Shots were fired Tuesday afternoon in Little Italy but no victims have turned up.
Updates from April, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Police are in search of witnesses or tips in an assault in the metro in late January. They have security video of a suspect from various angles, but none of the incident, which happened aboard a blue line train in midafternoon and left the victim in bad shape.
Police are also trying to identify a man who attacked several people on different occasions in Lafontaine Park last month. In this case they have some pretty good photos of the guy. Update on this one: there was an arrest 3 days after the original news story.
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Kate
People 45 and over can get the AstraZeneca vaccine starting Wednesday.
jeather
As someone who misses the cutoff, I am disappointed — it seems like they chose 45 just to be different. (Their explanations for why 45 and not 40 were mostly word salad, with the “well the risk of blood clots vs getting covid”, which is going to rebound on them badly in a few weeks when they have to reduce the age limit. The probably correct answer of “we don’t want to overwhelm the vaccination centres so we will reduce it to 40 in 3 weeks” would have been the best one, but they are into lying for our own good.)
Tim
Here is a list of sites that will be open as of tomorrow for 45 and up: https://santemontreal.qc.ca/population/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccination/#c51696
jeather
Someone told me — I haven’t seen it validated — that they don’t have enough vaccines to do the 40-44 group, which would also have been a completely reasonable explanation to give for why 45.
Joey
There are 200,000 doses of AZ to administer and 800,000 people aged 45-55. Lowering to 40 (I wish!) seems like it couldn’t possibly work at this point. Let’s say 2/3 of all people want a vaccine but only half of those would accept AZ, that still leaves only 200K doses for 800K*2/3*1/2 = 266K people, not counting all those over 55 who are already eligible for AZ. Bref, if you want one, make an appointment at midnight (or whenever the system allows it; the minister was pretty unclear in his answer).
GC
Having only 200000 doses for 800000 people does seems like a reasonable reason to not lower the age more but, as jeather said, no reason to be opaque about that. (Full disclosure: I *did* make the cutoff, and could be biased…)
If the over 45s don’t snap those does up quickly enough, I’m sure the age will be lowered before long. When I was trying to make an appointment after ten last night, they kept getting taken before I could fill out the whole form online. Of course, I’ve heard that lots of the 55+ crowd were making appointments and not showing up for them, so I suppose that’s not a perfect indicator of how quickly they’ll be taken.
walkerp
They are going to be used up fast, is my layman’s prediction. 45 to 55 and you are moving into many parents of young children, people used to doing things on the internet and less exposed to misinformation. Also more mobile. And then any time you open it up to a new age group, you are going to get the keeners at first. It looks like I already missed my window for any appointments anywhere near me.
Can anybody roughly calculate how long the walk-ins will have vaccines? Is it worth it to go for an early line up tomorrow?
mare
@walkerp Anecdotal evidence, but the people at the Olympic Stadium told me there had been long lines all day but when I arrived at 19h00 there were only 35 people and I was in-and-out in an hour. That was on the first day of the 55+ cohort, when they still had to work out the kinks of the “no appointments necessary” vaccination routine. They’re probably even more efficient now.
From what I read in the media, the Olympic Stadium and Palais de congres are the busiest sites, maybe Vanier and other sites are faster.Maybe it’s different now, with a younger age group, I can’t tell you for sure.
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Kate
I’m seeing on Twitter that Bill 21 has been upheld with exceptions: anglo school boards, and members of the National Assembly.
Kevin
Attache ta tuque. A 250-page complex ruling on legislation that will be in courts forever because it invoked the notwithstanding clause, so every five years the provincial government has to pass it again.
Kate
The CAQ plans to appeal the exceptions to the Supreme Court. That judge’s Solomonic decision will please no one.
jeather
I continue to wait for reporters to ask if students have the right to care about their schools having secular names, but no one ever seems to.
Whatever the result was it was going to the Supreme Court.
steph
@ jeather, catholicism is non-secular. so check-mate.
jeather
Yes, it’s a part of Quebec’s cultural heritage, which is by definition secular because it happened in the past or something.
