Covid is spreading in workplaces just as Quebec decides to allow bigger Christmas gatherings and plans are being made for the restaurant part of the High Lights Festival to be held en présentiel.
Updates from December, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Some St-Henri residents were so ruffled by the appearance of new, intrusive hydro poles along the Lachine Canal recently that they made a fuss and Hydro‑Quebec backed down.
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Kate
Valérie Plante made a strategic error promising to hire 250 more cops during the election campaign, because now Ensemble is determined to make her do it. Does Ensemble even care whether this is a good solution for the city, or the best place to put that much budget money? Or is this just tedious Ensemble-style politics again?
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Kate
The Parti québécois launched its new logo on the weekend:
A marketing guy called Jean-François Proulx found essentially the same logo on a Kazakh site:
Admittedly, when designing a logo, you usually do some research first, and Kazakhstan is pretty far away…
jeather
Are we assuming they just stole the design (or, more likely, hired someone who did)? It’s awfully similar. It’s not a bad logo, though.
DavidH
It’s biting its own tail and going in circles? Yep, great logo for the PQ.
Kate
jeather, when a designer is asked to come up with ideas, one of the sites they’ll skim for ideas is Behance.
jeather
As a not-designer, how would you a designer have come across it on Behance when looking to make a PQ logo? (I know nothing about this.)
mare
What the f*ck does Kazachstan with OUR fleur de lis! They don’t even speak French. Cultural appropriation, give it back.
(Still think it’s an ouroboros.)
Kate
jeather, the PQ isn’t rolling in cash, but they would’ve contracted with an agency. One of the first steps for something like this is to turn a few designers loose to look for ideas, and one of the first things they’d have searched for would’ve been Q-based logos. There are pages with Q logo ideas all over them in a file in that agency – that’s a certainty. Then somebody liked this one, they adapted it (getting rid of that 3D swirly effect, shame) and adopted it.
There are very few new ideas in the world, though. It’s just possible someone dreamed this idea up separately and spontaneously. If someone says to you “Make a logo that has to merge a Q and a fleur-de-lys” how many ways can you put it together?
jeather
So that is a . . . yes they stole the design? (Hired someone who etc.)
Kate
Well, as I say, design can experience convergent evolution, but these are awfully close. I’d say it’s 90% likely they stole the design, but most design is stolen.
thomas
The proportions of the new design seem wrong to me — where the fleur-de-lys seems oddly asymmetrical. Also, wasn’t the original PQ design inspired by El Lissitzky’s “Red Wedge” poster?
Mitchell
Before I read the post, I thought it was the placeholder icon for Quicktime player.
maggie rose
It just doesn’t look like une fleur in this configuration. More anatomical or zoological, less botanical.
Ian
Cute concept, but it looks like a G.
In any case I guess the PQ doesn’t know about right click > search Google for Image
Kevin
It’s sadly typical of the PQ that the party’s attempt at a relaunch/rebranding only gets attention because of their logo.
But it shouldn’t be a surprise, because the past six decades have demonstrated that their core argument “we need separation in order to do X” has failed as Quebecers proved time and time again that X can be accomplished without separation.
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Kate
Stephen Bronfman is asking Quebec for hundreds of millions of dollars toward his baseball stadium plan. Does anyone believe the cockamamie promise that this could be done at no cost to taxpayers? If we’re forced to buy this, we’ll be the biggest stooges in the western hemisphere.
Update: Martin Leclerc on Radio-Canada agrees with me: “Le hic, c’est que les investissements publics dans les stades et les amphithéâtres ne se font jamais à coût nul pour les contribuables. Ça n’arrive tout simplement pas.”
su
I wonder if Canada Lands received applications from any other organizations to acquire that piece of valuable public land. All we seem to hear about is the Baseball consortium. Has Canada Lands even approved and accepted the Baseball Consortium’s acquisition ? Perhaps Canada Lands will approve on condition that the Montreal administration officially agrees.
carswell
Sneaking suspicion that, as was/is the case for the REM/REM de l’Est, the backroom deal is already done and this back-and-forth between the developer, CDPQ Infra, the various levels of government and possibly MLB is mostly a dog and pony show aimed at making the eventual go-ahead seem inevitable. Then again, I’m a cynical old git.
