Fisheries and Oceans Canada has stopped some work being done on the new bridge because it’s been stirring up sediment that’s bad for the fish.
Updates from November, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
If conditions are met, phones should make a test din Wednesday at 13:55.
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Kate
Tuesday morning, Simon Jolin-Barrette announced a plan to extend the Charte de la langue française to CEGEPs – “La langue française doit être la seule langue commune des Québécoises et Québécois” – but François Legault stepped in and contradicted him by the afternoon. But an expanded Charte is to be expected next spring.
Update: Also Simon J-B: “Quebec was born in French, and it will stay French.” People who speak indigenous languages might like a word with him.
MarcG
Let’s ask a Michigander ce qu’il pense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec#/media/File:Province_of_Quebec_1774.gif
Tim S.
They understand that the people affected by this are francophones who might choose to go to CEGEP in English, right? You know, their potential voters and their families?
steph
I’ve been hearing that “bilingualism means the death of the French language. The government needs to promote unilingual French”. I feel sorry for the future of their children.
Blork
Well, to be fair, the political and social entity known as Quebec that dates to about 1600 was “born in French.” Not to be confused with the geographical entity of Quebec, which has been around for millions of years. But saying it that way means you need to also agree that the political/social entity of Quebec was also born out of conquest and colonialism.
Uatu
Looks like learning English is exclusively for those who can afford private lessons or can send the kids out of province for university- i.e the political class of QC.
Tim S.
Also, the class that might own or manage QMI.
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Kate
Gabriel Sohier Chaput was in court Tuesday morning on charges of promoting hatred against a definable group – in this case, the Jews. A video on this Gazette page outlines some of Sohier Chaput’s activities and opinions.
MarcG
Lots of details on him and his friends published here a few days ago https://montreal-antifasciste.info/en/2020/11/19/zeiger/
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Kate
It’s rare that I get to put a NSFW warning on a post, but consider yourself warned over this story that the Museum of Fine Arts is planning a show of 19th-century French paintings next fall, including Gustave Courbet’s notorious L’origine du monde.
MarcG
I thought you were being sarcastic! Good thing I had my pearls nearby.
Kevin
That painting is just as impressive in person. I hope they bring some Manets.
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Kate
A team of city workers is supposed to be helping move the tent dwellers from the Notre-Dame East encampment into shelters. How much will be “help” and how much will be enforcement isn’t clear, but this piece does say the city’s offering to store their camping goods over the winter.
Update: In addition, the STM is giving a bus to the Old Brewery Mission so they can circulate around town, picking people up and bringing them to shelters.
david245
Don’t do it, homeless! Ask the lost port police building stones/bricks what city storage means!
Kate
Bit of a difference between storing some tents and sleeping bags, vs. demolishing a building.
Michael Black
It’s not just “camping gear”, it’s their stuff.
From tv interviews, some have stuff from when they had homes. And surely that factors into what’s going on. They don’t want shelters because it’s not what they are used to, and they have stuff. They want homes and right now, a tent is all they have.
Again, the stories don’t differentiate, but by not doing so, this particular story doesn’t fit the usual narrative of “homelessness”. They want to be together, and they may not be well prepared for surviving outside during the winter. A tent doesn’t offer much warmth, thiugh a barrier from wind. But it’s a sense of place.
dmdiem
This isn’t your traditional “mental illness and addiction” type of homelessness. This is an economic event. It’s happening all over North America and it’s going to get much, much worse.
Chris
>It’s happening all over North America and it’s going to get much, much worse.
Why?
dmdiem
Mass unemployment coupled with insane housing costs. Keep an eye on the warmer regions of North America. That’s where tent cities will start popping up in the next couple of months.
Covid isn’t just a health crisis. It’s a slow motion economic catastrophe.
Government stimulus might help stem the tide. We’ll see.
Raymond Lutz
It’s going to get much, much worse because we built for centuries an unsustainable system. Economically, biologically and physically unsustainable (yes, climate science IS applied physics).
