The city has bought a piece of land around the old Riverside pumping station, currently occupied by Les Forges de Montréal with plans to keep the forges working.
That’s awfully close to the Peel Basin.
Updates from September, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Radio-Canada basically gasps over a massive new condo project to be built at Sherbrooke and Guy.
david992
I don’t know about gasps, that’s a fairly alright account of this excellent project.
Key note near the end:
“Une analyse de la Banque Scotia relevait récemment qu’il y avait 440 logements par millier de résidents à Montréal en 2016. Ce ratio a diminué à 437 par millier en 2020. À l’échelle canadienne, 100 000 unités de plus auraient dû être construites pendant ces quatre années pour garder le cap.”
Robert H
Massif? Par rapport à quoi? Il y a déjà des bâtiments d’envergure à proximité, le Port Royal par exemple. De plus, pas question d’embourgeoisement. Broccolini va construire un complexe de condominiums de luxe dans un quartier parsemé de condominiums de luxe. Le Projet est une bonne nouvelle pour le centre-ville, surtout pour ce coin qui est un vide dans la paysage urbain depuis des lustres. Le Sherbrooke contribuera à la métamorphose du centre-ville. Au fur et a mesure que les employés de bureaux quittent les lieux, les résidents s’installent, apportant avec eux un véritable vie de quartier. J’ai remarqué qu’il n’y avait pas un mot dans l’article sur le projet précédent pour ce site. Il y a plus qu’un décennie, c’était censé être l’emplacement d’un hôtel Waldorf-Astoria, un projet qui est mort au bout de quelques années. C’est donc encore mieux que ce terrain vague soit enfin rempli. Je m’en fous si je ressemble à un promoteur. J’espère que ce projet va de l’avant.
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Kate
Pandemic measures will soon be lightened up in Quebec, including allowing the Bell Centre to be totally sold out for hockey matches, so long as everyone is vaccinated. Movie theatres will also be able to operate normally.
Chris
Normally? As in: without vaccine passports? Or do you consider vaccine passports part of normal? 🙂
Kate
I do, yes. Because they are.
dhomas
Normally, as in: at full capacity (and presumably with popcorn!). Cinema operators (except maybe that crackpot Guzzo) don’t really care if unvaccinated people are excluded if their theatres are full and concession stands are making money.
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Kate
Here’s a Téléjournal report on the massive new reservoir in Rosemont. Wait till they come to the comparison with the Mines of Moria.
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Kate
Marc-Antoine Desjardins has dropped out of the mayoral race and has joined forces with Balarama Holness’s Mouvement Montréal. Desjardins had 24 candidates in Ralliement pour Montréal, who will now be running under the Mouvement banner.
CharlesQ
I’m disappointed in Mouvement Montréal’s program. Some of it (in french anyway) is copy and pasted twice. Most of it is either already been done or is not under municipal jurisdiction and depends on Quebec and it’s all really vague. The idea of a bilingual (french/english) Montreal is outdated. For the Ville de Montréal, the numbers are 52,4% francophones, 34,4% other and only 13,2% anglophones. There are twice as many trillingual people on Montreal then in Toronto in percentage. A multilingual Montreal makes more sense then going back to a 1960s language model. Anyway as long as Coderre doesnt get back in, i’ll be happy.
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Kate
Thursday is the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation across Canada. It isn’t a statutory holiday in Quebec, and TVA is annoyed that it’s causing confusion over what’s open and what’s closed.
This is against a backdrop of François Legault holding out stubbornly against the fact that there’s systemic racism in Quebec. Paul Journet describes the scrap at the National Assembly as Legault coped with the first anniversary of the death of Joyce Echaquan by squabbling with MNA Greg Kelley over the phrase. Allison Hanes in the Gazette notes how Legault feels any criticism of him or his government is an attack on Quebec itself.
Speaking of Legault, I was struck by this Guardian piece, reminding me that it’s not just in Quebec that “the woke” are a straw man opponent for the right.
