CTV talked to a friend of Jannai Dopwell-Bailey, the 16-year-old stabbed to death outside his school on Monday, who says ‘everyone knows’ who did it and people are wondering why there hasn’t been an arrest.
Update: CBC talked to the victim’s mother, who says she only wants justice for her son.
François Legault said Wednesday that English-speaking Quebecers are the best-served minority in Canada, a sentiment that’s not original to him, but always plays well.
Updating to add: The CAQ are also going to delete the religious culture course and replace it with a course to cultiver la fierté québécoise et la cohésion nationale dès l’enfance. I’ve seen on Twitter but can’t find a media link, that Geneviève Guilbault says it will have a soupçon de chauvinisme.
I have heard this countless times and, as you point out, not just from Legault. But I do believe the statement to be true, despite the way it is used as a political weapon. In my home province of Manitoba, the French language has been pounded into the ground and beaten to a pulp (Manitoba was 50% French when it joined Confederation). #FeelsBadMan
Thomas, it may be true on the face of it, but the problem is the implication that anything anglos have, they were graciously given by the decency of the majority. But as the anglo spokeswoman quoted in the piece points out, anglos also helped build this city and its institutions.
I would argue that THE VERY WEALTHY are the best-served minority in Canada.
I absolutely agree with you Kate, the two are not mutually exclusive. The way the massive Anglo contribution to the present and history of Montreal is constantly being erased is regrettable to say the least.
But I think it comes down to the reaping what English Canada has sowed over the centuries, and Anglo-Quebecers are paying the price. Francophone Quebecers only see the big, bad Canadian (perhaps even British) Anglo of the past, not the fragile Anglo-Quebecer of today. If French had been allowed to exist and thrive across Canada, Francophone Quebecers wouldn’t feel so fragile. Sadly, when Pierre Trudeau, the knight in shining armour, rode in on his horse with linguistic rights in the 1970s, it was too late for many francophone minorities outside Quebec who now exist essentially as folklore.
I consider education a government investment. As someone educated here in quebec in english my whole life, the language laws make waste of that government investment.
Bearing in mind that, as a rule, Quebec doesn’t push hard for francophone rights outside of Quebec because it doesn’t want to be forced into offering something new here. (I have no opinion on how well anglos in Quebec are treated — though of course there are some interesting definitions of who gets to count as one — compared to other well-treated minorities worldwide, but agree that this is absolutely the lowest possible bar.
I’m very curious what the culture/ethics class will turn into. I’m sure we’ll find out eventually — and then a year later for the books to be properly translated into English for us well-treated minorities.
Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery is grudgingly reopening on Sundays, but only from 9 till noon, in response to public dissatisfaction with its Sunday closure since the start of the pandemic. NDN is a huge place and, up to a point, a kind of public park, and should certainly be open longer hours on the weekend.
Update: A later piece from CTV gives the same news, and cites a union rep basically confirming my comment below: the Sulpicians are cheap.
Can the city give these guys an order to keep the cemetery open every day in the daytime? Probably not, but I wish they could.
What is wrong with these assholes?
As lame as the administration of NDdN have been this pandemic, let’s save some contempt for the frou- frou spandex-wearing, $10K bicycle-riding, burial-disrespecting idiots that caused the cemetery to close to all cyclists awhile back. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if those morons were the ultimate source of the cemetery’s current anti-public-access attitude.
Max, from what I’ve seen, it’s basically that the Sulpicians are cheap.
Numbers from commercial rents and tourism show that the vitality of Montreal’s downtown is gradually recovering from the pandemic, but the percentage working from home is 47% now compared to 51% a year ago – not all that big a change. And office vacancies are growing. With any luck, working from home is not going away.
I was downtown this morning and it seemed pretty lively. I was there to clean out my desk. I haven’t been fired — its a transition to somewhat permanent WFH status for everyone at my office. There will still be desks and meeting rooms, etc., but the desks will be “floating,” meaning no one in particular is assigned to them; you just find an available one if you have an “at the office day.”
I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I won’t miss the commute. But I do already miss the downtown lunches, especially since FINALLY there’s a good by-the-slice pizza joint in the area (Slice & Soda on Ste-C just west of Guy). I will also miss the spectacular views from my window, and just the daily proximity and interaction with downtown MTL.
