City council resolved Tuesday that the SPVM is not going to get facial recognition tools till they say so. The SQ already has them and it sounds from this article like the SPVM is being extremely shifty about whether it’s been using them or not.
I’ve always assumed that once such tools became viable, authority would use them. It’s like everything from phone hacking to GPS tracing – if you’re after somebody, you’ll use the tech and then figure out later how to present the evidence in court.
Chinatown has been very hard hit by the pandemic, not only the decline in foot traffic plaguing other stores and restaurants, but an unfair association with the contagion of Covid on top of it.
I remember during the SARS moment in 2003, C-town establishments were hurting and put signs out saying there were no cases of SARS in the area (it was true – there weren’t). I can’t imagine what Covid is doing to them.
And yet, I’m not going downtown. On the CBC noon radio show Tuesday the topic was the state of downtown, and they had one guy on boosting it and saying how it was safe and great and so on. But to go downtown, I’d have to take a bus or metro for anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes each way, boxed in with random people, and right now I don’t want to do it – it seems like a stupid exposure to risk, to take public transit for a jaunt.
Still, I have now spent the longest period of my life without setting foot on Ste-Catherine Street, and some days that feels weird.
I had to pick something up from downtown this past weekend and had to take my car. I drove up St-Laurent, through Chinatown. I was actually surprised by how many people were walking, in quite close proximity, on the pedestrian section of de la Gauchetière. I’d walked down Ste-Cath the week prior and there were many more people in Chinatown by comparison. Anecdotal evidence for sure, but maybe things were looking up for the area (before this new surge this week)?
I hope so, dhomas. I’m very fond of our old Chinatown, even if there’s an argument that a newer and livelier C-town has been growing up around Concordia and west to Atwater in recent years.
I’m in Chinatown every Sunday and I’ve noticed it’s picking up for sure. I haven’t been on Ste Kitty since March. I do miss Kazu and Mon Ami but I haven’t gone to a sit-down restaurant since the first lockdown.
I spoke with a restaurant/bar owner in Chinatown recently and he told me that things have been very unpredictable. One night will be busy, the next will be dead, with no rhyme or reason.
There are pockets of activity elsewhere downtown. Ste-Catherine is consistently busy from Metcalfe to Atwater – sometimes almost as busy as normal. Place des Arts is usually pretty lively with plenty of people lingering on the pedestrian stretch and on the Place des Festivals. The rest of downtown is very quiet. The Latin Quarter is especially moribund.
I’ve found Old Montreal and Chinatown to be quite busy on weekends or when the weather is nice, but I’m guessing it probably drops off a lot when that isn’t the case.
I’m consistently surprised by how many people seem to be eating in restaurants and shopping in various parts of downtown, especially since we keep hearing stories about an abandoned city. But I understand the recovery is far from uniform.
This post is a good reminder for me to swing by and pick up some pastries or takeout next time I’m near Chinatown.
I feel the same – I live somewhat far from downtown, and I don’t have a car, and I feel it’s a bit risky to use public transit when not essential.
I read (in the Derfel’s Twitter feed) the surprising fact that there are no Covid cases that can be traced back to the use of public transport. Of course that doesn’t take into account that not all cases have been traced, and that there are currently many more students in busses and the metro, who are more likely to be a carrier of SARS-CoV-2. So public transport might be or become more of a vector of transmission.
During the month of August, I started using the metro again about once a week to go downtown or Old Montreal. I kept using it because it was never crowded (at least when I was using it, on weekends). Most people are wearing masks and on the orange line, it’s been relatively easy to maintain distance. I’m on the fence about this weekend though with cases rising. I actually feel more comfortable on the metro or bus…I don’t know if that feeling can be backed up by any science, but I feel like the bus, especially those new ones with air conditioning, tend to feel stuffy.
The head of the CIUSSS du Centre-Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal has put the cat among the hot potatoes with a statement that Covid is no worse than the flu. Dr Lawrence Rosenberg has met resistance from the health minister for saying this, but is sticking to the statement. Meantime, Laval and the Outaouais are turning orange and the Centre-du-Quebec is going from green to yellow.
I’ve seen some items, by the way, about how it would really suck to get flu and Covid at the same time. But the CLSC near me isn’t even taking appointments for a flu shot till mid-October.
