As Ariane Krol writes, only four days after the federal plan to limit greenhouse gases was presented, students held a climate march demanding faster action on environmental issues.
Updates from April, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Surveys of the weekend driving crises as cones make their seasonal return.
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Kate
Fagstein has tweeted a list of April Fools jokes. Thomas Gerbet gives us a jape from Longueuil.
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Kate
The CMM is preparing to adopt a rule to save the remaining woods and marshes around the city.
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Kate
Shots were fired at a house on Nuns’ Island overnight, but nobody got hurt.
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Kate
The ARTM is facing a tough time with public transit ridership down for two years and probably lower for years to come than would’ve been expected, before the pandemic came. They want to get reliable financing from government so that services don’t have to be reduced to a level where almost nobody would be able to rely on them.
The financing of public services, transit and health most notably, have got to stop being political footballs, and be set on a regular, rational and sustainable basis that can’t be tinkered with for electoral purposes, or jimmied to suit neoliberal theories.
Mr.Chinaski
On a similar note, nobody is buying monthly passes anymore, they are useless.
They should use a logical 1-set price charged on your credit card at the end of each month with 10%/20%/30% rebate for each level of 10/20/30 trips.
azrhey
They have that in London..you pay either with your oyster or your credit card (or phone with paypass) and the first tickets are full price until you reach the daily ticket price… then the next day it starts all over again…until you reach the amount of the weekly ticket then they stop charging you for the rest of the week…then next week…until you reach the monthly price…etc… No buying tickets, no calculations…it;s all made automagically …
I miss TfLTee Owe
Azrhey nails it – London makes it work, I think I mentioned this on here before – nothing that couldn’t be copied, all that’s missing is the will to do it
Danny
NYC is also trying it on a smaller scale with the rollout of their new contactless payment system (OMNY). As soon as you reach 12 fares paid during a week ($33), it becomes an automatic weekly pass with no additional charges.
CE
“On a similar note, nobody is buying monthly passes anymore, they are useless.”
I buy monthly passes every month that I don’t bike (usually December-March). I can’t imagine that out of all the people I see on the bus and metro, I’m the only one who bought a monthly pass. Just because you’re able to stay at home and work doesn’t mean everyone else is.
Daisy
I also buy a monthly pass in order to get to and from work during the week, and if needed to get around town for other purposes on the weekend. If I’m on vacation 2 weeks or more during a month, I buy packs of 10 tickets instead. (Annoyingly, the tickets you need to be able to take the Longueuil metro aren’t available as 10 packs, so to get home from my South Shore job I have to buy 2 packs instead, or else walk on the bridge and get on the metro at Parc-Jean-Drapeau.)
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Kate
Pope Francis has apologized to Indigenous delegates for the residential school abuses, which is what they went to the Vatican to hear. There’s also mention here of a papal visit to Canada later this year.
Indigenous people are also hoping the Pope will revoke the decrees that make up the Doctrine of Discovery, the papal bulls that permitted European explorers to treat the New World as terra nullius and claim it for themselves. That will be a big day if it ever happens, although I don’t think the gesture would have any legal weight now.
Meezly
Interesting, I did not know that but also not surprised that the papal bulls laid the foundation for the Indian Act. But the article seems to be arguing that it would be more than a gesture, that by revoking the DoD could potentially have legal ramifications that would help courts rule in favour of Indigenous self-government and land claims.
walkerp
Great, now let’s see some cash and arrests of rapist priests.
Kate
Meezly, I learned about that Papal Bull stuff shamefully recently, but it explained so much: the Pope was basically regarded as king of the world, so he “allowed” the Spanish and Portuguese to divvy up the non-European parts of the planet. Once you see it, so much becomes clear, including the political will behind the Reformation, and why the British were so keen to get the Pope out of their lives so they could get on with grabbing as much “unclaimed” land as they could.
Nobody ever taught us this in World History in school – but then, I went to a Catholic high school where it’s likely none of the teachers knew about it either.
Tim S.
The English were not particularly interested in overseas colonization until well after the Reformation. In the meantime they had their hands full with Ireland and reconquering France.
Kate
True, Tim S., but after the Civil War they made damn sure no new monarch could be a Catholic, among other things.
Meezly
Based on my limited Euro history, the Pope represented God on earth (and still does) but outside the religious sphere, there was the divine right of kings, thus the Church still had to submit to the monarchy. I think the divine right of kings continued after the Reformation, and it took the revolutions to do away with it.
Whatever the case, colonization and imperialism benefited both monarchy and Church, and the DoD was made out to be God’s Will for the white man to assert dominion over the New World.
It’s crazy shit and it does explain so much and needs to be required knowledge for everyone.
Tim S.
Well, since we’ve wandered into a topic I know a little about:
1) throughout the Middle Ages kings and church struggled for control. In general, monarchs and other rulers controlled the churches within their own territory. The Pope was kind of a UN+ – if he was on your side, wonderful, you have all the moral righteousness you need. If not, meh, an obstacle you do your best to wave away and set your propogandists against. There wasn’t too much he could do apart from try to organize financial sanctions – which required other monarchs to enforce. Which they may or may not have felt like doing for all kinds of non-religious reasons.
2) There wasn’t really divine right of kings until the 17thC. Before then monarchs tried to cloak themselves in some kind of sacred status but so much of their power was negotiated with different constituencies within their kingdom. Claiming a religious aura only gets you so far when a gang of angry nobles ambush you or when you die and leave a child to succeed to the throne. It was in the 17th and 18th centuries, particularly with Louis XIV, that there was a push to entrench the idea of divine right as a way for kings to build up their position against their own nobles and start to create the modern state. As we know from the fate of Louis XVI, people didn’t really buy it.
3) The story of religion in the colonization process is kind of interesting. Obviously it would have been better for the indigenous people if everyone had stayed home, but there were plenty of religious people who spoke up against the exploitation of indigenous people – Bartholomew de las Casas is a famous example, but also the Jesuits in what’s now Canada/Northern US. Their motives for coming here were often personally religious – deliberately seeking martyrdom, for instance. There wasn’t much financial benefit to the Catholic church from colonization until much later. It might have been different in the Spanish colonies, though. There were also, right from the start, various attempts at formal protection for indigenous peoples – which were impossible to implement an ocean away, but sincerely meant all the same.
4) This isn’t an area I’m super up on, but last time I paid attention to the latest research racism seems to have become a thing only in the 17thC. It’s worth remembering that well into the 18th century plenty of Europeans were being captured into slavery by North Africans raiding the Mediterranean (see Voltaire’s Candide). Even Europeans didn’t think they were racially special (religiously, yes) for much of the early colonization period. I’m only part way though, but there’s some interesting stuff about attitudes toward indigenous people in The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow.
Kate
That’s an amazing book, Tim S. I had had no idea that indigenous North American ideas about personal freedom fed into the European enlightenment till I read it (actually, listened to the unabridged audiobook).
Meezly
Thanks Tim S and Kate. Will put that in my ever expanding reading list.
Tim S.
Will also repeat my recommendation for Graeber’s Debt (originally recommended here by Clément, I believe). One of the best books I’ve ever read.
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