Updates from July, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 20:54 on 2022-07-14 Permalink | Reply  

    A settlement of $28 million was awarded to victims of sexual predation by the religious order Clercs de St-Viateur has been thrown out by a judge because he found the $8 million included for legal costs was too high.

     
    • Ian 19:49 on 2022-07-15 Permalink

      I may have read it wrong but it seemed more like the judge was impressed with the class action suit, accepted that they deserved something, but felt the legal fees were too high so he asked the legal firm to resubmit. 8 out of 28 million does sound a bit spicy.

    • Kate 00:19 on 2022-07-16 Permalink

      Mmm, true. Maybe “thrown out” is wrong. More like sent it back with a post‑it note suggesting they rethink that item.

  • Kate 14:09 on 2022-07-14 Permalink | Reply  

    On July 3, I noticed I was down to two fares on my Opus, so I charged it up with another block of ten.

    I took a bus two days ago and didn’t look at the readout, so Thursday morning when I took a bus I was surprised to see zero fares remaining when I tapped it.

    Had I misremembered buying those ten fares? Was the machine broken? Had I been riding buses all over town in my sleep?

    So here’s the thing, and it may be useful to somebody else in a similar situation.

    I asked the booth guy at a metro station what was up. He seemed immediately familiar with the problem, and explained that my Opus had two records on it: zero fares of the kind sold before July 1, and ten fares of the new kind (Zone A). The bus reader can only see one kind of fare, and the record for the old fares, currently at zero, has priority.

    He deleted the record showing zero fares of the old kind, so now the bus reader happily sees the Zone A fares correctly on my Opus.

     
    • Jp 15:04 on 2022-07-14 Permalink

      The same thing happened to me! I also asked the metro attendant about it, to confirm my 10 new fares were loaded on the card.

    • Blork 16:46 on 2022-07-14 Permalink

      I don’t know how they can continuously make things more and more confusing. You know those new Zone AB tickets that are supposed to make thing easier for people coming from Laval or Longueuil? Nope. I just went to a machine to load up some tickets, and among the 20+ options, AB tickets were not even listed. I can get an AB monthly pass, but apparently I cannot buy individual tickets or groups of 10 or whatever. Or if I can, it isn’t goddamn obvious.

      So steamed right now. Riding on a borrowed Opus because I can’t buy tickets for my own. THANKS OPUS!

    • LJ 17:05 on 2022-07-14 Permalink

      Québec sait fare!

    • maggie rose 21:02 on 2022-07-14 Permalink

      I hesitate because this is a Montreal blog, but this is inspiring. After Covid took Germans away from public transport, the federal gov there, in looking for ways to get users back, is putting the price of a monthly pass down to 9 Euros (less than $12 CAD), for June through August. Covers all systems across the entire country. Seem to have worked. Obvs, without the public transport structure to support it, this won’t work. but what a darn good idea and help to encourage lower income people to get to schools, look for work, etc.

      Article is written by Canadian expats in the Netherlands. Can we import good ideas to Quebec? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/14/germany-9-euro-travel-pass-cheap-fares

    • Blork 21:13 on 2022-07-14 Permalink

      Follow-up: on the way home I went to the billetterie and spoke to a person who doesn’t give AF* and he basically said if I want a pack of 10 tickets I have to buy one of those disposable paper cards.**

      So no ZoneAB tickets on your Opus card. I can buy monthly passes, weekend passes, RTL bus tickets individually and in groups, a dozen other types of tickets, but I cannot buy (on my Opus) the most useful and “simplified” type of ticket there is for someone who lives in Laval or Longueuil and occasionally uses the Metro. THANKS OPUS!

      (*) “the person who doesn’t give AF,” or the PWDGAF, is essentially the universal term for almost anyone who works with the public in the 2020s.

      (**) It’s possible that there is a way to put those tickets on an Opus, but since the PWDGAF couldn’t be bothered to do anything other than shove a paper pass at me, and couldn’t be bothered to even turn on the mike behind his glass wall so I could hear what he mumbled, I am inferring this.

      BTW, @ maggie rose: nice!

    • Kate 22:51 on 2022-07-14 Permalink

      Blork, as a counterweight, the booth guy who fixed my Opus was polite, grasped the problem immediately and fixed it in a minute. So they’re not all weary drones waiting for pension or death.

    • Blork 00:15 on 2022-07-15 Permalink

      It’s a trap!

    • nau 09:05 on 2022-07-15 Permalink

      This is of course moronic, but this is what the STM says on their website about getting 10 Zone AB tickets on an Opus card (spoiler: you need to get a second Opus card (but it’s free (if you registered your existing card in your name))):

      Designated OPUS cards for All Modes AB, ABC and ABCD fares
      All Modes AB, ABC and ABCD fares in the 1-trip, 2-trip or 10-trip formats
      Regular fare: only available on non-refillable smart cards and designated OPUS cards
      Reduced fare (6 to 17, 65 and up): only available on designated OPUS cards
      You can obtain a designated OPUS card on these locations:
      STM Espace client
      Metropolitan ticket office and certain exo sales and service outlets (zones B, C and D).
      This card is not available at authorized retailers or at fare vending machines.
      You will receive this new OPUS card free of charge if you show an existing OPUS card registered in your name.