Local pharmaprix was already booked up for all of November, now making appointments for December.
Flu shot appointments never open up earlier, they try to time the strongest time for the vaccine for the most active time for the flu. I listened to the doctor’s interview, and he just plain says it’s not worse. He is generally a bad interviewee, I’m not sure why they speak to him regularly.
There is a possibility that the flu season will be weaker, either because no one sees anyone else or because there seems to be some effect of one virus blocking another — this is a very iffy theory, though it seems to work for other diseases, we don’t know if Covid will work that way, and “some effect” is far from “you can only get one at a time”.
“Laval and the Outaouais are turning orange and the Centre-du-Quebec is going from green to yellow.”
This happens every year when the leaves change color.
Seventeen suspects were charged on Tuesday on various counts connected with drugs and weapons. Four of them also face attempted murder charges.
Wonder if this is an entire gang:
The seventeen suspects are: Jerome Leach, 25; Chaquille Boyce-Dickson, 25; Glendon Joseph, 21; Evander Leach, 23; Kelvin Munroe, 25; Lalute Reid, 45; Esbon Batiste, 32; Alexandria Thomas-Bailey, 27; Samantha Thomas-Bailey, 29; Victoria Thomas-Bailey, 22; Amir-Reza Zarin, 24; Kelvin Dautruche, 25; Ashley-Jade Hyacinthe, 26; Shante John, 26; Nicolas Lewis-Meade, 24; Duranus Shevron Joseph, 30.
Tuesday shows 489 new cases of Covid in Quebec.
On Time Out, JP Karwacki has a pretty good rundown of what the orange alert means, and it’s not pumpkin spice latte.
Public health are imploring us to follow the guidelines. People are not responding to tracing calls, so bicycle couriers are being sent to find them and make them get tested.
Religious leaders are calling it unfair that the tightened rules affect them too.
Doctors block their phone number because they’re calling from personal cell phones.
So answer your damn phone no matter who is calling. If it’s a jerk, hang up.
Wonder if they leave messages. There is so much phone spam lately; probably 10% of my calls are actually valid.
@Kevin the doctors make the phone calls?!?!?!
My experience is that medical people do not leave messages. They need to know they’re talking to the specific person concerned. I’ve occasionally emphasized in medical situations that I have a cell, not a landline, and nobody else answers it or gets the messages, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
Like their use of fax machines, it’s an area where the medical world has yet to catch up to our century. They still think they may be talking to a family answering machine with a tape.
Kate, I work in a field where I often must reach vulnerable/at-risk people (not medicine) to relay sensitive information and this is the practice we use, too. You’d be surprised at the number of people who don’t always have minutes/need messages left at a family member’s house/use their BF’s/GF’s phone etc, etc, etc.
I only leave detailed messages on voicemail accounts where I hear the person say their own name. Many people also use generic messages where you only hear the phone number. That’s no help at all to me.
When I had to bring my cat in to the vet, the vet called from a private number to discuss things after the consult. But then today I got a call from a private number which was someone offering me $100 to be in an audience for a youtube video. (I declined.)
I don’t know what the number is showing up as, since I do not actually go anywhere, and the few people I occasionally see would just phone me anyways to give me a head’s up. No one is answering that question.
I keep hearing mixed info about private outdoor gatherings under orange alert, though. Sometimes I see 6 is the limit for indoor, sometimes for all private.
@Joey
Yes, some of the contact tracers are doctors.
Lots of people are also booking telephone doctor’s visits — and then not answering their phone because they don’t recognize the number or it’s blocked :/
@Kate
Family answering machines are extremely common. Almost everyone I know with children has a landline.
They’re not answering because phone spam is incessant right now. There is one number that has been calling me twice a day for 3 weeks now. I think it is because I picked up once a few weeks ago, then the system sensed ‘human presence’ and has not let up. It is a problem. They might be better to text something before they call.
Denise Bombardier hates Valérie Plante. There’s no other conclusion possible after reading this brief piece Le massacre de Montréal in which she accuses the mayor of destroying the city by chasing its residents, en particulier francophones, to the suburbs.
To balance this out, an Urbania writer pens a love letter to the city.
