The STM is studying the possibility of running bus rapid transit (SRB) on Henri-Bourassa, Côte-des-Neiges and Park Avenue, but these are only twinkles in their eyes for the moment.
Updates from March, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
An act of explicit anti-Asian racism was caught on video in the metro and circulated on TikTok and Twitter on Sunday night. “On va se battre contre vous autres les criss de Chinois” says the assailant.
The universality of face masks might be making it easier for subhumans to express their hateful statements. You can’t see anything of this assailant’s face to identify him by.
Update: La Presse talked to the woman who was the object of the man’s outburst.
Bill Binns
This guy sure does dress, walk, talk and act like one of the sainted, marginalized and victimized folks currently experiencing homelessness that tend to stumble around the metro.
I was all for the open trains where people can easily move from one car to another but it sure makes incidents like this a lot easier to pull off without getting caught.
Sprocket
My girlfriend is from Southeast Asia and has become hyper aware of this type of thing. If I was present and some sort of anti Asian stupidity were to happen… She knows I would have her back and hand his ass to him on a plate.
walkerp
These racists always pick times when they know they are not going to be threatened themselves in any way. It’s the coward’s instinct. I’m with you Sprocket. One good beat down would teach that guy a good lesson in anti-racism.
Mark
Using violence to confront this type of behavior might strengthen the racist’s resolve and sense of victimhood. Stepping in and physically placing yourself between the attacker and the person being verbally assaulted is usually a good approach, as long as the person doesn’t have a weapon. By doing this, you make sure the person is safe and you’re sending a message. Obviously, if they attack you, then, by all means, defend yourself.
This guy did pick a very strategic time for his tirade, as he left when the doors opened, so I don’t even know if people had enough time to react, step in and confront him, unless we don’t see the whole video.
The racist acts like this for many reasons: 1) they are scum 2) they are afraid (lost their job, divorce) 3) they are a victim of abuse themselves 4) combination of all of the above. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to “teach him a lesson”, but perpetuating violence will only make the climate tenser.
Sprocket
@Walkerp I am not advocating violence. Just that if a situation were transpire I would step in. At 6’3″ I can intimidate these cowards without needing to raise my voice.
@Mark. I think you are being a bit too sensitive. Many have been divorced and/or lost jobs over time. I have had both situations. While they are life changing events; they don’t turn you into a jackass.
I would imagine the preexisting jackass that was already there.
‐————————————————-She was also racially discriminated against at a fast food place in northern QC because they for some reason thought she was Inuit. But that is a story for another time. How a redneck is rude to someone from Laos and then goes on to deny service because they think she is indigenous beggars belief.
Uatu
Hey, I thought we were one of “the least racist places on earth”….. hahaha. I’m Asian and this shit has been going on way before covid hit. It’s just now there’s an anger and frustration that enables these guys. When covid ends it’ll be there, back underneath all the smiles and platitudes of inclusion
Chris
>Hey, I thought we were one of “the least racist places on earth”
That’s probably a reference to my previous comment. I never said we have zero racism here. We have plenty. That’s not a contradiction with being one of the least racist countries. You realize that:
“least” is a comparative, it does not necessarily mean absolute numbers are low, it means few compared to others.
such things are properly studied by academics and pollsters. See for example:If you have contradictory evidence, please do share.
Uatu
Well I guess according to the article we are pretty tolerant. I’m probably cranky because I’ve been on the receiving end of racist cracks my entire life (from people of color and white as well) and it isn’t some abstract data expressed as a color on a map for me.
Chris
Uatu, sorry to hear that. There’s no contradiction there either I’m afraid. The general does not always apply to the specific. So we could have low racism in aggregate but of course specific individuals may have experienced more than average.
Daniel
Chris, you’ve hit peak white mansplainer. Please just sit down and listen.
Chris
Daniel, who says I’m white? or a man? You’re just using a fancy ad hominem now. How about you retort my points instead of attacking whatever kind of person you imagine me to be. I also have the feeling that you are misinterpreting my tone, which is of course an endemic problem on the internet. Please try to apply the
principle of most charitable interpretation.MarcG
Chris, when you said “There’s no contradiction there either I’m afraid” you were assuming Uatu was trying to contradict you rather than simply share their experience. Apply the principle yourself.
