A new park at Park and Pine will be inaugurated Monday in honour of social activist Lucia Kowaluk. She was one of the movement that saved the Milton-Park neighbourhood from being razed in the 1980s late 1960s and 1970s.
Updates from September, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A small demonstration was held Sunday demanding legal status for all workers in Quebec.
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Kate
As presaged earlier, orange alert was declared Sunday in Montreal as of midnight. What this means is listed in the articles linked.
dmdiem
What?
25 people can go to a wedding.
Unless it’s held inside, in a movie theatre. In which case 250 can go.
Gyms can remain open.
They were always a cesspool of bacterial and fungal infection, but viruses? Nah totally cool.
bars and restaurants will stop serving alcohol at 11pm and close at midnight.
Because the problem is not a virus, it’s vampires and werewolves roaming the streets.
Whatever happens to us in the next few months, it’s exactly what we deserve.
Say G.
I am glad that those Terror-Warning color-coded warning signs have been recycled.
Why waste money and resources on new signs when multiple propaganda campaigns can use the same fear tactics.
MarcG
Does anyone know the reasoning behind the bars-closing-earlier thing? I know the obvious answer is “they’re stupid and think we’re stupid” but seriously, they must be following some kind of logic that could be explained.
Ian
…and now Arruda has declared that we are indeed in the second wave. I can’t imagine bars will stay open for much longer.
Michael Black
I suspect some of the rating is due to necessity. It’s better to not stop some things, like food or schools, but fun type things aren’t really a necessity. They are now talking about length of contact being important, so if you close bars early, it cuts back on how long someone is spewing germs.
Yes, everything is a problem for businesses (though not as bad as shutting everything down again) but none of the orange alert restrictions mean a thing to me. Obviously it all matters a lot to people who like to go out, but that seems to be the vector, because it brings people in close contact because that’s the point.
Blork
I suspect there are at least two lines of thinking behind bars closing early:
(a) Generally speaking, later bar patrons are drunker than earlier bar patrons, and drunker patrons are less likely to be careful about distancing. (E.g., many people might pop into a bar for a drink or two at 8PM or 10PM but not many people go out for one or two drinks at 1AM. So the majority of patrons in a bar after midnight are people who have been in one or more bars for several hours.)
(b) A nagging reminder. Knowing that the bars are closing early every night is a constant reminder that these are not normal times and you can’t behave as you normally would, even if you’re sitting there in a bar as if things were normal.
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Kate
Families of people maltreated in the mid-20th-century brainwashing experiments at the Allan Memorial held a protest Saturday for the right to sue the Allan, McGill University and the Canadian and Quebec governments, which they say must all have given approval to the work of Donald Ewen Cameron, but over the years each of these institutions have washed their hands of his work. TVA even spoke to a living victim of the experiments, but most of them have since died. Cameron himself died in 1967.
Meezly
Wow, I had no idea. “The Montreal Experiments” even has its own wikipedia entry.
Kate
Indeed. It was an awful thing, a science experiment taken to a horrible extreme: Montreal experiments.
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Kate
Indications Sunday morning are that the city is to go to orange COVID-19 alert.
The Gazette says “Normally, the orange alert would call for the closing of all bars, but the government is not planning to do that” – what does “normally” mean here, in a system cooked up a couple of weeks ago? And why make categories and rules if the first thing you do is announce you’re not going to follow them?
j2
I bet it’s all the nose-hangers. Man, not only do you look stupid and are probably uncomfortable, but you don’t protect anyone. Seriously, people are far too casual. A little bit of effort would go a long way _and_ support the economy.
Mark Côté
Although I agree that it’s really annoying to see people not wearing masks properly (why even bother?), everything I’ve read recently says that the virus is currently spreading through large indoor gatherings, i.e. parties, not in stores and such.
And yeah “normally” makes zero sense here.
DeWolf
Unless I’m mistaken, the government never actually specified what each of the categories means. The details came from leaked internal documents that were shared by a guy on Twitter, but the government said they were not final.
In other words, the government can continue making things up as it goes. At the moment Radio-Canada is reporting that moving to orange would limit indoor gatherings to six. It seems most transmission right now is occurring in private gatherings where people do not keep distance or wear masks, so I wonder how these new limits will be enforced – if it’s even possible to enforce them.
Ian
I was buying a coffee today and the guy behind me wasn’t wearing a mask. When I told him he was supposed to be wearing a mask, his response was “so call the police”. That’s where we’re at without enforcement, I wish I was making it up but that’s the vibe on the street. Even my grocery store – which adopted gloves, masks and shields before it was mandatory – is now letting people walk around with the masks off their noses, even staff.
There is no point making new laws when the existing ones aren’t enforced.
Michael Black
The Gazette refers to a “report”, but it’s a Radio Canada news piece. So it’s quite removed.
We have the leaked rules, but they may be preliminary.
The claim of moving to orange is based on a previous story based on what?
“Normal” as used here seems based on nothing.
Anyone can predict anything.
Kevin
Wear a mask OVER YOUR NOSE. If you can’t breathe wearing a mask properly, you’re not healthy enough to leave your home.
The politicians are acting like ninnies by saying police can’t enforce mask wearing or breaking up gatherings when we’ve in a state of emergency since March!
mare
If orange means “a little inconvenience” then red means “more inconvenience,” but we’ll run out of colours for the complete lockdown, when all schools, bars and shops close, and every person on the street needs a signed declaration of why they’re outside and where they’re going.
JP
Masking and being distanced go a long way, I think. Maybe I just don’t have enough friends to throw a party…but I don’t see what the big deal is if, say, you skip your 30th birthday celebration, or whatever the case may be. Viruses don’t do headcounts, it’s not about whether you’re 6 people or 10 people or 3 people (though I understand these are guidelines for people who need to be handheld through this or don’t have common sense).