Incidentally, Legault won’t allow us to have another stat holiday because he wants more productivity.
Meezly
After the death of Joyce Echequan, Legault has had a year to educate himself on how systemic racism impacted her unnecessary suffering and death. There have been discussions here about his ‘stubborness’…it should be clear by now that his denial is intentional and political.
Calling him stubborn in his willful ignorance makes him sound like a crochety old man who doesn’t want to change. Can we please try to put in context why he’s being this stubborn?
As leader of this province, his intentional denial of systemic racism is a political strategy which makes him more a threat to democracy than merely holding onto the status quo. He can’t admit to systemic racism as that would impact the racist Bill 21 and discriminatory Bill 96.
steph
He’s obviously doing it to cater to his base – which is enough in this political system to get him elected. It’s a shame.
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Kate
A couple who sheltered Edward Snowden when he fled to Hong Kong have found their home here in Montreal. I’m surprised the United States isn’t making more of a fuss – wouldn’t they regard Snowden’s helpers as aiding and abetting his crimes?
Ephraim
Here’s the problem… https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54013527
What he exposed, what they want to try him for. What they sued him for in civil court. The whole basis of what he is charged for… was… declared illegal in September of 2020. So, while he violated the espionage law, he’s also now legally a whistleblower. So they want to charge him under the espionage act but he should be protected under the Whistleblower Protection Act. But it took 7 years to vindicate what he was saying. It’s a very complicated case.
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Kate
A man was shot overnight in a Côte-des-Neiges apartment, allegedly as a drug deal was going down. He is not expected to die.
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Kate
Economy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon has denied that the Quebec government plans to construct a baseball stadium in Montreal.
Radio-Canada’s Martin Leclerc says the famous placard at the Tampa Bay Ray stadium that was supposed to announce pending team-sharing with Montreal is not going to happen.
david992
This whole thing smells like a scam somehow, not sure what the play is – government money? – but it seems absurd and to be taken with megadoses of skepticism.
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Kate
An SUV rolled near Galeries d’Anjou on Wednesday afternoon, landing on a sidewalk and nearly killing a pedestrian. No better explanation is given than that the driver, unhurt in the incident, “lost control”.
dhomas
I just passed by there. The accident involved more than just the SUV. There was also a wrecked Toyota Corolla (or similar car, it was beyond recognition). The whole street was blocked from Beaubien to Jean-Talon.
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Kate
Denis Coderre claims to be worried about the city losing international agencies – OACI, IATA and the World Anti-Doping Agency – if more is not done to keep them here. There’s no apparent immediate risk of them leaving.
dhomas
Sounds like scare mongering to me. This guy is a piece of work.
Spi
Really? No more recently than a few months ago IATA announced it was downsizing Montreal to the benefit of Geneva. Give it a few more years and they’ll close the Montreal office.
https://news.paxeditions.com/news/buzz/iata-significantly-reduce-its-presence-montreal
Remember when the AI was all the rage a few years ago and various people were talking about making Montreal the hub for AI regulatory stuff, that’s pretty much dead and the most prominent company that was in that sector was sold off to American interests.
Tim
Spi: that AI company was sold off to American interests because it didn’t have a solid business plan and spent millions of dollars with nothing to show for it.
dhomas
Element AI was an example of how even the smartest technical minds aren’t always the best at running a financially successful business.
Kate
There’s a big difference between doing open-ended research, and building a product for a customer. Maybe they didn’t really grasp that.
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Kate
The nursing shortage is beginning to pinch in the city, with some maternity wards having to close temporarily, and nurses alleging that some emergency departments are understaffed.
As for the Quebec government’s bonuses, nurses say their main issue isn’t so much their pay as the mandatory overtime. And the bonuses are making other healthcare workers mad.
steph
How many more are going to be forced out of work because they don’t want 2 vaccines?
DeWolf
Maybe they should find jobs where they won’t kill someone because of their negligence.
