Montreal City Weblog

Updates from December, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• Kate 21:12 on 2021-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

  Santé Montréal is bracing for a surge of Covid from the Omicron variant. Dr Mylène Drouin says it’s too soon to have indoor gatherings of 25 people even though François Legault has been holding this out as a possibility for the holidays and has ruled out new restrictions.

  Rules for travel are also bollixed up.

  Who was it pointed out recently here about how Quebec politicians often mirror moves from the UK or France? Boris Johnson is also trying to buck medical advice and push Christmas gatherings.

  Kate and Daniel D are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Daniel D 10:56 on 2021-12-02 Permalink

    For sure, I think several commenters have drawn the comparison.

    One thing Legault and Johnson have in common is they live in fear of the polls turning against them. Johnson doesn’t want to “ruin” Christmas for that reason, rather than doing the right thing – whatever the right thing may be at the time given the available evidence.

  • Kate 11:38 on 2021-12-02 Permalink

    André-Philippe Côté has a good cartoon on this topic.

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• Kate 14:55 on 2021-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

  A man who punched an aggressive drunk during an orgy at Cinéma l’Amour in 2018 was acquitted of involuntary homicide on Wednesday. The blow was judged to be fair self-defence – but do read the account given here by Louis-Samuel Perron in La Presse. Everyone’s pants were down.

  walkerp and Azrhey are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • walkerp 18:36 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    Some new vocab words in there for me, especially une partouze. That’s a doozy!

  • Azrhey 19:49 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    Há! My specialty! (Linguistics not the other thing!)
    In French orgie is just “party in excess” more often than not food and drink “une orgie de saveurs” akin to debauchery but not necessarily sexual , but you can specify “orgie sexuelle”
    Partouze OTOH comes from the english Party plus the suffix -ouze that means “colloquial” (barbouze, fellouze, bagouze, etc, I’ll let you Google those…or not 😉 )
    I would not have expected to see partouze in La Presse, definitely not the proper register for a “proper” newspaper

  • walkerp 23:55 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    Thanks for the etymological details, Azrhey! 🙂 And I will be looking some of those up.

• Kate 10:16 on 2021-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

  Global profiles two Latinas in city council, Josefina Blanco with Projet, now on the executive committee, and Alba Stella Zúñiga Ramos, with Ensemble, now that party’s deputy leader.

   

• Kate 10:13 on 2021-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

  Patrick Lagacé writes about what happens when unmedicated psychiatric cases are roaming the streets because they have nowhere to go.

  ant6n, qatzelok, and Blork are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Blork 11:31 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    Oh, I know! I know! The budget gets balanced!

    #rememberthe90s

  • qatzelok 12:01 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    Will children under 4 will be roaming the streets when the CPEs get shut down for austerity?

    If so, I think we’ll need a lot more traffic calming measures.

  • ant6n 12:04 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    @qatzelok
    Maybe without traffic calming measures the problem will solve itself.

• Kate 10:08 on 2021-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

  The daycare strike either blights your life completely, or passes hardly almost unnoticed.

  Janet, ant6n, nau, and 3 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • nau 10:39 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    Do we say “hardly unnoticed?” “Almost unnoticed” or “virtually unnoticed” okay, but I’d write “hardly noticed” (or “barely noticed”). Am I out to lunch?

  • Kate 10:50 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    I tend to over-negate when I haven’t had enough coffee yet. Thank you.

  • jeather 12:20 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    Lots of people over-negate in English because it’s more common for a language to use all the multiple negations as intensifying the negation (see: French) than to do the weird cancel each other out game we play.

  • nau 13:31 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    Phew. It was too early for lunch. Made me realize I’d never really thought about how hardly/barely work or in this case don’t work with things that aren’t done or don’t happen (in the sense that if something passes unnoticed, then what didn’t happen is one noticing). Of course, one could say “That will hardly pass unnoticed” but that’s another thing entirely.

  • MarcG 13:49 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    That made me dizzy

  • nau 16:07 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    Hardly. 😉

  • ant6n 16:16 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    You can’t never over-negate not too much.

  • Janet 10:49 on 2021-12-02 Permalink

    Ain’t that the truth!

• Kate 00:34 on 2021-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

  Police are at something of a loss dealing with disorganized crime. The people popping caps in our streets aren’t the Mafia, whose structure and rules are well understood, part of urban mythology at least since The Godfather. These guys are young, unpredictable and hard to pin down. Just as a middle-aged person isn’t going to understand the slang, music or concerns of most late adolescents, they’re not going to understand why the kids want to carry a handgun and occasionally use it.

  I find myself wondering not so much where the kids are getting guns, as where they get their ammunition.

  Kate, JS, Uatu, and 2 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • dwgs 10:04 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    The ammunition comes from the same place as the guns.

  • Kate 10:19 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    For starters, yes. But you use up ammunition, and your source for your gun wasn’t a stable storefront somewhere, it’s some guy you know, who may or may not be available when you run out.

    Or can you just order bullets online?

  • Blork 11:42 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    I wondered the same thing, but I suspect most of these kids walking around with off-brand Glocks aren’t exactly spending their days on target practice. As in, they maybe fire them once or twice to get a feel for it, and that’s it until there’s a gunfight or a random potshot somewhere. So that 17-round clip that came with the package spends most of its life in-place and is pretty much never emptied.

    After all, these guns are used primarily for waving around (i.e., dick waving) and less so for actual shooting.

  • Uatu 11:45 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    I like Chris Rock’s idea of making bullets 1000bucks each. That way thugs would have to decide if capping someone is worth the price 😛

  • JS 12:37 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    Any idea how much guns cost on the black market? Where are high school kids getting the money to buy them? Do the kids own their own guns, or are there community armorers that lend or rent them out?

  • Kate 14:19 on 2021-12-01 Permalink

    I have a feeling a guy (and it’s always a guy, sorry) doesn’t directly pay for the gun, but gets it in return for services rendered, or to be rendered in future.

    Even in the more established gangs, a whole lot runs on obligation. It knits the whole thing together. For example: a friend of mine comes from a Sicilian family. He was starting a business. His dad, who was not mobbed up but drank coffee occasionally with guys who were, told him “Son, if anyone does you a dirty trick in your business, you just let me know. I know guys who can help you get even.” But my friend told his father never to do anything of the sort, because he knew that if those guys provided help, it would be on the understanding he would be expected at some point to return the favour.

• Kate 00:29 on 2021-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

  Christopher Curtis writes about the Cabot Square funeral for Elisapee Pootoogook as only he can.