Updates from November, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 22:11 on 2020-11-03 Permalink | Reply  

    Aaron Derfel tweets about workplace outbreaks and a concern that Quebec may be soft‑pedalling the numbers.

     
    • Jonathan 09:17 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      I’m just so tired of his over-reaching tweets.

    • Kate 11:07 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      Do you think he’s lying about the numbers, Jonathan?

    • walkerp 11:39 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      I still appreciate the summary of info and data that he puts together, as well as the links. He has been one of the more consistent sources of info since this started. However, his tone does get tiresome. It’s always leaning towards the extreme, the alarmist. He’s been flipping out about schools since August. Again, he is mostly correct in his criticisms, but if you followed his predictions, we would be having mass outbreaks in all the schools and everything long since shutdown, which has not been the case at all.

    • Kevin 12:20 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      There have been loads of outbreaks in schools, and transmission to the community from infected students.

      I’m glad students have been ignoring the government’s official recommendation and have been wearing masks in the classroom.

    • Kate 12:25 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      Over the last 24 hours there were more than 1000 new Covid cases diagnosed in Quebec, and 33 more deaths. Since the recent surge has been in the regions, Horacio Arruda is flirting with lifting Montreal’s risk category to orange – although it’s easy to foresee a cycling effect, where rules are lifted, people get back to socializing, cases mount, rules are reimposed, it could happen over and over. Whereas if politicians had the nerve, a real circuit-breaker might cut transmission way down. But nobody wants to ordain the full closure of businesses. Commerce must continue.

    • Jonathan 15:50 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      I don’t think he’s lying about the numbers.

    • CE 17:28 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      Is it just me or are Twitter threads a terrible way to convey information? Why not set up a webpage or publish his findings in the media?

    • walkerp 17:34 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      In terms of form, it’s not just you, CE. They are pretty terrible. The problem is reach. Twitter and Facebook have eaten the rest of the internet and everybody is too lazy to click away from them so you have to get your info out in that platform.

    • MarcG 17:37 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      I find it funny that Twitter was built on the concept of “micro” and now they’ve had to adapt to people basically writing short essays on it.

  • Kate 18:17 on 2020-11-03 Permalink | Reply  

    Since before this blog began, discussions have been held in NDG over what to do with the Empress Theatre (Cinema V) and it’s a safe bet the building is in worse shape now than it was 20 years ago. The CDN-NDG public consultation page includes a tab for the Empress.

     
    • Jebediah Palindrome 23:08 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      I listened in on the consultation. Seems like they’re deadset on demolishing the building, keeping the facade and not committing to any future vocation until they get the public’s full input…

      … which is kinda what torpedoed a lot of the other proposals. Too much ‘let’s put everything we need under one roof’.

      All NDG needs is a centrally-located multi-purpose performance space, something that can be used for cinema, theatre, comedy and music. It would be such a game changer.

    • dwgs 10:32 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      Trying to keep the building is a non starter at this point and there isn’t much of the interior that is notable. Also, the facade isn’t in great shape either, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is beyond saving.

    • Kate 11:09 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      I tend to agree, sadly, with dwgs. The building is done. They should put up a new building with some ancient Egyptian motifs in the façade to evoke the design of the Empress.

    • Jebediah Pallindrome 14:32 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      I’m not so sure. I’ve been inside several times, it’s quite solidly built. Architects said so about five years ago. I think this is a situation where it looks worse than it is. Besides, generally speaking the greenest building is the one that’s already built.

    • dwgs 15:49 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      Jebediah when were you last inside? It hasn’t been heated in 7 years, which would mean lots of broken pipes, which would mean water damage. Two winters ago during the spring thaw water was pouring out of the second floor front windows for about a day and a half. You said it yourself, ‘generally speaking’. I don’t think that applies to a building which has been unoccupied for almost 30 years.

    • Kate 16:10 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      Not only unoccupied, but unoccupied after a fire.

    • Jebediah Pallindrome 17:48 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      @dwgs AFAIK no water or electricity has been ‘on’ in the bldg for many years. When I was last inside… in 2017 the building was structurally sound.

      The Empress Theatre Foundation’s plan was to gut it and rebuild, but this would allow the preservation of the facade, volume, some of the floors and the scraps of artistic/architectural details that remain. It’s not insignificant what’s left. Architects and the city signed off on this.

      Like it’s not at risk of falling over.

      The borough’s plan is to keep just the facade, then figure out what to rebuild behind it, but only in response to the public’s input.

      That’s what’s bedeviled this project from day one: too many irons in the fire, too many demands on one space.

      ETF was opposed by another group in NDG that objected to the possibility of a bank being a commercial tenant, ignorant of the possiiblity that a bank could have brought in income necessary to fund cultural programming.

      Either way… this project’s biggest obstacle is that what NDG needs is a performance venue to help stimulate restaurant/bar business on Sherbrooke West and given the borough some much needed entertainment, but all the people involved in the project are old and still think ‘the kids don’t go see live music anymore’. When I was on ETF’s board, I was the only person under 30, the only person with even a tangential connexion to the local arts and entertainment scene.