EmilyG
I don’t think there’s less racism here than in other places (“here” being not just Montreal, or Quebec, but all of Canada.) It seems that in Canada, we like to be nice and polite and pretend that the problems in this country aren’t “as bad as other places.” In reality, I think people pretending that these problems don’t exist, or aren’t bad, doesn’t actually make it so, and the reluctance to admit that there is a lot of racism in Canada doesn’t help to make society less racist.
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Kate
Last week it seemed school kids around Quebec were given masks that were potentially toxic, and now it seems STM workers have also received these masks, which contain “nanoform graphene materials” which present an “‘unacceptable’ risk of toxicity to the lungs” according to Health Canada.
Quebec is also backing off administering the AstraZeneca vaccine to people under 55.
I have a feeling that this pandemic is going to spawn a hell of a lot of class action suits, which will go on for years.
Nick
COVID-19 vaccine makers are not legally liable. I think the government has to pay out whenever there are serious side effects or worse.
walkerp
This is what happens when policy is dictated by companies wanting to get the pork bids. The new mask policy for elementary schools was good, but super suspect when it also mandated that the kids could not bring their own home made masks and that the ones provided by the school would be thrown away at the end of the day. For sure somebody got a huge contract and you have to ask which came first, the contract or the health concerns.
qatzelok
So the Astra-Zeneca vaccine is *fine* for people over 55 because…. these people are disposable anyways?
Blood clotting is something that affects seniors more than anyone, so I don’t get why this is *fine*.
And I also find it very creepy that Ottawa has signed onto “no liability” contracts for these faceless multinationals.
Pfizer Infra.
jeather
It appears that the blood clotting issue is mostly related to women of child-bearing years, not anyone under 55. So it probably should be allowed for men under 55, as well as adults over 55. But this is based on skimming some of the stuff, I’m not sure there’s really enough data to know. It does also appear to be a different clotting issue than the age related clotting issues seniors have. And of course, it’s very, very rare, certainly more rare than deaths from Covid.
No home-made masks is one thing, but “two masks per kid per day, including before/after school programs and gym class, if you break it we will tape it up because the government doesn’t provide spares” is not good.
Tee Owe
Jeather – I was with you yesterday, today I learned new facts – hard to share because I can’t post a link and the link anyway is to a rolling blog on the Guardian website – here’s what I read –
Germany’s vaccine regulator has said it has recorded 31 cases of a rare blood clot in the brain, nine of which resulted in deaths, after people received a Covid vaccine from AstraZeneca.
The Paul Ehrlich Institute said it has now registered 31 cases of clots in the cerebral veins – known as sinus vein thrombosis, or CSVT – and that in 19 of these there was a deficiency of blood platelets or thrombocytepenia, Reuters reports. In nine cases, the affected people died. With the exception of two cases, all reports concerned women between the ages of 20 and 63. The two men were 36 and 57 years old.The point is, this is no longer the handful of cases it used to be, and if you can dig into the numbers (I don’t know how) then these incidences are a percentage of an age group, mostly women, and only those getting that vaccine so maybe not so rare as I used to think. Maybe it’s OK to be careful
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Kate
TVA quotes Denis Coderre: «Les gens ont besoin d’espoir, ont besoin de fun». Someone’s got to be feeding him lines about how the Roaring Twenties followed the Spanish flu.
JoeNotCharles
We can make our own fun, thanks. We need the government to take care of the boring day-to-day responsible stuff.
qatzelok
By branding himself as “fun,” is he saying that Valérie Plante has been nothing but pandemics and climate disruption?
(I wish Mario had asked him if he had plans to sell more public parks to *Evenko Infra*)
Bill Binns
Ugh – Madame Land Acknowledgment on one side and Mr Bread and Circuses on the other. Can we not have a choice somewhere in the vicinity of the middle?
Ant6n
Surprise: If you reduce them to caricatures there’s no middle.
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Kate
The death happened in an Ontario hospital, but the victim is from Pointe-Claire and the accused, a doctor, lives in DDO and trained at McGill. Police in Ontario are looking into whether other deaths at the Hawkesbury hospital may also have been homicides.
dwgs
Mercy killing?
Max
This article says it’s something Covid-related. And that the doctor’s had a run in with the authorities before.
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Kate
Le Devoir looks back at the notable moments in Denis Coderre’s time as mayor. Let’s not forget how he ordered the bugging of Patrick Lagacé’s phone in displeasure at some of the journalist’s revelations.
