Bell Media has just gutted the CJAD newsroom, including, sadly, Shuyee Lee, whom I’ve never met, but whom I respected for her diligent coverage of local news. CJAD will simply reuse material from CTV, but even CTV won’t have a permanent reporter at the National Assembly any more. Steve Faguy has the details on his blog.
Updates from February, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
Lawyer Kwadwo D. Yeboah, a Black man, is filing two profiling complaints against the SPVM after they arrested and handcuffed him and made a false claim that he’d given them a fake driver’s permit. The description of the arrest suggests the lawyer calmly told them all the errors of procedure they were making as they tried to stitch him up.
Update: CBC specifies that Yeboah was arrested in front of his teenage daughter, whom he immediately told to film the incident, and there’s more detail in this piece.
Ephraim
And he proves the point of why they need bodycams… so someone can go over afterwards and tell them what they are doing wrong. It’s a teaching too…. plus of course, it keeps cops honest as well. Seems to me that the only people who don’t want bodycams are the people who violate procedure.
-
Kate
La Presse’s Mayssa Ferah looks into a minor gang war in Montreal North that culminated in the fatal shooting of Jesse Dave Chatelier on the weekend.
-
Kate
The Caisse de dépôt is planning yet more expansion of the REM, to Laval and Longueuil.
Faiz imam
Not sure if “expansion of REM” is appropriate terminology. These are both independent projects for the CDPQ, like the REM de l’est last month. Both projects that folk have been discussing for years, but which have been given to CDPQ because apparently semi-privatization is the only way anything gets done anymore…
The Tascherau project has the potential to be very successful, the south shore cities have been making plans around such a development for many years.
a REM up the 15 though? its going to have to transfer at De ruisseau station, and probably hit some very full trains coming from all 3 west island arms.
Also no idea how the finances are suppose to work when these are first among many options to get around, as opposed to the main REM where the monopoly makes geographic sense.
Ephraim
Faiz – It’s a way around the requirements of “buy Quebec” that the government itself has to live with.
Ant6n
Buy quebec is dead with CETA. Also, the vehicles are a small part of total project cost.
I remember talking to sind cdpqinfra person back in 2016, who mused about the necessity of building a rem branch up the 15, as opposed to my suggestion to make the blainville line more like rapid transit. Those ppl sure like high way centric pseudo transit.
Faiz imam
“Those ppl sure like high way centric pseudo transit.”
Its significant trend everywhere.
It’s cheap and NIMBY’s don’t complain. And with Retail going down the drain we get the possibility of those huge real estate developments. (All good things IMO)
I like the idea in principle, but the issue is capacity on to the main branch.
Not to mention the consequence for those Mascouche train folks who were promised room on the incoming trains at their new transfer station in St-Laurent. The REM is gonna get crowded.
Ant6n
Highway centric transit is not inevitable, as you claim, probably not even if one reduced to only the North American context, where transit planning sucks.
Also, placing a bunch of transit stations on a highway is not great for development, no matter how often you repeat this Fiction. There’s a reason why suburban highway shoulders dont encourage development…
Faiz imam
Meh. You may say its a fiction, but Billions of dollars of highway adjacent high density developments are happening as we speak. Thousands of units.
Might not be to your taste, but its happening.
Daniel D
It may be happening, but it doesn’t discount the fact that it doesn’t have to be inevitable as Ant6n highlights. It’s just lazy and unimaginative planning. The region’s development could be so much more than highways, park & rides and everyone living next to a polluted highway.
-
Kate
A woman from Halifax recounts a terrible experience from 2016 of coming to Montreal, getting roofied in a bar, and finding herself at the mercy of pimps who repeatedly drugged her. “The first thing police asked her about was her sexual history, and whether she usually went home with strange men.” No rape kit was used at the Montreal General either. Have things improved for victims in the ensuing five years?