I found this article sums it up nicely: https://elemental.medium.com/the-most-likely-way-youll-get-infected-with-covid-19-30430384e5a5
Tim S
@ mare: black’s still available.
Kate
JP, that’s an excellent piece and sums up what we know now about Covid contagion vs. what we thought six months ago.
CE
Since the mask law came into effect, I have yet to see a shopper inside a store or inside public space not wearing a mask. I’ve seen some workers, especially older people working at grocery stores, not wearing them though. All around, people seem to be doing pretty well with wearing their masks.
walkerp
Same here. And now more and more on the streets.
I am trying to figure out what parallel dimension Ian is living in where maskless anarchists run wild, Plante is Mom Boucher and people are doing donuts in the alleys.Ian
Tim Horton’s at RL & Place Philips is where the guy told me to call the police. PA on Parc is the grocery store where staff & some managers are nosehanging. I’ve seen people go into deps without masks many times, always the same excuse,”Im sorry I forgot my mask at home could I just”.
If you don’t think Plante is on the take then I don’t know what to tell you, but Applebaum didn’t think he was breaking any laws either – not that it has anything to do with the mask situation.
Doughnuts though, I’m intrigued by doughnuts. Pray do expand on this idea.
Jack 20:22 on 2020-09-20 Permalink
Thats some really good news, fearless lady.
Ian 07:55 on 2020-09-21 Permalink
That is good news, I had no idea that bit of green was even in danger – seems like a fitting tribute.
Blork 11:06 on 2020-09-21 Permalink
Picky point, but the neighbourhood’s threat of being razed occurred in the 60s and 70s. By ’79 that threat was over and the process of going co-op had begun. (The co-op was formalized in ’83, but the fight against the real-estate developers — who ironically began as a group of lefty communists — started in ’68 and peaked in the 70s.)
CE 11:12 on 2020-09-21 Permalink
I doubt this is a popular opinion but I thought the idea to develop that parcel as social housing after the interchange was demolished would have been a much better use for this spot. That intersection is very busy and noisy so I doubt many people will be using the space to “hold forth on various subjects.” Currently, you rarely see anyone using it, especially since there is are much nicer spots nearby in the rest of the other parks that surround it. It also always felt awkward as a public space with the backs of houses and an alley on one side and a skyscraper on the other. I think a residential building at that corner would have framed the rest of the park nicely. Even with some landscaping and furniture, it’s still going to feel like an awkward empty lot with a park on it.
Blork 11:13 on 2020-09-21 Permalink
A bit more: the origins of the real estate developers who wanted to raze the neighbourhood and install highrise apartments (they got three built — which are crumbling now — but the plan was to put up 12 so I think) began as a bunch of communists who wanted to tear down the old privately-owned (landlords!) triplexes and build a huge utopian city-within-a-city of dense high rises. Their rhetoric and thinking is highly reminiscent of the current “density above everything!” rhetoric that we hear so much today, including comments on this blog.
As the project evolved it became clear how much money was involved and how much money was there to be made, so the communists quietly evolved into capitalists and the rest is history.
CE 11:17 on 2020-09-21 Permalink
I’ve heard the Communist connection with LaCité before. Is it a coincidence that the company that manages the buildings has “red” in its name? (Redbourne)
Blork 13:20 on 2020-09-21 Permalink
@CE, that’s a stretch.
david18 13:37 on 2020-09-21 Permalink
As this blog’s foremost proponent of a denser and more affordable central city, I’d like to make a distinction between something like Milton Park – which involved a wholesale demolition and reconstruction of an entire neighborhood into those superblocks. The end result today is great, as it was stopped just in time, and we got a bunch of important landmarks, medical offices, the cinema, etc. It’s an especially wonderful asset in the depths of winter.
That’s related but independent of the fact that this corner lot is a very dumb place for a park. It’s one of the city’s busiest intersections and absolutely nobody does anything on that stretch of grass except cut across it. It’s the perfect location for another 20 story tower, connected underground to the Transat building and the rest of the Cité. We could get another 500+ people living there, with basically no pushback against construction, a super desirable and central location, more support for the ailing mall and nearby Saint Laurent and Park commercants, and that very marginal effect on the ever rising rents in the area.
Properly considered, putting a park there is just an insane idea.
MarcG 13:47 on 2020-09-21 Permalink
If I’m getting the right place it seems like people do actually chill there: https://goo.gl/maps/YC9gW8uWVJNtdswRA
PatrickC 14:43 on 2020-09-21 Permalink
I got to know Lucia during those 60s and early 70s of the Milton-Park struggle when as a student I worked part-time for Our Generation, the journal Dimitri edited. An exceptional woman. She could hold her own in ideological debates without dropping a stitch in the knitting she sometimes brought to editorial meetings (though she was no Madame Lafarge!). Typical of her multi-tasking.
Michael Black 15:08 on 2020-09-21 Permalink
Peter Hechtman died in March, though I only noticed about a month later. His obituary mentioned he was involved in “Our Generation” but as a club at McGill. I think the magazine came out of that, but if I knew for certain, I read it a long time ago.
PatrickC 17:58 on 2020-09-21 Permalink
@Michael Black, IIRC the original title of the journal was Our Generation Against Nuclear War, and it emerged from people involved with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. An important influence was the anarchist Murray Bookchin, but there was a range of views from across the non-Communist left (later more “new leftie”), and members of the editorial board I knew included Abe Limonchik, who went to be a city councillor (he used a pseudonym at the magazine to protect his day job), and Herbert Marx, later a prominent Quebec politician, and judge.