CTV is marking 25 years since the last hockey game at the Forum – and the ghosts still haven’t found a comfortable home at the Bell Centre.
Updates from March, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Not sure Le Devoir should’ve used the word éclosion in the headline for a piece about new local municipal parties, following from news earlier Thursday that Sue Montgomery was launching a party in her borough. This piece adds that a second mayor expelled from Projet, VSMPE’s Giuliana Fumagalli, has also started a party, this one to be called Quartiers Montréal.
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Kate
After Quebec held a ceremony Thursday to mark a year of pandemic losses, Valérie Plante led a moment at city hall, reminding us that Montreal was the epicentre of the hardest hit province. The city alone has lost 4,558 people to the virus, and the count ticks up every day.
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Kate
The city has high hopes for terrasses to lift our spirits through the summer, but is not bringing back the active mobility corridors.
Tim S.
It’s a mistake not to bring back the extra-wide pedestrian spaces. I really found them pleasant, even without taking into account social distancing. And while I’m reassured by the evidence that there’s less transmission danger outdoors, I don’t know why you’d want to tempt fate, or force people to stand close during a chance meeting.
Daniel
Can someone remind me of the difference between a pedestrianized street and an “active mobility corridor”? If it was in the article, I missed it.
Tim S.
The corridors are just putting down traffic cones or something to extend the sidewalk space into the street. See the picture here: https://montrealgazette.com/news/coronavirus-sanitary-corridor-opens-in-monkland-village
Kate
Daniel, as Tim S. indicates, they were temporarily widened sidewalks.
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Kate
The Village’s SDC wants to remove the word “gay” from the Village. It’s an attempt to make the area more inclusive. More on the arguments for and against this change.
ant6n
I’d say the “village” signals less that it is a LGBTQ-friendly area, compared to calling the “gay village”. As a historical term, most will understand that it doesn´t just refer to homosexual men, but the whole LGBTQ community. This inclusiveness could probably be communicated with other means.
Kate
Queer Village?
PO
The term “village” is usually already a pretty clear sign that the neighborhood is historically home to a large LGBT population – I’d argue this is the case worldwide or in most major cities. My vote (and tendency) is to call it “the Village”/”le Village”. It pays its respects to the history of the village and maybe the removal of “gay” suggests Montreal as a whole is welcoming to the LGBT population no matter which neighborhood. “Queer Village” is a big no for me.
Bill Binns
It would be more apt to call it “The Needle District” since that is what Projet has decided to create here. It’s not particularly gay anymore. I mean sure, you do occasionally see a man walking another man who is wearing a leather dog mask on a leash through the IGA but I’m sure that happens in most neighborhoods from time to time.
“The Village” is way too idyllic a name for a neighborhood that contains the horrors of Berri Square. Let’s not lead tourists astray.
Ephraim
BTW, they are also using the term 2SLGBTQ+ See https://ocpm.qc.ca/sites/ocpm.qc.ca/files/pdf/P109/7-53_sdc_du_village.pdf
Tee Owe
NYC have Greenwich Village and it has recognition value for whatever you want it to be – so why not something neutral like East Village/Village de l’Est?
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Kate
Workers at the Port of Montreal are preparing to strike on or after March 21, a deadline they agreed to last year. Loading and unloading would halt and there would be economic repercussions, but negotiations are continuing.
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Kate
Sue Montgomery has launched a new municipal party in Côte-des-Neiges-NDG. It’s not unusual to have borough-specific parties but I don’t believe CDN-NDG has had one before.
Ant6n
This sounds like it’s not a political party. A party itself must follow democratic principles, candidates must be selected by members. How will this work in this case? Parties must exist as long term political institutions, how will this work if it’s „Sues Party“.
Not dismissing her struggles with PM, but these one-off structures centered around a political candidate really need to go away.
Kate
Our municipal parties don’t tend to have the object persistence of federal or provincial ones. Look at recent Montreal history: the once dominant Civic Party is gone, the Montreal Citizens’ Movement is gone, Coalition Montreal rose and fell, Vrai Changement had a moment or two between 2013 and 2017 but doesn’t hold a single seat now, and then there are parties like the Lachine, Outremont and Anjou parties that restrict their interest to a single borough. There’s a list of defunct municipal parties on this Wikipedia page.
