Although current news is more about heat in the west, a Canadian report says Montreal will be the major Canadan city with the most days of extreme heat as climate heating worsens.
Updates from June, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
CDN-NDG mayor Sue Montgomery has been found guilty of 11 ethical breaches by the Quebec Municipal Commission. Leaping on this with glee, Lionel Perez is demanding she step down.
Jack
Please remember the Quebec Municipal Commission are civil servants. They protect their own.
Kate
Excellent point, Jack. I don’t think the ruling means much, but Perez’s tendency is always to make hay – even when it makes no sense for a borough mayor to step down in the summer before the election.
Cadichon
I don’t believe anyone at CMQ was trying to help a Montreal civil servant somehow. There is really no such thing as solidarity between civil servants… Especially if they come from competing branches or level of government (like in this case).
Jack
Cadichon I disagree. I wrote this after the Superior Court Judgement.
The judge who decided in Montgomery ‘s favour confirmed something I already thought. “ À l’origine de toute cette affaire se trouvent les plaintes répétées d’Annalisa Harris concernant l’indifférence de Stéphane Plante lorsqu’elle lui demandait des documents ou de l’information. L’insistance de la directrice de cabinet a été perçue comme du harcèlement psychologique par le directeur de l’arrondissement. “ I have to say this pisses me off and shows how many of these entrenched bureaucracies have contempt for the elected, which in essence is us.Cadichon
I really have no idea if there was harassment or not happening at CDN-NDG, my only point was that I don’t see the CMQ “protecting their own” there because they wouldn’t consider a Montreal borough manager “their own”.
Also, checked CMQ’s members bios, and it’s really a bunch of senior lawyers from the municipal world, with an ex Affaires municipales chief of staff acting as president. Not many civil servants sitting there actually.Jack
Thanks for responding and I take your point. I still believe that as employees of the Quebec Government they are career civil servants with very strict understandings of their roles and privileges. This is the bio of the president,”Monsieur Marois occupe depuis 1994 diverses fonctions au sein du gouvernement du Québec et de la fonction publique québécoise.”
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Kate
Mario Girard tells two stories about street benches. Paris’s mayor wanted to replace the classic Banc Davioud with something more comfortable and modern, and people got upset; the Montreal story is about designer Michel Dallaire getting upset that the city altered his bench design, shown in the story – both the original and the version changed by the city, which Dallaire calls mundane because the armrests were moved to the ends, like the vast majority of benches everywhere.
When Dallaire’s original design was first launched, some people found it hostile to the homeless, because the inserted armrests made it impossible to lie down. To my eye the design simply looks mildly hostile generally. It’s like an airplane seat. It doesn’t allow for two people, or someone with kids or a dog, to sit side by side, and makes an implicit assumption that everyone out and about is a solitary unit, which just isn’t so.
Dallaire has done some great stuff, like the Bixi bicycle. But his bench isn’t the masterpiece he thinks it is.
jeather
Ignoring how much I dislike the inserted armrests in general, his original bench just looks like a bench with armrests, not like a weird special non-mundane seating option.
Kate
That’s what seems to irk Dallaire. They made his great design mundane.
dwgs
I prefer the modified version from both a practical and aesthetic point of view.
Blork
I prefer the modified design too. The original with the inserted armrests at first seems clever, but the more you look at it the more affected and silly it seems; quirky for the sake of quirky. Not unlike someone wearing one white Converse hightop sneaker and one black Converse hightop sneaker. (Oh wait, that was me. Shaddap, I was in my 20s.)
thomas
Just a stupid question, but why do benches need arm rests?
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Kate
Christian Savard from Vivre en Ville writes in Le Devoir about why this year’s municipal election is a critical moment and the choices we make are important, as the pandemic subsides but we still must face a bigger crisis with climate change.
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Kate
Mayor Plante said she would try to set up public projections of the hockey finals but nothing has been announced yet. This isn’t just bread and circuses, but an effort to keep people from gathering in packed crowds around the Bell Centre as they did for the semifinal games.
