People who adopted rabbits during the pandemic, presumably as an alternative to a cat or a dog, are abandoning them at the SPCA in growing numbers.
I’ve never had a rabbit, but I understand that the notion that they’re an easy option as a pet is mistaken. Like all animals they have specific food needs, can become stressed in particular ways, and need veterinary care from time to time. No domestic animal is an effortless companion.
Did we all get that? Mine came through as a text, but I had my phone on “do not disturb” and it remained silent.
Yep! Got it. The sound itself wasn’t intense for me
I work overnights, wake up at 4pm. I took no chances and shut off my phone.
Thanks for the heads up!
I was in a mall (and I didn’t have my flip phone with me.) I heard it go off on a bunch of people’s phones at once, in the mall.
Here’s what rich visitors do in Montreal.
Also got for you a list of the fanciest bars and best neighbourhoods to visit.
Rich visitors check out the Barbie expo in a mall?
Yes!
The photos look like they were taken with a half-megapixel digital camera from 2001.
That Fashion Weekly piece seems like a parody, but alas it is not!
BTW, I saw the Barbie show a few years ago and I will admit I was somewhat blown away by it. (And this from someone who doesn’t give AF about Barbies.)
Really, Levi’s jean jackets, Adidas Stan Smith runners… this is glam?
It’s that ironic “so unglam it’s glam” glam. (Even the irony is outdated.)
I’ve seen the Barbie exhibit and it was interesting but as one of the top things to do when you’re staying at the Ritz-Carlton I find it baffling.
I’ve had several people in the last couple of years from around the world ( Moscow, Singapore, Buenos Aires,.. ) that upon learning I live in Montréal ask me “ohh Have you been to the Barbie Expo????”
I was planning on going on of these days, just to see what the fuss is all about….
Seems it’s a bigger thing out there than in here…
I remember seeing some PR about the Barbie thing when it opened, but had no idea it was still going.
It’s not on my bucket list.
Consider this a public service announcement ,do not have 2 Abacaxi Mai Tai’s at Mal Necessaire…just saying.
Ok, these two Jambons posing the way they do, it’s quintessentially anti-Montreal. It’s actually hilarious how stupid they both look. Thanks for this! I’ll be sure to make fun of them for years to come.
Cheers
I liked their expressionless faces and permanently clenched jaws. Nothing sells a city like downing a week’s worth of molly before clearing customs.
Ach, you made me go read that and now I’m feeling nauseous. Also, even from a quick skim…Kamousaka lamb and Miles End?
So, when one needs a break from New York, forget Paris, London, Los Angeles and that Other-Mistake-on-the-Lake down the 401. Maintenant, ça bouge par icitte! Matching 70’s denim outfits, check. Hands strategically positioned toward the crotch, check. Serving Blue-Steel glares, mon dieu c’est trippant! Taking Tea while staying at the Ritz, dropping serious coin at Holt’s, gallery hopping, upmarket take out and fine dining, and last but not least Barbie! On ne traine que dans les quartiers BCGC. Face it, this town is happening!
On the link to the best neighbourhoods to visit, the photo captioned “Go sailing down the Lachine Canal in Saint-Henri.” was really bugging me, because I just couldn’t place it in my mind with anywhere along the canal in that area.
Racking my brain as to where it could be and a visit to Google Maps later, I think it’s in Lachine itself on Blvd Saint-Joseph where near the lighthouse. Not sure if this short section of water counts officially as part of the Lachine canal, but it definitely doesn’t count as part of Saint-Henri!
@Daniel D: That was bugging me too! Especially ‘sailing’!? I guess they mean it poetically. You’re right about the location. https://goo.gl/maps/6gqoHz8pSScQczVo9
La Presse has a report on the death of Elisapie Pootoogook in the construction site overlooking Cabot Square. She had been ushered out of the day shelter tent on the square, tried to find shelter in Atwater metro and was also ushered out of there, and finally died, probably of exposure, on the site.
The tent shelter, erected last year in memory of Raphaël André, another indigenous person who died of exposure on our city’s streets, is running out of funding and may itself have to close. Nakuset says in this piece that it’s a band-aid solution only, and that people need a permanent building somewhere nearby. But there’s no money and no help.
An independent lawyer has submitted a report saying the forceful arrest of a woman at Jean‑Talon metro last spring was acceptable. The woman had jumped the turnstiles and was taken down by two transit cops (according to the text – the photo shows three) who were caught on video punching her. The lawyer’s report concludes the violence was justified and he makes some very cold-blooded recommendations, among which is notable by its absence the idea that simply cheating on a fare should not permit transit cops to brutalize a person.
The found a lawyer agreed that their actions were acceptable? I’m sure I could find one that thinks the opposite. What’s happening to journalism?
@Steph, why are you calling out journalism? It was a lawyer who submitted the report.
The video is disturbing, and cheating on a fare should not warrant a beating. But it can be argued that the infraction here was resisting arrest (apparently it was only when she tried to escape that things got rough. Arguably, the whole law enforcement/civil order thing rests on people not fighting against the police when they are detained.
Thing is, it’s easy to look at this as a beating for a transit ticket infraction. But let’s just entertain a scenario here for a minute…
Suppose this person was a murderer who had just killed some people. She goes into the Metro and jumps the turnstile, and is challenged by the Metro cops (who don’t yet know that she just killed some people). She runs away, and the cops just go “Oh well. No point in going after her, because it’s only a Metro fare!” and go back to their donuts. Two hours later she kills someone else.
Imagine the outrage. “They had her! Then they let her escape and didn’t even try to catch her!” Even the most woke people would be outraged (especially if the murder victims were wokeness heros).
