for sure, but that’ll still be one immense change.
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Kate
A man is in critical condition after a stabbing in the early hours of Friday in Montreal North. There have been no arrests.
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