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Kate
It’s hot, but it’s also very windy. Out walking around Sunday afternoon, I heard a loud noise nearby – a sort of thudding crash. A dead branch had blown down a few feet from me, and smashed into the windshield of a parked car. I was lucky not to be any closer – I don’t think it would’ve killed me, but it would’ve knocked me down or out, for sure.
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Kate
Cyclists are not immune to the orange cone phenomenon, with the city blaming its striking engineers for delays in delivering the complete REV this summer.
The engineers’ union is back to work Monday but with some details still to be worked out.
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Kate
Moving Day means trouble this year for many households which haven’t found new affordable digs, as a wave of evictions overtakes the dwindling pool of rentals in the city.
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Kate
Heat and humidity are expected for the beginning of the week, to be followed by cooler temperatures and rain – which we and the crops need – on Wednesday.
There’s a heat warning on the official weather site now and I’ve got to say, Environment Canada leaps to big warnings for everything now, so that if we ever had really dire weather coming, I don’t know what colour they could use.
Su
Back in the day, 30 was considered a normal summer day here in Montreal. And humidity was the norm.
Kevin
The warnings shouldn’t just be because it hits 30 in the shade.
The very high humidity and the nighttime temp staying over 20 contribute.
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Kate
Along with the rest of Quebec, Montreal goes to green Covid status Monday. CTV summarizes what this means in practice.
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Kate
In the midst of Habs fever it was momentarily disorienting to hear a lot of honking on a non game day. But I see that Italy just won a Euro 2021 match. In this part of town, international soccer gets more noise than hockey.
Francesco
These biennial soccer tournaments are like the NHL playoffs which are like the Jazz Fest: for two weeks a year *everybody* is a jazz fan, and for 50 weeks a year, everybody *can’t stand* the stuff. Every couple of years, everybody is suddenly a soccer fan; even soccer fans are suddenly maniacal about teams whose players they couldn’t name. Every couple of years, everybody is entranced watching sports during the Olympics that they wouldn’t be caught dead watching at any other time. I admit I’m glad the Habs made the final at last, and will be boastful if they win or disappoint if not, but I haven’t been a hockey fan in a couple of decades at least — notwithstanding the fact that I have had the CH logo and “Go Habs Go!” tattooed to my right butt cheek since January, 1993, *before* their last Cup!
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Kate
The Quebec action group struck to squeeze money out of the metro’s blue line extension plan suggests saving $1.2 billion by changing the location of the planned Anjou terminus. This plan would save all five proposed stations, although an alternative suggestion involves reducing the stations to four.
Ephraim
So the station would be built under the 25 near Chateauneuf and somewhere near the BestBuy/ToysRUs with no big bus terminal. With one exit on either side of the 25 and no parking as a collector. Which of course would mean less traffic for the shopping centre.
david288
The 1.2 billion clams in savings isn’t just related to the relocation of the station, though that may be the single most significant reduction at $750 million. There are loads of proposed changes, including a significant reduction in the number of entrances and elevators.
If we lived in the dystopia that so many people think we do, this thing would be cost neutral as they’d expropriate great tranches of land and develop ultra intensive highrise communities at each station to recover costs.
Ant6n
Given this has been planned for 40 years, and that a lot of the land along jean talon is parking lots, its sort of odd that this isnt all just publicly owned by now and simply built with cut and cover.
Ephraim
Actually, I wonder if there is a plan to develop the land above the edicule. What’s more desired than to be easy walking to/from public transit and some shops. And you can build some social housing as well. It’s main streets, so you should be able to build tall, maybe 20 stories?
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Kate
Raphaël Napa André was the indigenous man who died of cold here in January. Two weeks later, a tent warming shelter named for him was opened in Cabot Square, where many people of indigenous origin have tended to gather. On Friday, relatives of André gathered at the square to remember him, and to press for a permanent shelter there for itinerants.
The seated man in the photo is holding an image of the
Five Row WampumHiawatha belt, an old symbol of peace among the indigenous nations in this area.There are rallies and vigils planned for Canada Day next week, including a march starting at 2 pm in Jeanne-Mance Park on Canada Day itself, next Thursday.