    • MarcG 09:09 on 2022-07-15 Permalink

      Why do we suck so bad at this?

    • Kate 09:27 on 2022-07-15 Permalink

      maggie rose: Spain is also making all train trips free from September till December this year.

    • Meezly 13:23 on 2022-07-15 Permalink

      I bought a portable Opus reader a few years ago and it’s very handy. I recall that a similar thing happened to me with the July 1 cutoff, but I was able to see the two zones with my Opus reader.

    • Kate 00:21 on 2022-07-16 Permalink

      Were you able to fix it yourself with the gizmo, Meezly?

    • Daniel D 14:41 on 2022-07-21 Permalink

      Just came back from London, where you tap your credit card or phone in at your starting station, tap it out again at your destination and it calculates the correct fare. The issue is Opus was never designed for this kind of system. They should really replace it with something more modern and allow contactless payments for one-off journeys.

      My learnings from reading this post are that I should use up the existing fares on my Opus (topped up before July 1st) and then get a new Opus card for future use.

    • MarcG 15:00 on 2022-07-21 Permalink

      Opus was outdated when it was implemented. Did any other cities get screwed by whoever’s behind it?

    • Daniel D 16:18 on 2022-07-21 Permalink

      Has anyone done a breakdown of how Opus works on a technical level?

  • Kate 08:40 on 2022-07-14 Permalink | Reply  

    A family in the north end is suing police after they were rudely awoken in the wee hours by the tactical squad breaking down their door and pointing guns at them. Cops had the wrong address. Even the people at the right address underwent trauma for no well‑founded reason.

     
    • steph 09:34 on 2022-07-14 Permalink

      “Les mains sur les genoux,” is this a new thing? I’d be confused by the order at gunpoint. Reminds me of the unfortunate Daniel Leetin Shaver shooting.

    • Ian 19:53 on 2022-07-15 Permalink

      I guess it’s meant as a more specific instruction than “keep your hands where I can see them” but it does seem a little like the cops are playing at just keeping everyone off balance and confused while they “secure” the scene. Classic cop behaviour, they assume everyone not a cop is a perp.

  • Kate 08:35 on 2022-07-14 Permalink | Reply  

    The death of Pierre Marcotte at 83 is being widely noted. There are retrospectives of his career as a TV personality.

     
    • carswell 10:46 on 2022-07-14 Permalink

      Last summer about this time, friends and I were headed to a gite near La Malbaie in the Charlevoix. We’d turned off onto a side road that we thought led to our chalet and were stop and starting because we weren’t sure where the entrance was. A car travelling in the opposite direction pulled up. The window rolled down and a handsome guy (I would have guessed late ’60s or early ’70s) with a friendly face and manner asked if we were lost and told us how to get to our destination. He looked familiar and as soon as he’d pulled away, we realized it was Pierre Marcotte. Our stay was so delightful that we’re returning this year. Had been wondering whether we’d cross paths with Marcotte again but alas. Anyway, like many of the locals we encountered, he was admirably welcoming and helpful and not at all full of himself.

  • Kate 08:19 on 2022-07-14 Permalink | Reply  

    Notre-Dame-des-Neiges is getting more and more overgrown and gothy looking, and some customers are getting so angry with people in the cemetery office that security has been hired to protect them. In itself this is not evil, but the Sulpicians should fix the problem by offering a fair contract to their workers, not by getting the Journal to publish a piece like this.

     
    • Ephraim 18:27 on 2022-07-14 Permalink

      So, how much is a visit to Notre-Dame now? $14. How soon until they charge to see the cemetery? And still put out their hand asking the Quebec government for money….

    • Kate 00:21 on 2022-07-16 Permalink

      They had better not charge me to visit my great-great-grandparents.

  • Kate 07:44 on 2022-07-14 Permalink | Reply  

    A 93-year-old man was killed on his bicycle Wednesday in St‑Léonard.

     
    • mare 09:06 on 2022-07-14 Permalink

      Sad. At any age cycling in industrial areas like that is scary AF. You feel pretty small surrounded by giant trucks with weird turning ratios, and sometimes at high speeds. I’m puzzled how a cyclist decides to pass between a truck and its trailer, there must be more to that story.

      Around the block from Urgences-Santé, ironically.

  • Kate 07:39 on 2022-07-14 Permalink | Reply  

    Two people were shot downtown late Wednesday night, and the BEI is investigating because one of them was a policeman.

     
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