Su
The article describes a mayor branded as a quirky, bumbling entertainer but is in fact an autocrat. Brings to mind a similar chap who was once the harmless clownlike mayor of London England.
Marco
They kind of gloss over the formula E fiasco. Yes, it contributed to the deficit because the City of Montreal lost over $60 million from hosting the race. Coderre knew it was a disaster and he tried to hide the costs. Oh, and who can forget his $3.5 million granite stumps on Mount Royal. I think of him whenever I sit next to them. Actually, I think of what I could have done with $3.5 million as a sit down on a broken park bench.
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Kate
Workers at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges have voted for strike days, management saying it’s too broke to make them a better offer. When Notre-Dame – also owned by the Sulpicians – sacked people because of the steep fall in tourism revenue, the claim had some credibility, but people are still dying, if anything at a slightly accelerated rate.
The cemetery workers complain that the Sulpicians will not let them examine the books to confirm that their claim of being hard up is true. That’s pretty much all you need to know about this story.
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Kate
High school kids are theoretically back to school in person full time Monday, even though risk is still high, and while older people are better protected now than in the first wave, younger people are still getting sick. Some parents and experts are not happy about the students going back, nor are the students themselves.
The Tyee has a good piece by Andrew Nikiforuk, We could have been largely free of the pandemic by now, in which he blames politicians for dithering. A must-read.
Kevin
High schools are allowed to have the kids back, but it’s not required. I suspect most will only let the grade 9 students come back because their chairs and desks are still in the classrooms.
I doubt grade 10 or 11 will come back at all this school year, and I think my oldest has a 50-50 chance of starting next year in the classroom full time.
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Kate
Various items talk about two new players for the Canadiens before the trade deadline: Cole Caufield – who looks about 12 years old in that photo – and centre Eric Staal, who at 36 must be among the oldest of the pack.
Update: I’m told “Caulfield was a signing of a player they drafted so not a trade.”
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Kate
Sylvain Ouellet, Projet councillor for St-Michel, takes his turn at dissecting Denis Coderre’s book. It’s worth persisting with any annoyances from Facebook to read this piece, because Ouellet notes some odd signs of group writing or careless editing: sections of text repeated in several places, but also outright contradictions, such as praising the René-Lévesque REM in one section, then suggesting elsewhere that the elevated train should run along de la Commune.
Read that again: Coderre wants the REM to run right through Old Montreal, while talking up heritage on other pages!
Ouellet also notices in Coderre a lack of interest in the texture of daily life in Montreal – we knew that, but Coderre doesn’t even think he has to pretend any interest in nature parks or libraries. He really does just want to boost the city to a level where he can hobnob with celebrities. He always has and he always will.
Coderre’s expected to announce his candidacy Sunday evening, which probably means on TLMEP. The show was supposed to also have Geneviève Guilbault on, but she’s now in preventive isolation after her husband tested positive with Covid.
Update: Global simply says Coderre has already announced.
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Kate
The National Geographic has a current culinary guide to Montreal which, as we all know, is “wedged between the St Lawrence and the Prairies Rivers” – but it was clearly written up before the pandemic.
DeWolf
Funny how Back River is common, and people also say rivière des Prairies when speaking English, but Prairies River sounds ridiculous.
There’s an informal way of saying Montreal place names in English that has a real learning curve for any freshly arrived anglophone. A couple of years ago when an American friend visited he was amused to learn about the spectrum of names: there are those that are commonly translated (eg Park Avenue, Pine Avenue, Mountain Street), those that are usually said in an anglicized way (”Saint Catherine’, ‘Saint Urban’, ‘Saint Henry,’ ‘Gaai”) and some that are always said in the proper French way (Saint-Denis, Notre-Dame, Côte-des-Neiges, etc.). When it comes down to it, it all seems kind of arbitrary.
Ephraim
Well, some of those names actually used to be on the street signs. And there are a few that are sometimes used, though no longer on the signs, like Craig. And the Bank of Montreal head office is on St-James street. And there will always be a fight over Mountain/de la Montagne over if it was named after Jacob Mountain or Mount-Royal itself.
In the case of Guy, well, we really should pronounce it in French, since it is named after Étienne Guy (1774-1820).
Have you ever heard the francophone pronunciation of Maguire? (It’s in Mile-End)
Saint-Denis isn’t named after a saint, it’s named after Denis Viger, who Square Viger is also named, but Viger st. is named after Denis-Benjamin Viger, his son.
