Three hundred and fifty pharmacies in Montreal will be able to start giving Covid vaccinations in a couple of weeks, while Quebec prepares to give in‑home vaccinations to people who can’t get out easily.
Updates from March, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Two men climbed up part of the Olympic stadium – not the mast itself – to snowboard down on the weekend. CTV says the act was illegal but not under what law, which I presume would be trespassing? Nobody got hurt and nobody’s been charged.
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Kate
The SPVM is putting up a command post and going door to door in Verdun in an attempt to find witnesses or collect information in the murder of a man found dead in an alley near the Verdun General a month ago.
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Kate
A year ago, with some irony, a man in his 70s was being re-tested for his driver’s licence after losing it for medical reasons. At a train crossing on Gouin Boulevard he drove onto the track past the barrier, and got himself killed and the SAAQ tester injured when the St-Jérôme train went through.
A report is in on the incident, basically saying what was obvious: there were too many distractions – train signals, heavy snow falling, people gesturing outside the vehicle, the tester giving directions, all at the same time.
They don’t say how that poor SAAQ guy is doing now. The account on the radio was terse but suggested he got pretty badly mangled.
Bill Binns
The SAAQ guy will be a legend. I see him teaching classes at the driving inspector academy wearing an eye patch and heavily leaning on cane. This guy has seen things. He knows how bad it can get out there on the streets.
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Kate
Hate crimes against Asians reported to the SPVM are way up since Covid. Sadly, this is not unusual, similar stories being reported from other cities in North America and Europe.
Here, even some Inuit have experienced anti-Asian gestures, and one of the earliest attacks reported here was against a Korean academic who’d come here to do some research at Concordia.
Meezly
Anti-Asian racism attacks have been higher per capita in Canada than the US, but the level of violence has been more extreme in the US. There has been a spate of recent violent attacks against elderly Asians in the US, which has rattled many of my Asian-American colleagues. Face slashing, beatings and knocking old people down simply just for walking on the street.
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Kate
TVA claims that the first day of public vaccination was chaotic, but at least partly because many people showed up hours in advance of their appointment times. CBC is a little more sanguine.
dhomas
The information I received after reserving for my parents clearly states “don’t show up until 5 minutes prior to your appointment”. People are not following the guidelines. Or maybe that line was added in response to the situation yesterday?
Kate
It might also be that some people are brought to the sites by family members who may have other things to do, and aren’t entirely free to ferry their relatives around at specific times.
jeather
No, the line was there before the vaccinations opened, and indeed was there last fall for the flu shot. I think this is just first day kinks being worked out.
Joey
FWIW, after the announcement yesterday morning expanding the campaign to those 70+, my parents booked appointments at Palais des Congrès for 5:30. They arrived 15 minute early and were vaccinated before their scheduled appointment time. Couldn’t have gone better.
Daisy
As someone who gets around using public transportation, I often show up early for things because I leave far enough in advance that I don’t arrive late even if there are delays in the metro. I wonder if they have said to people making appointments whether it is okay to arrive late for one’s appointment. If I was confident enough that it would not be a problem for me to arrive late, that I would not miss my appointment, I might not need to leave so much extra wiggle room in my journey.
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Kate
Authorities have seized $6 million from Yanai Elbaz, who was convicted of various bribery-related crimes in connection with the construction of the MUHC hospital, but a lot more public money is gone where it can’t be recovered.
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Kate
The Royalmount project has been delayed a year, and the number of condos adjusted downward. The developers sound quite proud that they’ve managed to exclude social housing completely. The prospect of a 10,000-sq-ft Louis Vuitton boutique doesn’t really lift my spirits, you know?
DeWolf
Interesting bit from the article: as the project stands, TMR has complete control, but if a residential component were added, it would require a zoning change and then the agglomeration (ie Montreal) will get involved. Since housing is where the money’s at, Carbonleo will no doubt be pushing hard for the rezoning. That may finally give Montreal a chance to mitigate the worst aspects of this project, namely its promise to dump a huge amount of extra car traffic onto already saturated roads.
orr
I went past the site every day until the lockdown last year as old things were torn down and the space opened up.
I wonder what alternatives to the carbonleo plans your blog readers would suggest is optimal to build in that space?
I vote for rewilding of the site to create an urban green space.Kate
I’d love to see an experiment in building a real, viable neighbourhood, with some pedestrian streets, mixed architectural styles, some small storefronts intended for independent businesses and cafés, things like a school, a library and a clinic, a reliable bus route, a park, but it’ll never happen because it’s not profitable enough. Everyone loves streets like Mont‑Royal and Masson, St‑Viateur and Bernard and Wellington, but that’s partly because they’re like the rhinoceros, they’re the last of their kind, we can’t build any more of them.
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Kate
Only five years after a coroner’s recommendation, the STM is installing a defibrillator in each metro station.
Blork 16:34 on 2021-03-03 Permalink
The pharmacy idea sounds good on the surface, but how are they going to manage that? Look at the lineups reported the other day at Decarie Square and other places (caused, AFAIK, by people showing up too early for their appointments).
No pharmacy I’ve ever been in has room for more than six or seven people to wait for service. Given people would have to wait for their turn, then wait another 15 minutes to make sure there is no anaphylaxis (that’s the protocol AFAIK), how will they manage that and still keep some semblance of social distancing and running a pharmacy as well?
Bill Binns 17:53 on 2021-03-03 Permalink
I think the lines will calm down fairly quickly. We are seeing the eager beavers out there who just had to get it on the FIRST DAY so they can be FIRST. The majority of people will go when it becomes easy or when they are told. I’m sure at the end there will be another group that has to have nets thrown over them and have a needle forcibly jammed into their neck in the middle of the street.
dmdiem 18:32 on 2021-03-03 Permalink
If 350 pharmacies gave out one dose of the vaccine to one person every 15 minutes, 8 hours a day, the entire population could be vaccinated in about five and half months. That’s an oversimplification, of course, but the point is that the sheer number of pharmacies available could easily diffuse the crowds away from the central distribution hubs currently set up. At least enough to make lineups everywhere minimal.
Tim S. 18:56 on 2021-03-03 Permalink
We got the flu shot at our local hole-in-the-wall pharmacy, and it was fine. They scheduled 1 person every 10-15 minutes, the shot took 30 seconds, 15 minutes to wait in the corner, served regular clients in the meantime, all very smooth. At one person at a time, even is someone shows up 10 minutes early it’s fine. And I doubt even a particularly anxious person would think to go 90 minutes early to a local pharmacy appointment.
JaneyB 19:11 on 2021-03-04 Permalink
The pharmacies work for the flu shots every year, they’re everywhere, and people can shop while they wait. It’s a good method. They should do it for more than 8 hours a day though; if they did it continually while open, 2.5 months for everyone done would be a very happy result!