Benoit Dorais, the mayor’s right hand man, caught Covid over Christmas, but is said here to have recovered.
Updates from January, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The city’s biggest cemetery, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, opened in 1854. Where were the European people who died here between 1642 and 1854 buried? In a lot of places, it seems. Some burial places are known and, in some cases, have been displaced; many others are still under our feet.
Michael Black
Weren’t people buried in churchyards, though maybe they were later moved?
Old Kildonan Church still exists in Winnipeg, on John Black Avenue. A bunch of relatives are buried there, though Henrietta’s marker had to be repaired at some point. Andrew Bannatyne is buried there, so I assume his sister Laurenda and wife Annie are buried there. A bunch of “prominent Metis” are there.
But Red River is barely 200 years old, much younger than Montreal’s beginning.
Kate
Rural churches in Quebec still have churchyards with tombs, but in the city I think there was a growing fear of burying people too close to water sources and houses, after a point. There had been a lot of epidemics: cholera, typhoid, smallpox. So Montreal lost almost all its churchyard burials and everything was moved to Notre-Dame-des-Neiges after 1854.
I know of only one church in Montreal that still has a graveyard, although I don’t know how they arranged to keep it when all the others went away. I think people are still being buried there, too.
Montreal trivia: where is this church?
Bill Binns
Is it Notre Dame? I may have read something about VIP catholics or priests being buried under the floor?
Kate
Some of the big churches have crypts – Notre-Dame does, and so does Mary Queen of the World. And so do some of the big old convents, the nuns were buried in the basement!
But I meant an outdoor graveyard behind and/or beside the church building. There may be more than one in the City of Montreal proper but I know of only one.
CE
St. Patrick?
Max
Concordia’s Grey Nuns residence has one too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Nuns_Motherhouse
I lurked my way into the basement on time to check it you. Their security guards were not impressed.
Kate
I didn’t answer this and now nobody will see it.
The only church I know of inside the bounds of the city of Montreal that still has a graveyard is St-Léonard church on Jarry east of Lacordaire. I’d be curious to know if there are others.
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Kate
The Canadiens are to play home matches at the Bell Centre as usual, but without an audience for now. I’m not even sure why this is news, unless I missed some suggestion they should play instead in Laval or Brossard.
With the current Covid numbers I’m doubtful it’s wise for the team even to travel within a “bubble” to do their thing, but I suppose this is something being put in the balance against people feeling hard done by because there’s no entertainment.
John B
I believe all teams played in Toronto & Calgary, (without travelling between the two), for the second half of last season, so having teams play in their home arenas, somehow, instead of “hub cities” is why its news.
david264
I don’t know that it has anything to do with this, but it’s (possibly) noteworthy: http://nevadasportsnet.com/news/reporters/lake-tahoe-to-host-nhls-two-marquee-regular-season-games-in-february
Josh
It’s news because the provincial authorities only just now signed off on the NHL’s plan for the new season. The idea had been floated that if any one of the provinces had not agreed, then perhaps all seven of the Canadian teams would play based in US cities (like the Raptors, who right now are playing in Tampa, or like the Blue Jays, who played in Buffalo over the summer).
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Kate
Christopher Curtis writes on Ricochet about the elements making the city’s Covid outbreaks among the homeless so dire. I have a comment on it below.
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Kate
A 17-year-old was shot early Monday in St-Michel. He’s not expected to become homicide #1 of the year.
I haven’t seen any roundup of homicides in Montreal in 2020, so here goes. We had 25 numbered homicides last year. I’ve been placing them on a map from which you can see there are no obvious patterns – men, women and children, distributed around the island.
Two mothers are accused of killing their young daughters. In April, a woman was arrested after an attack on her daughters that killed one of them, and in July another mother was arrested after a fatal attack on her child. A different kind of family drama in October saw a brother accused of shooting his two sisters, all of them in their 60s.
A woman was found dead in a car on Nuns’ Island in September, and an arrest was announced in December.
A prisoner killed a fellow inmate in Rivière-des-Prairies in late June.
In November, a well liked dépanneur owner in Ahuntsic was stabbed in a robbery, but an arrest was made in that case a few weeks later.
All the other homicides would have back stories, of course, but sometimes the media are not told very much, or can’t reveal much to their readers. But of what we know, these are the ones that I thought notable.
