Sunday in Rivière-des-Prairies, a Black man was stopped by police, handcuffed, had his phone taken and damaged, and was held for some time in the back seat of a police cruiser, then let go with no explanation – inevitably raising questions about racial profiling.
Updates from July, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
There’s a heat warning up for Wednesday, which is supposed to reach 30° with a humidex of 40°. With any luck, Thursday will see thunderstorms.
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Kate
The remodelled Mont-Royal metro station was presented to the media after four years of work on Tuesday, although some aspects of the station and its environs still have to be completed. La Presse underlines the fact that it was all done while the station was operating, which STM chairman Eric Alan Caldwell calls a tour de force.
Twenty of the metro system’s stations are now provided with elevators, with four more coming by the end of the year and more after that, although Caldwell admits that they’re leaving the most technically challenging ones till last.
EmilyG
Adding elevators is a great idea.
But will they be well-maintained?
Especially considering that the escalators often break down, or are just turned off, forcing people with reduced mobility to walk up the stairs in stations not currently containing elevators.Kate
It’s a good question. I’ve a friend who’s been getting around on crutches after a bad ankle sprain. She found recently in one station that neither the elevator nor the down escalator was working, and it’s no party getting down a long staircase on crutches.
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Kate
The CHUM has sent a mise en demeure to the city saying it doesn’t want the REV to go via Viger because “people don’t go to the hospital by bicycle.”
This on the same day the first Québécois rider ever has won a stage in the Tour de France.
Martin - ProposMontreal
“people don’t go to the hospital by bicycle.”
Someone doesn’t want to lose parking money I guess.Kate
They write as if everyone goes to a hospital by ambulance. Some people have appointments but are physically fine, some work there, some are visiting people there. It’s a stupid argument.
dhomas
That’s a good first point, Kate. But secondly, not everyone who bikes on Viger has the CHUM as a destination. I used to bike past there every single day on my way to work, further west. An actual protected bike path would be awesome on Viger. Due to safety issues on Viger, I separated my shoulder on that stretch and needed rotator cuff surgery.
Kate
Good point, dhomas.
Chinatown merchants should mise en demeure in favour of the REV, too.
DavidH
Went twice last week. Both times using a bicycle.
mare
I must be an anomaly, I bike to the hospital all the time. Not the CHUM, but Sacre-Coeur, or, coincidentally tomorrow, the Montreal Heart Institute. Both are served by pretty nice bike paths, Gouin and the REV Bellechasse. It makes those visits much more agreeable.
A lot of people in hospitals aren’t patients receiving care themselves, but are visiting their friends or relatives.
I can somewhat understand the CHUM doesn’t want ambulances and bikes on the same street, but I must say that drivers in Quebec don’t behave very well near ambulances either. Gridlocking is a national pastime here. At least cyclists can still hear the ambulances, modern cars are so well insulated and have such loud sound systems that drivers often don’t hear the sirens until the ambulances are very close.
Kevin
Martin
Parking is free at the CHUM, for the first two hours.John B
From the article:
5500 people work at the CHUM daily.
4720 patients visit daily, (not counting people who accompany patients).
50 ambulances daily.Surely cyclists will be able to let an ambulance cross the bike path once every 15 minutes? I’m sure the path will benefit a lot of the 10,000 people who arrive not in ambulances. I feel like a union, (or 3), for the workers at the CHUM should mise en demure the mise en demure.
Also, Viger is the only west-bound artery between St-Jacques in Old Montreal and René-Levesque, up the hill, and René-Levesque has a bus lane forbidding bike traffic for several hours per day. There needs to be a bike path on Viger.
In the meantime, I’m going to be visiting both the MUHC and a physio next week, by bike.
Tim S.
At Greene and de Maisonneuve in Westmount, the bike path goes by the loading dock for the 5 Saisons grocery store, where big trucks frequently come and go during cyclist rush hour. There’s an on-duty flagman, sometimes two, who handles traffic, and it works really well ( I assume the city mandated the flagman as part of the negotiations around the expansion about 10 years ago). Sometimes the solution is just to hire someone.
Joey
Also, since when do we limit our assessment of the REV to ‘how many people bike to the CHUM’? Car traffic could also impede ambulance access to the hospital – yet the hospital isn’t advocating to make Viger ‘ambulance only’. Show me a bike path in this city that isn’t *constantly* being interrupted by cars, trucks, construction, whatever.
