Updates from May, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 20:03 on 2021-05-14 Permalink | Reply  

    The whole site of St Joseph’s Oratory is undergoing renovations, and they found a native burial site under the parking lot. The bones were removed and reburied in Kahnawake, but no more digging was allowed in the area afterwards.

     
    • Kate 20:00 on 2021-05-14 Permalink | Reply  

      Some of the response to Bill 96 Friday concerned the restriction on access to English-language CEGEPs. Effectively, the law will restrict francophone student access to post-secondary education in English.

      The city’s 3 English CEGEPs say students will leave Quebec, which may marginally be true, but one of the facts about CEGEP is that it’s all but free, and students often simply continue into CEGEP while living at home. Not everyone has the means to leave and go to school somewhere else.

      A summary of the bill in the Gazette.

      Not surprisingly, the Journal’s opinion page is a cheering section:
      Joseph Facal: Voir un Québec se tenir debout fait du bien
      Josée Legault: Projet de loi 96: un coup politique fumant
      Denise Bombardier: Simon Jolin-Barrette: l’héritier
      …and so on.

      Lots more to come.

       
      • Tim S. 21:37 on 2021-05-14 Permalink

        Yes, but some of the ambitious families who want their kids to be comfortable in the wider world will have the means to send their kids away – and others won’t. It’ll just perpetuate class divisions within francophone Quebec.

        I’m quite curious to see if there will be a significant backlash among those who will lose out (and their parents, and potential employers).

      • dhomas 22:52 on 2021-05-14 Permalink

        Gilles Bélanger: AIIE (American Institute of Industrial Engineer), Georgia Tech, S.A.S. Institute (North Carolina)
        Claire IsaBelle; Concordia
        Marguerite Blais: Concordia
        Joëlle Boutin: Concordia
        Lionel Carmant: McGill, Harvard
        Pierre Fitzgibbon: Harvard
        Eric Girard: McGill
        Mathieu Lacombe: University of Ottawa
        André Lamontagne: Mount Saint Vincent University
        Lucie Lecours: McGill (currently enrolled)
        Mathieu Lévesque: University of Ottawa, McGill
        Danielle McCann: McGill
        Christopher Skeete: unspecified English HIgh School, Vanier CEGEP, Concordia

        What a bunch of hypocrites. I can almost guarantee some of their kids are currently enrolled in English schools either in Quebec or elsewhere. Unfortunately, their biographies don’t list where they went to CEGEP.

      • Uatu 08:52 on 2021-05-15 Permalink

        Post secondary education is becoming increasingly online. How are they going to police students taking online courses in English? Can’t wait to see the Journal live stream a raid into young Jean Pierre’s bedroom for language violations by taking Econ 101 on Arizona State university online 😛

      • jeather 10:51 on 2021-05-15 Permalink

        Curious how the “must give preference to English language eligible students” is going to work out in practice. I suspect they had to do something like that to avoid a giant complaint from anglo parents whose kids can’t get into the English cegeps at all because there isn’t enough room.

      • david228 11:44 on 2021-05-15 Permalink

        Dhomas – I was surprised by your list of schools (not in small part because so many went to Concordia), so I looked in up. Very misleading. Almost everyone on your list did their schooling at a francophone school or in a francophone program. Also, having just done the same work you did, it’s a lot to do just to make an incorrect and misleading point about hypocrisy.

        Gilles Belanger – started at Ottawa (which is a bilingual school), undergrad degree is from UdeM, engineering degree from Polytechnique, and then later some courses/certificates in the US
        Claire Isabelle – undergrad degree at UQAM, PhD. from UdeM/Concordia
        Marguerite Blais – undergrad at UQAM, PhD. from UdeM/Concordia in her 50s
        Joelle Boutin – undergrad degree is out of Laval University up in Quebec
        Lionel Carmant – who is black, incidentally, took his MD at the University of Sherbrooke, did a two year pediatric neurology residency at McGill, and two year pediatric epilepsy fellowship at Harvard/Boston Children’s
        Pierre Fitzgibbon – undergrad degree is from HEC, got a certificate from Harvard
        Eric Girard – finally, someone on your list that’s right. Did his BA and MA in economics at McGill
        Mathieu Lacombe – from Hull, attended the bilingual University of Ottawa
        Andre Lamontagne – University of Laval undergrad, did a master’s degree 20 years later at Mount Saint Vincent
        Lucie Lecours – studied French/Quebec literature at McGill, an entirely french program
        Sylvain Levesque – studied at the bilingual University of Ottawa
        Danielle McCann – the only other francophone on your list that did attend an English program and school
        Christopher Skeete – is a stone cold anglophone so no shock that he went to school in English (also non- or partially white, to the people interested in that sort of thing)

        Of those who attended a Cégep, every one attended a French language Cégep aside from Chris Skeete.

      • Uatu 14:00 on 2021-05-15 Permalink

        I really enjoyed when Stone Cold Anglophone teamed up with Hulk Hogan in WrestleMania 22!

      • dhomas 14:11 on 2021-05-15 Permalink

        My point is that for a party that seemingly wants to eliminate Anglophone schools, many of them got at least some schooling from English schools when it was convenient to them. Under their new rules, would these same people have been able to do so?

      • dhomas 14:17 on 2021-05-15 Permalink

        Also, where did you find their CEGEPs? Their biographies on Wikipedia did not list CEGEP. (Admittedly, I didn’t do any in-depth research, just Wikipedia surfing.)