DeWolf
Yeah, how to pronounce English place names in French is a whole other thing. I live on Waverly and I’ve noticed that people who live in the neighbourhood tend to pronounce it the English way when speaking French (albeit with a French intonation), whereas people from outside the area (eg taxi drivers) say it as if it’s a French word.
GC
If I’m speaking French, I will say the French names in a French way–or at least as best as I can manage. In English, however, it is a real mixed bag. I will always say “Saint Laurent” for the street, but generally “Saint Lawrence” for the river…which is rather arbitrary. “Saint Denis” exclusively the French way–unless I’m giving directions to American tourists–but “Saint Catherine” almost always the English way…
Orr
When I was a young’un in the anglophone farm regions outside Montreal I’d hear the tv news talk about Pie-IX and it was a bit of a revelation find out what the words were and how it was actually spelled when I moved to Montreal and became bilingual. It still cracks me up, tbh..
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Kate
Le Devoir’s Zacharie Goudreault talks to various observers of the situation in the Mile End, with empty storefronts multiplying on its commercial streets. Among other threads, he touches on the Arts Café situation, saying that the owners told the newspaper this weekend that the café operator had not been able to pay rent for some time and so was told to clear out.
Goudreault also speaks to Danny Lavy, who pleads increased taxes as his reason for the brutal rent hikes that have emptied so many locations. But he also talks to Richard Ryan, who reminds him that city hall froze commercial taxes in the last budget. Lavy’s argument doesn’t hold.
Joey
It’s surprising that neither the Arts Cafe owners or the landlord considered the federal rent subsidy until now; the impression from the Eater story is that the real problem is a lack of communication between tenant and landlord that escalated past a point of no return.
As far as commercial taxes go, both sides may be right. It’s certainly possible that taxes have gone up a lot in recent years before being frozen/reduced in 2020. I’m not totally surprised the stories I’ve read about Welch haven’t bothered to check. If taxes went up say 30% in four years before they were frozen, both Lavy and Ryan would be “accurate.”
Meezly
Municipal taxes for building properties in the past 10 years are accessible to the public here: https://montreal.ca/en/how-to/consult-property-assessment-roll. It was proven that Lavy lied about the SW Welch building and Lavy probably didn’t realize those records are easy to look up. Same for the Arts Cafe – the taxes haven’t increased at all in the last decade. In fact, it has actually decreased.
Kate
Meezly! Thank you!
Joey
What? The roll says taxes for the Welch building were 21K in 2016 and 49K in 2020!
Taxes for the Arts Cafe building were flat (IOW a decline vs. inflation).
Ephraim
Generally space in buildings is rented Net, Net Net or Net Net Net. Net means the renter pays property tax. Net Net means the renter pays property tax and property insurance. Net Net Net means the renter pays property tax, property insurance and in Net Net Net, basically property tax, insurance and maintenance/repairs. Most commercial leases are Net Net, with the landlord responsible for the building. So even if the taxes for the Welch building increased, it wouldn’t really be a concern for the landlord.
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Kate
Joining streets that were pedestrianized last summer, like Mont-Royal, Wellington and segments of Ste‑Catherine Street, will be even more streets – parts of St‑Laurent Boulevard and Masson Street are mentioned, although Masson may depend on what can be done to stabilize the steeple of St‑Esprit church. How much of the Main will close, and for how long, is not clear. And there’s some division over how much of Ontario Street will be closed to traffic for the summer, too.
qatzelok
I’m not sure if merchants are aware of all the “potential-customers” that are being repelled by the car traffic they fight to preserve.
For example, I avoid Masson Street because the car traffic makes it unpleasant and constrained. The merchants only see *the drivers they could lose*, and not *the non-drivers they could win over*.
Phil M
But how much can you sell to the same few local customers over and over? Attracting more customers from further away helps businesses survive and grow.
Kate
It depends what you sell, Phil M. You can always sell food (groceries or prepared), domestic cleaning and maintenance supplies, coffee, magazines and books, wine and beer. People need those every week.
I need to find a reference to the study that showed that most people shopping along Mont-Royal live nearby and simply walk over to shop. When I was thinking about what to list, things people buy repeatedly and all the time, I only had to visualize the two commercial streets I go to most often: Jarry around the metro, and St-Laurent through Little Italy. While there are one or two clothing stores on both stretches, almost everything else is stuff people buy repeatedly and every week – in the case of bakeries and fruiteries, even more often.