John B
@steph a CTV article yesterday says there are 15,000 healthcare workers, 7000 of whom have direct contact with patients, who are not yet vaccinated. I doubt all of the 7000 are nurses, but some must be.
We have regular contact with one unit at the MUHC, and in that section of the hospital there have been at least two retirements recently, and I think some people have quit. The nurse I was talking to last time we were there said her vacation has been cancelled until at least April.
jeather
I am betting that most of the people refusing to be vaccinated are playing chicken, hoping/believing that the mandates will be repealed, and if it turns out they in fact stop being allowed to work they will change their tunes quickly.
Kevin
@John B:
Healthcare workers, in this context, includes everyone from senior management to the people who mop the floors.In March 2020 lots of nurses and doctors were told they were not allowed to leave the country or take vacation. Since then, however, there’s been a considerable increase in people burning out and being put on leave for a month or two.
Kate
At this point, what are the vaccine-resistant folks waiting for? A lot of us have had 2 shots. We’re fine. Nobody’s collapsing, nobody’s turning up with illnesses caused or conditions worsened by the vaccine. It works and it’s harmless, how much more proof do people need?
Randall
I know/know of 5 people in Montreal, all women, who suffered extreme adverse reactions to the jab. One was a frail 70-year-old. She complained to me about the shot hours before being found lying dead in her hallway. Two others I know spent a week in hospital in serious condition. One, a fit 30-year-old McGill student, was irate that the hospital refused to acknowledge that her condition came from the shot she received. The other two were women I saw at hospital. One was quickly carted away with severe convulsions immediately after the jab and the other was screaming in the emergency room that the shot caused her to be unable to feel her hands. I don’t know what became of those two.
Frankie
@Kate I developed heart inflammation within the first week after the shot but my doctor does not believe it is related. Three months later, I am finally feeling better. My physiotherapist knows of two other cases, also unreported as vaccine-related. I know someone who had a seizure 3 hours after his second shot. He was told it was not vaccine-related even though no tests were done.
Anecdotal, sure, but at this stage, anecdotal is pretty much all we have. If incidents of adverse effects are not being consistently recorded and not part of the official statistics, it is difficult to build a full picture of the side effects.
John B
> At this point, what are the vaccine-resistant folks waiting for?
I have a couple of vaccine-hesitant extended family members, here’s what I have heard, (hopefully the list formats ok):
We don’t know long-term side effects / consequences of the vaccine.
This is new technology, (referring to mRNA), we don’t know long term side effects of mRNA technology.
There should be an option using older, more normal vaccine technology, (never mind that those ones seem to have way worse side effects).
It causes changes in our brain that we don’t fully understand.
There haven’t been enough autopsies comparing the brains of people who got the vaccine with people who haven’t got the vaccine.Anti-vaxx family members also collect stories of people with horrible side effects as a reason the vaccine is “dangerous.” Stuff like someone they know that had to be hospitalized for a week after getting the vaccine, or a friend of a acquaintance, (who may or may not be real), that had huge problems. They are often stories like Frankie’s or Randall’s. I also have a family member that passed out after taking each of his two doses, so that’s being used by the anti-vaxx family members as another example of why the vaccine is dangerous. Stories like these reinforce the “we don’t have enough info / it’s not tested enough” sentiment. Of course, I would trade most of the side effects for not dying from COVID, but they still suck.
I also find the government’s approach quite paternalistic. All the messaging is basically “The vaccine is safe, take it.” There is little to no room for questioning, and little to no attempt to address the concerns that hesitant people have. While the government probably doesn’t want to get into a game of whack-a-mole with anti-vaccine theorists, at least making a good honest attempt to engage on some of the leading reasons for hesitancy might help.
Tim S.
I have no anecdotal stories about vaccine side-effects to share. Anyone else?
steph
My nurse friend that is refusing to get her 2nd vaccine, hoping october 15th she can finally have some time off.