This sentence struck me: “Jean Drapeau, qui a dirigé Montréal de 1954 à 1957 et de 1960 à 1986, a transformé une ville provinciale en une métropole de renommée mondiale”
How ethnocentric must one be to think the largest city in the country was a provincial town? Anyone thinking that really is looking through blue-tinted lenses (to coin a phrase).
Montreal was the leading city in Canada till the mid-20th century. It was Toronto that was the hick town till then.
I think you’re right, Kate. Bompardier’s article seems to be based on her emotional hate-on for Plante. For her to gloss over serious mistakes of past male mayors and to pile on Plante without any evidence to back up her argument makes me think she is also sexist.
Didn’t Drapeau raze whole swaths of working-class neighbourhoods in the name of progress, ie. cars? But it was ok, because Drapeau thought big and he was pro-car. But if a 21st century mayor thinks big by prioritizing bikes, it’s considered a massacre? And why bring up that flirtatious interaction with Drapeau if not for ego-stroking and to remind readers how old she is now but back in the day, she was a dish?
With Coderre, she describes him as proactive, his only major flaws being too showy and arrogant in his ambition. Huh?? Hello Bombarier, did you forget something glaring? Was rewarding over-priced construction contracts to companies who did a shitty job with the city infrastructure not a little bit destructive? So in Bombardier’s eyes, Plante’s de-valuing the car is destroying Montreal more than the rampant corruption back in Coderre’s glory days. But that’s ok because Coderre probably flirted with her too.
Plante is the first mayor to truly acknowledge climate change and though she’s far from perfect, she has been trying to make Montreal a greener city. Some implementations have not worked, but others have been forward-thinking. Also, many car-loving francophones have been fleeing the city for the suburbs and countryside this past summer because Covid was also a major motivating factor, which Bombardier has conveniently ignored.
What a spiteful article.
Bombardier exemplifies the ageing baby boomer mentality . Subtle degeneration of brain neurons and hence reduced cognitive flexibilty leads to a rigid and stubborn resistance to social transformation and pilot projects geared toward addressing concerns and threats to future generations. A tendency toward paranoia anger,fear and accusation as she feels threatened by necessary change. The ageing brain.
I find it interesting that Bombardier says Francophones in particular are moving to the suburbs due to anti-car policies. Do we have any data on French-speakers being more pro-car? I know the French-speaking suburbs are expanding fast but not sure of the correlation there.
I DO think she has a point that trying to make it more difficult to drive will ultimately push some people to suburbs, thus making urban sprawl worse and basically ruling out any chance of future transit improvement (because suburbs just aren’t built for that).
Why we blame individual drivers instead of developing proper REGIONAL urban planning and transit incentives/improvements frustrates me to no end. I know why we do it, but that doesn’t make it less short-sighted and dumb.
@Em
There’s a lot of data about francophone families moving to the suburbs, year after year. It’s a regular pearl-clutching event in local media.
First you get the loss of families from Montreal. https://www.stat.gouv.qc.ca/statistiques/population-demographie/migration/index.html
Then you get the decline of francophones in Montreal (always presented as decline of the French language).
It’s a shift in demographics due to Quebec’s decline in fertility rate. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2018001/article/54976-eng.htm
This is why Jean always gets a pass with Conservative nationalists.
https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/565934/au-temps-ou-jean-drapeau-croyait-que-l-immigration-defigurait-montreal
@Kevin thanks for the explanation. Like Em I had wondered about that, too. Makes sense.
Francos move to the suburbs for the simple reason that they can get a modest house and yard there for the price of a condo on the island. Also, their parents/babysitters live nearby and don’t want to drive far. This is the same for the Anglos and Allos but their numbers as a whole are far smaller.
…and I’d be willing to bet that this phenomenon happens in most major cities, it ain’t just us.
La Presse has an admirable investigative backgrounder on the South Shore woman accused of mailing an envelope of ricin to the White House. CTV has the mugshot of Pascale Ferrier.
Update: CBC has more on the story but as it’s only glancingly a Montreal story, I’m not going to post further unless a new angle comes up linking it to the city.
This story smells bad on so many levels. Did something happen to her in Texas that caused her to snap? Usually you get a longer gestation period and way more immediately radicalized behaviour on social media. Why was she trying to get back to the States? Many questions.
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