      The city really needs to deal with the old movie palaces in a cohesive manner, rather than piecemeal. You can’t have a vibrant cultural scene when all the theatres have been turned into housing, IMO.

    • dwgs 09:02 on 2020-11-05 Permalink

      I’m all for having a performance / cultural space but at this point that would be better served by building new. The costs of adapting existing space to modern needs would likely be substantially higher than building from scratch. Unless you are a structural engineer I don’t think that a brief visit 3 years ago qualifies you to judge the viability of the structure.

    • Jebediah Palindrome 13:39 on 2020-11-05 Permalink

      ^ I’m only going off what the structural engineers and architects said three years ago, which was that the bldg was structurally sound and that there was no need to demolish it

      The idea demolishing and building anew is less expensive is often inaccurate. It’s certainly not the green option.

      The concern here is that the city will demolish it with no plan on what to do with the site and then you’ve got an empty lot for a year or two and then it’s condos.

    • Orr 22:28 on 2020-11-05 Permalink

      “The idea demolishing and building anew is less expensive is often inaccurate.”

      Let’s take a moment to recall the Mordecai Richler gazebo, and the fact it took five years and seven hundred thousand dollars to rebuild this gazebo.

  • Kate 10:20 on 2020-11-03 Permalink | Reply  

    Two activists have written a plea for the Turcot footbridge in the Gazette.

     
    • dwgs 10:40 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      So strange that noted bike enthusiast and all around green community guy Peter McQueen isn’t front and centre fighting for this. /s

    • Su 11:50 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      dwgs. Yes . That is very strange.

    • PO 12:35 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      I might have already said this, but I will throw it out again. Based only on my gut instinct, my guess is that the rail company who owns the tracks there will never allow it. They won’t even entertain the thought of it, it’ll be an email that goes straight into the trash folder. If it has been built before those tracks were put into use it might have been possible, but now that they’re in operation, it’s game over.

      Time and time again I’ve seen that the suits at CP and CN do not feel obligated to cooperate with anything, ever. They’re untouchable somehow. I welcome any insight that says otherwise, because I’d like to be proven wrong.

      I’d even go as far wondering if the project was pulled because of them but the MTQ was too scared to lay the blame on them and instead called it a budget thing.

    • dwgs 13:00 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      I think it’s something very similar to that PO and I think all the insiders know it but everybody is keeping shtum (sp?) to avoid rocking the boat.

    • PO 15:46 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      And what also kind of bothers me just how quiet the MTQ has been about it. Maybe I missed something, but seems to me that they just swept it under the rug, and when someone noticed it wasn’t going up and asked, they just gave a very generic “it was too expensive for the budget, we found other ways to include green spaces and cyclist/pedestrian paths”.

      From what I recall, 38 million dollars were allotted for the Dalle Parc… where did it go? I don’t remember extra green spaces and cycling paths being added after the plans were finalized.

      I’m somewhat angry that local journalists haven’t pushed hard for any real details beyond the standard “MTQ spokerperson said it was too expensive”. This footbridge was in the plans, there were renders, it shows up in the engineering maps in 2012 then all of a sudden disappears. Clearly there was planning involved and clearly it had been discussed within the MTQ at least a dozen times. And certainly there were meetings and discussions about axing the project. Those people need to speak up and start giving reasons.

      Maybe there were genuine reasons for not going through with it. Whatever — I’m open minded. But if you sell the city/province on a plan then drop it without clearly explaining yourself… that’s just a bait and switch, isn’t it?

      (I may be speaking too certainly, and maybe there have been more clear justifications made. I just haven’t found them. Please let me know if I’m wrong about any of this.)

    • walkerp 16:05 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      It’s a complete scandal and yet the response as others have noted has been so muted. I think it is partly that we are all so constantly beaten down by the assumed dominance of the automobile that we never really believed the Turcot would be done in any way human in the first place. I also suspect there is some corruption going on here as well.

    • dwgs 16:23 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      It was totally a bait and switch thing. It was the shiny bauble to get people to go along with the plan but there was never any real plan to do it. If it had been promised in good faith why was there no infrastructure prepared for it way back in the earth-moving or form-building stages? One doesn’t build a structure and then go back and add a feature, there would have been prep work for it at every stage.

    • PO 17:09 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      The rail section is probably 120ft wide and the roadway section at least 180ft, so to build a wide structure across the top of both of them would require a bridge with piers or a suspension bridge tower. 600ft total, at least, if you want a flat grade and situated high enough above the roads &rails.

      Realistically, look at how long it took to build the new Pullman road structure that goes above the tracks and highway. That was several years with the benefit of not having anything “in the way” since the existing highway was situated totally to the south of it at the time. All of the construction materials, equipment and personnel already in the area, too.

      Look at how expensive and time-consuming the St-Jacques bridge was to put up over the active Decarie/20 roadway at the time.