Last year they were ‘angels’ willing to risk their lives when no vaccine was avaliable. This year these same unvaccinated nurses are ‘carriers of death’. She has my support – and I hope she enjoys her time off.
DeWolf
Every single one of my friends and family, plus dozens upon dozens of acquaintances, has been vaccinated without any adverse effects.
You’d think that with just under 90% of the eligible population vaccinated we’d have more concrete stories of serious side effects, rather than just “I know a guy” anecdotes that pop up from anonymous people on the internet.
DeWolf
Steph, you know your friend can quit her job without being forced into an unpaid leave of absence, right? She doesn’t have to be refuse the second dose and all the protection that comes with it. She can just… quit.
walkerp
Zero anecdotes here either of any significant negative side effects from the vaccine from anybody I know.
I am very sympathetic to health-care workers wanting time off/more pay and suffering from burnout. That sympathy ends when the few of them who think their youtube education is superior to the experts around them and refuse to take the shot that has already significantly reduced the capacity issues that caused the burnout (well also govt neglect of the health care sector).
John B
> You’d think that with just under 90% of the eligible population vaccinated we’d have more concrete stories of serious side effects,
The problem is that what you & I think of a minor side effect is considered a “serious” side effect by the hesitant. Fever for a couple of hours? You & me: “That’s the vaccine doing it’s job, sweet!” Anti-vaxxer: “OMG the vaccine gave you a huge fever! You might die if you get a second shot!”
jeather
Like many women, I had some weird changes to my period post vaccine, including, most irritatingly, that the cramps responded less to ibuprofen than they used to. It’s over(and the ibuprofen sympom is the only one that lasted), but that’s still 5 months since my first shot, 3 since my second. (I usually get very sick for the rest of the day with other vaccines.) I don’t think it’s a long term concern, but anecdotally it’s something I heard a lot of and it would be nice if that were studied in the future.
Kate
Randall, I do not believe your anecdotes, and from the sound of it, nobody else here does either (although they’re politer than I am about it). If the vaccines were anything like so dangerous, they would have been withdrawn from use, or would never have been made available.
Frankie, anecdotes are not “all we have”. We have science.
thomas
I was hoping to read some juicy swollen testicles stories in this thread.
Blork
As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The COVID-19 vaccine is not as safe as just taking a Tylenol; there are actual cases of serious side effects and even death, as well as lingering milder side effects such as menstrual disruption, stomach issues, etc. But the number of such problems is extremely low. That doesn’t mean they’re non-existent, just very low. But if you’re one of those unlucky people who are so affected, or even if you know of such a person, then suddenly it seems very real and present.
Or if you’re someone who is on the lookout for such side effects, you will find them. But that doesn’t mean they’re not rare. They’re rare AF.
But it’s a risk worth taking. People need to grow TF up and take the tiny risk for the sake of the greater good. That’s what adulting is all about.
BTW, the above applies to all vaccines, not just this one. The autoimmune system is very complicated and not fully understood. Many people — including me — suffer from autoimmune diseases (MS, Lupus, GBS, Lyme, dozens of others) and many of these are acquired, not genetic. But how do we acquire them?
Anything that messes with the immune system can trigger an autoimmune disease. It could be a tick bite or a mosquito bite. It might be a bacterial infection from eating unwashed lettuce. Or it could be a vaccine or other drug.
“Vaccine injury” is a term that anti-vaxxers toss around a lot, and I regret to inform you that it’s a real thing. There are several government-operated vaccine injury compensation programs in the US that compensate people who have bad reactions to vaccines. Unfortunately the nutty antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists use this as evidence that the whole thing is a big sham and propel themselves into polarized corners where they can wave their stupid flags along with their like-minded COVIDIOT friends.
All things in moderation. Be aware that there is a risk, but the risk is very low, and the risk of having an unvaccinated population is orders of magnitude higher. These people who wave their anti-vaxxer flags are often the same ones who applaud the “patriots” who go off to war in Iraq or Afghanistan, which is far riskier than getting a COVID vaccine. So if it’s heroic for those soldiers to go risk their lives for the sake of their society, why is it so hard for an anti-vaxxer to “get it” that they can be a bit of a hero by taking the risk and getting the vax?
