There’s a long lunar eclipse overnight Thursday to Friday theoretically visible from Montreal in the wee hours – except that the weather forecast calls for cloud cover.
Updates from November, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Some doctors are concerned about their freedom to provide care in English under the terms of Bill 96, which says only people who attended English school in Canada will be allowed to receive health-care services in English.
It’s an interesting point. I went to school in English in Montreal, but I never kept any report cards or anything. How do you prove a thing like that?
Update: CBC reports on an open letter from a group of social workers and others concerned with refugees and immigrants, asking for essential social services to be exempt from Bill 96. This report says “Simon Jolin-Barrette has insisted Bill 96 will not touch Quebec’s health and social services law.”
JP
Worried about my parents. They didn’t attend English school in Canada, but don’t speak French at a level to communicate about their health. Up until now, it’s never been an issue…does this eventually become a human rights issue…? Ugh…
I hope healthcare professionals are willing to break these rules.
Derek
Kate – You could contact your former school board to get an official letter showing how much English education you received. The EMSB has instructions for various scenarios here:
https://www.emsb.qc.ca/emsb/admissions/eligibility/standard-criteria
It would be odd to have to bring proof of eligibility to go to English school to a freaking doctors appointment but I suppose if they can make QR codes for Covid vaccine proofs then similar codes could eventually be embedded on one’s Medicare card.
dhomas
To be fair, when I speak to my colleagues who don’t live in Quebec, they find it super weird that I needed to prove my kids were eligible to be educated in English. “You mean, there are English and French schools, but most people aren’t allowed to choose which school to send their kids to?” is a common reaction. It’s only normal to us because we’ve gotten used to it.
On the topic of doctors, I find it very hard to believe a doctor who speaks English will refuse to speak to a patient who addresses them in English. Anything in writing may have to be sent in French as it needs to follow Quebec regulations, but how are they going to prove a doctor spoke English to their patient? At some point, it begins to violate the doctor’s Hippocratic oath: “I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.” Not only are the warmth, sympathy, and understanding gone if you tell a patient “en français, svp!”, but doctors will have a hard time understanding symptoms and thus administering appropriate treatments if patients can’t communicate with them effectively.
ant6n
Being barred from public services (schooling) based on your ethnic background is already a human rights issue. But There are a couple of blind spots in Canada when it comes to democracy in this country, I’ve found it very difficult to get Canadians to see them (others: more language laws, the electoral system, the colonial head of state, …)
Kate
Derek, the school commissions in which I went to school no longer exist. The old confessional system was broken up in the 1990s.
dhomas, I’ve been assigned a GP who only speaks French (and whom I’ve never even met, but have spoken to on the phone). For my minimal medical needs I used to go to a clinic at St Mary’s where I could speak English, but my official doctor was assigned based on where I live, in Villeray, and now I have to go to his clinic instead. With this official doctor, if I ever need any tests or services I imagine I’ll now be shunted into the CHUM side of things, where I will not be allowed English services at all, regardless of where I went to grade school.
ant6n, there are reasons for all the things you mention. Most notably, Canada has to allow Quebec to break parts of the Canadian constitution at will, to keep it happy.
(Much later update from a sense of fairness: my GP speaks English with me in person, quite happily. He is a good dude and I hope he isn’t tempted away to the private side.)
DeWolf
I think Bill 96 is absolute trash, so I’m not defending it, but I just want to point out a couple of inaccuracies in this thread since they come up a lot in discussions around language policies.
First, the school situation in Quebec mirrors that of other provinces. If you’re an anglophone or immigrant in Ontario or Alberta (for instance), you can’t send your kid to a French school (and I mean I real French school, not French immersion, which is just English school playing dress up). Only kids with francophone parents can attend.
Second, language is not ethnicity, which is why the current, amended version of Bill 101 is compatible with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and doesn’t need the notwithstanding clause to be implemented. You can’t change your ethnicity but you can certainly change the language you speak.
Again, I’m not defending Bill 96, just pointing out that the ROC has similar limits on the French language that nobody really talks about.
Kate
DeWolf, I actually did not know that – that French schools are barred in that way. Was it done to force kids to assimilate to English, or as a sort of “fuck you” to Quebec?
DeWolf
I’m not sure about the history, actually. Generally these schools exist to serve francophone minority communities so it may simply never have been a question that any anglophones or allophones would want to send their children there.
