A protest was held Tuesday to press the Quebec government to institute effective rent control, and another protest involved hotel workers demanding emergency support from both levels of government – not only individual assistance, but support for the industry generally.
Updates from November, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
Four different records have been broken by this unseasonable stretch of warm weather.
dmdiem
November is my favourite summer month.
DeWolf
I woke up this morning to warm, humid air and an intense cacophony of birdsong in the back alley. It feels like being in an aviary. I hope they don’t think it’s spring.
Michael Black
It’s confusing, because the light conflicts with the temperature. The sun was already going down, but it’s like late spring or early fall temperature wise.
One year we got snow, I think it was May, enough for there to be slush, and it was the same thing. “Am I wrong about the time of year, or the temperature?”
EmilyG
Yesterday I went to get a flu shot. I was told to wear clothes with short sleeves.
So I wore a T-shirt, and while walking there, I didn’t even need to wear a jacket.EmilyG
Michael Black: It also seemed a bit weird that it was that warm out, and many of the leaves were off the trees.
Kate
EmilyG, did you get it at a CLSC?
dwgs
I got mine yesterday at the CLSC Rene Cassin. Made an appointment about a week ago, no lines, no hassles, pleasant staff.
Kate
Yes! Villeray CLSC has set up a specific flu shot clinic on Cremazie, and I have an appointment for Friday afternoon.
EmilyG
I managed to make a flu shot appointment online for the next morning at a local Jean-Coutu. They didn’t have my name in the list or something because I’d just signed up about 12 hours before, but I talked to them and it was sorted out.
And the nurse said it’s free for everyone this year under medicare.
-
Kate
A shelter for alcoholic homeless people will be opening on New Year’s Day in the old Vic, but with only ten beds for men and three for women. They’ll get regular doses of alcohol and help toward eventually stopping.
Note to CBC: Re the subhead “Homelessness advocates decried need for years”, decry does not mean what you seem to think it means.
Ephraim
It’s much more expensive to run a wet shelter. But it’s very needed.
david194
Basically, the point of this is sort of treatment is 100% harm reduction – to keep the drunks from wasting space in the jails and hospitals, in police cars and ambulances. This sort of treatment in no way leads to a cure, or turns people from drunks into solid citizens. The literature reports that it’s probably cheaper than the alternative, and keeps some of the most unpredictable and anti-social people from doing harm to others.
dwgs
I would like to think that the focus of the harm reduction would be the afflicted people themselves. Alcoholism and mental illness are diseases, not character flaws. And I have known plenty of people with substance abuse and mental health issues who were very solid citizens.
Michael Black
And since many/most shelters prohibit alcohol (maybe that includes people who’ve drank too much?), it leaves people with no where to go. On really cold nights, that may mean death, not being warm but also not being able to make good decisions.
There’s a balance. Drinkers may cause trouble in shelters, and there’s not enough staff, or the right kind, to deal with it. And it can disrupt other people.
I dropoed off a popcorn popper (and popcorn) to Resilience in December, and there was some sort of incident where “security” came along. This isn’t a judgenent thing, it’s a balance.
Blork
Side note: they’ve changed the subhead to: “Homelessness advocates highlighted need for years.” 🙂
Kate
Blork, I should get paid for my freelance editing 🙂
-
Kate
It’s a year since the city opened a recycling centre in Lachine, but a valuable machine that sorts glass still hasn’t been put into service, for various reasons explained in the article.
Su
So what I understand from this article and others . The management company bailed out ( notified the city last year), because demand for recycled paper is down, and hence unprofitable. The company promised to stay on until another manager could be found. While still under contract,they did not bother to install the brand new high tech glass sorting machine leading to a mountainous backlog of tons of glass! The new manager is promising to install the thing.
Also it turns out according to a specialist in waste and recycling that the level of contamination in our bailed and sorted paper waste ( used snot rags, plasticised material used napkins and more) is at 17% when the mainly overseas companies purchasing it now demand 2% purity.
The .municipal opposition blames the current administration for this.REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE
Kate
The authorities have probably concluded that we’re not ready to sort our recycling more intelligently, which we would need to do to make the end product saleable. I’m not even saying they’re mistaken – there may be a limit to how much interest they can make people take in their trash. I don’t know what the good answer is.
DeWolf
This would take a huge adjustment in habits and attitudes, but one of the reasons other countries manage to recycle so much more of their waste is because people are expected to take a bit more responsibility for their trash. In many parts of Europe, there’s no household pickup – you need to take your garbage down the street to a depot where you can sort it out into specific bins. In Taiwan, people sort their trash and wait outside their homes for the garbage truck to arrive. (It plays a jingle as it goes down the street, like an ice cream truck.) If they leave their garbage unattended, it won’t be picked up. And this is in a country where people work extremely long hours. It’s a fairly recent turn of events, too – 25 years ago, Taiwan had very poor recycling rates and a similar system to what we have here.