Kevin
The vaccine trials list every side effect of people taking part and all of that has to be evaluated by Health Canada before a vaccine is approved. It’s 100,000 pages of data.
And they list everything, absolutely everthing that happens to anyone involved, from swelling, to a fever, to myocarditis to stubbing their toe to being beaten to death by a mob weeks after getting a jab.
As I have said many times, medical science has come so far that the average person cannot understand it. It’s easier to take your car apart and put it back together.
Kate
The key thing most of us don’t grasp is statistics. Medical research is all built on stats, and if you don’t understand them, you will not understand where medical knowledge comes from.
MarcG
Almost every day there is someone responding to the Santé Quebec daily stats on Twitter asking, I’ll use a real quote for an example: “50% des hospitalisations sont du monde doublement vacciner?”. And that’s really basic math, imagine something more complex.
jeather
Honestly I don’t think menstrual disruption — which is, as a rule, mild — is particularly rare, I think it’s understudied. This is not talking about the safety of the vaccine (very safe) or the overall risk of side effects (very low — I complain about the menstrual effect, but it was the only significant side effect I had, far and away less bad than any other non-RNA vaccine I’ve had), this is talking generally about undertesting of or not believing side effects in women, which is a much larger issue than one shot..
Raymond Lutz
https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/ has an extensive list of ALL reported adverse effects. Take Myocarditis/Pericarditis reported adverse events declared after immunization: 774 reports (that is not to say those events were caused by the vaccination). According to my medical literature googling, combined natural (off-pandemic) occurrence of those diseases are, for our 38M Canadian population, 7700 cases/yr , well over the reported number… so, does covid vaccines cause Myocarditis/Pericarditis?
Blork
There’s no doubt the the COVID-19 vaccine *CAN* cause Myocarditis/Pericarditis (it’s right there in the literature), but that’s a long ways from saying it *DOES* cause Myocarditis/Pericarditis.
In the first case (*can*) it means it can cause it in rare cases, the way Aspirin can cause stomach ulcers and Advil can lead to high blood pressure and stroke. But it rarely happens, so it’s a risk we take instead of suffering that headache or rheumatism or whatever.
But if you say it *does* cause Myocarditis/Pericarditis (or stomach ulcer, or HBP/stroke) it means you can reasonably expect it will likely happen, which in these cases it does not.
Alcohol DOES cause intoxication.
Advil CAN cause HBP/stroke.
The COVID-19 vax CAN cause Myocarditis/Pericarditis (probably more rare than the Advil problems).
Raymond Lutz
Merci Blork, j’avais trop la flemme pour expliquer qu’essentiellement ça se ramène à une gestion du risque (à partir des données factuelles). Vaccination = really lower risk of covid death + _slightly_ higher risk of adverse effects (compared to background) so vaccination = good.
Randall
@Kate. Indeed I might not have believed it either. I don’t know thousands of people and I don’t hang around hospitals so that’s why I was surprised that these examples all happened within my limited Montreal circle within a few months. The name of the woman who died, by the way, is Jocelyne Marleau. I saw her body on the floor and she was definitely dead. Anecdotal evidence isn’t significant though because it’s not statistically representative and indeed is often misleading. The thing that worries me more is that one of those vaccine victims stated that the hospital refused to properly categorize her adverse reaction as a response to the jab. So that’s evidence of inappropriate statistical manipulation. I’m not ok with that. Ultimately everything comes with a risk and those who choose to take the jab have to measure that risk against that of getting infected with covid. Both risks seem pretty small but it’s up to the individual to decide which one is more worrisome.
ant6n
If the trust is low that problematic cases will be properly reported, then people may end up not trusting that the vaccine is actually safe. In some sense it`s in the society´s interest to play down potential problems, because the pandemic´s dangers are exponential, whereas potential vaccine problems are only linear.
