The suspect in a series of robberies in Montreal including a bank holdup on St-Hubert Plaza on September 10 was just out of prison on charges connected with bank robberies in the Saguenay.
Updates from September, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Work is about to begin to install three elevators at d’Iberville station on the blue line. It’s a big job, so one of the station’s two small edicules will be closed till 2023.
So far, only 16 of the 68 stations in our metro system have elevators, which includes the three Laval stations that incorporated elevators in their original design.
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Kate
Health minister Christian Dubé says we should avoid all gatherings unless they’re truly necessary, to stop the rise in Covid. There were 582 new cases diagnosed in Quebec over the last 24 hours.
DeWolf
The CTV article takes some liberties with their “stay at home” headline, given that what Dubé said was to avoid social gatherings. That doesn’t preclude going out for a walk, a picnic in the park with your immediate family or even, as the minister specially said, a restaurant dinner with people from your household. The CBC article is much more accurate by comparison (surprise, surprise).
Raymond Lutz
C’est désolant comment les directives gouvernementales (policies) ne tiennent pas compte des faits établis depuis DES MOIS concernant le mode de propagation du SARS-COV-2 (comme les changements climatiques d’ailleurs: les réglementations retardent de 50 ans sur les connaissances).
J’ai beau chercher, il n’y a aucun cas recensé où la transmission serait attribuable au seul contact de fomites (le virus est rapidement désactivé lorsque déposé sur les mains, en quelques minutes). Donc les désinfections de surfaces sont surfaites.
Le virus se transmet principalement par inhalation de microgouttelettes (diamètre de 1 μm) produites par l’assèchement de postillons. Ces aérosols flottent sur de grandes distances, donc le 2 mètres imposé ne protège pas de l’infection. Typiquement un prof qui parle sans masque pendant une heure devant des étudiants même distanciés qui ne portent aucun masque risque de transmettre la covid-19 à plusieurs.
La charge virale inhalée module grandement la gravité de l’infection: les cas de transmission à l’extérieur sont rarissimes lorsque l’exposition est temporaire (exemple: croiser en marchant une personne infectée). De plus les rayons UV désactivent le virus, le port du masque à l’extérieur n’est donc pas pertinent.
On compare souvent la fumée de cigarette au nuage de virions: il est rare de sentir une forte odeur de fumée lorsqu’on est dehors, à moins #1 d’être proche du fumeur ou bien #2 une faible brise déplace un filet de fumée concentrée jusqu’à vos narines. La plupart du temps les turbulences de l’air diffusent rapidement la fumée jusqu’à la rendre imperceptible (et donc inoffensive, dans le cas des virions).
Le port du masque par la personne infectée limite la diffusion de postillons, il est donc indiqué dans les endroits clos et mal ventilés, cependant ni la visière ni le masque de tissus ne protègent adéquatement la personne saine (il faut alors utiliser un masque certifié N95).
Kate
Excellent collection of data, Raymond Lutz – thank you!
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Kate
A man who put himself at risk working as a cleaner in CHSLDs at the worst of the first wave of Covid is now locked up in a detention centre and facing deportation. Mamadou Konate is receiving some popular support, but the rules say only nurses and orderlies qualify for fast-track status.
(Incidentally, it’s not much use googling for “Mamadou Konate” to find out more. Seems his name is a West African equivalent of Pierre Tremblay or John Smith.)
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Kate
Do the contents of public recycling bins actually get recycled? Here’s the brief video mentioned in the article.
Meezly
Doesn’t society know by now that recycling is a myth? It shouldn’t be surprising, but doesn’t make it any less depressing.
