A petition is asking the Madonna della Difesa church to put up panels giving historical context to explain why a portrait of Mussolini is among the figures in its Guido Nincheri ceiling fresco.
Updates from October, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
It’s at school and work that Covid’s being passed around in this city, not so much bars and restaurants – although I’m not confident that bar or resto work would’ve been too safe either. La Presse’s Fanny Lévesque wasn’t given separate numbers for that kind of work. Quebec City has more outbreaks connected with bars, cafés and restos than we do. Retail stores are the most dangerous workplaces here.
According to the La Presse piece, on Thursday, Montreal has 85 outbreaks of Covid. There are more numbers and breakdowns in the article.
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Kate
Possibly useful list of what’s open and closed over the next 28 days. Some of the permanent closures listed have long since been known about.
The city has closed some of its facilities – the Biodome, the Planetarium and the botanical garden are all closed. Libraries are all operating on a system of picking up books reserved in advance, both the city libraries and the BAnQ.
A website called Sauvons nos restos is selling gift cards to a range of restaurants with, I suppose, the idea that you pay now and eat there whenever things open up again. If they do.
Ian
The Botanical garden is a weird choice since it’s all outdoors… I was under the impression the Planetarium was already closed because they were replacing a projector.
JP
It really would’ve been nice to have Botanical Gardens open. I was hoping to go for a walk there in the fall season, even if I had to go alone.
But I get that maybe they decided to close it too in the spirit of discouraging us from going anywhere unless we really need to, to help mitigate the spread of this virus…though it just doesn’t make sense to me that gyms can stay open, but Botanical Gardens can’t…
At least, they worked it out, so we can still borrow books from libraries.
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Kate
As we inch toward the 50th anniversary of the October Crisis, Justin Trudeau is declining to make an apology for the arrests following the War Measures Act; the PLQ somehow also blocked a motion in the National Assembly to demand such an apology.
Ian
Considering Drapeau & Bourassa both begged Trudeau the elder to invoke the War Measures Act it’s kind of rich that the usual suspects always lay the blame on the feds.
GC
That’s what I was thinking, too, Ian. I was not alive at the time, but it was my understanding that the provincial and city governments were on board with the decision. Why heap all the blame on the PM?
Kate
I suspect it’s because P. Trudeau said yes. And there’s the famous bit of video where P.T. says he doesn’t think FLQ prisoners are political prisoners, they’re bandits – and at 6:08 his famous quip “Just watch me!” has gone down in history.
It’s P. Trudeau’s insouciance that got to people. He gets the interviewer here down to stammering confusion by asking him questions back.
GC
Well, he was kind of (in)famous for his arrogance, wasn’t he? Even the people who look back favourably on his tenure usually concede that.
It feels a bit like a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation. If the Trudeau had ignored Bourassa’s request for martial law and things went further south after that, would he now be blamed for that, instead? I hope Legault attacks systemic racism with the same enthusiasm. Once he finally acknowledges it exists, at least.
I have to say, I have not watched a lot of footage of Trudeau Sr. but I would not have wanted to debate him based on that clip.
Kate
Pierre really knew how to think on his feet. And yet he doesn’t come across like a bully, but like someone who’s almost entertained by the process, lightly floating above the whole matter. I think that’s what drove so many people to dislike him. Canadians – and this is something anglo and franco Canadians have in common – tend to be literal and dogged and terribly terribly serious about politics. Watching this man show that running an entire country was something he could do with a sneaky little half grin on his face, pirouetting behind the Queen to show he wasn’t taking the pomp and circumstance seriously – that was so un-Canadian. Imagine if he’d married a woman that was his intellectual equal.
david29
^ Exactly right. Insouciant, haughty, wry, bored, amused by the entire process that people took so seriously.
GC
I can definitely see how that could be frustrating, Kate.
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Kate
The plans announced recently for a big anti-mask and generally pro-conspirationniste gathering in Jarry Park on October 11 have been shut down by the city.
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Kate
Valérie Plante has announced a tax freeze for 2021 for both property owners and businesses.
Clément
“Why is Valérie Plante threatening the financial viability of the city by not increasing revenue while expenses are skyrocketing during the pandemic?”
Probably Lionel Perez
“Why won’t Valérie Plante give Montrealers a tax break while they are suffering through a pandemic?”
Also probably Lionel Perez
Kate
Clément: So very likely.
Ian
Well it’s no tax forgiveness but it’s a start. Good to see PM taking some concrete action to help people out.
DeWolf
Tax forgiveness would leave the city in a $3.6 billion hole…
Ian
Having most of the restaurants and bars in the city permanently close down will leave a scar, too. I can tell you which decision would lead to more political goodwill though, improving Plante’s chances at a second term. Even a tiered system of tax forgiveness would be appreciated I’m sure.
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Kate
Santé Québec notes 933 new cases in the last 24 hours Thursday and chalks up 16 new deaths, not all from the last day.
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Kate
Projet’s intention to build a new, carbon-neutral residential area on the old Blue Bonnets site has been put in question by a report from the city’s public consultation office. The location is not a promising one, ringed with sources of all kinds of pollution, and while Projet’s hope is that people could live and work there without resorting to car travel, you can sense the OCPM raising an eyebrow at the likelihood of this happening.
In fact, QMI raises the question of ecogentrification, whereby if you rule out cars, it unfairly excludes families and the disabled. I wasn’t aware that you had to have a vehicle if you had a family, and certainly there would be roads for deliveries and so forth and it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where a disabled person could get a derogation if they weren’t able to get around any other way.