Nick
That’s a Hiawatha belt or 5 nations flag/symbol. Never heard it called 5 row before. Pretty sure it’s incorrect.
Kate
Thank you.
JaneyB
You were probably thinking of the ‘Two Row Wampum Treaty’ – the symbol of peace between First Nations and settlers. Photo here: https://www.onondaganation.org/culture/wampum/two-row-wampum-belt-guswenta/
Kate
Maybe. It does come up if you search Google for “five row wampum” but I may have conflated the two.
I have to admit, I always sort of thought Hiawatha was a 19th-century fictional character, too.
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Kate
One in three Canadians say this is a racist country.
The mayors of Quebec City and London, Ontario – both of which have experienced murderous attacks on Muslims – have written an urgent letter to the prime minister asking for a national summit on Islamophobia. Here’s a story I happened on from Saskatoon: a Muslim man was attacked, stabbed and had his beard partly cut off while going about his business on Friday morning, and – telling detail, buried in the story – he was “hit over the head with the cane he uses for walking,” so the attackers had no compunction about assaulting a man who wasn’t entirely able‑bodied, either.
Once again, I have to comment on the use of -phobia in the description of such incidents. A phobia is an irrational fear over which the holder has no conscious control. Calling it “Islamophobia” pushes off some of the blame by likening it to a mental illness. It isn’t a phobia, it’s plain old hate, and there are people who revel in the sheer access of anger that accompanies hatred. It’s a choice. It has nothing to do with phobias.
Chris
Just as we’ll never get the murder rate to zero, we’ll never get these kinds of attacks to zero either alas. But they are so low here in Canada. I feel like these 1 in 3 people have no idea what other places on Earth are like. I wish the poll had asked them to name a place less racist than Canada.
The term Islamophobia is infuriating for another reason: conflating Islam and Muslims. It’s used by some to try and shut down any criticism of Islam, an ideology filled with sexism and homophobia. Opposing an ideology does not mean fearing or hating human beings. Other languages have the word Muslimhate, which is what English needs.
david299
^ No kidding. Canada is one of the least racist places on earth, possibly the least racist. There has always been a very strong strain of self-loathing among a minority of people in English Canada, which goes hand in hand with not really having much of a culture, and letting the American culture machine occupy so much of the most critical ‘national’ space vacuum. You can’t blame the Americans for the Canadian outrage industry – which has always been a small but loud gang – or the new prominence of this marxian racial paradigm or the wall-to-wall focus on race, which most people with any sense know doesn’t even exist, so that these racial obsessives and hustlers are actually reifying the very race-based decision-making they claim is so pernicious.
Quebec will be fine, but it’s just one more point of cultural divergence between us and Canada, which should probably just get it over with and join the US.
Uatu
Canada is no worse and no better than any other country, IMHO. Every place has a racist element in it. It’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed in QC for so long. It doesn’t really matter where I move, some insecure douche (the proud boys) will take it out on me because I ain’t white. And the same applies to QC (La Meute) It’s no better and no worse than anywhere else. I think what really is key is social media pushing the insecure button on the fearful resulting in attacks. Every one should just take a breath and take a step back and consider what they read online because mostly it’s just there to keep your eyeballs on the site to sell you crap from ads. Relax. Nobody wants Sharia law and nobody’s going to replace you.
Kate
David, Canada was founded by white people taking native land, and its marginalization of the indigenous peoples continues.
Likewise, a lot of white people resist and resent people who look or dress a little different from themselves taking up space (even though those people are usually working harder and paying more taxes than the white trash causing the problems).
It’s not self-loathing to recognize these problems, and in view of the Quebec City and London incidents and things like the story from Saskatoon, it isn’t “American” to see we have a problem. It isn’t “American” to put it to the government that we want them to do what’s possible to make sure it doesn’t get worse.
You have drunk the Koolaid that says Quebec is somehow separate and above the rest of Canada in these matters. As usual, Quebec puts its own spin on its approach, but it’s also got the racist undertow that the rest of the country has. It’s dogma to believe Quebec is special. Quebec isn’t special and its French founders were the same Europeans who decided the “New World” was terra nullius and fair game, just like the English and the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Dutch.