Since the 2008 financial crisis, all we had was a jobless recovery (which showed, again, growing inequality). The US (and others?) surfed on a growing student debt bumble and chickenization of multiple sectors. Covid-19? Some argue that emerging zoonoses are linked to animal habitat destruction. And you ain’t seen nothing yet: wait for the complete arctic see ice disappearance event in less than 10 years and the major agricultural collapses it will bring in the northern hemisphere. So, yay, there’s no going back to ‘normal’.
It’s that simple: I’ve begun to explain to my children (for now the older one) she and her generation will have to choose between (and fight for) emergence of fascism or emergence of anarchism (or any flavour thereof).
Raymond Lutz
Bumble? Covfefe! 😎
Chris
I was curious if dmdiem thought things were going to get much worse because of covid, which seems to be what he’s saying. I don’t think I agree though, since multiple effective vaccines will be here soon. Maybe reckoning with the debt we’ve created will cause more economic trouble though, but it probably will be on the order of magnitude of 2008, which I wouldn’t characterize as “much, much worse”.
I largely agree with Raymond’s longer term forecast though.
dmdiem
It’s going to take time to roll out the vaccine. The logistics of vaccinating a whole planet is insane. I’ve heard estimates that a full year is entirely possible.
There’s already a massive expansion of the tent cities in California and lines for food banks in Texas that stretch for miles. It’s already bad. Of course it’s going to get worse before the vaccine gets here.
Chris
dmdiem, the USA is a whole other thing, I thought you meant here. Yes, vaccinating will take a long time, but once it starts, I think the worst will be behind us.
dmdiem
Sorry. I was referring to North America in general. You know the old saying “if America coughs, Canada catches a cold.” In this case it’s literally true.
Our government seems to be at least trying to help people and small businesses weather the storm. And locally they seem to be managing to get the excess homeless into shelters for the winter. But in the States? “Here’s $1200. Stop being poor.”
It looks like the rollout for the vaccine is going to start around March/April. Directed at first, and then going out to the general population a few months later. Unfortunately that means making it through flu season. And with our lunatic neighbours to the south, who are 100% going to celebrate thanksgiving and Christmas, the thought of this winter is terrifying.
The upside is that by this time next year this goddamn bug should be fully extinct. Good riddance.
Chris
Extinct? Very unlikely. We’ve been vaccinating for various other bugs for decades (ex: MMR) and they’re not extinct. Only smallpox got truly extinguished. SARS-CoV-2 will be around for decades I’d wager, but will become a small problem.
Hey, I just noticed we passed a milestone: global covid deaths have just surpassed global motor vehicle deaths!
dmdiem
People who got SARS-CoV-1 are still immune to this day. The thinking right now is that the same permanent immunity will be acquired from the vaccine to SARS-CoV-2. However, only time will tell for sure.
Chris
Reinfection seems rare so far, but there are documented cases. Also, don’t forget: life likes to live, the virus could mutate too, to keep itself around.
dmdiem
Viruses aren’t alive. They don’t respond to evolutionary pressure outside their host organism. They mutate based on the organism they infect. Usually that means more infectivity and less lethality. Although you could argue a stray cosmic particle here and there could make things worse. Right now, reinfection is so rare that it’s nearly impossible to study.
SARS-CoV-1 is extinct. Hopefully by this time next year SARS-CoV-2 will be as well.
Chris
>Viruses aren’t alive.
That’s debatable. But I appreciate your pedantry. 🙂
>They don’t respond to evolutionary pressure outside their host organism.
Their host organism is their whole environment. Mammals don’t evolve outside their environment either. So what? They evolve.
>SARS-CoV-1 is extinct. Hopefully by this time next year SARS-CoV-2 will be as well.
How about chickenpox? Caused by VZV virus. Airborne. Reinfection very rare. Vaccine exists since 1995. Yet VZV is not extinct.
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Kate
It’s not Montreal-specific, but as a news grazer I depend on sources being reliable, and CBC’s plan to launch a service called Tandem, which will make commercial advertising look and feel like their own news content, is bad news indeed. There’s a petition against the plan and, if you think an objective noncommercial news service is a good thing worth preserving, you can sign it, or write or email your MP, or both.
