The Village wants to make sure it’s welcoming to 2SLGBTQ+ people including a new video and logo.
Updates from April, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
This
St-JeanVictoria Day weekend, the Société des arts technologiques (SAT) will be allowed to hold a 29‑hour boozefest, having arranged to be excused normal closing time. It’s being promoted by an entity called MTL 24/24 which has the intention of pushing to keeping things open around the clock.EmilyG
And I thought I’d been to some long boozy parties in university…
Bert
Did they request the same one week later, or 5 weeks earlier? It’s always the 24th somewhere.
Kate
Thanks, Bert. Corrected.
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Kate
A new “liberty convoy” is expected in town this weekend. Now they’re against Bill 15, a new
federalprovincial measure that prioritizes the interests of children over their parents.H. John
Kate, Bill 15 is provincial.
Kate
Thanks, H. John. I was so accustomed to these folks shouting against Trudeau that I jumped to the wrong conclusion.
GC
Either way, Montreal seems like the wrong place to protest it. But, I suppose they want attention more than they want actual change.
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Kate
The lack of francophones on the board of CN having been noticed, the railroad is determined to name two francophones to replace those withdrawing this year.
Michael Rousseau has given angry francophones years of material. Check out Twitter and see.
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Kate
Local news must be slow, because a lot of sites are covering the announcement of a new provincial party helmed by Balarama Holness – Mouvement Québec. Equality Party 2.0?
SMD
According to a recent Montreal Gazette Op-Ed the Equality Party 2.0 is being created as we speak by an entity called the Exploratory Committee on Political Options and the Task Force on Linguistic Policy. They have a website: http://www.exploratorycommittee.ca.
Kate
There could be more than one!
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Kate
Quebec is extending the mask mandate to mid-May. The latest new death number is 38 and Quebec will soon notch 15,000 deaths from the coronavirus, but we’re all so jaded by now that this is the new normal.
mare
I really want to know why Quebec’s mortality rate per million is so high compared to Canada’s average and other countries. Is our population in worse health to begin with?
DeWolf
It’s likely that other jurisdictions have seriously underreported their Covid deaths. An audit recently found that New York undercounted its nursing home deaths by 4100 and in summer 2021 the New York Times reported that the state’s overall Covid death toll was being underreported by 11,000 (!).
The Toronto Star also recently reported that Ontario has been undercounting its Covid deaths.
Shanghai has miraculously only had three deaths since being swamped by Omicron, even though there are reports that it is ravaging nursing homes the same way it did elsewhere. By contrast, Hong Kong reported 9,000 deaths during its recent Omicron wave.
Everybody rolled their eyes when François Legault claimed Quebec was being “more Catholic than the pope” in reporting its Covid deaths, but funnily enough the evidence seems to support his claim…
Kevin
I’m doing some depressing math and I’m hoping there’s an error somewhere.
In 2020, about 8226 Quebecers died of Covid. Gazette article from Jan 1, 2021 https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/quebec-surpasses-total-of-200000-covid-19-cases-on-new-years-eve
By the end of 2021, we were at a total of 11,781, or a yearly death rate of about 3,555 https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-covid-19-deaths-jump-by-21-as-cases-rise-by-14-494-1.5727002
So if we’re at 14,778 now, that’s about 3,000 dead so far this year, that means in four, maybe five months the so-called ‘milder’ Delta and Omicron and BA2 have killed as many people as all of last year, give or take.
Please tell me where I’m wrong.
mare
@Kevin no, you’re not wrong. 🙁
I use the tool at https://datagraver.com/corona/#/ with which you can track not only countries but also provinces. And it confirms that our cumulative death toll went up from 11760 on 3 January to 14740 now.
@DeWolf using the same tool I can see the mortality rate per million is 1737 in Quebec, and only 620 in British Columbia.
And even compared to The Netherlands, where they had an immense number of cases after they removed all measures in January, we’re doing really bad, since they only had 1288 deaths per million. And they’re very good at counting because they have a continuous census, since everyone has to be registered with the government.
Joey
What about comparing excessive deaths per capital? Wouldn’t that eliminate inconsistencies across jurisdictions?
Tee Owe
@Kevin – maybe it has to do with the denominator being higher – if ommicron/BA2 are way more infectious then way more people catch them. if some proportion of those infected die and the number infected goes way up then even if that proportion is small, the absolute number of deaths also goes up. A small proportion of a big number can also be a big number, as we read everywhere. Does that help?
Tee Owe
Oh I forgot, my better half suggested we should look at deaths with Covid versus deaths because of Covid – not every system distinguishes them and this can lead to discrepancies between what’s reported in different places
Kevin
Tee Owe
Oh, I know the reason– the infection rate skyrocketed after Legault told people in early December that they might be able to have 20 people over for dinner, despite Delta already hitting other countries. And dropping masks in schools and elsewhere as Omicron/Ba2 arrived in Jan/Feb also contributed.It’s just sad.
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Kate
As the cost of fuel rises, the taxi services that provide some of the city’s adapted transit are finding they’re short of staff because the salaries offered are not enough.
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Kate
Gamaniel Valcin, a Montreal man visiting his native Haiti, died in a plane crash there Wednesday. He was the father of Riley Jonathan Valcin, the young man killed in a work accident on the Old Port Ferris wheel on Christmas last year.
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Kate
More than a third of Montrealers do some gardening even though some manage with a very small amount of space.
