Updates from September, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 18:23 on 2021-09-06 Permalink | Reply  

    I linked to this piece in La Presse on the weekend about a shooting in Little Burgundy a year ago. The writers included the one-sentence paragraph “La scène ne se déroule ni à Chicago ni à Miami.”

    Ted Rutland tweeted in response to La Presse, with an example, that “30 years ago, the media fed a moral panic about Black crime by referring to parts of Montreal as the Bronx. Today, during a new moral panic, the reference is Chicago.”

    The mayors of five Quebec cities are challenging the federal leaders to say what they will do about gun crime.

    My attention was drawn by chance to these July figures from Statistics Canada on homicides in Canada. I downloaded the CSV and here’s a PDF of the per capita homicide figures to look at. Per capita, Saskatoon is the homicide capital of Canada. The only town in Quebec slightly over the Canadian average is Gatineau. Trois-Rivières has a higher homicide rate than Montreal, which is down there just above St John’s, Newfoundland. Saguenay and Sherbrooke are near the bottom of the list.

    OK granted. There has been some gunfire. Nobody wants there to be more. But can we see the metaphors, as dissected by Rutland, as chiefly a racist impulse? I am seriously of two minds about this. I think the panic about the shootings is partly of media creation and partly because it’s a dual election season – but then I think yeah, but those are real bullets, and occasionally someone ends up really dead.

    We just have to keep our heads about this.

     

    • Jeff 19:34 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

      Thanks for your insight, Kate

    • Clément 06:37 on 2021-09-07 Permalink

      Good points. Furthermore, when (mostly white) biker gang member were killing each other left and right 20 (?) years ago, the media wasn’t making comparisons with Chicago or Los Angeles

    • Kate 10:16 on 2021-09-07 Permalink

      The U.S. comparisons must mostly be drawn from movies or TV. But there were biker movies made there too, which don’t seem to have entered the local zeitgeist the way gang archetypes have.

      But Rutland is probably right: it’s the presence of Black gangs in those American locations that seem to force a parallel to situations here.

  • Kate 15:46 on 2021-09-06 Permalink | Reply  

    An Ottawa Citizen writer comes to Montreal and marvels at our active transit.

     

    • John B 16:42 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

      I’ve spent a lot of time in Ottawa post-vaccination this summer, and I brought my bike. It’s… different, in some maddening ways.

      I’ve been staying more in the suburbs than I’m used to in Montreal, so I don’t have the Downtown Ottawa Bike Experience, where I hear things are getting better, with more separated lanes and stuff, but what I have seen is kind of maddening.

      There is a great network of reasonably well protected trails, especially through the greenbelt, but also on some abandoned rail lines. There are also quite a few trails near major roads that are somewhat protected. But they’re all mixed-use trails, with the conflicts those bring, with 20km/h speed limits and they don’t connect to each other! If someone is going to bike in from the ‘burbs they need to be able to have a safe route that’ll get them there reasonably quickly, and disconnected, slow, trails are not that.

      Then there are the “bike paths” on roads. Some are quite wide, like 6-10 feet wide, but it’s still the shoulder of the road, and it’s full of gravel and metal bits, and cars are passing you at 60 – 90km/h. Also, these bike paths seem to just randomly end mid-block, where blocks are >1km long.

      Ottawa is so close to having something great! If they would at least connect their multi-use trails they would have a very large cyclable network. If they would add some actual bike-only lanes that aren’t stuck to high-speed traffic it would be even better. Ottawa is a city full of green spaces where cycling can be super-pleasant, and could become a favoured mode of transportation. If they elected a Valerie Plante it it seems like there are tons of low-hanging fruit that could be improved in a very short time.

    • Kate 20:08 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

      It took a long time for Montreal to realize that having bike paths that just stopped was a bad idea and, in at least one case I recall, a fatal one. It confuses drivers and cyclists both.

      You don’t put in a piece of random bike path willy nilly to look like a good guy politician responding to cycling activists. You need an overall plan. It took Projet to do that.

    • j2 18:32 on 2021-09-07 Permalink

      I grew up in Ottawa and started cycling to my downtown high school from Ottawa South. Bronson and the overpass above the canal was nightmarish. Overall I loved it and I learned to ride and signal in traffic, since you have rights and responsibilities of a car. The Greenbelt was amazing. Cycling to the Gats to do some mountain biking was amazing. That said I wonder how much has changed in the past 20 years. It’s grown a lot.

      Here, there’s nowhere near as many nice areas to cycle around. I find the drivers are pretty clueless in a dangerous way. The civil engineers seem to like putting cyclists into danger. It’s improved with the bixi but with that has come greater volume and more cluelessness to the cyclists side.