Montgomery is laying the ground for a run for the mayoralty of CDN-NDG – she may or not not succeed in attracting others to run for council positions along with her. It’s not unusual for parties to form around a dominant figure, but then fizzle out when that figure dies or moves on.
ant6n
It’s not unusual. But it’s not democratic. Parties are in some sense set up to undermine democratic processes – so parties need to be set up according to democratic structures. One possible test is whether a party is set up to exist permanently (as opposed to being constructed for a one-off issue or a particular person) – but they don’t necessarily have to actually exist longterm, because they can still die quickly if not succesful.
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Kate
It’s strange to read that Queen Elizabeth’s death could have left Quebec in political and legal disarray, but the government has tabled a bill to tidy up some loose ends left by the René Lévesque administration in 1982.
Kevin
See my comment below about Levesque’s legislation being designed to be challenged.
Plamondon’s suggestion to remove the Lieutenant Governor is just as difficult as removing the Gov. General position or the Cdn. Senate.Everyone proposing otherwise either knows it’s impossible and is just saying it to get you angry, or they have no idea how the laws that govern our country work.
Education systems across the country should devote much more time to laws and the constitution and the Charter.
Kate
I agree with you there, Kevin. Americans at least get civics classes. Nobody taught me in school about the constitution, the charter, basics like how the feds, the province and the city divide up authority. A lot of folks don’t know or care about a lot of these things, and if they don’t, how can they even vote intelligently?
Ephraim Dickstein
@Kate – No one taught you in school how to budget, how to calculate the price per serving, how to save money, how to invest money, etc. There are a lot of things that our education system doesn’t teach.
The civics should be part of the Quebec History / Canadian History course. When I did Canadian history, we had to read the BNA act. But then they brought in Quebec History and well, it skips so much in favour of so little. I’m sometimes surprised they haven’t replaced Eric the Red with Jacques Cartier. And they never seem to bring up the religious discrimination that was the basis of Quebec. Do you see a single mention of Esther Brandeau in Quebec’s text book?
GC
I remember covering a bit of the constitution in Canadian history. Things like separation of powers, residual powers, etc. Definitely not a full class, but at least we touched on it. This was Ontario in the nineties, however, and not everyone gets the exact same education.
It’s true, though, that basic skills like budgeting are overlooked. Our family studies–or whatever it was called–class covered things like sewing and cooking, but not that… I feel like you can get by better in life not knowing how to sew but having some clue how to manage your savings.
Kevin
My oldest child is in grade 10. Her history classes and textbooks, in multiple grades, have spent 70% of the curriculum on life in Quebec between 1500 and 1760, and 20% on 1760 to 1867.
She did have a class this year or last with the rather silly name of Consumer Sciences that discussed all those household things, but it was a touch abstract.
Kate
Kevin, I think it has to be abstract. With classes on the practicalities of life, if you get more specific, sooner or later you’re going to impinge on areas some people feel should be taught by the parents, not by the school.
Ephraim
It’s sometimes as simple as mathematics… Basmati Rice Cups are $2.50 for 4. Each is a serving of 125g of prepared rice. How much would the raw rice needed to prepare one serving be, if raw Basmati rice was $7 for 3.62kg. Where 40g of raw rice makes 100g of prepared rice. And how much would you save per serving.
So that’s 50g of raw rice to make 125g of prepared rice and 9.66c of rice per serving versus 62.5c per serving of prepared rice. Saving 52.84c per serving.
The same goes for something like Laundry Detergent. They are sold in containers of 96, 48 and 24 loads with a price of $19, 13 and $7 respectively, calculate the cost per load. You are offered a bucket of laundry detergent delivered from a warehouse store for $90 that offers 1100 loads. Which should you buy? (BTW… I use the bucket at just 8.1c per load.)