Michael Black
I commented previously on the evolution of recycling on the island. Are we better off with less being recycled, but more of that being pure, or a lot more being “recycled” but it going to waste because of contamination?
Maybe there shouod be a drop back to where more was expected of people, and let that rebalance before going back to wider collection.
Sometimes it’s not even the people at home. I brought in the recycling.bin last week, and there was an unfinished coffee in it, I assume from the workers next door. If random people think it’s okay, then tyere’s not much hope.
-
Kate
Red zone measures, which includes Montreal, will be in force until November 23.
-
Kate
Wednesday’s Remembrance Day ceremony in Place du Canada will be minimal in size this year, and the public is asked to stay away.
-
Kate
Martine Delvaux has won the annual Grand prix du livre de Montréal for a book on the power of men called Le boys club. Article calls it an essay, but at 232 pages, it weighs in.
Cadichon
«Essai» as in «non-fiction».
Kate
Thank you. In English, the word tends to mean a shorter piece, like a long magazine article.
azrhey
Does english make a the difference betweeen “essai” and “dissertation” ? I’d say dissertation is 1 to 8-10 pages, where essai is a structured group of dissertations on the same theme. In highschool they make you write tons of dissertations, then in college you learn how to put them together in a coherent piece of work.
Kate
In English, the word “dissertation” is mostly used for major academic writing, often a PhD thesis or the like. I certainly never heard it used for any writing at the high school level. We wrote essays, and they weren’t particularly structured. In general literature, an essay is usually taken to be a fairly personal piece on a given topic, not book length, I would say. Montaigne wrote essays. So did E.M. Forster. Belles-lettres in French?
azrhey
oh maybe that’s a semantic change then.
In French we right, not particularly structured dissertations ( intro-developement-conclusion and the teach would be happy ) and then essais are longer things that require research and citations and what not and are more or less academic. mémoires and thèses are a type of essai that is strictly academic where thèse exposes newly researched stuff and date and mémoire is more a comparison or an analysis of previous known stuff.
But yeah , I think the meanings got switched between French and English. As I’ve been writing dissertations since grade 7, but I’ve only ever written one essai and it was for my bachelors. At least in French. 🙂
Languages are weird/fun.Daisy
Then what is a “composition”? That’s what we used to write in French immersion classes.
Our high school essays were supposed to be structured like so: introduction, three body paragraphs (each with its own main point), conclusion. That’s the kind of writing we had to be able to do for the English 12 Provincial Exam (not in Quebec obviously).
azrhey
Composition is explanatory , dissertation is argumentative ( not sure it’s the right words though ).
Composition : The dangers of fighting in peewee league
Dissertation : Should fighting in peewee league be banned legally?
I hope it’s clear 🙂
Kate
I wonder if there’s a piece anywhere on these faux amis in cultural contexts. I remember when it dawned on me that in French a comédien wasn’t someone who told jokes…
azrhey
https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Annexe:Faux-amis_anglais-fran%C3%A7ais
my favourite one is still congealed vs congelé 🙂
Kate
Great list, azrhey, but there are so many. Skimming down, I was struck by “activism (n) : militantisme” but not the reverse. In English, a militant is often someone who’s very politically active, verging on dangerously so. In French, you get statements like this one about the recent Projet Montréal party conference: “Les militants de Projet Montréal s’étaient réunis virtuellement dimanche…” meaning simply active members of the party. In English, Google gives this definition: “combative and aggressive in support of a political or social cause, and typically favoring extreme, violent, or confrontational methods.”
PatrickC
There are several dictionaries of faux amis, including this one (though it’s not that recent):
https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/faux-amis-and-key-words-a-dictionary-guide-to-french-language-culture-and-society-through-lookalikes-and-confusables/introduction?from=searchMark Côté
In my high school in rural eastern Ontario we learned very structured essay writing. Overly structured really, but it cemented the fundamentals of writing an effective argumentative piece. I’ve come to realize that my school’s focus on English was comparatively rare though.
Mark Côté
Memories flooding back: we specifically learned how to write expository essays, after first learning expository paragraphs.
MarcG
Manifestation sounds weird to me in both languages now
-
Kate
As Radio-Canada did a couple of weeks ago, the Journal asks whether the mayor has kept her promises. These are not black-and-white answers, because the numbers come up a little differently, but not by much. QMI also asks about Plante’s management of the pandemic crisis, concluding that she’s done OK except for bike paths, which suck.
-
Kate
Anglo media are mostly noting the start Tuesday morning of the demolition of the Pioneer Bar building in Pointe Claire. The building, 120 years old, was a hot potato for some time in the suburb, but the owner of the land is determined to put up a condo development.
I was struck by what someone interviewed on CBC radio said Tuesday morning – that this building had been a spot for social gatherings in Pointe Claire village for a long time, so that removing it was not good for the area.
Incidentally, I worked briefly in that area some years ago, and it was a bar then too, with food, but it wasn’t called Pioneer or Le Pionnier. It was something like Benjy’s or Binky’s – does anyone remember what it would’ve been called in the 1990s?