    • Max 21:53 on 2021-09-07 Permalink

      Speaking of bike paths, a new downtown segment on Peel is about to come online. This week from the looks of it. Biking up and down de la Montagne has has been sketchy as hell for more than a year with the construction. It’s from Rene-Levesque south to how far I don’t know as I’m Griffintown-averse. Crossing Peel as a pedestrian on the south of side of RL is about to get a lot more civilized too.

    • Orr 15:58 on 2021-09-08 Permalink

      Talk to me when the Chemin-de-la-Cote-Sainte-Catherine bike path is directly connected to the avenue du Parc bike path.*
      Until this dangerous gap in the protected-bike-lane network is filled, Montreal gets a hard fail by not taking seriously the need to have a safe & connected & gap-free bike path network along all the major active transport arteries.
      (*This is an essential connection to all riders to the north or Mont Royal and the northwest of the island (think St-Laurent and points west) to get to downtown. See also: rebuilt Rockland overpass was done with zero safety improvement for pedestrians and active transport, and btw the walk-your-bike pedestrian overpass over the rail tracks at UdeM’s new biology building is an insult to active transport users.)

  • Kate 10:48 on 2021-09-06 Permalink | Reply  

    A lot of landlords in town are obliged to replace their old water main connection made of lead pipe, and it can get expensive. Although the headline here hints at irregularities over the city doing the work itself, the story doesn’t really bear out any corruption. You can get it done by a contractor you choose, but that might be more complicated. End of story.

     

    • mare 17:08 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

      Replacing the water mains entry involves opening the road and removing a 1M section section of the sidewalk.

      After the work is done, the situation is as follows:
      1) there is a section of the sidewalk missing. That sections is fixed, by the city (!), in stages. First the edge will be cut square, a few weeks later some gravel is thrown in, a few weeks later more gravel, and then finally a new concrete sidewalk is poured. The whole process can take many months.
      2) there is a piece of road patched, by the plumbing company on the same day they replace the pipe. The gravel supporting the asphalt isn’t compacted very well, because that takes a few weeks and rainfall, so over the course of a year, the patch sinks 20 cm, cracks open and is yet another recurring pothole location.

      In our block there are now about 10 sections like that, and a few times already the sidewalk was interrupted on both sides of the street, making the street a no-go for people in wheelchairs or mobility scooters. That’s just in one 250m section of one street, there are thousands of sections like it.
      It makes so much more sense to do this work all at once, per block, combined with the redoing of the roadbed, which has to be done anyway, partly because of the potholes caused by the work already done. But the city refuses to provide any timeframe *when* the roadbed will be redone, so some owners start doing the work now anyway. (The lead levels are pretty low here, we had the water tested a few years ago, but we regularly get an alarming letter from the city.)

      Interesting factoid: last year we asked three companies for quotes, together with both of our neighbours and thus combining three buildings. The different quotes were remarkably close, and they said that they had a standard price per building and doing three at the time wouldn’t be any cheaper. It would definitely be cheaper for them…

  • Kate 10:43 on 2021-09-06 Permalink | Reply  

    Birdwatchers who prize the forested land around the Technoparc are demanding an independent study before the terrain is built over with a mask factory.

     

    • su 10:59 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

      These life science ornithologists and ecological scientists are requesting this due to methodological issues and conclusions which are inconsistent with the science concerning endangered species in the former wetland.

    • Kate 11:31 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

      Can you be surprised if the official study supports razing the area and building a factory? Of course it does.

  • Kate 10:06 on 2021-09-06 Permalink | Reply  

    La Presse is pursuing its theme of looking back on the effects of shooting incidents on neighbours. In March, a couple of gangsters shot up the window of an apartment in Park Ex. Police easily caught two suspects, and later told the residents the shooters were probably targeting a man who had moved out three years before. The guys were found with a lot of guns, and will be facing charges.

     

    • Kate 09:42 on 2021-09-06 Permalink | Reply  

      Global emphasizes what a pain it is for restaurants to check the vaccine passport – with a quote from Peter Sergakis, of course – and CTV has a video about music venues, leading with the idea that the passport is also a pain for them but actually ending up with some upbeat stuff about outdoor performances. The guy who claims no Covid transmission has happened inside venues is wrong, though: remember the outbreak caused in a karaoke bar in Quebec City a year ago?

      Meantime, McGill is insisting on classes in person and no distancing, no testing and no vaccine mandate.

       

      • j2 09:59 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

        It is a simpler act than even taking money from the customer, since there’s no tip or PIN involved. A phone or tablet fixed in one location would work. I’m sure the problem is the customers, not the mechanism.

        Any friction to business is seen as a detriment but the alternative is another lockdown – which seems far, far more detrimental.