I will also miss the 5à7s, sometimes spontaneous sometimes planned. My besties don’t live anywhere near me (or each other) but we all worked downtown, so getting together after work for a drink or three was a normal part of life. Not now, since we’re all scattered.
WFH is great for people who have young families or long commutes, but it’s not so great for young and/or single people (or just childless people) who like to be social with the people they work with. It’s a mixed bag.
I’ve been recognized by food court restaurant staff a couple times recently (even with my mask on), and they asked if I was back at work. There’s a palpable sense of, not desperation, but something close, for office workers to come back. I actually don’t work in an office downtown, though, and they seem pretty bummed when I tell them.
I’m ready to call a priest to perform last rites. Downtown is dead. The pandemic just accelerated the trends that were already happening, and the people, and the businesses, have acted.
The core issue is that downtown doesn’t have enough people living there (40,000, according to today’s Globe article) and it relied on 300,000 people commuting. That was not sustainable and unfortunately for businesses that relied on commuters, their investment has failed.
Kevin, you keep beating this drum, and I wonder if we’re living in parallel universes. Or maybe your definition of downtown is limited to the corner of Robert-Bourassa and René-Lévesque? Because downtown is less dead than it was in the early 2000s when half of it was vacant lots and parking.
Because when I was downtown yesterday, and the day before that, it didn’t seem dead to me. Ste-Catherine was packed as usual, the café I went to on Stanley Street was full of people and there was a massive lineup at Uniqlo.
Do you know how many residential units are *currently* under construction downtown? 11,764. I just tallied up all the currently active projects on agoramtl.com that are between Atwater and Berri – not including Griffintown, which is of course just a short walk from the heart of downtown. That’s on top of the thousands of new housing units that have been built over the past 10 years. Maybe you’ve noticed most of the downtown parking lots have disappeared. The 2021 census will show a large increase in the downtown population, and the 2026 census will show an even larger increase, given the volume of what’s currently under construction.
The office district is moribund, but the office district is just a small part of downtown. Otherwise, there are six universities and cégeps, a residential population growing by leaps and bounds, and plenty of tourists.
Totally behind what DeWolf says. Downtown was very busy yesterday morning when I was there, and all those residential condo towers going up along Réne-Lévesque aren’t just for short-term rentals and porn shoots. Downtown is certainly changing, and some of the smaller businesses are hurting — like the ones in mall tunnels mentioned in a post above — but overall it’s far from dead.
DeWolf
I think the city is ignoring a massive crisis and an opportunity for significant change in favour of wishful thinking, and as a result will let the core suffer and struggle for many years.
I think most people we now see along Ste. Cath are students — and because those 90,000 people from UQAM/McGill/Concordia/Dawson were away for a year and a half, their return seems impressive. But students have very different spending habits than workers. Store vacancies are now 17 percent downtown. We’ll see what happens in six months.
We used to have 300,000 people commute to the core every day. Now the amount of vacant office space has gone from 10 to 14 percent, and all signs indicate that most companies are going to continue with a hybrid workforce.
If only 1 in 3 comes back on any given day (which seems likely), that cuts the daytime population of downtown by half. That’s a massive change.
As for residents, building 12,000 units in the core is good but I don’t think that’s anywhere near enough. I think it will take too long to build them, and I worry how many of those are investments for people who want to run AirBNBs. I think it’s a patch, not the wholescale change that downtown needs.
Kevin, those 12k units I mentioned are actively under construction, which means they’ll be occupied over the next few years. And that’s anywhere from 15k to 20k new people downtown. That’s a 20% or more increase in the residential population. If that’s not wholesale change, I don’t know what is.
Any businesses catering mainly to office workers will suffer, that’s for sure. But I think you’re seriously overstating the case. Downtown Montreal is in a better position than all but a few downtown areas in North America because it is inherently diverse.
Last rites? Good lord, Kevin, you sound like you’re ready to pop a champagne cork. What’s happening to Centre-ville is happening to central cities around the world. and Montreal is no exception. Downtown is however in good shape relative to most North American cities, and I can second DeWolf about how much better it is now than it was during the early years of this century. It’s changing its vocation from a 9 to 5 CBD dominated by a daily influx and exodus of office workers to a multifaceted zone on its way to becoming a true neighborhood. The average large project under construction now is far more likely to be residential instead of work space. In fact, the only current plan for a new office tower is the one proposed to be built over the Hudson’s Bay store. The commercial offering will have to adapt to this new reality, so we can expect closures and openings as some business and institutions go and new ones arrive. We are all acutely aware of Montreal’s problems, but I wouldn’t exchange them for Chicago’s, New York’s or even Toronto’s.