Quebec is part of Canada, deeply and fundamentally and ab initio.
mare
So david[n], you really think the RoC is less racist and discriminatory than Quebec? Other cultures or skin colours or out QUILTBAG are pretty rare in most of Quebec, apart from Montreal and some native Canadians reserves (those in itself are racist in my book), and the province is more homogeneous than most of Canada. Hérouxville wasn’t an outlier, but the outrage made other towns/villages wary to show their “Norte racines” thoughts in public.
And Canada is definitely not less racist than other countries, but because we screen our immigrants, we have fewer poor, under-educated immigrants, so less victims to blame. In many countries in Europe they have many of them, and they tend to be more traditional, more visibly different and less integrated, and they are “encouraged” to live in segregated neighbourhoods and even the second or third generation receive a large part of the Muslim hate and discrimination.
DavidH
Every country including Canada is racist, so Canada is not racist?
Of course there is racism in Canada. I actually wonder how the other two out of three manage not to see it. That other places are also racists does not make us any better and certainly should not prevent us from naming and addressing it.
My guess is the people with the more cosmopolitan roots and the more travelled were mostly part of that one out of three and those denying racism were very very white. It’s how the commentariat is usually split these days. It’s not immigrants, natives or POCs denying racism. It’s people who don’t go see the world or others and spend too much time navel-gazing to be able to take in criticism about their self-view and identity.
GC
I also wonder what fantasy land the other 2/3 live in. It reminds me of a news story I saw on TV many years ago. They went to a small town that was about 99% White and interviewed a couple of people who said straight-faced “We’ve never had any problems with racism in this town.”
GC
Kudos to CultMtl for actually linking to the study, however! So many of the major news sources don’t, as Kate has also pointed out many times…
Chris
>Canada is no worse and no better than any other country, IMHO
Uatu, that’s just not true. Are we putting religious minorities in camps like China is doing? Do we have worker-slaves like in Saudi? Do we have ethnic wars like Rwanda? Are we like India, which tops just about every list of most racist places?
>Relax. Nobody wants Sharia law…
Just not true. Huge numbers of Muslims want it.
>And Canada is definitely not less racist than other countries
mare, can you name some countries you think are less racist? I’m legit curious.
I think many Canadians don’t realise how good we have it here, and are unaware that’s there’s a whole other level of racism that is commonplace elsewhere. You might start with this Washington Post article.
We’re not perfect, and should work to improve, but this self-flagellating narrative that we are a racist hellhole is total BS.
Jeff Marshall
This comment section is a disaster.
We may be more polite about it, but Canada is a racist country, and that very much includes Montreal/QC. You can make all the excuses you want; we’re the least racist, see how you do in other countries, etc. but the fact remains that minorities are made to eat shit and that’s how a lot of Canadians like it.
MarcG
Since our delightful society determines the value of everything, including people, with money, I checked out the statscan employment income data, and if I’m reading these numbers right, the average in Quebec for someone who’s a visible minority is $30,998 and for white folk it’s $41,615. And for anyone who wants to make a “that’s because they’re still new immigrants trying to find their way around” argument, the number seems to actually drop to $29,509 in the “Third generation or more” column.
MarcG
Note that it also drops for non-vis-mins, perhaps pointing to another relevant issue: that we’re all being screwed (but unequally).
Uatu
@chris: I think I’m just speaking from my own experience. You r right about the classist and racist tendencies of other countries, but there seems to be a conflation between obviously racist acts that are reported like in the WaPo article and daily life of visible minorities. Sure we don’t have worker slaves, but I have relatives who were treated as such by their Quebecois employers. We don’t have internment camps, but we have indigenous communities that have 3rd world living conditions. Over my lifetime I’ve had people make fun of me to my face, imply that my parents stole jobs, read White power graffiti and hope I don’t run into these people, listen to the Premier of the province blame people who look like me for ruining their chance of an independent country. Along with other microaggressions. And I mentioned Sharia law because that’s used as an excuse to attack people even though the Charter of Rights and freedoms protects against the worst part of the laws. Canada isn’t a racist hellhole, but it needs work like you said.
