You can vote on the voice of the REM – at least, from three choices of female voices.
Updates from August, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
Summer roadwork means lots of traffic jams.
Blork
What, no nightmares?
Kate
The use of “nightmare” and “headache” to describe traffic problems has declined a lot lately, in both languages. Probably mostly to do with reduced traffic since the pandemic – I can’t take credit.
DeWolf
Or maybe it’s the prolonged nightmare of the pandemic putting things into perspective?
-
Kate
Two La Presse writers collaborated on this piece on gang wars as the source of the shootings that have shocked the city this summer. But while they do present a bit more detail about the most recent killing – although young, the victim already had a considerable charge sheet – if police or journalists know more about the sides being taken and the settlings of accounts going on, there’s nothing about that in this brief piece.
The Journal considers other attacks in the urban area.
-
Kate
Note the CTV headline Car crashes into tree… except it was the driver who crashed a car into a tree – this in Park Ex after a road race. The car caught fire, but there’s no news about how the tree is doing.
(We’ve discussed before about wording that implicitly absolves drivers and makes it sound like only the vehicle itself is at fault. This distinction will become more important when self-driving cars become more common.)
Update: A passenger was badly hurt in this incident, while the driver walked away. Still nothing about the tree.
JP
I know this is mean, but I really don’t care about the status of the individuals. I highly doubt they’re anything but a burden to society and their families.
dwgs
Wow JP, really?
-
Kate
Except for shootings, local news has been pretty low‑key lately. So it’s a story Monday that Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough has decided to allow chicken coops although the SPCA opposes the change because it has seen so many urbanites jump onto the trend then abandon their hens when they realize that, like other living creatures, they have needs.
Having chickens you can’t care for is not a pet problem, and should not concern the SPCA. What you need is to find a neighbour with an agricultural background and hand the chickens over to be dealt with. Not cruelly, but in most countries in the world, that’s what you’d do, and let the neighbour keep them to make soup or whatever.
Update: CTV has more detail on the SPCA advocating for a moratorium on urban chickens and the need for a city-wide approach to the matter.
Thomas
This borough has become unrecognizable since we elected Projet Montréal. Bike lanes galore, electric boat rides and shuttles on the Back River, and now chickens! I’m here for it 😉
Kate
Tell us more about the boats on the Back River. I’ve heard nothing of it.
Kevin
I know several clandestine chicken farmers and they go to great lengths to be good neighbours because nothing is more annoying than being woken up by a gorram chicken.
Kate
If you had a rooster, maybe, but do hens wake people up?
Some years ago friends lived on Jeanne-Mance in a triplex behind a dep that was run by a Greek woman, who kept chickens out back. She did have a rooster, and it woke them up regularly. Definitely illegal at the time, but she had a big fence around the yard behind the dep.
walkerp
I think the problem is those egg layers do not necessarily make good fryers. Still, it seems like the SPCA could quite easily find some chicken hobby farmers out in the country who would come and pick up the abandoned chickens.
JaneyB
Or the borough could contact some of the collective kitchens/immigrant community centres and donate those chickens. Someone there knows how to get from live chickens to dinner.
Kate
walkerp, that’s why I said soup. I know these wouldn’t be likely to be big tender frying chickens.
JaneyB, exactly.
The idea that we’re treating these birds as abandoned pets is just so western-decadent. Yes, we need to see them as living beings, but they’re being bought to lay eggs, until looking after them gets too tedious for your average city dweller. That’s not how we treat a pet.
Thomas
As part of the borough’s ‘budget participatif’ for 2021, the tour operator La route de Champlain has been contracted to provide a river shuttle between Sophie-Barat and Beauséjour Park, as well as short little ‘sorties animées’ at both sites, using a fleet of two electric boats. The schedule and locations vary from week to week; it’s free, but you have to reserve in advance. I took a ride on the weekend and had a blast.