Kate
The way we recycle here, mixing glass, metal, paper and plastic together, is also a big clue that we’re not doing it right. But it seems that oil companies have conspired to make us believe plastic can be recycled when, mostly, it can’t.
nau
Let’s not overstate things. Plastic recycling is mostly a myth but glass, paper products and metals are all recyclable. Admittedly, Montreal/Quebec recycles these poorly, mixing them all together so as to extract the least possible use value from them and only collecting a very narrow portion of household metals.(Yes, I see Kate has beaten me to the punch on some of this). Instead, they should focus on first collecting as much metal as possible (the scrappers get the big stuff but lots is still just thrown in the trash) because it’s the most valuable and highly energy intensive to dig up and refine. Paper and glass ideally would be collected in various sorted streams that would maximize use value (imagine if glass from Montreal could actually be sent to be re-used in the glass plant in Pointe-Saint-Charles, how crazy would that be). If the lowest quality paper isn’t worth recycling, it could be composted, and if the lowest quality glass isn’t, it’s not a big deal if it’s landfilled (it’s chemically inert, there’s no big energy use difference between new and recycled glass apparently and the raw material input isn’t exactly scarce). Of course, more sorting would require the populace making more effort than the politicians think they’re willing to. I guess the other big question is with it becoming clear that plastic recycling is mostly bunk, will there be renewed efforts from those seeking build incinerators?
Faiz imam
The single biggest thing we could do to improve recylcing is to boost composting rates. If we can get people to put dirty paper in the compost, that would really increase the quality and thus value of recycled paper.
cardboard food packaging is a huge issue for recylers and it seriously cuts its value.
Ephraim
Maybe it’s time to actually TAX plastic at the import and manufacturing level. You use it, produce it or import it, you pay the tax. When it’s more expensive than alternatives… we will stop using it.
Blork
It’s been said three billion times before but bears repeating: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. IN THAT ORDER. As in, if you’re recycling it’s because you’ve failed on the first two “Rs.”
But people don’t want to hear that. They just want to have their blue bins/bags which lets them use plastics and glass with abandon, knowing (thinking) that it’s harmless because they’re recycling. :-/
Chris
Blork, the 3 Rs have been superseded with the 5 Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle, in that order.
And indeed it’s the first that’s most important. Stop buying crap in the first place!
walkerp
Fully agree with the 3 and 5 Rs. As individuals, we have to start making harder choices about what food we buy.
However, the bigger problem is structural and it gets harder and harder to make those choices. Plastic wraps everything. We need to be complaining to supermarkets about superfluous wrapping (hello PA “Nature”) and we need to continue to be activists against the oil companies and the governments that subsidize and prop the industry up.
(On a positive note, there are more and more farmer’s markets and in the fall you can get all your veggies directly from them without using any plastic at all. I noticed a major reduction in how much crap I have been taking to the curb in the last 3 weeks.)
Blork
Why do people have to ruin something that’s perfectly fine the way it is? Nobody’s going to remember the five Rs, whereas the three Rs are catchy and easy to remember. And the two extra Rs don’t add anything. “Refuse” is ambiguous and it’s intended meaning is already expressed in “reduce.” (Refusing is a way of reducing.) And re-purposing is part of re-using.
So now, instead of having a catchy phrase that everyone can remember and relate to, we have a longer and harder to remember phrase that sounds like it’s been corrected by a naggy teacher.
FAIL.
Michael Black
Yes, “reduce” covers “don’t buy”. “Recycle” covers “reuse” and “repurpose”, ie “find a second use for it”, except so much effort has been put into formal recycling.
If we want to worry about something, what about ewaste recycling? People are told to do that, so even perfectly good stuff is going that way. I think I see less electronics at rummage sales and waiting for tye garbage. But I’m not sure I trust the “recyclers” to pull out the working stuff and pull out the unusual or collectable stuff, I suspect it’s just down to extract the gold and other metal. A lot of stuff that’s tossed is still good, and useful to some. Some if it, especially older, can be repaired (maybe not economically feasible, but fine for hobbyists doing it themselves), and non-working stuff can be a source of parts for new projects. But it’s just seen as a monolith. Someone suggested some years back that ewaste recycling is really about keeping things out of the used market.
Let’s not forget that recycling is old. Done in the thirties out of desperation, done during WWII because things were scarce. But fifty years ago a slow resurgence. Forty years ago Westmount and Outremount had door to door newspaper recycling. Non-profits doing it, but it had city approval. And there were newsprint pirates, moving in, and the non-profits counted on the money from selling the newspapers to pay for truvk rental and gas. Newspapers, and only newspapers, had to be tied in bundles. And that went on for a long time, before cans and glass were added. Other paper, and plastic, and no more bundling came “recently”, presumably to make it easier for people. Remember, Montreal started recycling with those green bells in neighborhoods,. Probably a lesser collection, but likely everyone doing it took some care.