Kevin
Clyde’s.
Kate
Yes!! Thank you. I could remember the typeface on the sign, and that the name had 6 letters and an apostrophe, but not what it said.
Kevin
I confess I don’t get the nostalgia for the joint, but then again, I never went inside.
Kate
I’d be curious to see what the building originally looked like, 120 years ago. More recently, it may have had its social role as a bar, but it was pretty much an eyesore architecturally.
I recall going there to have some food and beers with the people I worked with, in the 1990s. It was your typical dark wood gloomy interior, I think, but iirc, we ate on a terrasse that used to exist outside.
Is there any other bar in the area? I recall ice cream places but no other watering holes.
David Senik
Hey hey! Likely noted in one of the stories you linked is that the building was originally built for use as a hotel.
I grew up in Pointe Claire so I can remember the early 90s when the ‘Pi’ was frequented by bikers, followed by it’s conversion to a country and western bar called Stetsons around 1993/4. That didn’t last long because by 1995 it had become Clyde’s Showbar and Grill.
There was one other bar in the village just northwest of the Pioneer building which was called the Brasserie du Village but most people referred to it as Dag’s. As teenagers if we didn’t get into Clyde’s we would try Dag’s, where Elgie (pronounced EL-gee) would typically serve us. I’m not surprised you weren’t aware of the place, Kate. It was small and a real dive. Even if you had seen it you likely wouldn’t have ventured inside. Not the most welcoming place!
Kate
David Senik, I didn’t grow up in Pointe Claire, and only spent a little time there when working on a project in a little office on Cartier near the highway. Didn’t hang out in the village area much, but went there once or twice with the people I worked with. So I’m not too familiar with the spots or the people who frequented them.
Much more recently I worked with a young woman who’d waitressed at the Pioneer while finishing a degree. She must have been one of the last people to work there before it was boarded up. But that’s the extent of my connection with the place.
Dominic
Clydes had a small front dining room, a very small hallway leading to a good sized room in the back for mediocre West Island local bands to play. There was also some very narrow stairs leading up to a balcony with a pool table or two. In the late 90s it was full of life guards and yacht club teens from the John Rennie, Lindsay Place, and St Thomas/St Tomas highschools.
A lot of West Islanders have good memories there.
-
Kate
Public health is launching a new contact-tracing method for Covid cases in Montreal, based on how things are done in Japan.
Schools without ventilation systems will be opening the windows through the winter to get some air circulation happening.
-
Kate
The city’s going to save $6.7 million by not handing out managerial bonuses this year.
david222 01:42 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
They should protest to rebuilt the old port building at 0:12 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aPhLF7yfU8
I know it has come up before on here, but I heard it again a few months ago from someone completely random and outside my circle that they did store this somewhere, and planned to rebuild. The urban legend won’t die!
Kate 10:19 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
That building wasn’t made of Lego, david. The land it was built on is old landfill – the original port of Montreal didn’t have dry land in that spot. I’m no structural engineer but even I could see from outside that the ground under the building was shifting: there were visible cracks in the walls by the end, segments of bricks parting away from other segments.
The structure looks like it was made of distinct cubic forms, and you could “rebuild” it on a computer screen that way, but in fact it was bricks. There would’ve been nothing to store but a pile of bricks.
I liked that building, don’t get me wrong. But that isn’t a good place to put a building.
Max 11:55 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
The port police headquarters building had a smaller sibling on the other side of the tracks. Opposite the bottom of Berri, it made use of the same materials and architectural style. On an old map I have somewhere it was labeled ‘Port Infirmary’. You can see it (barely) on this aerial shot from 1963:
https://i.imgur.com/0Y9NFAm.jpg
Max 17:48 on 2020-11-11 Permalink
Here’s a better look at it, from the Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours chapel, also in 1963:
https://i.imgur.com/uY2KyLA.jpg
Handsome little thing it was. Too bad there are so few pictures of it.
David474 02:38 on 2020-11-12 Permalink
That’s pretty neat. Do you know the function? The building I’m mourning would have been a fairly central port building back in the day (way before my time but I’ve heard stories), what did function did this small one serve, do you know?
David474 02:56 on 2020-11-12 Permalink
Tell me this isn’t just evil: https://goo.gl/maps/oBZ9tBFjVBLwkkLY9
Kate 10:46 on 2020-11-12 Permalink
David, Max says it was labelled “port infirmary” so it presumably functioned as a first aid station, maybe looked at immunizations and checked sailors over who’d come from other places suffering from illnesses. You can see how that might have been useful back when this was a working port.
Max 11:26 on 2020-11-12 Permalink
This map from 1940 labels it ‘NHB Traffic Office’, NHB being the National Harbours Board. So I guess the building’s vocation changed over time?
https://i.imgur.com/3rUnxJf.jpg
My collection of historic aerial photos tells me it disappeared sometime between 1963 and 1970.