Alberta’s language policies are outlined here. It’s actually technically possible for an anglophone kid to be admitted to a French-language school as long as they have a “parent with Francophone roots wants to introduce their child to the French language and Francophone identity and culture.” No idea how you’d prove “francophone roots” other than showing proof of what appears to be a French family name.
https://www.alberta.ca/french-language-education-in-alberta.aspx
Chris
Another analogous situation I keep an eye on is the lack of English on many store signs in Richmond BC, here’s a recent story:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/richmond-signs-chinese-english-1.4150456
Blork
Imagine the furor if a francophone went to a FRENCH-SPEAKING doctor in Nova Scotia or Alberta and the doctor told them “sorry, you have to speak English because I’m not allowed to serve you in French.”
Kate
DeWolf, it’s so bizarre that the idea of sending your kid to school to learn another language as a net benefit is simply not considered as a possibility.
One of my friends from high school was notably bright – he eventually became a Rhodes Scholar – and when he was in grade school they weren’t sure what to do with him so they suggested switching him to French school for a couple of years to give him more of a challenge. They did, and he chanced on a teacher who traumatized him, James Joyce style, with horrific accounts of what hell would be like if they sinned.
But he did learn French.
I was only threatened with French school as a possible punishment. “Keep doing that and we’ll send you to French school!”
It was effective. My French is still not terrific.
Josh
We had a lengthy court case in the Yukon that touched on this very question – can non-franco parents send their kids to francophone schools. It went to the Supreme Court and I transcribed a lot of the proceedings that took place here in Whitehorse.
Kate, the rationale for not allowing kids from non-francophone families into these schools is that basically you would reach a tipping point eventually where a school ostensibly for kids who’ve grown up speaking the language (“French first-language schools” they referred to through the proceedings) would become indistinguishable from French immersion schools. The parents who send their kids to the first-language schools do so because the expectation is that their children will mingle with other francophones, speak the language at recess, etc. Also the actual instruction within the classes, I would imagine, differs considerably between the two systems. (You would teach a 6 year old who speaks French at home much, much differently than a 6 year old who intends to learn the language at school.)
There’s also a bit of a cultural element; many of these parents want their kids mixing and mingling with other kids whose parents also watch Radio-Canada or RDS at home in order to preserve the culture (and in order to plant the seeds of a distinctly franco-yukonnaise culture).
It was a pretty interesting (and long, drawn-out) court battle here. Basically the question hinged on whether the local French school board was admitting kids it should not have been in order to inflate numbers to justify a new, larger school. In the end, they got their school.
Josh
(I should add that at the time, some First Nations people in the territory were none too happy that the francophone community here was getting its own school board and fancy new school, while their kids are just expected to attend regular, English-language schools that only vaguely motion in the direction of some of the truly threatened First Nations languages here.)
mare
This is a ridiculous and dangerous part of this shitty law.
What with (recent) immigrants, or the influx of anglophones from the RoC? My French is pretty good, and I mostly speak French with my francophone doctors, but sometimes there is some language-based confusing of medical terms and we switch temporarily to a mix of English and French. If that’s not allowed, or when my French was poorer so I wouldn’t understand much, that would be dangerous. Even native speakers have problems recalling advice and follow up regimen after seeing a doctor. People whose French is (still) poor will fare far worse. Doctors everywhere in the world use the language that works best when seeing patients, and often that’s English as a common language, but they also use an interpreter when needed. Does Quebec provide and pay for translation services? No, because interpreters are expensive and in short supply.(And let’s not talk about mental health care: speaking French with your therapist when your French is poor? That won’t be a very successful therapy, just by the increased stress it causes alone.)
Derek
Kate – I don’t know what the confessional system was but I graduated from the Catholic school board in the 90s. You can contact the CSSM (née CSDM) to get your records if you went there. The PSBGM is administered by the EMSB now. Regardless, if you went to school here, someone has your records.
Kate
Derek: Confessional just means religiously-based boards. The main boards in Montreal used to be the Montreal Catholic School Commission and the PSBGM, as you say. I was sent to Catholic schools but in English.
jeather
If you were in the student ID era, the government has your records too. (Confessional system was PSBGM/CSDM.)
I don’t mind doing minor discussions in French with my health care providers — the nurse and doctor when I got my Covid test didn’t speak English well enough, and it was fine, and I’m pretty sure my vaccination nurses all spoke only French to me, but if we’re doing more than that, I don’t feel comfortable enough in French. I’m near the MUHC so when I went to the ER there I had no problem in English, at least. Don’t have a GP still, 2 years on; not sure if I’ll be assigned one who speaks English, assuming I ever get anyone.