Jack
I think sadly this decision will be used to attack the English CEGEPs . Legault seemed plenty mad that his “valeurs” couldn’t be felt in the English School boards. He of all people understands ethnic politics in Quebec. I hope I am wrong but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the new legislation on language will be tougher based on this decision.
MSBlack
I would like to hear how anyone who supports Bill 21 has had their life improved since this legislation was passed.We have ample testimony concerning the lives adversely affected.
GC
Having a different rule for anglo boards just feels like another line in the sand saying that Quebec is made up of francophones and “others”.
Kate
I was pondering that, GC. See, the hijab is a threat to Quebec culture, but it isn’t a threat on the anglo side, because, as you know, anglos have no culture.
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Kate
I’ve been passing over a lot of the education stories, but this one about a school in Montreal with terrible air quality struck me, because I can remember getting sleepy every day in class, in the afternoons, for no good reason, and now I suspect it was not me, but the CO2.
Also, is there a Québécois thing about the dangerous effects of “courants d’air”? I hadn’t really thought of it as cultural, but when a couple of folks were discussing it from that angle on Twitter recently it came back to me how often I was not allowed to open windows at work (this back in the day when everyone smoked inside, too), and having one coworker loudly accuse me of having made her gravely ill by opening the window a little. I remember my folks talking anxiously about “drafts” in a similar way, but I don’t know anyone anglo in my generation who would prefer a stuffy room to having a window cracked open a little.
MattG
Hey Kate, ever hear of Fan Death?
Kate
Yes, I have a Korean acquaintance who clued me in about it. Although she didn’t believe in it herself, she said her mother did.
Nick D
I think you are right, but I’d noticed this in France and in French-French (the thing about “les courants d’air”, I mean). So maybe it’s a thing that’s in the language-using culture as a whole. (I seem to remember a line in the film Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain where the woman who runs the tabac in the café refers to the courants d’air). The other one I’d noticed in France is an obsession with “calcaire” in the water (i.e. hard water) and how terrible it is in all kinds of ways. There used to be ads on TV in France about this. I’ve not noticed this in Quebec culture though.
Raymond Lutz
Ben j’te dira que t’ce bord citte d’la solitude y a rien de spécial que j’me rappel l’adsus… La seule chose (incongrue?) que ma mère disait: “Mettez votre foulard ou sinon vous aller attraper froid” (catch a cold). Rien de spécial sur les courants d’air intérieur.
Kate
I’ll open this window and give you rheumatic fever, Raymond Lutz!
Raymond Lutz
J’ai mon foulard! For those interested à la fine pointe of current knowledge about mechanical ventilation in covid time, read Effects of building ventilation on SARS-CoV-2 transmission a keynote at the ASHRAE 2020 Virtual Conference.
TL;DR (en français, car repiqué d’un commentaire que j’ai fait à l’instant sur Radiocanne): on y apprend que ce n’est pas tant la concentration de C02 qui importe, mais la fraction réinhalée (quelle fraction de l’air que vous respirez contient de l’air exhalé par votre voisin). En temps de pandémie l’auteur recommande 1% max… Ce qui correspond à un apport continuel d’air frais de 10 litres/seconde par occupant adulte (la moitié pour les enfants?) je doute que ces seuils soient atteints, ni l’hiver ni l’été, because $$$
Daniel D
> … I can remember getting sleepy every day in class, in the afternoons, for no good reason, and now I suspect it was not me, but the CO2
When I took government run French lessons, they language school was based in an old school building on the Plateau which looked pretty much untouched since the days it really was a school.
I recall the air circulation was pretty much non-existant, and within 30 minutes the room was stuffy and I felt sleepy and sluggish. It sounds like it fits Kate’s experience.