I´ve some anti-vaxxers in my close family, and talking to them is like pulling teeth. It´s impossible to agree on basic facts or even just math, no reporting is trusted, a hidden agenda is assumed everywhere. For example its assumed that any studies done on the vaccine are done by people who are in the vaccine industry, and therefore have a vested interest in pushing the vaccine. So you should probably trust more in research done by people who aren´t immunologists (there exist some doctors who are anti-vaxxers…), because they have no vested interest.
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Kate
The return of professional baseball has become a red hot potato. Opposition parties in Quebec City are accusing the Legault government of helping out their chums by enabling the construction of a stadium in the Peel Basin.
The Journal also claims that the promoters of the return of baseball – Stephen Bronfman and pals – have been hand in glove with the Caisse de dépôt. La Presse’s Philippe Cantin demands more transparency about the whole process, which I’m glad to see he admits would come at a cost to the taxpayer.
Tim S.
It would be nice if the province was this interested in the Pink line.
Kevin
It’s telling that even Denis Coderre is not openly supporting the idea of bringing a baseball team to Montreal.
Opinion polls show the most enthusiastic supporters are people over 50, and even then, most of them say they would never attend a game in person. Those same polls show that two-thirds of people under 35 have no interest in even watching a baseball game on TV.
The audience for pro sports is small and vocal — but kids these days are more likely to watch someone play a video game than to watch a ball game.
Kevin
I note that the owners in Tampa Bay have received so much backlash that they are no longer putting up their sign in the stadium talking about possibly leaving in 2028.
So the next time some lobbyist or politician or grifter talks about this stupid idea, Imma smack them.
mare
So the Caisse is moving their money from fossil fuels to professional sports. Better PR, and more lucrative (otherwise they wouldn’t.)
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Kate
On Facebook, Christine Gosselin says this was the victim in that fatal cycling incident Monday at Park and Mont-Royal. I don’t see his identity confirmed anywhere else.
Some discussion of the intersection’s hazards on La Presse, which notes that when its journalists went there Tuesday morning they happened to witness another accident, this one between two vehicles, one of which ended up on a sidewalk. But, as DeWolf notes below, Denis Coderre is lying outright to say the situation is worse now and more cyclists are dying.
Meezly
Confirmed by TVA: https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2021/09/28/un-jeune-scientifique-tue-par-un-poids-lourd-1
He wasn’t wearing a helmet 🙁
Yes, that intersection. And further south at the lights where the Etienne monument is, I remember a pedestrian being fatally hit by a speeding vehicle a few years ago. Cars are weapons.
Kate
Yes, that victim was a woman who went running every day, and someone burned through the red and killed her. I remember that incident too.
Thanks for the link, Meezly.
Clee
Most cyclists don’t follow any rules and drivers are more distracted then ever 🙁
walkerp
Really sad.
Fuck Coderre. That safety bullshit is a classic car addict trope. Their solution (and what they really want) is to get cyclists off the roads so they can drive with impunity.j2
“Most cyclists don’t follow the rules” so, oh well, fuck this kid. /s
DeWolf
A helmet is not going to help you when you are being run over by a dump truck. Stop the victim-blaming.
DeWolf
Also, show me one cyclist who doesn’t “follow the rules” and I’ll show you 10,000 drivers who don’t. Almost everybody behind the wheel drives over the speed limit and rolls through stop signs on a daily basis. Drivers constantly block the bike paths that are meant to keep cyclists safe. And every week, I see so many people running red lights, it’s astonishing.
dhomas
When I drive the speed limit of 30 on my street, other drivers routinely pass me by going through the adjacent bike lane. They even get pissed off about it. Motorists should be more careful as they are the ones driving multi-ton machines capable of killing people.
Robert H
Thank you, DeWolf and dhomas.
