A woman received some minor injuries Friday evening when a shootout apparently broke out between two groups in St-Henri.
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Kate
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Kate
A man was shot in Montreal North on Friday. He’s recovering, and he’s “known to police.”
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Kate
The SPVM annual report for 2019 shows it’s still mostly a white male crew: men outnumbered women 2-1, and only 8% of the force are visible minorities.
That article and this one from TVA also give out various figures on crime, traffic accident statistics and so forth. The full document is here.
Chris
The CTV article doesn’t answer so many interesting questions: how many non-white-males graduate police academy? How many apply to work at the SPVM? How many are accepted/rejected? Knowing that would paint a fuller picture.
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Kate
Quebec is ponying up $2.3 billion for public transit to offset the massive drop in revenue from the pandemic, to be handed out in chunks over the next couple of years. Nothing here about how much the STM specifically will get.
Le Devoir spins this story differently: the $2.3 billion is for municipalities, with $1.2 billion meant specifically for transit.
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Kate
Lots of students living in the McGill ghetto have tested positive for Covid.
The entire city is now an orange zone.
The health minister is asking everyone to cancel social plans for 28 days.
walkerp
What are “social gatherings”? Does indoors and outdoors not make a difference? These guidelines are so vague.
Kate
This is what a CBC piece is saying on Saturday morning. The guidelines are way too vague.
I sat here Friday night listening to my neighbours whooping it up outside in the alley for a couple of hours. Not the first time they’ve done this over the last month. In earlier times, I always thought it was nice that my immediate neighbourhood was a convivial place where a lot of the households (families with kids around the same ages, which is one reason I don’t tend to give more than a friendly wave – I don’t really fit in, sociologically) are mutually sociable and supportive.
But last night, jeez. Half a dozen or more households, now? Without masks or distancing? Even outdoors, it felt like they were pushing a boundary.
Joey
Clearly we are overestimating what is meant by the term “bubbles.”
Joey
Or rather, what is understood, not meant.
Tim S.
Based on what’s happening in Europe, which seems to have been a couple of weeks ahead of us throughout this whole thing, I’m increasingly convinced that intermediate measures are useless, at least as proposed so far. Once exponential growth starts, the only instructions that people seem to be able to grasp, society-wide, is “stay home.” It’s why I think the school thing is more complicated than the government lets on. Regardless of whether kids actually transmit it, as long as schools are open it sends the message that everything’s normal. And on that note, my kids’ school just sent out instructions to make sure the students bring everything home with them each night.
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Kate
Happened on this story about outdoor coworking spaces planned to pop up around town next summer. A prototype is already operating not far from Blog HQ, in Villeray. Story later picked up by TVA.
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Kate
There were 637 new Covid cases diagnosed in Quebec over the last 24 hours.
jeather
Call display now shows “Santé publique” if tracers try to reach you, which has to be a slight improvement.
Kate
Until the spammers learn to spoof that too. But yes.
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Kate
The SPVM has put a mobile command post in Old Montreal, seeking to resolve three recent incidents of violence in the area.
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Kate
Someone on this trade magazine for food suppliers is getting their articles to score high in Google news searches, but it’s actually kind of interesting to read about the difficulties being experienced by produce wholesalers here in this unusual year. Now I can see why a bundle of rapini is going for more than $5.
david833
It’s a strange thing, if you’re ever spent an extended period outside Montreal, rapini is surprisingly difficult to find. Like, not just Quebec, but groceries in New York, the San Franicsco, all over. It never really occurred to me that rapini on most grocery shelves is a Montreal (or possibly Canadian?) thing, but it seems to be.
Meezly
Haven’t bought rapini in a while, but usually the only rapini I see is from Andy Boy.
Kate
Meezly: With the pink tag, yes. No other kind ever shows up here. Grown in California, was my impression – another reason it could be expensive right now, if any of the harvests were destroyed by fire or damaged by smoke.
david∞ – I wonder if it’s particularly prized by the Italians who settled here decades ago. Although the person who clued me into it wasn’t Italian, it was the woman who was running Soares’ Portuguese grocery on Duluth, when I lived nearby. “Try this, you’ll like it!” – and she was right!
dhomas
I was going to say the same as Kate: rapini (broccoli rabe, in English) is probably popular in places with large Italian populations. Pro tip: fry it up with hot peppers. So good, if a little unhealthy due to the frying.
Ian
They even sell it at Loblaws in Toronto, it is by no means a Montreal thing.
You also see it used in place of Chinese broccoli in Chinese restaurants sometimes.
david833
Rapini, olive oil, chili pepper flakes, garlic, salt = one of the truly great vegetable dishes.
The stuff in the shops might be from California, but the broccoli rabe you get IN California doesn’t have any bitterness to it. It’s basically baby broccoli. Maybe they grow it for the Canadian market? Or it just finds a home here? I’m not sure about Toronto, but if it’s the same as Montreal, it could be a Canada thing rather than a Montreal thing?
dwgs
I grew up in northern Ontario in a town with a large Italian population and rapini is common there, definitely not just a Montreal thing. It’s also the main ingredient in Marcella Hazan’s favourite dish and she spent a lot time in NYC.