Meezly
Some of you may be interested in signing an open letter to Legault against the plan to limit government services to citizens who are eligible to attend English schools:
jeather
I was also sent this link
https://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/exprimez-votre-opinion/petition/Petition-9347/index.htmlant6n
@DeWolf
Ethicity is the correct term. Access to certain schools is based on ethnicity, not spoken language. A francophone can not learn English to gain access to an English school – what matters is how they were born and which ethnicity their parents are.
And if the ROC has the same rules, then shame on them – two wrongs don’t make a right.Daisy
It’s not ethnicity, because anglophones are not necessarily of English/anglo descent (including me). Some of them are even of French descent. We have any and all ethnicities you can imagine.
In the ROC town I grew up in the francophone school was populated mainly by the children of members of the Armed Forces (there was a base in town). I believe it was quite a problem that not all of them were actually francophones, i.e. didn’t speak French at home. When they started school, some kids spoke perfect French and some not a word. How do you teach a class like that? But they all had a right to be there because of one parent having been educated in French, whereas an anglo kid who had already learned French was not allowed to be there.
JaneyB
Further to the education issue: In the French part of Winnipeg, indeed there are separate schools for immersion and others for ‘mother tongue Francos’. This was created by Franco-Manitobans to make sure the level of French instruction was high enough for kids who grow up in mother-tongue Franco families – there are plenty of these folks. Not sure but my guess is that kids from francophone Africa are welcome there – they do exist in Wpg, brought in to fill up the demographic gap from the low birth rate of the local Francos.
ant6n
@Daisy
I would argue that “anglophones” vs “francophones” at least in the context how lineage and heritage are used in Quebec to discriminate people into different availabilities of public service, are indeed ethnic divisions. It might feel odd because we are talking about a division line that latgely divides different white peoples of European descent, but this interpretation is consistent with the definition of the term ethnicity. Here the focus is on ancestry and language.Wiki: “An ethnic group or ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups such as a common set of traditions, ancestry, language, history, society, culture, nation, religion, or social treatment within their residing area.”
jeather
The issue with calling it ethnicity is that there is no self-identification — there are lots of people who identify as anglos in Quebec (and who other anglophones would agree are anglo, as the community aspect does matter) who cannot go to English schools.
ant6n
@jeather
When the state has policies that divide the people along ethnic lines in order to apply different policies, it didn’t care about how you self-identify. Otherwise the discrimination is moot.Meezly
This has been an interesting discussion, and at risk of digressing a bit, as quality of education was mentioned between French immersion vs French first schooling, as my Vancouver friend went through this as an Anglo sharing child custody with her ex-francophone partner.
Their kid was struggling with reading and writing at his French First school, even though he could speak French well, but the teachers were not good at figuring out how to help him. The school never tried to accommodate my friend by speaking to her in English. They’d tell her that her son’s “doing fine”. And it was hard for her kid to make friends as all the kids came from different areas as this was the only French school in Vancouver. It was not a good fit for her kid, but her ex insisted that the kid keep going to this school because he’s francophone.
When my friend moved to a different area, she finally convinced her ex to enrol their kid in the neighbourhood school’s French immersion program. It was much less strict, more relaxed and the kid was able to make friends in the hood. However, she realized he was academically behind for his grade level. The kid felt “stupid” because in Grade 4, all the kids knew how to multiply except for him.
He never learned multiplication in Grade 3 at his French First school because it was all about dictées, dictées, dictées.Anyway, with a good tutor to help him catch up, the kid has been adjusting and thriving. I don’t know what I’m trying to say with this except to share my friend’s experience with both educational systems. If this particular French school was actually any good, my friend’s kid would’ve benefitted from that. But the running theme is that there is a blindness and obsession that the French language must be prioritized at all cost so much so that it becomes more damaging than nurturing.
Kate
Meezly, I’ve wondered about some of the things you mention here. Putting kids who’ve never spoken French into a French school cold seems to be a sink-or-swim situation. I have wondered what happens to kids who have even a minor problem with language learning when faced with this.
Also, I remember some of the French teachers from high school – to them, not to know French perfectly was seen more as a moral failing than as the natural result of growing up in a family that didn’t speak French at home. The obsession with the language that you describe here is not new.
