CTV Montreal, then known as CFCF-12, began broadcasting exactly 60 years ago. Bill Brownstein sketches the history.
Updates from January, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
As Pfizer reduces vaccine deliveries, the plan to vaccinate the homeless has also slowed down.
I have a GP whom I’ve never met. I’ve seen his nurse practitioner twice. But I had a scheduled phone call with him today, first time we’ve spoken. We agreed that, given my good state of health, there was no reason for me to go for a checkup in person till after I’d been vaccinated.
So I had to ask – when did he think the vaccine would become available for someone my age, in my state of health? I could almost hear him shaking his head. No idea, he said. Not with this slowdown. Anyway, it won’t be given by his clinic, it’ll probably be a popup like the flu shot clinics, and it’s up to the government to say when.
Vaccine update: evidence shows that delaying the second shot of the Pfizer vaccine may not be so smart, so Quebec may have to do some fast thinking about this.
Tee Owe
Here’s what comes next – it begins with an antibody test- you’re positive? then you’re immune- you don’t need the vaccine, go away, get outta here. Ok I made all that up, but remember, you read it here first.
Faiz
The vaccine rollout is slow now, but the two suppliers, as well as the other ones that may be approved in the coming weeks, should massively increase rollout in the spring.
In their published projections, they are show à massive spike in deliveries after April.
So while this slowdown is unfortunate, it’s not very relevant to long term timelines.
It’s like worrying about driving 30kmh instead of 50kmh on a local road, when you know you’ll be going 120 on a highway later.
Quebec city prepared a facility that can do 30,000 doses a day. I expect all our providers to ramp up massively once the doses are available.
I justwant peopletto gget ttoo hopeless due to this slowdown
jeather
Yeah, the slowdown is terrible and feels really political, but anyone under 70 who doesn’t work in health care is probably not going to have their vaccine delayed by it. (I believe that people in remote communities don’t get the Pfizer vaccine, they get the Moderna one.)
Kate
I’d jump for an antibody test. I’d love to know if that short sharp virus I had early last February could possibly have been Covid. Nobody was talking yet about it being in the population here, and it was probably some kind of cold, but who knows?
Mark Côté
There are some indications that the virus was in the US as early as December, so it’s entirely possible, maybe even probable, that it was circulating in major cities here by February.
MarcG
I had a nasty flu in mid-February that was unlike any I’d had before. My mother-in-law caught it too and it put her in the hospital for a few days. I actually went to visit her and remember asking them if it was ok since I was sick and they said “everyone here has the flu”.
DeWolf
Tee Owe, there is new evidence that the variants that have emerged in South Africa can re-infect people who have already had Covid – which means natural immunity is no protection. The vaccines offer much stronger protection and in the worst case scenario, they can be reformulated against any new variant. Most vaccines currently approved were designed within a few weeks of the SARS-COV-2 genome being released last January.
Ephraim
Data coming from Israel now suggests that you should NOT delay the second dose and that the efficacy of just the first dose of Pfizer’s vaccine is about 33%
Tee Owe
Thanks DeWolf – point taken. I was trying to be humorous. Another thing to keep in mind along with the one vs two dose caution that Ephraim mentions, is that immunization is not immediate, so even a highly efficacious vaccine will not have ‘taken’ until after a few days, even a couple of weeks. People should not believe they are magically protected as they leave the vaccination clinic, they should maintain distancing, hand-sanitizing, mask-wearing etc. They probably tell you this anyway.
Kevin
Tee Owe
They do.
You’ve also got to consider whether a vaccination or recovery from Covid is producing a T-cell or just B-cell antibodies.Tee Owe
Kevin
They both take time
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Kate
CBC’s Joanne Bayly has tweeted that James Cross died on January 6. The 1970 kidnapping victim of the FLQ who survived, Cross was 99 years old and died of Covid.
Jack
I am not sure how to access this documentary but it was informative and a perspective bender,
L’Otage by Carl Leblanc.
Essentially it gave voice to Cross and his experience, it was powerful. In a typically phlegmatic generational recounting of what he and his family experienced.
I always found when I talked to some of my dads friends who had done things like been on the first wave of the D-day invasion, made their 25 mission cap, flew Hurricanes etc. they’d just say,”No big deal, what are you up to?”.Kate
Here’s a Le Devoir piece on Cross from when L’Otage came out in 2010.