In fact I did another course at UQAM, and those small lecture rooms have the same problem.
dhomas
Italians have something similar called “colpo d’aria”. This article sums it up pretty well (though I don’t know who would have been traveling to Italy last October):
https://www.thelocal.it/20201027/italian-expression-of-the-day-colpo-daria/I have to admit, I wear an undershirt (canottiera) to this day thanks to my Italian upbringing.
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Kate
The mayor made a 180 and agreed to name a walkway in the new UdeM campus after Camille Laurin, this after Rich*rd M*rtineau threw a tantrum about white men being slighted by her administration.
MattG
I really despise him. And I despise the fact that some close family members like him and respect his opinions. It makes for interesting Christmas dinners.
Marco
Oh good. Finally something in Montreal is named after an old white man.
Tee Owe
IMO most people described or categorized as ‘white’ are actually pink. Could provoke a re-alignmnent, maybe?
Kate
And people who are categorized as Black are really various shades of brown. It doesn’t get us anywhere, really.
qatzelok
No matter the color of his skin or his gender, Camille Laurin was the psychiatrist who invented Bill 101 – a hero and genius in a great number of people’s eyes.
Joey
Isabelle Hachey explains how Denise Bombarider et. al. made up the whole “Valerie Plante is too woke to name a street after a white man” in La Presse today: https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2021-04-21/camille-laurin-merite-mieux.php. The mayor’s office had nothing to do with the decision. The toponymy commission rejected it to avoid duplication, given the existing street in RDP (which Kate noted in her previous post). This is all invented BS and lies, and there will be no consequences for the “journalists” who purposefully misled their readers. Moreover, the idea that Valerie “REM station Griffintown-Bernard-Landry” Plante wouldn’t name something after a dead white QC nationalist is absurd.
Kate
Thank you, Joey!
Tee Owe
Sorry Kate I didn’t mean to be flip, I was trying to make a point, that ‘white’ is used kind of triumphantly by certain segments of the population, whereas black/brown/yellow are considered inferior, being ‘non-white’ – so if we were to re-classify ‘whites’ as ‘pinks’, maybe a lot of folk would be less vocal. I agree, it’s tortuous thinking but I wanted to explain myself.
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Kate
Quebec’s columnists each have a pair of texts roughed out, one of which will be completed and published depending how Tuesday’s ruling on Bill 21, the Loi sur la laïcité de l’État, comes down from Superior Court. Either it’s going to be a brave defense of Quebec values* or it’s going to be a brave defense of civil liberties, according to taste.
Earlier this month, Amnesty International criticized the law.
Jonathan Montpetit discusses the implications of the law.
*Quebec values since the Quiet Revolution, that is. Before that, religion had the upper hand in almost every area of life.
Meezly
Knowing how things go in this province, I’m going to agree with the experts that the fight will continue in the Supreme Court of Canada.
Kate
I don’t see how it could go any other way, Meezly.
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Kate
It’s undeniable: the Coderre party has a $400,000 debt to pay off before it can even start amassing a war chest for November.
CE
Knowing that, if I were in an industry where I would be giving services to a political party, I’d be hesitant to work for Ensemble unless I got some money up front. Might make it hard for them to find contractors.
ant6n
Once Coderre manages to raise all that money, he’ll be a real candidate for the little people /sarcam
James
Ensemble will need to find 2000 people to donate 200$ to just get back to 0$. Normally you can only donate only $100 per year but because it is an election year you can donate an extra $100. Candidates can contribute an extra $800.
For comparison, during 2019 Projet had 1483 individual donors who donated an average of $124 ($184k raised not including party memberships). Admittedly, this was a non-election year but I think Ensemble will find it very hard to raise more than twice as much in half the time.Projet’s most recent report:
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/projetmontreal/pages/251/attachments/original/1591118691/Rapport_financier_PM_2019_web.pdfJames
It turns out 2019 was considered an election year because of the by-election for the Plateau Mayor.
For the 2017 election year, Projet had 2924 donors who donated an average of 127$ (372k$ raised) and had 4000 new party memberships.Very tall order for Ensemble with 7 months to go !
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