      Imagine trying to build a 500-600 foot bridge over four active rail tracks and 12 highway lanes, all operational 24 hours a day. The price tag for a 200-foot wildlife bridge over the Ventura freeway in California is looking to cost about $90million. Converted to CAD and matched to Quebec construction costs, tripled in length, retrofitted for our winters, add in the costs associated with shutting down the roads & rails below for multiple weekends during construction, and toss in the cost of making it a functional park with paths, lighting, etc. and you’ve got a quarter or half-billion dollar project easily.

      If it was ever going to happen, it would have needed to happen when the Turcot was being rebuilt and they had the means to do it as part of the entire project. I don’t believe it could possibly happen now. I hate it, but it just doesn’t sound realistic.

    • NDG07 18:09 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      I wonder if there could me more chance of getting something done on this file if we could shelve the idea of a “dalle-parc” and just make a pedestrian/cyclist link down from the end of Cavendish and across the railway and highway. There is plenty of open space at the foot of the falaise and by the canal, so I am not sure that it is especially valuable to build more over the railway and highway in a place that will not be easily accesible to anyone.

      If there is a place where a “dalle-parc” would be a good investment, it’s over the Decarie autoroute between avenue Notre-Dame-de-Grace and Queen Mary. There is a lot of foot and cycle traffic adjacent to and across the autoroute, and it is close enough to many homes that the highway noise significantly affects quality of life for many people and any additional green space would be easily accessible to many.

  • Kate 10:16 on 2020-11-03 Permalink | Reply  

    Mental health is on the news radar right now, the man who murdered two random people with a sword in Quebec City on Halloween being tentatively diagnosed as psychotic, although QMI dug up some evidence that the alleged attacker already saw himself as a warrior years ago in high school.

    Mental health services for homeless youth in Montreal have been working overtime as the pandemic has increased stresses to an already fragile social group. Quebec is promising additional millions for mental health – something they say they were planning anyway, but which the Quebec City attack has brought forward.

    Numbers show that between 25% and 75% of calls to police involve some aspect of mental instability. This stands in stark contrast to the recent statement by Yves Francœur, head of the police brotherhood, that police have an obligation to neutralize threats. The fastest way to “neutralize” anyone is with a bullet. Immobilizing them nonfatally or talking them down are a lot harder.

    Incidentally, I’m going to make an unpopular remark here. Every so often there will be a mental health awareness push, and it’s always put up front that mentally disturbed people are not dangerous. I’d amend that: most mentally disturbed people are not dangerous. Maybe we all need a little more education in detecting the ones that are.

     
    • Blork 12:38 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      I think your remark is entirely reasonable.

    • dwgs 13:01 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      Anyone who doesn’t believe that there are dangerous mentally ill people out there is beyond naïve.

    • EmilyG 14:18 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      Mentally ill and mentally disturbed aren’t quite the same thing. Mental illness is fairly common.
      Yes, there are dangerous mentally ill or mentally disturbed people, and it would be good to find out who they are, because they give the rest of us mentally ill people a bad reputation and contribute to the stigma against mental illness (and against seeking help for mental health issues.)

      I have depression, anxiety, and C-PTSD. I’ve found it very hard to get help for these things.
      I’m also autistic. Autism isn’t a mental illness, it’s having a brain that’s wired a bit differently, but autistic people often develop mental illnesses because of the way society neglects the way they function. And autism services in Quebec are very inadequate at best, and actively harmful at worst.

      Mental health care needs to be improved, and not just because a few mentally ill people might actively be a danger to society.

    • walkerp 16:41 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      What is the proportion of dangerous vs. non-dangerous mentally disturbed people? How does that compare to the proportion of dangerous vs. non-dangerous mentally not-disturbed people?

      Just anecdotally, I have never been but in danger by a mentally disturbed person but I have been put in danger by mentally non-disturbed people many times.

    • Kate 18:12 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      walkerp, it’s a good question (dangerous vs. non-dangerous) but records may not be kept in terms that could be analyzed that way.

      I can only say that, over my lifetime, as a woman who hasn’t lived an over-protected life, I’ve had my share of unexpected sketchy encounters and some may have been with random disturbed people, although in general I never stuck around long enough to tell whether they were mad or on drugs. Of course maybe it was both.

    • GC 22:49 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      Maybe it’s also not a simple binary, where you can neatly slot every person into “dangerous” or “non-dangerous”? A lot of people would probably never be dangerous, but for others it might depend on a lot of factors.

    • dwgs 10:35 on 2020-11-04 Permalink

      I think the dangerous ones are a small minority but due to their behaviour they are noticed much more.

  • Kate 10:03 on 2020-11-03 Permalink | Reply  

    Some Montreal neighbourhoods have been having more power outages than usual. Hydro‑Quebec is blaming the trend on negligent contractors breaking cables.

     
    • JP 10:19 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      We had an unexpected, not seemingly related to the weather outage a few weeks ago. I think it might’ve been the 15th of October. Power went out at 8 pm came back around 11 pm. And the outage map extended through Cartierville and New Bordeaux. No idea why it happened.

    • Myles 10:25 on 2020-11-03 Permalink

      This summer, my neighbourhood near Parc Laurier had several-hour power outages about every three weeks. One of them started in the afternoon and lasted until sometime after I went to bed. Hydro-Quebec claimed this was no different from the average.

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