CE
I heard people complaining today about the heat, I made sure to tell them to stop complaining because we live in one of the coldest countries on earth, if not the coldest. Can anyone name some countries you think are colder? I’m legit curious. I feel like these people have no idea what life in a hot country is like.
Kate
Iceland would be colder. The British Isles are further north from here too, but the Gulf Stream moderates their temperatures, which get neither as hot nor as cold as us, usually. I’ve an Irish friend who was complaining on Twitter recently because it was going up to 20°.
Ephraim
Have you ever seen TV ads in French? Desjardins hardly manages ANY diversity… except the ad for diversity… https://www.youtube.com/c/desjardins/videos
Mark
Something I have noticed in my interactions with people from MTL/QC ( full disclosure: I don’t currently live in MTL/QC) is that not many in the province have lived abroad for a significant amount of time. While some of the charm of MTL (in my opinion) comes from it having so many born-and-bred locals, I have also noticed the reverse: many QC/MTL people have never experienced truly being out-of-place, starting out, having to fit in a new culture or language (not assimilate, which is a dreadful word). I think some of the racism and xenophobia some people propagate comes from not knowing what it’s like to not be in a comfortable majority, to be ‘a local’, to know everything that is happening in your city/province, to be able to filter every cultural reference around you, etc. From there, the road splits in two: as a local, you can either support and guide newcomers on their journey in your native city/province, or you can forever cast them as inferior and nebulously dangerous.
Anecdote: My partner is from QC and (years ago) when she told her family she was dating an Eastern European man, one of her uncles instantly called me Mohammed. he kept referring to me as Mohammed for years, up until he met me in person. I am neither Middle Eastern nor Muslim, which were both assumptions he made based on my country of origin (my country has a minuscule Muslim population – 0.3% according to the latest census). I of course understand there was an element of jest to this, but still. If you look at social media amplified xenophobia, most of it started as memes/jokes, and then it turned into a political agenda.
EG
It does seem to me that there’s a sort of insular-ness to quite a bit of Quebecois culture. I notice it in subtle ways, such as how francophone Quebecois are more likely to make racist jokes, and be ignorant of a lot of racist or problematic things in general. I’ve had this confirmed by people who are more outside of Quebec culture/location/practices than I am. I’ve even been reluctant to speak out about this, not wanting to bash Quebecois or Quebec culture.
As a result of this insular-ness, many Quebecois seem incapable of seeing racism, so it’s easy for them to deny that there are many racist practices embedded in many systems (also known as systemic racism.) And their denial of things like racist jokes as “just a joke, I’M not racist,” is part of the problem.And in the rest of Canada, the racism is, to some degree, more covert, as many Canadians like to paint themselves as polite, nice people, who can’t possibly be racist.
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Kate
The Gazette brought a Toronto resident home to Chinatown in Montreal after developers bought the house in which he grew up, with plans to raze the area and put up a condo tower.
DeWolf
We don’t yet know what Shiller and Kornbluth plan to do with the block, so it’s not accurate to say it will be replaced by a condo tower. Given the attention it has received and the sensitive nature of the site, I seriously doubt it will be razed. The city seems unlikely to issue a demolition permit and any project would require approval from the Ministry of Culture because it sits within the patrimonial zone of the St-Esprit church.
Of course, things could change if Coderre is elected. And if Shiller kicks out all the block’s tenants and lets it rot away for years and years, demolition could eventually become more likely.
DeWolf
Something that might be relevant to this: Shiller and Kornbluth bought a seven-storey apartment building on Drummond between Sherbrooke and Doctor Penfield. They wanted to tear it down and replace it with a 12-storey building, but the city’s demolition committee recently rejected their proposal because of neighbourhood opposition.
Something tells me the opposition against redeveloping this historically important block of Chinatown would be magnitudes greater than the opposition to redeveloping an ordinary 1950s building on Drummond Street.
Kevin 22:21 on 2021-06-28 Permalink
Ugh. And made all the worse with older, less insulated buildings.