The clip I saw of the hospital DG had her saying that an ambulance having to wait a few seconds to access the hospital because of a presumably unhinged cyclist was “a question of life and death,” as if the patient in the ambulance wasn’t going to spend the next 18 hours in a hallway waiting to be cared for. On the long, legitimate list of things the CHUM and its patients could possibly need, ‘worse cycling infrastructure’ has to to be at the very bottom.
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Kate
Tanvir Singh, the young man who attacked a ten‑year‑old girl on the street in March, has been found not criminally responsible for his act, and will be staying at Pinel indefinitely.
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Kate
It’s a little alarming to see the Santé Québec list of Covid deaths tick up by 35 since yesterday. I know these numbers come in irregularly and that doesn’t necessarily mean 35 people died in the last 24 hours – but it does mean 35 more people died.
Also, the Montreal total has not changed in a week, which is pretty unlikely, given the constant inching upward of the Quebec number.
Note CTV’s report: The total number of patients receiving care is now 1,960, with 651 people explicitly seeking treatment for the virus. That suggests that a lot of people seek medical care not even realizing they have Covid.
Blork
AFAIK, in terms of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, this is the worst July of the pandemic. Not that you’d know it, with all the mask-free faces around, and people talking about ‘during the pandemic’ as if it were over, and the general sense that we should just roll over and take it.
MarcG
@Kate Or they get Covid while in the hospital.
Chris
>That suggests that a lot of people seek medical care not even realizing they have Covid.
Well, duh; the vaccines work. If you’re vaccinated, and reasonably healthy, it’s basically a cold, sometimes so minor you don’t think you’re even sick.
That article has a lot of numbers, but conspicuously absent is the fact that a lot of these hospitalization/deaths are essentially Darwin Awards at this point. Not much that can be done about that, unless you want to tie people down and vaccinate them.
Kate
Kindly do not “well, duh” me on this blog, Chris.
I’ve got two really good, really smart clients, and they and their partners, all vaccinated, are all very sick right now. There’s no fucking “well, duh” about Covid.
Myles
Chris, people who aren’t healthy don’t deserve death. You probably know and love people with health problems who you would prefer to keep among the living, and they probably agree.
Ephraim
My golden aged mother got COVID at the MGH. I managed to get in and out of the Neuro without getting COVID. Friend tells that her parents got it at Catherine Booth from someone transferred from the JGH.
I’m coughing up a lung with post-COVID cough and I’m fully vaccinated.Kevin
“If you’re vaccinated, and reasonably healthy, it’s basically a cold, sometimes so minor you don’t think you’re even sick.”
The catch, and it’s a big one, is that if you have an unknown health problem there is a good chance that the organ-attacking disease that is mischaracterized as an airway infection will expose it and you’ll wind up in the ICU and/or suffer for months and months.
So sick people really should stay home.
denpanosekai
Covid’s hitting me hard right now. Coughing lots of blood. And I’m triple vaccinated.
Tee Owe
Depanosekai – coughing blood is not normal for Covid – please see a doctor ASAP
EmilyG
Biology professor T. Ryan Gregory points out in a tweet:
The argument that reinfections must be less severe because that’s how immune systems work seems to neglect the fact that it’s reinfection *by a different variant that escapes prior immunity*.Chris
Kate, sorry, bad choice of words I guess, I was just trying to express “obviously”.
Myles, of course, where did I imply otherwise?! Please re-read and note the quoted part of Kate’s text that I was replying to. It should be entirely expected that a lot of people have such minor covid that they don’t even notice it. That of course is not to say that others don’t get major covid!
Kevin, yup, quite true. Though those groups are not split 50/50. There’s something of a selection bias with the media always talking about the people with horrible symptoms, but talking very little about the larger group that get hardly any symptoms. Leads some to think the former group is larger.
>So sick people really should stay home.
Absolutely, but they often don’t. 🙁 I was in a cafe the other day where a worker was non-stop coughing. 🙁
EmilyG, in other words, the pandemic will never “be over”.