Of course if you sell specialist items of any kind, yes, you’re going to be interested in attracting people from further afield because it’s a different slice of the demographic you’re after. But not all merchants have to think that way.
DeWolf
We’re talking about commercial streets in the densest parts of the city. There are 85,000 people who live within 2km of St-Denis/Mont-Royal – easy walking distance. If you expand that to 5km (about 20 minutes by bike or bus/metro) you’re capturing just under 500,000 people. That’s equivalent to the population of Laval and more than twice the population of the West Island.
There’s a reason that, even before the pandemic, less than 10% of Mont-Royal’s customers came by car, according to a survey by the SDC. And it’s a street filled with shoe stores, supermarkets, clothing boutiques, bookstores and other destination businesses. It also has the highest occupancy rate of any commercial strip in Montreal.
I don’t understand this double standard where people are happy to drive to a shopping mall and walk a few hundred metres to the shops they want to visit, but somehow when they go to Ontario Street or St-Laurent they must absolutely park right in front of the shop they’re visiting. As if that’s even possible given the limited number of parking spots on commercial streets and the fact that they’re usually full.
Kevin
It’s the ability to find parking and then to park the vehicle without complication, not the walk.
When I go to anywhere with a large lot I know I’ll be able to find a place with relative ease, even if I am hundreds of metres away from the building.It’s a different matter when trying to go to St. Denis or Mont Royal or whatever. On my motorcycle I can zip around and get into a spot on those streets or (95% of the time) on a side street. (I only need a metre-long space). In a car, if I don’t find a space on the street I’m doing to, I then start going around the block and then spiral further away while hoping not to run into a) a spot that is just not quite big enough, b) a spot that requires a parking permit, c) a road that I didn’t realize was under construction until I turned onto it, or d) a one-way driving trap that prevents me from getting back to where I wanted to be.
That’s why there are certain areas of town I just never go to unless I know that a store in the area carries something specific that I need/want, and I’ll try to hit multiple stores in one visit. If more of those destination stores close it gives me less reason to go there.
And by the same token, there are loads of stores in my neighbourhood that I frequently visit on foot. My wife and I walk to her favourite coffee shop every day. I pop into the local bookstores/music stores/ knick knackeries on a regular basis. But if I’m going to spend $300 on groceries or a crate of wine, or I need tools/materials, or winter coats/children’s clothes and the places in my hood don’t have what I like, I’m going to the place with easy parking instead of to a similar neighbourhood across town.
Francesco
I *had* to drive up St-Hubert the other day, and, notwithstanding the fact that I think the upgrades are a visual and sensory failure, I was downright shocked by how unpleasant it is made by all the parked (and double-parked) cars and trucks. You couldn’t pay me to shop there.
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Kate
La Presse looks at how a third municipal party very nearly came together then fell apart before the four principals could achieve any unity of action.
Criticism has been made of Plante and Projet for trying to enforce some kind of overall party discipline, but this story is a counterexample of how parties are not made. Parties at the federal and provincial level literally have an official called a whip who ensures that elected members toe the party line. Municipally, I don’t believe the same role exists, and it’s only peer pressure and the strength of character of the leader that binds people of varying opinions into something called a party – which is one reason municipal parties don’t last long, and often crumble once the initial, charismatic leadership is gone.
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Kate
Despite recent high-profile concern about stabbings and shootings, I’m struck how the only police blotter incident I find overnight on the weekend is an unspecified nonfatal attack on a guy in Hochelaga.
Spi 21:08 on 2021-03-29 Permalink
To be seen if it’s going to be a Pie-IX SRB or a Sauvé SRB.
DeWolf 11:56 on 2021-03-30 Permalink
Despite the branding, I wouldn’t consider Sauvé to be an SRB. There’s a dedicated reserved lane, but it can still be used by cars turning right, it’s still vulnerable to being blocked by delivery vehicles and illegally parked cars, and there hasn’t been any upgrade to bus shelters. Last time I was on Sauvé, there were lots of cars driving in the bus lane to get around traffic, which defeats the purpose of its existence.
Pie-IX is the way to go – it’s basically designed to offer the same user experience as a tramway, and buses don’t need to share space with other vehicles.