      • DeWolf 10:42 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

        These TV-based media outlets can always be relied on to provide the most hackneyed, sensational, underreported takes on any given issue. CTV is often bad for this but Global is even worse.

        Its article claims restaurateurs are struggling, but it quotes precisely two people. The first is the owner of Le Petit Vibe, the restaurant that has made the loudest noise about being opposed to the passport – as they state quite clearly, they closed their dining room as a political statement, not in response to the impracticality of enforcing the passport. Doesn’t really fit with the narrative that the passport makes like difficult for restaurants. Then it quotes Peter Sergakis, Montreal’s most reliable source for negative commentary on anything that prevents him from extracting as much money as possible from his uniquely horrible establishments. Remember when he claimed the smoking ban would drive him out of business? Or when he was caught fraudently serving 20oz pints of beer that were far less than 20oz?

        To be clear, I’m not blaming the reporter, especially when he’s doing the story for TV, with all of its time constraints. It’s the editors who think it’s okay to take TV script and put it online as a news article without any additional context. Back when I was reporting for a daily newspaper, if I had filed a story with only two quoted sources on a hot topic like this, my editor would have crumpled up my draft copy and thrown it straight in the trash. (And believe me, there were times when I didn’t do nearly enough legwork as I should have and was called out for it.) But I guess TV newsrooms have a different standard.

        The reality of the vaccine passport, which at this point I have used in a dozen different cafés, bars and restaurants, is that it takes less than 10 seconds to deal with and is done at exactly the same time as you order a drink, or when the restaurant host is determining which table is available for you to sit at. (If restaurant/bar workers are good at anything, it’s multitasking.) The only hiccups come when customers arrive without their QR codes ready, but even then, I’ve arrived at places behind tourists with Ontario proof and it didn’t hold things up very much. I haven’t been anywhere that has had to hire a special security guard to verify the passport.

        Another angle that hasn’t been reported: I’ve noticed a couple of establishments that reopened or expanded their indoor seating the day the passport came into effect – precisely the opposite of what Le Petit Vibe has done.

      • Andrew 10:42 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

        I laughed out loud at Sergakis’s quote that his business is down 20%. Like that’s the point, that’s exactly the percentage of unvaccinated adults.

      • JaneyB 13:08 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

        My past experience teaching at McGill is fairly reassuring. The students there are exceptionally conscientious. I’m not surprised that some of them are anxious about a lack of passport for classrooms; they are anxious generally. I suspect they have one of the highest vaxx rates in society eg: 99%. Also, with the vaccine passport necessary for all extra-curricular activities there, any hesitant younglings would have fixed that pronto.

      • notabene 21:14 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

        I currently teach at McGill and I am not reassured. Students are not being adequately cautious about masking and distancing, numerous international students are not yet vaccinated, and many classrooms are outdated, with windows that don’t open and questionable ventilation (the rooms are stuffy and/or smelly, which doesn’t suggest an adequate rate of air exchange). The university has not provided any additional filtration in the rooms where I teach, but nonetheless a memo from the provost instructs faculty not to bring their own air purifiers. Another memo from the provost to the deans is callous not only about faculty health concerns but about the health of their family members: “The following are not valid reasons for granting permission to teach remotely: fear about campus safety, residing in another jurisdiction, or concern about relatives who might be at heightened risk or exposure to COVID-19, including those living under the same roof.” It seems to me that the administration is hellbent on justifying their tuition fees by providing an in-person “college experience”–at the expense of the health and safety of their community.

      • Harry 08:04 on 2021-09-07 Permalink

        Next time you show your passport, ask if the establishment has a vaccine policy for its staff…

    • Kate 09:27 on 2021-09-06 Permalink | Reply  

      Labour and community groups will be holding a Labour Day demonstration against social inequality and the erosion of workers’ rights, especially the CAQ’s Bill 59, an attempt to walk back rights to safety at work.

       

      • Kate 09:15 on 2021-09-06 Permalink | Reply  

        There was a fire overnight in a commercial building in the part of St‑Léonard that’s endless blocks of bland, low two-storey industrial installations.

        Also overnight, a fire broke out in an apartment building on Ste‑Catherine in Westmount (great illustration there, CTV) which CTV said had several households in it and TVA says was vacant (great illustration there too, TVA). Kudos to the Gazette, which actually got a photo of the building on fire and also attests to residents being forced out.

         

        • DCMontreal 09:26 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

          The building is around the corner from me. All the tenants had been renovicted within the last year.

        • Kate 10:16 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

          Odd. I wonder why some of our media think households were forced to leave last night.

        • Tim S. 10:48 on 2021-09-06 Permalink

          I suppose it’s possible it was the neighbours who were evacuated? It’s a fairly dense area.

          I feel like there should be a reverse-onus law every time a property owner could gain from a fire. Unworkable, I know….

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