You can book a ride at the bottom of the page here: https://parcoursgouin.ca/sites-nautiques/
Kate
Thank you, Thomas! That project didn’t get into the news at all, that I recall. Good info!
Thomas
I haven’t seen it announced anywhere. I just happened to be walking by one day and saw a sign: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0praLInfH2jVG80JvGQQhohHw
jeather
“until looking after them gets too tedious for your average city dweller. That’s not how we treat a pet.”
Don’t I wish you were right.
Janet
Here are two sites for kayaks and electric boats on the Back River. I believe you go out with a guide, so it may be suitable for all levels of ability.
https://www.laroutedechamplain.com/
https://www.laroutedechamplain.com/ahuntsic-cartiervilleBlork
There’s a service available in the US and a few places in Canada called “Rent the Chicken” in which you (ahem) RENT your backyard chickens. The service provides the birds and the feed — and most important, information. You provide the backyard, and you keep all the eggs.
The best part: rental periods are for only 5-6 months at a time, so you’re not stuck with a chicken situation to deal with year-round, which (among other things) can cramp your vacation plans.
There are a couple of locations in Ontario, but I doubt we’ll see them expand into Quebec because Quebec would probably layer on so much bureaucracy as to make it more painful and annoying than just buying the goddamn things (think of food trucks and other disasters where simple things were made complicated).
J...one?
It concerns the SPCA because the chickens (and TikTok ducklings … Google it) end up there when there is a mis-sexed rooster, or the hens stop laying, the neighbours complain about the ammonia smell, or the owners just don’t want to look after them any more.
It concerns the SPCA also because it has the animal control contract with the city for Ahuntsic Cartierville and other boroughs.
You could also argue that urban chickens concern the SPCA because they seem to have expanded the scope of their mission to generally sensibilizing people to animal cruelty, which arguably includes keeping and eating poultry.
Kate
I posted about the ducks the other day, J…one – please don’t order us to Google things.
I understand why the SPCA is concerned about the chickens, since it is in their mandate to reduce the cruelty people can mete out to animals. But chickens remain to a large extent food producers and food sources to most of us. If we take on the production of animal-based food, it behooves us to undertake the tasks that go with it. I could even make a case that if you cannot humanely slaughter a chicken, you have no business keeping them.
Kevin
Kate
Roosters are louder, but hens can be almost as loud — they’re just irregularly so, which can be more annoying for some. We probably don’t know recognize it as much in our common history because because the idea of having non-breeding animals is a novelty.I’m with you on how they should be treated: they’re food animals, not pets. We evolved to eat them. We created them to be eaten. The only reason people want them in their yard is because they want fresh eggs.
If you really don’t want to treat them as food animals, don’t have them in your backyard.
dhomas
I completely agree that chickens are raised to be poultry/food and not pets. That said, even these animals should not be mistreated or treated cruelly. The SPCA is literally the “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals”. Their concerns are valid in order to prevent these animals from being neglected. The SPCA may need to be involved, though I would agree their mandate shouldn’t be to keep abandoned hens. Those should be converted to soup, as Kate suggested.
-
Kate
A man was shot dead overnight in Villeray. He was known to police.
MarcG 19:21 on 2021-08-09 Permalink
Can’t select a choice in Firefox/Ubuntu – where my QA homies at?
ant6n 23:32 on 2021-08-09 Permalink
More consultation theatre
Uatu 10:24 on 2021-08-10 Permalink
How to integrate transfers for the last mile? F that! Vote for what’s really important! I vote for Samuel L Jackson! “The train’s delayed mother f cker!”
Matthew H 11:56 on 2021-08-10 Permalink
Michael Stipe isn’t an option? He has so much experience!
Tux 13:15 on 2021-08-10 Permalink
Personally I like (A) the best.
Daniel D 14:19 on 2021-08-10 Permalink
@ant6n: I don’t think it’s even consultation theatre (great turn of phrase though! I’d not heard it before). It’s publicity and hype building.