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Kate
A sixth woman is suing Gilbert Rozon for sexual aggression. Sophie Moreau, the daughter of comic actor Jean‑Guy Moreau, was only 16 when, she alleges, Rozon assailed her multiple times, asking to take her virginity. 24heures has a quick list of the six women who have accused Rozon of various degrees of sexual impropriety.
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Kate
Radio-Canada’s Enquête has revealed that, during Frank Zampino’s stint as chairman of the city’s executive committee, he received faxes at home updating him on the various corrupt deals being made around city hall during the Tremblay era, not just by the city itself, but by boroughs and the STM too. Zampino has always denied all knowledge, while others have called him the mastermind of the collusion system. The city is still trying to sue Zampino to recoup some of its lost dosh.
If you fancy another story about local corruption, the same Radio-Canada journalist has
collaborated onco-written an epic about Laval’s Gilles Vaillancourt.mare
Using the word collaborated in the last sentence made me think that the journalist was corrupt too.
Kate
Fixed!
dwgs
The usage of ‘collaborate’ pegs one as a Montrealer / Quebecer like no other word. Elsewhere in the English speaking word people tend to say ‘cooperate’.
MarcG
@dawgs (that’s how I pronounce it): Do you mean people that say “cooperate on an article” or “cooperate on a scam”? Neither one sounds right to me and I spent some time in Ontario.
GC
Chiming in as someone who grew up in Ontario… I would say that cooperate is something roommates do. To team up on something work-related, like an article, most people would 100% say “collaborate”.
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Kate
The deepest train station in Canada is taking shape 70 metres underground near UdeM.
In other REM news, between 20% and 30% of the 9400 parking spots along the train’s route will be paying ones, even in some spots, like Panama, where they’ve been free up till now.
EmilyG
From the first article:
“The station will be accessible via five high-speed elevators that will travel the equivalent of a 20-storey building in less than 30 seconds.”
Oh my.MarcG
Can you choose to take the stairs? Yikes.
Kate
There will have to be stairs in case of breakdowns.
I wonder whether people will be keen to set records in how quickly they can climb those stairs.
Faiz Imam
I’m surprised under 30% of the parking spaces will be. Paid, I expected it to be a lot higher.
I remember RTL installed gates in the parking lot of panama station when I was in high school, and that was quite a few years ago.
All park and rides should be paid parking. The cost of those spaces and of the sprawl caused by them is not zero, and we shouldn’t all equally pay.
Also, people who choose to not take suburban transit to the rem stations should not get a free pass for doing so
Uatu
Yeah I think the free parking days of the Panama station will be over. At least until the angry driver segment makes it an election issue. Never count out the angry suburbanites. I’ve seen them rally to refuse construction of a mosque across from Brossard city Hall (there’s a Metro store in the location now). The mosque was eventually built near dix30 but I remember the hoopla around it.
James
Kate: There will be stairs but only in case of emergency. A 70m climb is not for everyone!
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Kate
The last remnant of the St‑Pierre river, which flows through the Meadowbrook golf course on the border between Côte St‑Luc and Lachine, will be buried and covered over by court order. Marian Scott’s article in the Gazette explains how the river came to be so contaminated, and quotes Justin Bur saying the St‑Pierre was diverted as long ago as the 1690s.
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Kate
A classic drama played out Thursday in Rosemont, in which a spurned lover stabbed his rival, who was taken to hospital with non‑life‑threatening injuries. The alleged attacker has been arrested.
EmilyG
My goodness, I used to live near there.
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Kate
Valérie Plante was sworn in Thursday evening alongside all but six of those elected recently. Those six – three borough mayors and three councillors – await recounts which will begin Monday. La Presse has the most detailed account of the event, describing the skirl of bagpipes that greeted the mayor, and the Mohawk elder who opened the ceremonies.
H. John
I was wondering how to ask this respectfully.
If a Roman Catholic Bishop showed up with a monstrance to initiate the swearing in (with any luck most of you have to Google that), some people might raise “laicité”.
And yet, it’s become acceptable/the norm for a 1st Nation representative
to open a ceremony.I’m not asking this because I think 1st Nations’ spirituality is unacceptable. I don’t understand why we see it as less equal.
We use their spirituality.
We don’t think it’s inappropriate (state/religion) because their beliefs are useful theatre for us to pretend we get “them”.
I’m concerned we’re treating their spirituality as less than equal to other religions.
walkerp
Is it a question of spirituality, though, or of territory?
Though, either way, it is still theatre to some degree.