Joey
As, I think, David Wallace-Wells pointed out in an NY Times op-ed about this very topic yesterday, we are also dealing with a relatively unique situation in the 2+ years of COVID: because of the way boosters are allocated, those who have the “most” protection are also the most vulnerable if infected.
GC
Chris, while Covid will probably never “be over”, but this Pandemic will. At some point, it will not affect enough of the population (or the planet) to still be considered a pandemic. We’re just not there yet.
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Kate
A group that wanted to buy a metro ad protesting the $5.25 fare from the South Shore has seen its ad rejected by the STM as “denigrating public transit.”
Blork
Side note (but related). Last week we ranted here about the confusion around those AB fares and the Opus card, and @nau said that the STM website said you needed a “designated Opus card.” I can confirm this, as I managed to get one at the ARTM billeterie on the weekend. It is literally an Opus card with “Tous modes AB” written on it. Free if you show your other Opus card. (Shouldn’t it be free regardless?) And apparently you can charge up you Tous modes AB” card at a regular machine, where you can buy ride tickets in pairs or in groups of 10 for $45 (so $4.50 a ride).
Spi
I believe it’s been covered but the reason why you need two cards, is because the system has no way of distinguish which fare to deduct from your OPUS card. The system has no way of knowing that you’re heading off island when you get on in Montreal and thus can’t deduct an AB fare instead of an A one if they on the same card. Thus it’s the users responsibility to manage that now.
Mr.Chinaski
What a clusterfuck by the ARTM. It’s a shame we pay all those consultants over 100K and they come up… with this!
Kate
Spi, does that mean I could go to Longueuil with an A ticket, and it would be fine unless a transit cop caught me doing it? (Not that I plan to, but…)
Mr.Chinaski
Yes, they are actually doing checkups at the exit of the subway in Longueuil/Laval to see if you have a A versus AB ticket.
Kate
Good to know about! Thank you.
MarcG
Sounds very efficient and user friendly!
mare
An A ticket should just get you to Longueul/Laval but without the ability to transfer to a bus. Entering the off-island metro, presumably to go to Montreal, should require an AB ticket. So like it was before, and it won’t require extra manual checks.
I’m curious to see if when the REM is added to the network, it will get special turnstiles. This was supposed to be a driverless train, but if they need a lot of ticket inspectors that doesn’t yield a big cost reduction.
Bert
Just require a swipe-in – swipe-out system. I remember a British undercover transit police show and they covered just this. Swipe in and the system reserves the most permissive pass. Swipe out and the correct fare is deducted. Swipe out without the appropriate pass (under-fared) – block the card and require a purchase of the appropriate pass before next use – the purchase is immediately consumed by the system. “Forget” to swipe out – block the card and require a purchase of the appropriate pass before next use and have a big red spinning light and a horn go off on purchase. More that X “forgotten” in a given period and block the card.
Yes, this is susceptible to multiple “burner” card abuse.
Blork
Swipe-in/swipe-out sounds nice, but you’re talking about a complete tear-down and rebuild of the Opus card system and the associated readers and all infrastructure, which would cost tens of millions of dollars to build and would take years to set up. So yeah, but it’s not a question of “just blah blah blah” when blah blah blah carries so much overhead.
steph
@mare. yes the metro will get you there with the wrong fare. You are risking a fine.
I think it’s been statistically proven that strategic deploying ticket inspectors is cheaper. (The key word is ‘strategic’. obviously there’s way they can cost more)
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Kate
A 17-year-old was shot in Montreal North just after midnight, apparently from a passing car. His life is not in danger.
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Kate
There are a lot of items about the visit by the Pope next week to Ste‑Anne‑de‑Beaupré, including warnings about the total closure of a section of highway 138 to funnel people away from the area.
La Presse looks at an important point: shouldn’t the Pope be able to celebrate mass using wine from Quebec? But the requirements for vin de messe are stringent, only seven wines from the SAQ meeting the requirements, none from the New World.
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Kate
Bio-archaeologists are examining some human bones excavated during the construction of the REM, which are said to mostly be from Irish potato famine migrants.
Interesting coda: “two of the individuals most likely didn’t come from Ireland. The remains will soon be sent to a lab in Trois-Rivières where the DNA will be sequenced in the hopes of finding living descendants.” Does that mean they won’t sequence DNA from the bones they assume to be Irish? Hey, some of us are still here!
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