DeWolf
The woman in the story says she was never contacted again by the SPVM, and the police and MUHC both refuse to comment on the story due to “privacy” reasons. That’s obviously a lame excuse to cover their asses, so it makes me wonder – would the victim herself be able to file a FOI request to understand the details of her case?
Meezly
That is a horrifying account. More horrifying was the lack of response and professionalism from both Montreal police and hospital. And she was a white woman. I wonder if being an anglo visitor was part of it? Doubtful if things have improved much. She could probably seek legal recourse of some kind but again, this would be a time consuming, let alone traumatic, process.
Surprising there isn’t much coverage of her story. And not much about human trafficking in N.S. though apparently the gov’t is throwing money at ‘combatting the problem’.
There is something very Lynchian about Nova Scotia.
Tim
How many other people have been abused by these criminals in the past 5 years? I hope some of the local media outlets pick up this story. The police and hospital conduct was shameful.
Raymond Lutz
“There is something very Lynchian about Nova Scotia.” My thin cinematographic culture fails me: I can’t namedrop a director more on the gore side rereading reports on the Portapique shooting…
22 people dead, spread over 13 hours… Covid plays funny tricks to my time perception: it was less than a year ago! Among other fuckery, the RCMP waited 31 minutes after the first 911 calls to warn people… with A TWITTER POST! Oh, and the Macleans reported this case has hallmarks of an undercover operation gone wrong… Coen Brothers? Tarantino?
ant6n
Horrible story. Makes you wonder how many women have been raped and then murdered using drugs, but the official cause of death is just overdose.
qatzelok
Lynchian = almost 100% suburban
Meezly
I only visited Nova Scotia as a tourist and found it so lovely and friendly. But how the shooting happened and the accounts of human trafficking – it’s real, but also unreal.
It’s not just the portrayal of violence and gore, it’s more about revealing the layers of evil and insanity that lurks beneath the bucolic veneer of a community.
qatzelok
the bucolic veneer of a community = lawns
-
Kate
No, it’s not a duplicate post. A man was shot Sunday night in Rivière-des-Prairies, this one only grazed: he didn’t even have to go to hospital.
Early Monday, a man was stabbed in Verdun.
MarcG
Troy street is Verdun’s shady corner. There was a shooting there in recent memory as well. I wonder if they’re all related or if it’s just simple economics.
Bill Binns
I can’t figure Verdun out. It doesn’t give off that “bandits roost” vibe with layered graffiti and bars on shop windows that Hochelaga and St Henri do but gets more than it’s fair share of crime stories in the press.
Kate
Verdun shades from the low-key, respectable streets of Crawford Park to the very mildly edgy vibe of the Avenues. Some would say Nuns’ Island is nicer, but it has crime, too. Crime’s everywhere, it’s just that poor people’s crime has a different kind of visibility.
steph
Anytime I hear about stabbings around Montreal, I knee-jerk the thought of some dumb 20yr old not only owing his drug dealer some money, but mouthing off that he’s tough and won’t pay. More and more older ‘adults’ still live like dumb 20 year old. It’s usually very cliché.
Raymond Lutz 21:31 on 2021-02-01 Permalink
Who needs newsrooms and reporters when everybody is now a “content creator”? To stay informed I just take a look at my FB page, Youtube front page or Meteomedia to know what is trending, simple.
mare 01:32 on 2021-02-02 Permalink
#BellStopTalking
Meezly 10:44 on 2021-02-02 Permalink
I hope there is still work for good journalists out there.
Timing is interesting for Bell Media who’s getting blasted by TekSavvy and MPs this week for taking $122 m from the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy during the pandemic while STILL boosting dividend payouts to shareholders and laying off salaried employees, which they weren’t supposed to do.
AND despite posting strong financial results, Bell also cut rural network investment to the inordinate number of customer complaints it receives, among other things.
It’s great they are taking heat, but do the feds have the power to do anything about this monopoly’s greedy business practices and misspending gov’t subsidies?