Kate
H. John, it’s a good question. We’re definitely not putting this elder in the same conceptual category as we would a Catholic bishop, but I don’t think it’s less. Bringing in a bishop (as would certainly have happened in the past – think of those photos of the launching of the Montreal metro with Cardinal Léger to the fore) would suggest giving the Catholic church precedence, no longer a popular idea. But bringing in a Mohawk elder suggests an acceptance of the indigenous claim on the territory without enforcing any particular set of spiritual beliefs on anyone present.
OK, to an extent it’s virtue signalling, and it does suggest we’re kind of putting a burden on our indigenous folks to act out some kind of spiritual connection to the land, which individuals among them may or may not buy into. It’s a gesture, but on balance, a mildly benevolent one, I think.
Josh
This is another issue I have seen bubble up in the Yukon! When I worked at the college up here, it became standard practice to have an opening prayer said by a local Elder to open conferences, large meetings – that kind of thing. A local atheist activist wrote some letters to the editor complaining about the practice. Nothing was ever really resolved, there’s still some tension around the issue. It’s also worth noting that one of the many effects of colonization is that (at least up this way) many First Nations people regard themselves as strong Christians, so the opening prayers from some of these Elders can be very, very similar to what you’d hear from a priest or pastor.
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Kate
The shelter tent on Cabot Square may have to close. The city is willing to allow it to exist till the end of next March, but does not intend to cover its expenses.
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Kate
The Journal coos over a family leaving Montreal because it’s too violent.
Note the description of Thomas Trudel as “un garçon «tranquille» et «sans histoire»”. I want to be clear: I’m not implying Trudel was a young criminal, but a position’s being taken that, since he was a young white guy, he can’t have been involved in anything dubious: there was certainly no such consent manufactured when Jannai Dopwell-Bailey was killed outside his school.
There’s been no report yet from police about the motive (if any) for Trudel’s killing, and whether he could have been mistaken for someone else. Until then, we should be cautious about assuming anything about the incident.
Security has been heightened in the area where Trudel was shot on Sunday and Legault’s Je ne reconnais pas Montréal is echoed over several media. Revving up to polarize Quebec and Montreal for next year’s election?
Update: The school principal in the area is advising students not to walk alone at night.
dwgs
Anybody want to mention that it was a young white guy who killed Dopwell-Bailey? Cause it was.
Blork
OK, i’m trying hard to reserve judgement on why anyone would want to raise SIX CHILDREN in this day and age, so I’ll go with the extension of that: you can get a house big enough for a family of eight in Chaudière-Appalaches for half the price of a studio condo in Montreal. And if you have SIX CHILDREN then obviously child-rearing takes up ALL OF YOUR TIME so the family income is likely nowhere near six figures, which further justifies that move.
So yeah, take your family to Saint this-of-the-that in the middle of nowhere, where you can live cheaply, enjoy the freedom (and freeness) of wide-open spaces, raise your chickens and goats, and probably have a nice rural lifestyle. I suspect these folks were never really into city living in the first place.
Kevin
I’ve never been a fan of nostalgia because it blinds people to reality.
At its best it’s a mild delusion. At its worst it’s murderous.steph
when I head the Legault’s quote “Je ne reconnais pas Montréal”, my knee jerk throught was – yes, Club Super-Sexe is gone, things change.
Kate
I did a quick family tree for François Legault a few months ago, mostly to see whether there was anything in his claim of having indigenous ancestry. I was not able to determine that to any certainty, although I’d say it looks unlikely. (Doing census work this summer I found that an awful lot of Québécois believe they have some indigenous ancestry, although it was always at a level of vague family legend.)
However, what I did find out was that Legault’s family goes back several generations around the western suburbs of Montreal. He was born in Lachine, his father in Vaudreuil and his mother in Pointe‑Claire. Our François is a thoroughly suburban boy – neither a country kid nor a city slicker. He’s in no position to make blanket statements about his understanding of Montreal.
Mr.Chinaski
I’ll fight this… but Lachine is not a suburb!!!
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Kate
There are allegations of serious irregularities in the counting of votes in some boroughs. Recounts will begin Monday, and some candidates will have to sit out Thursday evening’s swearing-in ceremony.
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Kate
Mamadou Konaté worked through the worst of the pandemic as a CHSLD cleaner, but then was ordered deported back to Côte d’Ivoire. He’s had a stay of deportation for now. Konaté has been in Canada for six years.
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Kate
Montreal is getting to be one of the top cities for artificial intelligence.
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