Kate
OK, I know I’ve done this rant before, but it does bug me that a single-person household like mine – one woman and one cat – can produce a large bag of recyclables every two or three weeks, and there’s almost nothing to do about it. In fact, the pandemic is almost certainly going to be a step backward in even the simplest efforts to re-use containers, from a degree of caution.
I get some of my veg and other stuff from Lufa, which doesn’t use a lot of packaging. The cat eats food from a large foil bag bought roughly every 3 weeks. But I eat hummus for breakfast, and I’ve estimated I probably throw out at least a hundred of those little plastic pots a year. I don’t buy much in cans, but I don’t know any other way to get tuna, sardines or Italian tomato stuff except in tins, and I don’t know other ways to get olive oil, soy sauce or wine except in bottles. And they all go into the “recycling” which may not be recycled at all. None of these containers can be reused usefully, either.
And I don’t run a wasteful or fancy household either. I can’t solve this one.
MarcG
Some health food stores (do we still call them that?) have bulk olive oil refill stations. For the other ones, minus the fish, aside from making them yourself I don’t see a way around it.
Alex
Hummus is super quick and easy to make, we have an instant pot that cooks dried chick peas in 20 mins, we pick up all the ingredients from l’epicerie en vrac if you fancy to reduce your plastic use. There are also some new places opening up that sell stuff in reuseable jars: https://www.facebook.com/epiceriebasta
MarcG
@Alex Can you point me to the model of pot that you have? I’ve been thinking of getting one and 20 mins for dried beans would be a real plus.
Alex
@MarcG I have this one https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/instant-pot-duo-pressure-cooker-6-qt-0432672p.html#srp You can do all kinds of things in it. We use it for cooking beans, chili, dhal, yogurt (not all at the same time). Here is a list of the cooking times for various things https://instantpot.com/instantpot-cooking-time/#tab-id-3
Blork
Instant Pot is great for dried beans, but remember that ALL Instant Pot recipes are understated. When people say “10 minutes” they never include the 10+ minutes it takes to get up to cooking pressure, then the cook time, then the cooling down, pressure-release time that can be 10-15 minutes or more.
It still beats cooking in a regular pot for most things, but I always get a laugh out of these recipes that say “cook it in the Instant Pot in four minutes instead of 20 on the stovetop!” and then the Instant Pot ends up taking the same amount of total time and then you have more stuff to clean.
MarcG
@Blork Indeed. I just looked at a brown rice recipe and it basically takes the same amount of time I can do it in a regular pot.
Blork
OTOH, I can go from a bag of dried black beans to ready-to-eat black bean soup in about 90 minutes (mostly hands-off).
Chris
Blork: Heck, “recycle” is redundant with “reuse” as recycling is a form of reuse. So why not just 2 Rs then? easier to remember! “Refuse” I think is a very important one, capturing the idea of just saying no when offered, I dunno, a plastic straw or bag or whatever. Much better than reusing or recycling the item. Or just saying no to the pressure to upgrade your phone every year. It’s anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist, so I don’t expect it’ll ever catch on though.
Blork
No, @Chris, reuse and recycle are two different things. Reuse means use the thing two or more times. For example, re-using your glass peanut butter jar to store leftovers. Recycle means return the object to manufacturing and build a new one with the old materials, such as grinding up that glass peanut butter jar and making a new glass object from it.
Blork
…people frequently misuse “recycle” when they mean “reuse” like “I recycled my plastic water bottle to use for watering my plants!” That’s incorrect. There is no “cycling” there. It’s just a plain re-use. The “cycle” in “recycle” refers to the manufacturing cycle. So grinding up your plastic water bottles to make new ones, or to make something else out of the raw materials, is recycling.
jeather
What I like about the instant pot is not that it is all that much faster, it is that I put everything in and get to walk away. I’m not sure how you have more pots to clean, I just have the one pot, which is a different one than I would on the stovetop, but fairly similar in cleaning needs.
Blork
There is more to clean. A regular pot is a pot and a lid. Instant Pot is a pot, a lid, a silicon seal, the little metal cap under the vent, and if there were any splatters during your cook, then scrubbing around all those nooks and crannies where the outer pot and the lid connect plus all those nooks and crannies around the vent and vent switch.