“L’avenue du Parc n’est « ni plus ni moins qu’une autoroute » qui traverse un quartier densément peuplé, dit-elle. « Elle coupe notre grand parc du Mont-Royal en deux, et les abords du parc ne sont pas conviviaux pour les nombreux déplacements à pied ou à vélo.”
This is the key and it’s all too common in North American cities: city streets that function as highways. This is what Saint Denis used to be through the Plateau and what plenty of other streets in Montreal and elsewhere still are. Vehicles are prioritized and anyone on foot or two nonmotorized wheels is an afterthought, even in this relatively progressive city.
From the description in the article, this seems like what’s known among cyclists as a right cross. I was lucky enough to survive a similar encounter about 15 years ago in Boston. Granted, it was the bad old days when one was lucky to find a “bike lane” border painted on the street, but I was riding along the edge, being careful to avoid being doored by illegally parked cars and mowed down by traffic approaching from behind, trying to stay within my margin of safety. But a car passed me from behind and I made the mistake of assuming they had seen me as it was broad daylight. So when they decided to turn right ahead of me into a convenience store parking lot (no turn signal), I wasn’t prepared to react and found myself on the pavement, dazed, gasping for breath, and bloodied. Through my blurred vision, I could see people in a circle standing above me. As I said, I was very, very lucky: a mild concussion, no broken bones, just a few scrapes and an ache that went away after a few days. My bicycle, however resembled the one crushed against the truck in the La Press article photo, and I had to replace it. I’m glad I wore my helmet as it cushioned the impact when I hit the pavement. Now I am teased about cycling like an old man; moving cautiously, observing traffic signals, keeping an eye on tinted windows of cars as I pass (I’ve been doored too), checking the wheels of vehicles as they pass me on the right, and generally picking my way along as if I wanted to make it to my next birthday, because I do. It’s a wonder I still enjoy cycling, but there is still so much more that needs to be done to make it an activity that others would enjoy too.
Kate
I stopped cycling a couple of years ago. I hadn’t planned or intended to stop, I just rode home after one too many close calls in traffic, and never felt like taking the bike out again. It’s still in my storage locker.
Meezly
FFS, how is stating that he wasn’t wearing a helmet vlctim-blaming? Did it sound like I thought the victim was asking to get ran over while biking without a helmet?
A helmet, and being extra cautious, is the only defense we have against motorists (and within the same comment I stated that cars are weapons).
I’m a cyclist myself and also tired of the blamey BS that gets dogpiled on cyclists, but take a look on the streets. Most cyclists are not wearing helmets. It’s obvious a helmet is not going to save you when you’re getting run over by a dump truck, but those types of collisions are more rare. For more common vehicular-related bike collisions can be mitigated by wearing a goddam helmet.
As Robert H described, he was cut off by a car in a similar way as the Italian scientist and could have sustained a head injury if he wasn’t wearing a goddam helmet, so yes, a bloody helmet can save your life.
Tim
One question I have, based on the description in La Presse that the driver hit the cyclist when turning right from Parc onto Mont Royal, is whether the driver turned on his indicator to indicate to the cyclist that he was turning. Hopefully there are witnesses that can answer this question.
EmilyG
Cyclists “not following the rules” are nowhere near as dangerous as drivers not following rules.
DeWolf
The thing about helmets is they protect individual cyclists, but they do nothing at all to make cycling safer. They don’t stop accidents, they just mitigate the damage. Focusing on helmets is a distraction from the unsafe street design, irresponsible driving culture and incompetent enforcement of traffic rules that allow horrible events like this to happen.
Meezly
No shit. We know this. But the harder changes not going to happen overnight. Not in my lifetime. That’s a fact. While I’m alive, I’m going to wear my helmet.
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Kate
Anti-mask militant François Amalega Bitondo was arrested Tuesday at the municipal courthouse for refusing to wear a mask during a hearing over obstructing police in a grocery store (presumably also for refusing to wear a mask, although the item doesn’t specify). Amalega, a noted anti‑vaccine agitator, has run up $40,000 in tickets for various transgressions since the start of the pandemic.
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