Kate
dwgs, I’m trying to remember where Marcella Hazan mentions rapini. The first paperback volume of “Classic Italian Cooking” is the most thumbed-through and destroyed cookbook I own, but I don’t remember a mention of rapini.
dwgs
I only have her first book and it’s not in that but I’ve come across it elsewhere. Here’s someone else passing it along, http://notderbypie.com/rigatoni-with-broccoli-rabe/
JaneyB
It’s omnipresent in Toronto grocery stores. A foodie friend taught me to boil it first for a few minutes to take away the bitterness then sauté it with olive oil and garlic. Nom-nom!
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Kate
There’s been an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in Lasalle. This illness isn’t passed between people, but the pathogen tends to grow in large neglected ventilation systems, from where the bacteria infect people in the vicinity. The solution is to do a kind of John Snow map to zero in on where the problem originates, clean it up, and treat the sick people with antibiotics.
I hope there are fines for building owners that neglect maintenance so much that their building makes people sick.
Blork
There’s been some concern that when (if?) office buildings re-open it could lead to a spike in Legionnaires diseases because all those toilets, sinks, showers, etc. that have been sitting dormant for months gathering bacteria in their pipes will suddenly start flushing and sending the microbes into the air in those buildings’ bathrooms.
Andrew
After the Quebec City outbreak in 2012, the RBQ implemented a registry of all cooling towers in the province with mandatory maintenance standards and a test every month for Legionella bacteria. So there is a law on the books if that’s the source.
Actually, come to think of it wearing a mask would probably be effective protection. It’s a very common bacteria in natural water sources, it’s only dangerous if you inhale an aerosolized droplet into your lungs.
Ephraim
Standing water at average temperature. Cold water under 20c usually prohibit it’s growth and water above 60c kills it quickly. It’s one of the reasons why we can’t easily have instant hot water in Quebec. The water from the pipes is too cold to heat quickly with electricity, it needs to be done with gas and have an outside gas. The solution would be to have tanks with higher temperature (ie room temperature) water, but that would allow the growth of Legionella. And the heating would be too quick to allow the half lives to kill it at high temperature. So… water tanks for electric hot water 🙂
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Kate
QMI says the mayor of TMR has succeeded in growing a Montreal melon but he’s reported as saying it only tasted so-so.
MarcG
The melon’s heyday was before chemical fertilizers came around; it probably tasted different when it was fed manure rather than Miracle Grow.
Kate
I’ve tried to imagine how much better any melon could taste than when you get a perfect cantaloupe. And it’s hit or miss – I’ve had three cantaloupes this summer from Lufa, two were all right but one was absolutely ambrosial, and you can’t tell from the exterior at all.
John B
I grew some this summer. The one I tasted so far only tasted so-so.
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Kate
Here are some weekend driving notes.
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Kate
Jonathan Montpetit has a must-read Friday on what’s unifying right-wing extremists, libertarians and evangelicals: a fight against Covid-19 restrictions. Montpetit even gets into the reasons why this kind of protest attracts people of apparently different belief sets.
CharlesQ
Is this a Quebec only thing? I only hear of anti-mask demonstrations in Quebec, in the USofA and in Europe.
Kate
You mean only Quebec in Canada? Here’s one report of a demonstration in Ontario. The group Hugs Over Masks (ptui!) seems to exist in various locations in Canada and is listing a rally in Winnipeg this Saturday.
This group offers for download a fake mask exemption wallet card (in French and English) and a sign that businesses are encouraged to post saying they “respect” this card. There are logos at the bottom of the sign for other organizations of the same sort. One of them plans a big rally in Toronto, also this Saturday.
dhomas
Without reading the article, I can guess what’s unifying them. Right-wing: science denial (and going against the MSM). Libertarians: too much government intervention. Evangelicals: it prevents them from congregating (and therefore filling their collection plates) as well “destroying family values”.
Now let me read the article to see if I was right. 🙂
dhomas
So, I was a little off. 😀
Also, I really should stop reading the comments on major news outlets’ websites… ugh, so depressing.
MarcG
Somewhat related, here an intesting article which talks a bit about how the nutters have occupied the no-lockdown position and made it difficult for people with good reasons to support it to be heard. https://jacobinmag.com/2020/09/covid-19-pandemic-economy-us-response-inequality
Raymond Lutz
[repost]
I’ve been waiting for this one: a documentary linking flatearth AND QAnon! If you’re already knowledgeable about the former, jump straight to 9m50s . TLDR: preserving or restoring statu quo is the life blood of any reactionary movement and doing so puts them in conflict with facts; “reality itself become an enemy”; “ultimately, it’s not about facts, it’s about power”
walkerp
I would add also con artists and their marks are attracted to these kinds of movements. Qanon is generating a lot of advertising revenue on the internet.
JaneyB
I think it would really help if they were registered to be ineligible for health care for a couple of years. I know many prefer essential oils and homeopathy anyway but still. Also removing protesters to stay in a camp outside the city for a few weeks should be on the table, extreme though it is. I hate having to think like this.
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