The unlikely merger of Ralliement Montréal and Balarama Holness’s Mouvement Montreal started coming apart Tuesday when Ralliement’s Marc-Antoine Desjardins, running for mayor of Outremont, quit the campaign and walked away. Headers on the Gazette piece state that Desjardins didn’t say why, but the article goes on to explain that Desjardins said he was dissociating himself from Movement Montreal and Holness’s statements on October 12 – that is to say, Holness’s radical idea that Montreal is a bilingual city. That sounds like “why” to me.
Didn’t Desjardins read Mouvement’s platform before deciding to merge his party? It’s not a secret that Holness wants to make Montreal officially bilingual. It was reported earlier this year.
I remember reading a profile on Holness about six months ago (in Le Devoir I think it was, or maybe La Presse) about how he wanted to run for mayor and obtain bilingual status for Montreal. It was the first time I’d heard of him, and I thought to myself _good luck, buddy. I agree with you, mais tu cherches le trouble_.
In any case, the province would intervene before any kind of bilingual status could ever be bestowed upon the most bilingual city in the country.
This is undoubtedly a tricky topic and there’s good reason why it’s controversial – and not just because of defensive nationalism. Even if you acknowledge and respect the bilingual nature of Montreal, I think it’s hard to justify making the city officially bilingual when only 12.5% of the population is anglophone. Especially since there are already robust English-language services available. By comparison, 14% of Ottawa’s population is francophone and it is notoriously difficult to get quality French-language service on the municipal level.
I think there’s also merit to the idea that there needs to be an official framework for ensuring that the French language continues to thrive in Montreal. People don’t learn a second language without a certain amount of pressure, be it social or official.
DeWolf, 12.5% may be officially anglophone, but I think that number has been squeezed down to the minimum, to count only citizens or permanent residents and only people who speak pretty much exclusively English. A lot more people are English-speaking. Many people speak both French and English – and a lot will also speak a third or fourth language – but they will never be counted as English-speaking. And I bet many asylum seekers and immigrants show up with a bit of English to get by on, rather than French.
There are good reasons that the STM, Hydro-Quebec, Loto-Quebec, banks, Videotron and other service businesses, have an English side to their site. They know that a significant chunk of people want to get their information (and spend their money) in English, and it’s a lot more than 12.5% of the population.
Yes, and isn’t that exactly the point? If there’s no pressure to learn French, why would anyone when English is already the most widespread global language?
Nothing Quebec can do will change that fact. And Montreal has been a bilingual city for a long time. To claim it isn’t is to deny what’s before our eyes.
Being designated francophone, anglophone or allophone is defined by your answer to the question “Which language do you speak at home?”
Someone who speaks Chinese at home and mostly English elsewhere is counted as ‘allophone’. Lots of youth speak another language with their parents at home, but are more fluent in English (or French), and use that while speaking with their friends.
It works the other way too, I speak English at home (and French to my unilingual adopted dogs), but I would still self-identify as allophone, not anglophone.
I hate the never-ending discussions in Quebec about language and identity (and independence), and their use for political gains and to win votes. All the time, energy and money we collectively have spent on this could have been used to advance more important topics. Ways to unite and not divide us. But since Quebec is a very split province, using ‘otherness’ —being language, religion or the difference between Montreal and the RoQ— as a campaign topic is still an excellent way to win elections.
Leaving aside the merits of Holness’s proposal, entering an extended period of debate about bilingualism policy in Montreal seems like a terrible pillar for a mayoral platform – like, is this seriously a major issue that needs urgent attention, away from housing, transportation, crime, cleanliness, climate change, green alleys and clowns???
Yeah I am kinda into some of Holness’s policies, as pie-eyed as they might be (I think we need big ideas to regularly enter the public sphere to push against the status quo), but this one is a head-scratcher. I guess maybe it’s just part of his bigger Montreal-as-city-state thing?
I am also not a fan of a language referendum for Montreal.
But I have to say Montreal’s cosmopolitan and linguistic reality has been used by Quebec’s political class to get votes in the regions for years.
Charter of Values, Bill 21, Bill 98, Dawson College, McGill, Historic Anglophones, Bonjour -Hi etc. are all issues used and framed to other Montreal and get the “epouvantable” reaction of Conservative nationalist voters in the regions.