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Kate
A ten-year refurbishment is planned for the Ville-Marie tunnel.
dhomas
Might be a good time to put in some metro/REM tracks…
Kate
Given that the city wants to make itself more carbon-neutral, you’d think it would be an obvious move. Remove a couple of lanes for traffic, put in electrical train tracks. Hasn’t it crossed anyone’s mind in the planning?
Blork
I don’t know how that would work or how useful it would be, because a REM line in the tunnel would have to go right down the middle in order to not block on- and off-ramps, so that means it would not be able to stop downtown; it would run from the east of downtown to the west of downtown with no stops. Is that useful?
ant6n
@Blork
there’s enough space to take the two center lanes in each direction. That gives a total width of about 16m to work with: .8m barrier, 3.2m track, 8m platform, 3.2m track, 0.8m platform. It’s also possible to have separate (staggered) platforms for both directions and make them narrower (most single-sided Metro platforms are 4-4.5m wide).Under the Palais de Congress (going West) the two highway directions turn into tunnels on top of one another, meaning there are relatively sleep slopes. Then there are relatively sharp curves around gare centrale. At this point, it may not be possible to insert train tracks. But a new tunnel from the Palais to Lucien l’Allier could be relatively short, if the Eastern section of the 720 can be used for a transit ROW.
Jonathan
Yes! Anton for chief transport planner!
nau
It is a bit galling that they’re willing to tunnel some 7 km under St. Leonard but won’t tunnel the 3.5 km from Notre Dame/René-L to Gare Centrale or the 1 km using Anton’s route to Gare Centrale. Even adding Anton’s connection through to Lucien l’Allier only adds another km or so. Distance isn’t the only factor in tunneling expense but even if it’s more costly for other reasons, surely downtown merits the extra expense.
david264
The more important city-building move would be to cover the trench in the areas where it remains open between University and the new hospital. Putting in rail, fixing the tunnel, whatever: nothing pays off better than stitching the city back together.
david264
Well, University is wrong (for a couple reasons), I guess it’s more like from the palais des congrès to the new hospital.
If they’re redoing the tunnel(s) they could at least fix the ventilation so that any future moves to deck these things would require a narrower ventilation footprint, and so cost less, and reduce the uglification.
Kevin
The main point of the Ville Marie reno is to redo the ventilation, drainage pumping, and electrical substations above and below the tunnel. Repaving and fixing the tiles are the last thing on this list.
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Kate
A beneficial side effect of lockdown: this holiday period had fewer serious road accidents than in years.
Has anyone reading this even had a cold since March?
Tim S.
Colds are definitely still circulating through daycares…
dwgs
I was thinking about that just last week. Household of 4 and not a single cold since last February.
walkerp
Yes, everybody who had kids got sick in September.
Kate
True enough, no kids here. Thanks for reminding me of that fact of life!
Mr.Chinaski
I’m WFH, no kids, barely get out only for groceries…. and got a cold in early december!
CE
My jobs require me to be out in the public a lot and I’ve still managed not to get a single cold or flu since the pandemic started.
Kevin
I have kids and nobody in our household has had a cold in months.
I had *something* in the late spring, but I think I’ve developed allergies to whatever trees are at my in-laws’ home.There are hardly any reports of Influenza across Canada this year, but Quebec has the lowest level of testing in the country. Which is weird, because the combo tests for Influenza and Covid started being used in November.
So I suspect the bureaucrat in charge of that fax machine forgot to reload paper or something.david264
There’s this double track, where many Montrealers are thrilled to not have to work and/or to be allowed to work from home . . . but at the same time, take a special pride in shaming those who have different lifestyles.
david264
And by different lifestyles, I mean that they’re not staying home at all times because, say, they need to work, or they have already had covid, or they’re just extroverted and can’t help themselves.
david264
Like, avoiding a cold is super easy if you’re taking government cash or working from home, not so easy if you’re a person who actually has to work every day out of the home, or has had covid, or just will go crazy because if they stay home for five or ten months in a row because they’re not internet creeps like we are.
Kevin
@david
My wife and I have never stopped working outside the home… but the “if you have the sniffles, stay home” rule has had a huge effect. That’s the one thing I hope continues once the pandemic is mostly over in a year or two.
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