However, it sounds to me like the premises of this report may date from before Covid. Maybe Projet could refashion it as the ultimate in working-from-home neighbourhoods. Include some coworking facilities, flood the area with free wi-fi, ordain that every flat and condo have a dedicated WFH office space with a large wall enabling video backgrounds for Zoom meetings. Coffee on tap? Maybe that would be going too far.
Dominic
Are we at the point where we want to transform permanent infrastructure for a pandemic that will (hopefully) peter out by 2022?
Kevin
On paper that site looks like a great location for a housing development.
Until you look at a map showing that it’s part of the city of Montreal that’s surrounded by three different municipalities and has a train line occupying part of the territory.8 years since the housing project was announced and nothing’s been done.
Kate
Dominic, I think some percentage of office workers realize they prefer working from home, and can get just as much done. And employers may have realized that they could pay less rent for smaller offices if this change became permanent. Workers may be able to drop by an office from time to time, to check in with others or have a meeting, then disperse. That this risks shifting some business costs from owners onto workers is a transition that will have to be carefully watched, but it was a change on the verge of happening anyway.
Also, I think it’s going to be ingrained in us forever to feel that a pandemic is possible at any time, and we might as well be prepared for the eventuality.
Ian
The argument against distributed teams has always been that without managerial supervision productivity would decrease – maybe once we see that productivity does not in fact decrease, it will have the double benefit of allowing people to work from home and get rid of the cookie cutter MBA managerial class.
Dhomas
I have 3 kids. I honestly don’t think we could get much accomplished with them if we didn’t have a car. Until we had our third child, we still had the car, but we would hardly ever use it. My wife didn’t even have a driver’s license until we were expecting our third. She would take the bus to work and I would take my bike with the trailer for the kids until it got too cold, at which point I would switch to the metro. There was a period of about 6 months where we didn’t touch the car at all, to the point where we couldn’t find the keys anymore and the brakes and/or wheels were kinda stuck.
All this to say, it’s possible to have a family without a car, but it’s much easier with one, and it gets harder and harder to live without a car as you add more kids.
Tim S.
Yeah, with Dhomas on this. We managed 1 child without a car, but not two. On a daily basis we usually don’t touch it much, but when you need it, you need it. For one thing, they attend school/daycare 6.5km apart, but mostly it’s that we have extended family and obligations spread out all over the metropolitan area. There’s only so many times you can explain to a crying child that they missed a birthday party because some jerk took the Communauto you booked to Magog, or get stuck for 50 minutes at Longueuil waiting for a once-an-hour south shore bus with two bored toddlers, before a car gets really attractive.
Maybe if regional public transit were better, we could do without (as Ian keeps saying), but if you have any regular obligations not near a metro, you just can’t do them without a car.
Ian
@Dhomas Yeah my car has started making a kind of clunk noise when I first move it, too. I do have to move it twice a week for the street sweepers as I don’t have a driveway, but haven’t been using it much at all since I stopped having to commute.
@Tim S indeed, if there was even decent train service to the West Island I would happily sell my car for scrap but it looks like the REM is going to make it even worse.
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Kate
Street pedestrianizations and temporary cycling lanes were found to be appreciated by the majority of residents that were asked about it.
steph
But some guy in Joliette doesn’t like it!
Ian
For those of us that actually completed that survey, it was very difficult to answer in any way that didn’t make it seem as if you agreed with it completely and wanted them to go even further with similar plans. It was transparent data manipulation that would not have been useful for even the most basic consumer study, it was clearly intended only to be useful in the sense of accumulating political capital.
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Kate
I’m seeing reports on Twitter that the bars were crowded Wednesday night, before the midnight shutdown. There was an anti-mask protest at Lafontaine Park – no masks, of course – and some went out to eat a last meal at a restaurant. CBC has a brief video talking to people making a last visit to the Museum of Fine Arts before the closure. Le Devoir has a photo essay on the city’s last call.
CTV’s headline here talks about a police telewarrant presumably to allow them to crack down on private gatherings, but there’s no information in the story about how it works.
GC
I’m also very curious. It sounds like they just dial a phone number and an automated system gives them a warrant. I hope it’s not that simple. As much as I want them to enforce the rules more, that seems way to open to abuse of power.
DeWolf
The tweet about bars being crowded last night “with practically no distancing” makes me wonder. Were the bars breaking the rules by putting tables closer than 2m? Were customers breaking the rules by standing around or being in groups larger than six? I wasn’t out last night but I suspect there may be some exaggeration involved in the tweet.
I can understand why people wanted to spend some time in their favourite bars or restaurants given how uncertain the future is. After the rain ended yesterday afternoon and it became unexpectedly sunny, I decided to say goodbye to my local haunt with a couple of beers in their back garden, which these days is especially beautiful with the changing foliage. It wasn’t busy but there was a regular flow of people coming alone or in groups of two for a quick beer. The staff seemed to appreciate that people had come by to finish the handful of kegs they still had open.
I really savoured those two beers – a Yakima IPA and a Voyageur des Brumes, which you can get in cans and bottles, but which taste so much better served on tap from a place that takes good care of its beer. I liked seeing the familiar faces of the servers and I enjoyed sitting somewhere other than my own home for an hour.
I doubt the confinement will only last 28 days and I’m not keen on being indoors with the virus still around, so this was likely the last time I’ll be back to that place until the spring – if it manages to stay in business through the winter.
Kevin
GC
Judges will be on call to approve warrant requests over the phone. Cops will still need to have a paper document in hand to enter a home — so I guess they’ll need a printer in their car or something.walkerp
There was a mini-run on bandes-dessinées at the bibliothèque Mordecai-Richler yesterday. Well a few young dudes with huge stacks, but there was a sense of urgency in the air. 🙂
GC
Thanks, Kevin. The articles I saw were very vague on the details.
Kate
Kevin: Flic-o-fax!
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