These issues and laws have zero impacts in the regions. They are all targeted here for electoral gain.
So when somebody like Holness comes along and questions some of this narrative build, he is crushed in the French media, “c’est epouvantable” and that he is harming social peace, is quite a lot to take in.
My fear is somebody with more political savvy is going to use the blowback that will be generated with 98, and the haircut Legault is hoping for for the English speaking community.
To create a political context in Montreal that will be ethnic and exclusionary.
Montreal status as a bilingual city would only mean that the City could provide services in both langages (like its Pierrefonds borough does). So for instance every pages on the City’s website would be available in both langages instead of some pages only. I don’t know what it would change beside that.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that when Ralliement and Mouvement merged, Holness vowed that “la charte de la Ville ne sera pas touchée” and said that langage issues were a distraction in this campaign. https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/grand-montreal/2021-09-30/elections-municipales/holness-et-desjardins-s-unissent-pour-la-mairie-de-montreal.php
So when he changed his mind a couple of days later, obviously without Desjardins’ assent, thingswent awry.
Maybe I should add that my main irritation with this whole thing is that it’s Quebec vs. Montreal, not an angryphone thing.
Also, as I’ve written here before, I’ve always been generally satisfied that Montreal was able to keep the harsher edge of Quebec nationalist politics out of city hall and out of its elections. But not so much any more.
It’s Quebec vs. its own decisions.
The province is going to do a whole bunch of shit, argue a whole bunch of nonsense about minuscule numbers (4,000 people go from French high school to English CEGEP each year), and in the end, it won’t matter.
Two-thirds of people under 40 don’t care about language. It’s an old person’s issue. The problem is that from here on out, there are more people over 65 than under 19 in Quebec. And those kids? They’re increasingly not Quebec francophones, but instead the children of immigrants.
Security has become a hot potato in the election – especially, I suspect, because the parties know that municipal voting skews older, and older people skew cautious and jumpy. La Presse’s Philippe Teisceira-Lessard lays out some numbers and gets some soundbites about the situation.
One cop cited says “It’s not like we’re finding a body in the trunk of an abandoned car. We’re talking about finding 43 gun casings on two street corners. Someone’s putting on a show.” That seems obvious, but it’s a show with consequences, judicial and political.
La Presse says a Snapchat video hails the murder of Jannai Dopwell-Bailey, the 16-year-old stabbed to death Monday in Côte-des-Neiges. With a link to the video of a couple of guys in balaclava flashing knives to rap music. Item has some background on gang rumbling that may have led to the killing.
Indigenous women are demanding that investigations be made in the grounds around the old Royal Vic. There are concerns that bodies may have been buried during the Ewen Cameron era, and even a suggestion that the swimming pool behind the hospital may have been constructed to distract from other excavations going on.
That is extremely creepy. My bet is that McGill U will continue to downplay, deny and steamroll the renos, forcing the Mohawks to seek an injunction. And then bodies will be discovered and they’ll have to have an investigation, wasting a lot of time and money on both sides. With the recent attention on the Residential School burial sites, wouldn’t it be in McGill U’s best interest to just take the initiative in righting a past wrong for once?
I think now they will have to do some digging. I’m of two minds whether there’s any likelihood anyone thought they could get away with burying bodies around a hospital in the middle of the city – the people running the Montreal experiments probably had access to more efficient disposal methods – but if there are stories that have been passed down, it needs to be checked out.
Catherine Leroux’s fine novel, Madame Victoria, is based on the real case of a woman buried behind the Royal Vic and whose identity has never been established.
https://montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/catherine-leroux-delves-into-the-mysterious-death-of-madame-victoria
A woman was stabbed to death Tuesday afternoon downtown, and a man is in custody. It’s the 26th homicide.
Update: La Presse has more on this incident including the names of the victim and the accused.
Howard 10:44 on 2021-10-21 Permalink
While ‘everyone knows.’ Getting proof in the form of statements, eyewitness accounts, CCTV footage, etc. takes time. Without proof, it’s all circumstantial, and subjecting adolescents to third degree interrogations is sketchy at best.
dwgs 11:23 on 2021-10-21 Permalink
Agreed. Let the cops do their jobs properly to ensure a strongly built case. Then scoff at the ridiculously light sentence given.