The point being that if you put up a fight over being detained for a small infraction, maybe it’s reasonable to think you might be hiding something bigger, and it behooves the cops to detain you until they know what they’re dealing with.
…just tossing a different perspective out there. And if you’re still in doubt, imagine if this person were an anti-vaxxer neo-Nazi, or someone coming back from an underground KKK rally, or a person who voted for Denis Coderre. Would you be just as outraged?
Blork
People can only act on what they know. Retroactive justification is never appropriate.
Blork, that thing about murders is a weird assumption. Fleeing the cops is not in itself an admission of larger guilt. A lot of people would make an effort not to get hauled in by the transit police.
Also, please don’t make an assumption I would condemn someone for voting for Denis Coderre. This is not America and we are not so polarized as that.
Kate, the Coderre thing was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. Also, that wasn’t directed at you; it was directed at readers in general. (Unless I otherwise say so, my comments here are always directed at the general reader.)
Yes, the murder case is a weird assumption, but it’s based on many cases I’ve read and heard about where criminals, terrorists, etc. slipped through the grasp of the authorities and everyone becomes outraged because they let the person go. So this example isn’t supposed to be a real-world justification, it’s just a counterpoint to people’s easy outrage.
While I’m no fan of the Metro cops, I do respect the general conundrum that most cops face in which they are constantly in a position of damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
I don’t think police should be making decisions on what they do or don’t do based on how outraged Twitter users might get.
Resisting arrest for — again — a FARE VIOLATION. Yes, we can imagine how we’d feel about resisting arrest if everyone had just seen her murder people, or if we found that out even, but there are a lot of people who jump the turnstiles (a lot), and there are a lot fewer murderers, and I bet, even fewer who flee the scene via the metro.
If cops can’t figure out any way to catch someone who is resisting arrest without beating that person, maybe they’re not very good at their jobs.
My “murder” example was exaggerated for dramatic effect. It could just as easily be someone wanted for assault, domestic violence, whatever. The point being that from a cop’s point of view, if a person is going to resist arrest over a transit ticket then there’s a good chance there’s something else that they’re hiding.
Bearing in mind that cops (maybe not transit cops, but regular cops) start their day by reviewing a long roster of people wanted for weapons offenses, assault, robbery, etc. etc. They start their day knowing there are a bunch of dangerous creeps out there evading the law. Then they see someone resisting arrest over something very minor. Put 2 and 2 together…
Blork using the Spiderman origin story to justify police brutality lol.
A good cop should never need to punch anybody to detain them, that’s just getting the boot in because they get off on that shit or can’t control their anger (which is understandable in a violent confrontation but they are supposed to be trained to exist in violent situations).
I agree that the punching seems way out of line. My only issue is with people complaining about any use of force when detaining someone who is fighting back and resisting arrest.
Here’s another Blork thought game: how would this story be playing out if, instead of this being a random person who made a poor choice, it was a Proud Boy up from the US to attend some pro-gun meeting, and after they detained him they found he was carrying a pistol? Would the outrage at the roughing-up be the same?
The outrage wouldn’t be the same, but I would be against him being roughed up or physically hurt any more than was necessary to detain him.
No matter who they are (a murderer, a Proud Boy, a fare violator, etc.), (metro) cops should be trained to detain them without the use of excessive violence. The cop’s job is not to judge. That’s literally a judge’s job.
David Graeber made this point, more or less, in his book The Utopia of Rules (from the wikipedia entry for the book):
Graeber describes the contemporary era as the “age of total bureaucratisation,” in which public and private bureaucracies, now so intertwined as to be effectively indistinguishable, have become the main mechanisms for Wall Street profits, and describes how bureaucratization brings the threat of violence (through legal and police enforcement) into almost every aspect of daily life in wealthy countries.[1] Graeber argues that bureaucracies are no longer analyzed or satirized as they were in Catch-22 or The Castle. The book centers on the “political implications” of bureaucracies and Graeber’s solutions.[1]
I’m calling out Journalism for wasting the ink the article was printed with. The article might as well be a paid advertisement.
I agree with dhomas with regard to excessive violence. And in this case, at least judging by the video (which is not a sound basis for judgement) it seems excessive. But let’s not kid ourselves; detaining someone who is resisting — and for all we (or the cops) know could be dangerous — is inherently a violent process.
Joey, I just finished reading The Dawn of Everything, the book Graeber co-wrote with archaeologist David Wengrow just before his death last year. It’s not only about the sources of authority, and about violence as one of the tools available, but it’s partly about that.
Ya so the thing is the independent investigator is 100% right. By all intentions of the law, the cops in Quebec and Montreal have the full authourity and indeed the encouragement to inflict as much and excessive, with ‘excessive’ being the norm and so losing its meaning, physical damage on suspects. The fact that these same suspects are disproportionately people of colour, along with the fact that women are far too often targets despite for their physical size and stature, shows that these are not just byproducts of a policy and culture of” shoot first , questions maybe “, they are the intent.
Robert H 02:57 on 2021-11-18 Permalink
«Il faut savoir qu’un lapin, c’est un animal qui est exigeant. Ça demande beaucoup de soins, ça mange toute la journée, ça a besoin d’accès à l’eau courante, ce n’est pas confortable en cage, et ça a besoin d’un grand enclos», explique Mme Desaulniers.
Poor creatures. Victims of human ignorance, short-sightedness, selfishness, indifference and sometimes, cruelty; toys and accessories to be discarded when they become inconvenient. Too many people aren’t fully exercising their capacity for abstract thought. I’m going to give my cat a hug.