Kate
carswell, I fear you may be right.
paulg
Seeing how out of touch Legault is with the actual issues facing the province, his need to tie sports to nationalism (not to mention his age demographic aligning with the fans of MLB) – I would give this a good shot of working
su
I wonder if any “stakeholder” groups or committees are included in all the back and forth
CE
I just don’t see how baseball is a sustainable sport to invest in. I’m in my mid 30s and know lots of people who watch and enjoy sports. They’re into hockey, football, soccer, tennis but not a single one cares at all about baseball. I have one friend who plays baseball but never watches it on TV. I asked him if he’d go to games if Montreal got a team, he said he’d probably go to one to check it out (I probably would too). I don’t think I’m alone here. Baseball feels like the church, it’s being held up by older people and a few die hard younger people but once all the old people die off, what’s going to be left of the fanbase?
Kevin
It’s not just baseball — ALL sports are seeing shrinking, aging audiences.
If you’re a sports fan you’re going to watch hockey, basketball, football — but any new sport is just carving out a chunk from that small group. It’s not attracting viewers from outside.Youth today are more likely to watch people play video games than they are to watch sportsing events of any kind.
steph
We used to have a team, and they moved away because the audience was too small. I can’t imagine how it’s gotten any better. What do they know that we dont?
Em
My guess is they’re banking on tourists to provide a lot of the attendance at games. The city is much more of a tourist destination than it was in the 90s, and the new location is quite near Old Montreal. Whether it’s enough to make it viable, I have no idea.
I’d be interested to see the proposal. If a team’s only going to be here half time, I certainly hope the stadium and surrounding area could be designed to be useful to the wider city and community the rest of the time, and include some of the green space/sports and community facilities that the Old Montreal and Griffintown neighbourhoods sorely need. I’d rather see that than an extension of Griffintown.
Mr.Chinaski
Of course they are banking on tourists. The Rays play in the AL East, which has Boston, New York and Toronto. Those are the 3 closest geographical teams in the league, and two of them have the largest fanbase in the league.
Let’s also remember that a modern baseball stadium would also be a place for large, outside events that could hold up to 50 000 people if you include the field, from concerts to outside hockey games to even football games!
Mr.Chinaski
Forgot to add that teams play their intra-division opponents NINETEEN times each, around 26-27 games at home per year against those large fanbase teams.
That’s almost 33% of games in a season in which Montreal would be against the Yankees/Red Sox/Blue Jays
GC
I’m with steph. This feels like a failed experiment and there’s little evidence to suggest it will turn out better on the second try. (I think I’ve already said that on this blog, though… And, I’m also as cynical as carswell about it being too late…)
Mr.Chinaski, while it’s true the venue could be used for other things, is Montreal hurting for such a venue? Are there lots of events that aren’t happening because the Bell Centre, Olympic Stadium, etc. are already booked and there’s nowhere else big enough for them? I’m honestly asking, because I don’t know.
Spi
There have been numerous stories through the years of events not being held at the big O during winter months because of fears the leaky roof won’t hold. Which on more than one occasion has proven to be right.
carswell
@Spi Yeahbut how many concerts and events would be held at Stade Francois Legault in January or February? And haven’t taxpayers just paid big bucks for large outdoor concert venues like the Quartier des Spectacles and, more to the point, Place
d’Evenkodes Nations?But sure, having been grifted — twice! — by the Molsons, let’s give the Bronfmans a teat to suck on too. Dog knows they need the money.
carswell
Also, isn’t the roof on the Big Ouch going to be fixed for good (in both senses of the phrase) real soon now?
Kevin
About half the seats at the Bell Centre were empty tonight. That should be a warning sign for anyone thinking of investing in any kind of sports team.
Orr
It’s all about the tapping the tv/media revenue stream and nothing to do at all with doing something of value for our city.
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Kate
A Laval story, but a teenager was shot while sitting in a library by someone outside. He may have been studious, but the victim was already known to police.
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Kate
Park Extension is in crying need of more family physicians, but Quebec says no.
carswell
Can’t be systemic racism because “Québec” is the one place in North America where that doesn’t exist.
Uatu
At the very least they should allow nurse practitioners to pickup the slack
Kate
Many of the patients there aren’t citizens yet, so they have no vote – and if they voted, it wouldn’t be CAQ.
So there’s no payoff, even to placing nurse practitioners there.
ant6n
Sometimes I long for a cynicism tag, similar to the sarcasm tag, to show one is not okay with a certain situation rather than fatalistically accepting it. After all, the PMs job is to represent all people, not his voters.
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