The extra work is worth it sometimes, but not for really simple things. I hear about people using the IP to make a cup of rice and that sounds ridiculous to me.
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Kate
With the threat of a second wave of Covid on its way, owners of bars and restaurants in the Plateau and those along Masson in Rosemont say a second shutdown might mean such a subsequent wave of closures that neighbourhoods could change permanently.
Ian
“Luc Rabouin, souligne que les efforts du fédéral, du provincial et de la Ville de Montréal sont à poursuivre. La Ville «s’est engagée à poursuivre la réduction des charges fiscales», assure-t-il. Toutefois, un congé de taxes n’est pas envisageable, «car les finances de la Ville sont durement atteintes». «Ceux qui ont le plus d’argent, c’est le gouvernement du Canada et du Québec. Ils ont des milliards, nous à la Ville on a des millions, c’est pas la échelle», conclut-il.”
Translation: “we’ve done nothing, and we’re all out of ideas”.
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Kate
Two senior city officials have lost their positions at city hall after the recent inspector-general report noted serious irregularities in the department that buys vehicles. One has resigned and the other has been suspended.
walkerp
Hmm, so the inspector-general is doing some real work. This is promising.
Kate
The problem with anti-corruption forces is they’re just as corruptible as anyone else. Quebec’s UPAC was spawned to fight corruption. Recently its onetime second-in-command has been on the hot seat for ethical lapses, and a guy has written an exposé book about the Unité. And these guys were meant to clean up corruption here! (I haven’t blogged this sordid saga because it’s not specifically a Montreal story.)
James
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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Kate
CTV’s report on a Wellington Street pizzeria that has broken Covid rules flagrantly and repeatedly is almost comic in its excesses – groups eating inside when it was not allowed, kissing and hugging, a brawl and hostage-taking, six staff infected with Covid, handshakes and embraces with clients – but also points out how incoherent the official response has been.
Em
The really dumb thing is that this restaurant has huge windows opening onto the street, so everyone driving by can see inside. It was clear there was absolutely no social distancing and few masks, and the place was often packed. The disrespect for the rules was pretty blatant.
Meezly
Wow, Moretti is near my work back when I was going to work. I didn’t realize how much that area of Griffintown had changed until that joint opened and I had a look at the clientele.
walkerp
This place was douchebag central and clearly mobbed up. Perhaps that is part of the explanation for the city’s incoherent response.
AM
Lived in that neighborhood for a year (thankfully no longer) and every time I walked by, it looked like a scene out of Goodfellas. Have to agree with walkerp’s assessment since the majority of people there every night were clearly not people who lived in the neighborhood.
Ian
Wellington used to be all Irish mob, not that long ago. Must be some kind of agreement.
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Kate
QMI keeps up its attack on Valérie Plante with a Joseph Facal column in which he accuses her, as of something terrible, of running the city for her voters.
He also lambasts her for not caring about the “recul du français” and for acknowledging the indigenous history of the land – all stuff from the nationalist playbook, and coming poorly from a man who was himself not born in Quebec but, according to Wikipedia, has learned to speak English, while complaining that the Plante city hall is a “bilingual administration” – i.e. that it doesn’t adhere to the fiction that everyone in Montreal is a francophone
It isn’t the mayor of Montreal’s job to act as a lieutenant to the OQLF, but to attend to the people who actually live here.
I wonder what QMI is really burned about with Plante. They can’t have been crazy about how the Coderre administration messed with their journalist Michael Nguyen (Denis Coderre had the police seize Nguyen’s computer) and Coderre has always been implicitly a federalist, so they can’t really want him back. But what do they want?
walkerp
Cars.
Kevin
Not just cars and construction, but “ses niaiseries sur le ‘racisme systémique'”.
Anyone blowing dog whistles that loudly must be feeling the pinch somewhere.
dwgs 09:18 on 2020-09-25 Permalink
Needs to work on his technique.
walkerp 18:56 on 2020-09-25 Permalink
As I said when the bank robbery was first reported, he was a drug addict: “He consumed drugs and then committed crimes to support his habit.”