Michael Black
The Gazette’s headline presents him as “triggering the October Crisis”.
The Crisis wasn’t the War Measures Act, it was because Cross and then LaPorte were kidnapped, and they thought it might get worse.
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Kate
Montreal has four Covid hot zones: St-Léonard-St-Michel, Ahuntsic-Montreal-North, Nord de l’Île-St-Laurent and RDP/Anjou/Montreal East. I am not clear on the definition of “Nord de l’Île” which I haven’t seen before as a descriptor. This piece says François Legault is going to “sortira bientôt l’artillerie lourde” in these areas.
DeWolf
What is with these old man leaders and their constant military metaphors? Ugh.
azrhey
they could start by shutting down the technopark in VSL. Morning and evening I see overcrowded busses shuttling workers to and from the CV metro.
But I guess the industry Must Go On.
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Kate
Every so often somebody comes up with a way to “help” the homeless survive winter. Sometimes it’s just the distribution of sleeping bags. Last time I noticed it, high schoolers had reinvented the bivvy sack. Now someone has reinvented the bivvy sack again and got media attention for it, too.
Never mind that public health and the operators of shelters have always maintained that it’s more important to get people inside on bitterly cold nights, not give them untested means of staying out, perilously, in the cold.
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Kate
Firefighters, who spend more time acting as first responders than putting out fires, want to be on the same vaccine priority list as ambulance paramedics, since they’re exposed to the same risks from patients. They have a good point.
mare
Agreed, they travel with a bunch of them in a small enclosed space, so if one of them gets infected they might spread it to all. Ambulance paramedics are in an enclosed space sitting next to patients though, when they are transported to the hospital, often performing medical procedures, so run an elevated risk.
Joey
This makes sense to me, though by now we should have a very good idea of who is most likely to spread COVID-19 if infected as well as who is so so critical that we cannot really afford to have an outbreak among their typical contact group. A priori you would think EMTs, firefighters, etc., would be in both those groups – if we had proper contact, we’d have evidence to prove or disprove that. I suspect we don’t.
jeather
That seems reasonable. Our priority list is a little weird once we get past the top 3 groups, too — shouldn’t teachers be in a higher group? I hope that part of it is that we don’t have enough to go into more detail after that, but I doubt it.
Alison Cummins 19:44 on 2021-01-20 Permalink
It was a big world for young people. My father, born just before the baby boom started, created two shows for them in the early sixties when he was just out of college.
Michael Black 20:11 on 2021-01-20 Permalink
I remember the bumpers about it being owned by Canadian Marconi, but some of it’s hazy. CBC and CFCF the only English choices, unless you watched WCAX and WPTZ before the adjacent local stations came on in the morning and blocked the US stations. I know I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964, but hazy about specific shows before that. I wouldn’t have known if Razzle Dazzle was on CBC or CTV. We forget that CBC aired US shows , in the bidding with the commercial networks foor programming. I remember a “lot” of black and white shorts, filler and not in great shape. Some shows lasted long enough or came later so I knew they were on CFCF, Like Young, Magic Tom, Johnny Jellybean.
For the 30th anniversary, CFCF had month long celebration, an hour every weekday devoted to previous programming, though I think it was fiction tv rather than replaying game shows or locally made shows.
They did the same thing for the fortieth, though not as good a selection of programs.
For the fiftieth, it was well under the control of the network, no local shows other than Pulse (and that was eventually renamed “CTV News”) and no flexibility from the network’s schedule.
The progression of tv, experimental and unsure what works so there was variety, and local stations sharing programs with the rest of the network, then very rigid and no place for variety. Endless channels now thanks to cable, but more monolithic.
PatrickC 22:00 on 2021-01-20 Permalink
Magic Tom! There’s someone I haven’t thought of in ages. I watched a lot of shows on “TV Twelve” back in the day, and “Pulse” in its heyday was an excellent local news program, though my glasses may be rose-tinted by time.
su 10:01 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
I remember Pulse news opening jingle was Pink Floyd’s MEDDLE!
Jebediah Pallendrome 17:42 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
Wow really? ^^^
What song off Meddle?
Bert 18:16 on 2021-01-21 Permalink
Jebediah, I thought the same. Perhaps it is some mix up with W5 who used Supertramp’s Fool’s Overture – start around 3m20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17xrwEc0oqI