      • david268 17:13 on 2021-05-15 Permalink

        Under the new rules, they’d be able to attend whatever university and get whatever certificates they were admitted to, yeah.

        Cégep info I got from a combination of the legislature site, the party site, and googling various things.

    • Kate 19:51 on 2021-05-14 Permalink | Reply  

      A man was stabbed Friday afternoon downtown, at St-Mathieu and de Maisonneuve, and is in critical condition.

       
      • Kate 18:00 on 2021-05-14 Permalink | Reply  

        Metro asks whether Mile End is effectively the new gay village.

         
        • david228 11:54 on 2021-05-15 Permalink

          It’s definitely more in keeping with gay culture today. Back in the 1970s when Saint Jacques emerged as a gay village, gay life was much seedier and underground – porno stores, saunas where men had group sex, exotic drugs, clubs/bars as your social centers, etc. The Saint Jacques village fit like a glove for that iteration of the culture. Nowadays, the culture is mainstream and online, and the consumption patterns track with basically just your (mid/late) twenty-something or thirty-something existence in perpetuity, without any risk of knocking someone up and destroying your life with kids. That’s Mile End, baby.

      • Kate 17:59 on 2021-05-14 Permalink | Reply  

        Can’t resist these designed spaces that keep turning up, possibly because the real estate market is so hot. How about this one, a moodily photographed big open loft where the bedroom is a cube in the middle of the space? It may be cool, but you know what else it has.

         
        • jeather 17:50 on 2021-05-15 Permalink

          That is cool looking but it seems unlivable. Who wants a bedroom that is a glass box in the middle of the room? Does no one care about fresh air?

      • Kate 13:49 on 2021-05-14 Permalink | Reply  

        Quebec saw a surge in far-right events in 2020, as that world regrouped around anti‑pandemic‑measure ideas.

         
        • Kate 12:38 on 2021-05-14 Permalink | Reply  

          Montrealers are delighted with the CAQ reform of the charter of the French language, Bill 96. Whew. I thought some of us might not appreciate its crystalline beauty.

          Incidentally, I’ve seen a lot of commentary on the new bill through Friday and am torn. Would anyone prefer either that I follow the whole fandango, or that I quietly pretend it isn’t happening?

           
          • dhomas 18:40 on 2021-05-14 Permalink

            I think this is very much a Montreal story. This Bill is clearly targeting Montreal. It’s more of the CAQ’s ROQ vs Montreal narrative.

          • Daniel 18:57 on 2021-05-14 Permalink

            Please follow the fandango. dhomas is right.

          • Kevin 20:34 on 2021-05-14 Permalink

            Montreal is not Quebec in exactly the same way NYC is not the U.S.

          • Tim S. 21:38 on 2021-05-14 Permalink

            Or even New York state…

        • Kate 12:36 on 2021-05-14 Permalink | Reply  

          There’s a plan to convert the Holt Renfrew building into offices, although it’s not as if office space is exactly in short supply downtown.

           
          • Kate 10:10 on 2021-05-14 Permalink | Reply  

            The start of six social housing projects with a total of 400 units has been announced by the city.

             
            • Kate 10:07 on 2021-05-14 Permalink | Reply  

              A graphic in the Journal lays out the plan of the REM de l’est while a new study shows that the first phase alone cost $9 billion and Quebec will be paying the Caisse de dépôt back three times over in the course of the 99-year agreement.

              Critics, including our own ant6n, said from the beginning that the REM was a mechanism for siphoning public money into the Caisse, and there it is.

               
              • steph 11:13 on 2021-05-14 Permalink

                So 1.14% compounded? I’m sure it’s gonna be MUCH higher.

            • Kate 09:30 on 2021-05-14 Permalink | Reply  

              Daily Hive looked at what kind of houses $2 million – surely we all have that much in the bank – will buy in different boroughs. It’s a veritable festival of breakfast bars, but what I love most is the ancient Roman bathroom in Beaconsfield. Give me internet access and I could live in that room alone.

               
              • steph 09:48 on 2021-05-14 Permalink

                $2 million won’t buy you any of these houses. These are asking prices without consideration for the auctions and over-bidding that has become normal in this market.

              • Kate 11:39 on 2021-05-14 Permalink

                Well, it would make a nice down payment.

              • GC 18:15 on 2021-05-14 Permalink

                I would have thought “chic barn” was an oxymoron, yet here we are.

                I would not look twice at that Westmount place from the outside, but the interior is very much my taste. Not that I need five bedrooms or have $2 million lying around…

              • Bryan 22:07 on 2021-05-14 Permalink

                WHAT! $2 million in Mont-Royal gets you parquet floors!? NO.

            • Kate 09:13 on 2021-05-14 Permalink | Reply  

              Quebec’s toponymy commission has a rule that you can’t name things for people till 5 years after their death, but that rule has been broken multiple times already, as mentioned in this piece. Valérie Plante wants the city to have a more comprehensive policy covering how the city honours people – a policy that will govern what happens, among other things, to the downed statue of Macdonald.

               
              • david472 12:04 on 2021-05-15 Permalink

                Now that we’re out of the pandemic, last summer’s hysterical frenzy to jump on the US bandwagon and topple any statue people could find seems an even more dumb and lazy way to interface with the culture and history. I guess certain people felt ’empowered’ for a couple weeks, but what a laugh that whole thing was. Just underlines why the grown-ups should generally just ignore mob activism. God help me if I ever vote for the CAQ, but one thing I appreciate is that they utterly cannot be moved by the online yahoos.

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