Daniel
Signed the petition. We’ve seen in the States what happens when trust in the media is eroded. The CBC doesn’t need to be its own worst enemy in that sense.
qatzelok
I was enjoying a delicious Subway sandwich and refreshing Coca-Cola Zero in my high-end condo in Canal Griff,(five free appliances!) when I saw this article on my super-slim iBook 90.
Tim S.
Thanks for linking the petition!
steph
The government should regulate news vs entertainment to let consumers make a clear informed decision.
Blork
I rarely sign online petitions, but I signed this one. I’ve spent decades of my life as a die-hard CBC fan; I’ve always had more radios than rooms to put them in, and pretty much listened to nothing else (because I cannot stand commercial radio; not just the content but the blaring ads). CBC has really slipped in a lot of ways in the past decade, but I’m still there. So much quality audio, even if there are some duds. But FFS, this Tandem thing sounds like a carton of coffin nails. Once they go there they will have lost all credibility and hope.
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Kate
A church in St-Michel is hosting maskless gatherings and the pastor is a figure in the conspiracy community here.
Chris
No worries, I’m sure their god will keep them safe.
Ephraim
Hand out the fines…
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Kate
After public indignation and even threats to the mayor, Longueuil will be moving its surplus deer rather than killing them.
Spi
You mean displace them so that they can die out of sight. They should just capture and move the entire herd.
qatzelok
…Rather than demolishing the golf course and bungalows beside the park to expand it. New condos and bungalows are being built into razed forests in Longueuil as we speak…
Su
I think it is called deforestation. Apparently a phenomenon of utmost concern to us in other parts of the world , but somehow glazed over here at home
Kate
I suspect Canadians (and in this I squarely include Quebecers) always feel we have this huge piece of forested wild land at our backs, so it doesn’t matter if we chip away at it near our cities. Bogus, of course, but I know the feeling is there because I have it too.
MarcG
A few years ago I had the idea of moving to the country to grow some vegetables so my wife and I drove all over the lower part of Quebec and a bit of eastern Ontario and discovered that it’s essentialy a giant parking lot for GMO corn – very depressing! Obviously further north there’s still some forests because you can’t grow corn there.
Michael Black
A friend lived near Coaticook, and he said in the fall when the apples were over ripe, the deer would get tipsy from eating them, a bit of alcohol content.
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Kate
QMI says around 7000 B&B-type short rentals are still active in Montreal despite the pandemic.
Ephraim
Because Revenu Quebec isn’t doing it’s job and it doesn’t have to report publicly on how they are handing the portfolio. It’s government that isn’t answering to the people.
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Kate
On the first day we had some snow that lasted, a journalist took a bike out on the REV to report on how it went. Not sure all the photos here are current – the third photo with the big pile of snow doesn’t look like it was taken this Monday.
DeWolf
Considering it’s TVA that was a refreshingly straightforward review. The signals on the REV are probably its biggest problem. I’ve encountered many drivers turning right on a red light (a red arrow) because they were either confused or they just didn’t care.
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Kate
Even though there are facilities in Quebec with the expertise to decontaminate soil and rocks and other excavation trash, the REM project chose instead to have 600 tons of ejecta buried in Ontario because it was cheaper.
Great shot of the dig on McGill College.
Su
“La traçabilité de tous les camions de transport a été documentée et assurée du début à la fin de l’opération. Ce ballast a été disposé en respect de toute la réglementation applicable.”
Emmanuelle Rouillard-Moreau, RÈM porte parole.
I wonder what kind of tracking system they use ? Would it be GPS tracking for hundreds of trucks? So is the documentation he mentions in the form of GPS data records ?
That would be great,given the awful record of illegal dumping going on in Construction industry.Ephraim
That was the point of having the CDPQ run it, so they can bypass the Quebec first contract stipulations that the government itself has to follow.
dwgs
I think GPS trackers are pretty standard on large trucks these days. The owners want to know where their drivers are going, what routes they take, etc. Long distance tractor trailers have equipment that records all that plus speed, shifting and fuel efficiency, length of breaks taken etc etc.
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