And how about calculating how much you need to save for retirement? Most schools don’t teach that, but yet if you start doing it with the first year of your first job, you will save more in the first 10 years than you can ever catch up with later in life. When I taught, I also had students calculate the cost of a pack a day cigarette habit and a high street coffee per day too. It’s stuff people really need to know.
Kate
Ephraim, you make a good point about buying in bulk, but don’t forget, three big factors influence this:
– having the money up front for the larger purchase
– having the means to transport larger quantities
– having room to store things – especially food – safely.Not everyone has all three. I’ve come up against these limits myself over the last year, not wanting to keep popping out to shop, but hauling 20 lb. bags of things like rice or cat kibble gets pretty old on foot or by bus.
CE
I didn’t have any classes growing up that taught me how to budget or spend my money intelligently but I had Street Cents on the CBC every Monday afternoon which taught me a lot of the stuff we’re talking about here. It’s too bad my generation had to rely on a TV show to teach us such basic and important aspects of living in the modern world.
David Senik
I LOVED Street Cents as a kid, though I watched on Saturday mornings.
Ephraim
Kate – That’s a different concern. The point is that people have to learn HOW to do that and WHY, it’s a choice and choices need a reasoning. I’m going to the be the last person to tell you not to go to Tim Horton’s or Thai Express, my retirement depends on it. But it’s not just food… do you put away $5000 in cash in an account that get 0.5% interest per year or do you buy bank stocks that have a 4% dividend. How would that look at retirement? Do you pay off your credit card or run up the debt? What does the effect of 19.99% interest look like? How much does that jacket cost? Seriously, so many people don’t understand this…. I had a friend who was convinced by a car salesman that it was cheaper to own a new car than to simply buy out the car at the end of the lease and drive it until death! I had to go through the numbers with her and show her the savings.
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Kate
Dr Mylène Drouin says there’s not going to be a return to normal in Montreal before September, ruling out crowded festivals this summer.
A headline in the Journal saying that Montreal is at risk of becoming ordinary caught my eye. But then I thought, hmm, this is the Journal. Can I hazard a bet on what “ordinary” means? Yes. Ordinary means some people speaking English. By that argument, if language makes a place interesting, we should all be speaking Mohawk or Anishinaabe.
DeWolf
If things are back to “normal” by September I would be ecstatic. I really hope that’s the case. For the time being, if we can have a summer that resembles the last one, that wouldn’t be so bad. Especially since this year the bulk of the population will have received their first dose by the time the hot weather sets in.
Meezly
I guess false equivalence pieces are allowed to be published in the Journal because it’s an opinion piece?
First, I understand his concern that in a bilingual city, there is a stronger need to protect French as the trend would be to default to English due to business, tourism, etc.
But what does bilingualism have to do with citizens being priced out of city neighbourhoods and the continuing middle class urban exodus?
So our abandoned, overpriced neighbourhoods makes Montreal ordinary because every other North American neighbourhood is experiencing similar issues, so his argument is that it must be that the English language is to blame?
MarcG
Last summer was hellish. All of the normally peaceful outdoor places were filled with noisy people who would normally be in bars, malls, etc.
DeWolf
Last summer I remember kids playing in the middle of my street, people having picnics, more families on bikes than I’ve ever seen, pedestrian streets, extra-big terrasses with seating that spilled out of their little wood enclosures. I thought it was nice. But then again I’ve never expected to find peace and quiet in the middle of a big city.
MarcG
There’s a path down by the river near where I live that went from nice wild area where you might see some ducks, dogwalkers, a jogger… to big piles of garbage, crowds of people with boomboxes, wooded areas filled with used toilet paper…
Kate
I went for one walk in Jarry Park last spring on a nice afternoon and it was packed with people. After that I stuck to quieter side streets.
In the news, but outside the usual remit of the blog, is that beaches in the Gaspé were severely damaged by what CTV calls delinquent tourists who camped in non-camping areas and left a lot of mess behind. Communities there are trying to figure out how to control a similar situation this summer.
Uatu
Delinquent tourists aka assholes
MarcG
Sounds like my nature path and the Gaspé got the same treatment from the same sorts of people.
steph
Many people did the local Canadian vacation. We’d have gone elsewhere to be asshole tourists if we could have.
