Fascinating profile of a woman who runs H. Fisher & Sons, a 102-year-old sewing goods company on the Main.
Updates from December, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Noting for future reference: this is the first Christmas I’ve had the kitchen door open all morning, also the first Christmas I’ve been able to do some final seasonal tidying-up of the back yard, clearing away the last dead plants and so on. Not a complaint. It’s all good, and I hope my readers are having a good day too.
Update: This is the warmest Christmas we’ve ever seen, and rainfall is causing flood warnings in some parts of Quebec.
dhomas
In 2015, it was over 20 degrees on Christmas. I hung my clothes out to dry. I know this because my Google Photos app sent me a “memory” of 5 years ago.
dhomas
Correction: Upon checking, the memory Google sent me was for “this week” in 2015. So the picture of my clothes hanging out to dry was actually taken on December 24th, 2015.
Kate
Because of technical problems along the way, the memory of this blog only goes back to October 2017. But you and Google are not misremembering.
So I must have had my kitchen door open that Christmas Eve as well.
GC
I remember that year. I had travelled to visit family in Ontario and only packed a winter coat. I melted!
dhomas
We opened our windows and patio door yesterday, too. The cat was happy to be able to come and go as he pleased. 🙂
John B
I had my door open all afternoon yesterday cooking.
In 2015 I was in Ottawa for Christmas. We went for a walk on the 24th and my son picked some dandelions for my wife. IIRC the temperature dropped on the 25th, but that was the first freeze of the winter.
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Kate
It’s something of a Jewish tradition to have Chinese food on Christmas (that photo is misleading, being from a previous year) while the goyim celebrate the religious feast. CTV’s report is a little less rosy, saying not all restaurants benefit from the tradition.
Churches can only admit 25 people for services. This meant handing out tickets for the mass implied to be at Notre Dame on the eve. The text doesn’t say it was Notre Dame, but many parishes would stretch to get 25 people in, so presumably it was.
Ephraim
It’s Chinese food and a movie. Two traditions that are difficult today. Five years ago, Yidlife Crisis posted this https://youtu.be/iPSLWauwwZM
Bill Binns
Uber Eats was all Chinese food on the front page on the 24th and 25th. I’m just not sure that this tradition of going to Chinese restaurants on Christmas translates very well to having Chinese food delivered. This tradition was never about the food. It was about going out and doing something at the only place that’s open. In fact, just thinking of the Jewish people I know, I don’t think they are big on having food delivered at all.
Sort of related: This was the first Christmas in many years that I didn’t watch “A Christmas Story”. It’s usually all over TV for the week before Christmas just like “It’s a Wonderful Life” . This year it was nowhere to be found because the Chinese restaurant scene has been determined to be extremely racist and hurtful.
walkerp
@Bill Binns can I get some back up on this claim about A Christmas Story please. In the States, it is on all over the place, including the now tradition of TBS and TNT running a 24-hour xmas marathon. Is it really not being shown in Canada because of this scene or just regional rights?
Kevin
Bill Binns
You must not get TNT or TBS where it was the only thing airing on Christmas Day.The show you couldn’t watch this year was a Charlie Brown Christmas because Apple TV snagged the rights for itself—but they let PBS play it once or twice.
John S
CBC showed A Christmas Story (Chinese restaurant scene intact) about three weeks ago.
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Kate
Montreal writer Joel Yanofsky, who wrote reviews for the Gazette among other things, has died.
Michael Black
And poor Cynthia.
Kate
I was going to say I didn’t know them, Michael Black, but on reading this Gazette piece I realized I do know Cynthia, or used to. Before she married Joel Yanofsky she was the partner of one of my friends for a couple of years.
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Kate
The demolition of the old bridge involves constructing fish migration channels so that the work doesn’t block the movement of more than 40 species of fish that are known to inhabit the river between the Lachine rapids and the Victoria Bridge.
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Kate
It’s in Le Soleil that I found this piece on how public health workers have been ordered to work in private CHSLDs in Montreal. They receive their usual rate of pay, but the for-profit homes don’t have to reimburse the government — another example of investors forcing public money to cover private risk.
Ephraim
Do you prefer that the homes send the people to the hospital instead?
An RPA can have a small “hospital” wing. But they doctor that they bring in still bills to RAMQ. But if it gets serious, don’t they send them to a hospital?
Kate
I’m not saying I prefer anything, but I think it newsworthy that the private side can use the emergency to commandeer public workers, yet not reimburse the public purse. Obviously something has to be done if residents of a home are hanging on without any help, and that Le Soleil piece makes the grimness of their situation clear – unwashed, fed cold food, and generally neglected, while the owners still profit.
I also thought it meta-newsworthy that the story was covered by a Quebec City paper.
Ephraim
Most of the RPAs don’t have nurses or doctors at all. These people would otherwise be sent to the hospitals and overwhelm that situation there. And then we don’t really have a protocol for taking them back to the RPAs…. because someone who tests positive isn’t something that they want back in their ranks. They don’t have a way to handle the spread internal, since it’s essentially an apartment building with a few services… but one of the services is meal services.
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Kate
The SPVM doesn’t want us to call 911 if we’re aware of illegal holiday parties. Instead it has an online form, but there’s no link in the article. The form is here.
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Kate
Shots were fired overnight in St-Léonard but no one was hurt.
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