David S
**Greater Montreal area: “les quartiers Montréal-Nord et Côte-Saint-Paul–Ville-Émard, à Montréal, le quartier Chomedey, à Laval, et les villes de Longueuil et de Terrebonne”.
I don’t believe Montreal-Nord and Côte-Saint-Paul-Ville-Émard are representative of the Island of Montreal.
Kate
It’s an odd selection, admittedly, but Montreal North and Côte-Saint-Paul-Ville-Émard are not unrepresentative either. What would you call the most representative boroughs?
DeWolf
I think they’re actually quite representative. Maybe not demographically, but certainly in terms of urban form. Montreal North by itself is extremely eclectic, with huge densely-packed apartment buildings, smaller mid-century duplexes and triplexes, and detached single-family houses. Ville-Émard and Côte-Saint-Paul consist mainly of prewar/mid-century duplexes and triplexes, with a lot of modern infill as well.
David S
I agree that they are not necessarily “unrepresentative”, but I think it is premature to generalize them as being representative of the entire island. I think there are so many factors to consider (socio-economic, cultural, age, family composition, etc.) that, unless you are looking at several boroughs, you cannot generalize.
For example (and for different reasons), I would not compare Ville-Marie, Pierrefonds, or (if by “Montrealer” you mean people living on the Island of Montreal) Westmount to either of those two neighbourhoods.
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Kate
The city is promising to devise an app to help people find parking spaces but not for two or three years yet.
Also, I wonder how people are meant to consult this app while at the wheel?
Blork
There was an app a few years ago that tried to do this, but it didn’t work very well. Whenever I used it, I used it via the passenger, who checked the app and called out directions to me. Nowadays most newer cars have CarPlay or something similar that sends app stuff to the car’s touchscreen, so I reckon it will be like Waze or Google Maps and will just be an interactive map on your dashboard.
Mr.Chinaski
I loved the PRKNG app, it’s a good thing if something similar gets updated. It gave clear instruction of where you could street park depending on where you were, at the end it wasn’t updated but it was still good to understand some weird places where you had 2-3 layers of panels on a street.
Joey
PRKNG was good except there was no way to keep up with changes to parking rules (even the borough office can’t tell you with precision what signs were changed and when). It’s refreshing to hear someone talk about the inconvenience of parking – e.g., the time you’ll spend circling/walking is greater than the time you’d spend commuting.
All this falls apart, to a great extent, when you remember that not everyone who parks has a smartphone or the ability to pay for their spot via app.
Like @Blork I imagine integration of this kind of tech into routing apps is on its way.
Now if only there were a way to get gas-powered cars parked in electric car charging spots towed quickly (or even ticketed!)…
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Kate
Parts of town are bracing for spring floods.
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Kate
(If you don’t think I should be critiquing architecture, please pass over this one.)
Dezeen has another Montreal house Thursday, described blandly as “used to be a duplex… converted into a single-family home.” I mean, bravo, what?
This one has a non-functional twisty staircase worked into it, inspired by M.C. Escher. It also features “irregular punched windows” and “fibre-cement panels left exposed” because symmetry and bricks are so passé.
MarcG
But who will dust the decorative staircase?
Kate
Somebody with a feather duster on a long telescopic handle.
Kevin
I looked through this and other Montreal homes they renovated and I really don’t like it.
Robert H
With gut renovations of older plex housing, my favorite design tactics are the skylight and light well. They’re the best way to brighten the interior of a narrow, deep floor plan. I like Escher prints too. The first time I saw one, I was an adolescent and I remember staring at the image of multiple staircases featuring anonymous figures and shifting perspectives, accordions of treads and risers blurring until I couldn’t tell one from the other. They really took my mind on a trip, still do. Maybe that’s why I don’t mind the odd-angle staircase vaulting playfully across the light well. Otherwise, the rest of the house features the usual tropes of modern design: large, unadorned monochrome surfaces (blank walls, windows without muntins, steel plates), open plan (don’t like the ground floor bathroom being directly off the living room), asymmetry–at least the rear façade (I wonder if Naturehumaine altered the front as well), and the foregrounding of minimally treated material such as steel and cement as design elements. The wooden floors are beautiful and une cour arrière avec terrasse is a wonderful thing to have for summer in the city. All in all, a mixed bag; I wouldn’t buy it, but I
do wish I could afford it.Meezly
Maybe I can afford to be more generous cuz this one’s not in my hood, but I actually find this one intriguing. I wonder if the stairs going nowhere are merely decorative? If the steps leading up to the skylight is perpendicular to the ground and assuming I could reach, I’d line the steps with plants. Also a bit sad they only punched one small window at the top. Even with a skylight providing light, it’s just nice to be able to look out and it seems like the lack of window is purely aesthetic.
Kevin
Robert H
In my built-in-the-1920s neighbourhood, there are lots of duplexes with a skylight shaft going to the ground floor.Robert H
@Kevin, they make so much sense, I wonder why they weren’t ubiquitous, a standard feature instead of an enhancement. They could be indoor or outdoor. I know that New York row houses and tenements were often built with party walls that parted about the mid point between the front and rear to create a sort of exterior well or shaft meant to bring in fresh air as well as light. But I’m thinking of an interior vertical space that extends through all or most of the floors of a building and is covered by a glass or transparent roof, a sort of atrium. I’m assuming that because plexes were built for multi-unit housing, such a feature would have eliminated any remaining privacy among the flats. But light wells become feasible for conversions to single household residences.
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