Ramadan begins this Tuesday. CTV looks at how traditional practices will have to adapt to the curfew.
Eater has some notes on Ramadan takeout options.
Updates from April, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Tent cities are reappearing around town with the milder weather and the difficulty of finding proper places to live.
Bill Binns
Strange how the tight rental market only seems to affect men.
Kate
Women have been mentioned in previous reports about tent cities and homelessless, so there are women involved as well, although I will agree it seems to be well below 50%.
There are a lot of intersecting reasons women are less prevalent, I think. For a lot of reasons, in general, women are less keen on camping and “roughing it” and we’re less likely to have done jobs in remote places or acquired the necessary camping skills from our dads.
Also, for good or bad, men are less likely to be able to exchange physical favours for a place to live.
Myles
Women are also socialised to be better on average at maintaining the social connections that help keep people off the street. Rigid gender roles can hurt men too.
Kate
There’s something to that, Myles. I agree.
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Kate
Police have still not spoken on the cause of death of the second Innu to die on our streets this year. Whether the death of Brian Vollant last Sunday was a homicide is yet to be made clear.
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Kate
La Presse tells a story I’d never heard of, of a young Montreal army guy from the 22e who was sent to the royal family to tutor Prince Charles in French for a summer. But Philippe Teisceira-Lessard is incorrect in saying that because of Prince Philip’s death “Charles se rapproche un peu plus du trône britannique.” He doesn’t. There’s only one death that will reduce Charles’ distance from the throne, and it’s not his father’s.
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Kate
I was reading a media site unrelated to Montreal when I spotted this, although it switched to something else before I could click through. Obviously it was delivered via Google ads to some cookie on my browser, but it strikes me that this is going to be one long, relentless election campaign.
It’s very clear to me, doing this blog, that the Coderre team is not going to pull any punches. Anything that can be blamed on Valérie Plante and Projet will be, even when it’s things that nobody could have helped, like budgetary constraints from the pandemic, or things from other levels of government, like driving difficulties caused by Quebec’s construction sites. The Coderre team will be watching for any dissatisfactions mentioned on social media, and exploiting them. They won’t care if something is a fair criticism or not: they just want to claw their way back in.
It’s going to get nasty.
Kevin
That ad is from a “group” called Relancer Montreal, which was called Reunifier Montreal when it launched last summer.
This entity could be just one man, Nicolas Poirier, a marketing guy originally from France who doesn’t like what PM has done in his borough.
He hasn’t said who, if anyone, is paying him for this. If it is Coderre/Ensemble Montreal, I believe they’ll have to declare it to the Elections officials at some point.
But yeah, a lot of people don’t like Plante and probably an equal number of people dislike Coderre. I recommend ignoring any arguments on social media because the odds are some of the participants are being paid to take part.
Kate
the odds are some of the participants are being paid to take part.
I’ve suspected that for awhile, but have told myself not to be paranoid.
There are people who’ve been making inflammatory statements about Plante/Projet for a long time, but if you ask them why they think that, if you even get a reply, you can see that they actually don’t know. So maybe they’re having fun with pretending to be outraged, maybe they’re not very bright, but I wonder, I do.
A lot of the time the riposte will be something implying you’re stupid if you don’t agree with them, etc.
dhomas
I don’t like to drive traffic to sites I’m not sure I support, but if anyone wants to visit the site, this appears to be it:
www (dot) relancer – montreal (dot) org
Kate
This Brian Myles editorial about the need to revive downtown Montreal mentions something called Relançons MTL, a Chamber of Commerce site, but I don’t think they’re connected. The URL that dhomas mentions is registered with Gandi, which hints it may be connected to the French person mentioned by Kevin, as many more Euro sites than North American ones use that registrar.
Kevin
Dhomas
That’s the site. Also a FB page.Kate
The paid activity has been fairly well documented concerning other issues for several years. I found it kind of amazing how, 5-6 years ago, how it only took 1-2 links to go from just about every pro-Trump social media post to a Russian propaganda site.Those people are still at it, and joined by agents from other countries, working on different topics.
Craig Silverman is good at tracking and explaining this.
CE
Ever since I worked a job where part of what I did was pad online reviews of the company I worked for, I’ve taken most of what I see online with a grain of salt. For example, the company had about 8 Reddit accounts which were very meticulously sustained so they would look legit. We’d write reviews for competitors’ products under the names while also making sure sure we sprinkled in a few good reviews of our own products. We maintained Facebook groups which just fed links to news articles related to the company’s market every couple days to the members just to create pools of people to advertise to. And this was a company with just a couple people on staff. I can only imagine how much internet activity is fueled by bigger companies/organizations/governments with deep pockets and large staffs with goals to be attained. I think all social media platforms have this going on, but imagine Twitter is the worst for it.
Kate
CE, is that what they call a “social media strategy”?
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Kate
The journalist and chronicler of celebrity Michel Girouard has died at 76. As an anglo I knew the name and vaguely what he did, but it’s not a death that will be widely reported on the anglo side.
ProposMontreal-Martin
I used to see him all the time with his poodle. He lived in la Cité
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Kate
Pointe Claire wants to fix up the windmill that it has made into its logo and identity, but it doesn’t own the structure or the land it sits on, which belong to the Catholics. Neither item explains why the church is being so obstructive, so you wonder how large a bribe they’re asking for.
steph
they only ask for a ‘donation’.
Bill Binns
I love that what remains of the Catholic Church in Quebec is basically a real estate investment trust with a sideline in running tourist attractions.
walkerp
Don’t forget the legal arm, where they spend their rental income defending pedophiles and serial sex offenders.
Kate
Bill Binns, that’s a perfect and accurate characterization.
qatzelok
If the Catholic church didn’t own this piece of land, there would probably be McMansions on it by now,
since privately-owned waterfront land has been ravaged by single-family car-dependent housing everywhere else in the West Island.And yes, the tourist industry appreciates these waterside vistas. That’s why they don’t go to the West Island.
PO
qatzelok, did you know that optometrists are perfectly capable of offering you glasses without a shit-colored tint?
Max
LOL. But yeah, the incessant downerism is tiring.
Little known fact about Pointe-Claire: The town has ambitions on turning their Lac St. Louis waterfront into parkland. During the ten or so years I lived there the town picked up a half-dozen waterfront homes and demolished them in favour of pocket parks. All older homes, no McMansions bit the dust.
At that rate it’ll be 1000 years before they catch up to Lachine and Lasalle, but they are at least trying. If you’re ever in the market for 1.5 kids and asphalt-enough to park your two cars, Pointe-Claire’s about as good a spot as it gets on the West Island.
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Kate
A cyclist was badly hurt in a hit-and-run early Saturday morning in Cartierville.
Radio-Canada has a list of a lot of serious recent incidents involving cyclists and motorcycle drivers all over what it calls Greater Montreal, which stretches all the way to Sorel.
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