Joey
@Kate did you come across anything in the last year suggesting that the many, many gatherings in the city’s large parks led to any kind of COVID outbreak? Seems to me we should know whether or not that kind of socializing is safe or not, since it’s basically inevitable and probably just around the corner…
Joey
Keep in mind that in all of Quebec we had an average of 113 new cases per day last July and August. Let’s say half of the province’s cases happen in Montreal – with better social distancing and mask-wearing habits, you might expect the numbers to be even lower this coming summer (unless one of the more contagious variants takes over, which doesn’t seem to be the case yet, and conditions at end of winter are better for that to happen than in summer). So may 50 new cases a day in the city? Then again, maybe a lot less – by summer we’ll have fully vaccinated almost all the at-risk populations and partially vaccinated of the ‘general’ population… and the vaccine seems to reduce both infection and transmission. So, what, 20 new cases a day? All this to say, if we see fewer crowds in parks it will likely be because things are moving along so well that we can re-open restaurants, bars and venues. Lots of things could impede the progress we’re seeing, inclduing vaccine rollout hiccups, variants and aggressive deconfinement measures. But, all things considered, I am much more optimistic about enjoying the upcoming summer than I was a year ago…
Raymond Lutz
We know since long ago that covid is an indoor desease. From https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-summer-of-covid-19-taught-scientists-about-indoor-vs-outdoor-transmission/ :
“if there is one thing we can definitively state, it’s that this virus is much, less likely to spread outdoors than in. For example, in a study of 7,324 Chinese case reports, only two could be linked to outdoor settings. A database of more than 20,000 cases found 461 that were associated with transmission in completely outdoor environments — predominantly crowded events like markets and rallies.”
Also: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/outdoor-schools-coronavirus/614680/
MarcG
461 out of 20,000 is 2.3%, which as of this moment is around 2,737,000 cases globally, 20,746 in Canada, 6785 in Quebec, and 2536 in Montreal.
Raymond Lutz
“predominantly crowded events”: sure, if you’re shoulder to shoulder, that doesn’t help…
Outdoor + 2m + turbulent airflow = OK;
Indoor + 2m + laminar airflow = not OK;eg: Evidence of Long-Distance Transmission (6.5 m!) Direct Air Flow in a Restaurant in Korea
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Kate
When gyms reopen in Montreal, only three of its YMCAs will revive as fitness centres. Even the NDG Y, which made a deal with the borough to stay open, is hedging.
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Kate
La Presse describes the moves Denis Coderre is making preparatory to an attempt to retake city hall this November.
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Kate
Marking a year since the official declaration of a worldwide pandemic, there’s to be a minute of silence Thursday at 1 pm in honour of the more than 10,000 Quebecers who have died of Covid so far. Church bells will ring, the metro will stop for a minute, and there will be a ceremony at the National Assembly.
Jonathan Montpetit examines how François Legault has escaped blame and sustains his popularity rating after the heaviest provincial Covid death toll in Canada.
La Presse remembers thirty of the early Covid victims from a range of ages and backgrounds.
Bill Binns 12:25 on 2021-03-12 Permalink
I think that the Forum being one of the holiest sites in the hockey religion is the only thing keeping the wrecking ball away. They never recovered after Future Shop left. If the cinema doesn’t survive Covid it’s difficult to imagine the building remaining open.
They will let the building sit empty and deteriorate for 10-15 years, announce the building is beyond repair and or unsafe and proceed to build a 20 story condo tower with a brass plaque tucked away somewhere indicating this was the site of the forum.
Kate 14:08 on 2021-03-12 Permalink
The Forum stood empty and decrepit for some years after the team left, I remember that well. The state it’s in now was somewhat rescued from being a hulk with no reason to exist. I’ve ranted on before about how it’s one of the ugliest buildings in the city (tied with Place Bonaventure and the Cégep du Vieux-Montréal on Ontario Street), so I’ll spare you the rant, but the building really has no redeeming features and I look forward to seeing it replaced eventually.