Westmount city hall is being held ransom by what’s called “un gang de cyberpirates” here – a shady outfit called Lockbit. They’re threatening to release a lot of the town’s private documents, although this item does not say how much ransom they’re asking for.
Updates from November, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
On Sunday, a rally was held in Chinatown to demand an inquiry into the death of Ronny Kay, shot dead by police in September.
The outline of the incident as told at the time was that a man was reported walking around Nuns’ Island with a firearm. When he pointed the object at police, they shot him. Whether it was a real gun, a replica or something else that could be taken for a gun at 100 meters has not been made clear.
The BEI was called in immediately to investigate, but the family apparently knows little about the results so far.
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Kate
Even though Quebec promised $200 million to decontaminate land in the east end of Montreal, the process is going slowly and only $9 million has been spent so far.
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Kate
Some drivers are already pre-dreading the traffic difficulties that may accompany the COP15 meeting, although let’s not forget that motorists will still have use of the Ville‑Marie while transit users will lose Place‑d’Armes station and cyclists the Viger bike path, for the duration.
Most of this article branches off into a summary of COP27, though.
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Kate
A 74-year-old driver is dead after he lost control of his car and plowed into another vehicle and a pedestrian, Sunday morning in Verdun. The incident may have been caused by a health crisis at the wheel.
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Kate
As a gesture against the National Assembly’s obligatory oath to the King, the Société Saint‑Jean‑Baptiste held an oath said to be libre, citoyenne et républicaine at St‑Jean‑Baptiste church on Saturday. These stories are English and French versions of the same CP report, and neither one mentions how many people attended.
In tangential news, PQ leader Paul St‑Pierre Plamondon is grasping at straws to get party recognition in the National Assembly, even though the PQ elected only three MNAs last month. Normally, recognition and benefits only go to parties electing a minimum of 12 MNAs or receiving 20% of the popular vote. St‑Pierre Plamondon seems to be counting on historic sentiment to get his party a better deal.
Uatu
An oath that reflects the secular nature of Quebec…. Taken in a church. Sure.
Blork
That’s actually kind of perfect.
Ephraim
Ah, yes, we are secular… in a church by a society named after a saint. Can someone remind them that Quebec excluded Jews from being in the National Assembly because the oath contained the words “on the true faith of a Christian” and that it is only with the 1832 Emancipation act (under Papineau) that Jews were allowed to even serve in the National Assembly.
There is one MAJOR difference between these people and Ezekiel Hart… Hart desperately wanted to serve the constituents that had elected him and was willing to even take the oath in order to serve… but they kept on trying to prevent him. These people aren’t refusing to take the oath for publicity and self service and thinking nothing about their constituents who just don’t care about the oath… they need someone in the national assembly to represent them
jeather
You forget that going to a school named after Jesus or Mary or a saint is just heritage, while seeing someone existing while being visibly not-Catholic is horrible religious proselytizing.
Ephraim
Let’s ask Paul St-Chose Plamondon https://twitter.com/infomantv/status/989554648523603968?lang=en
Ever since they called him that on Infoman a few weeks ago, I can’t manage to call him anything else 🙂
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Kate
Several people threw their hats in the ring for the job of police chief at the SPVM, but it’s now down to two: interim chief Sophie Roy, and her second in command, Vincent Richer. We’re supposed to hear the decision this Thursday.
It would be a kick in the teeth for Roy if her henchman were promoted over her, but is the SPVM ready for a permanent woman chief? We’ll see.
JaneyB
My bet is on Roy: a woman police chief sparring with woman mayor looks better than a man would, at least in the minds of the police association. And since she’s already interim, it’s less of a snub against Richer. I guess we’ll see.
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Kate
There was uncertainty this week whether McGill students would vote to continue funding their French‑language student paper, but they eventually did opt to keep it going. The McGill Daily was founded in 1911, and its French spinoff Le Délit in 1977.
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Kate
Radio-Canada asked several Italian‑Montrealers how they feel about a World Cup with no Italy team and asked which team, if any, they would support instead.
The first match is Sunday between Ecuador and host team Qatar.
dhomas
I’m of Italian origin (both parents born in Italy). I’m not what you would call a sports fan, but I do usually enjoy the excitement around the World Cup. That said, maybe I’m starting to pay closer attention as I get older, but FIFA as an organization seems to be getting more and more difficult to support with a clear conscience. Qatar was responsible for despicable human rights violations leading up to this World Cup, basically using slave labour to build their stadiums. The last World Cup in Russia was also questionable. The one prior in Brazil was just as bad, with the government building stadiums while people right next to them were starving.
Even if Italy had qualified, I don’t think I would watch many matches, just not to give my support to this corrupt organization and nation. For the record, I would support Canada and Portugal (my wife’s nation) for this World Cup.
Kate
dhomas, is your wife a keen supporter?
I remember street honking and festivities for various Portugal wins when I lived in the Plateau at the edge of the Portuguese neighbourhood, but nothing to equal the sheer exuberance in Little Italy when that team won the World Cup in 2006.
I’m not a huge fan myself. Might watch a highlights reel sometime. I don’t expect the Canada team to get very far – the team’s first outing is on Wednesday against Belgium, whose team came third in 2018, then Croatia on November 27 – and the Croatians came second that year. My ancestral teams would be Ireland (not in it – people there are more into rugby and hurling than soccer) and England, who haven’t won a cup since 1966.
Tim S.
I won’t jinx the Canadian team by making any predictions about results, but having watched some of the qualification games I can say they will be fun to watch. They’re also a very likeable group of personalities, a combination of humble stars and squad players getting their 15 minutes of fame.
Uatu
I saw a report on the construction of the stadiums on PBS. The workers were basically treated like slaves. They were working in the desert in extreme heat. The company gave them water- in the form of blocks of ice. When the workers said they couldn’t drink the water in this form the employers told them if they gave them liquid water the employees would be drinking all the time. Bullsht like this is why I can’t watch the world Cup
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Kate
Business guys are coming to terms with the fact that office life has changed forever.
Uatu
For guys that like to say that the market dictates business they sure hate it when the market dictates business that doesn’t work out for them
Mozai
Office workspaces were cheap crap because employees didn’t have a choice; now we do.
Ian
This is also a good point. It’s not just “nobody wants to commute”, many people don’t particularly miss open concept floor plans and hotdesking, either.
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Kate
Communauto is coping with cars in short supply, but this article is actually more about its difficulty in getting dedicated parking spaces, which have to be wrested from each borough one by one.
DeWolf
I’ve been a member since moving back to Montreal 4.5 years ago and it’s definitely worth using – it’s still way cheaper and more convenient than owning a car or even renting one for road trips. But it’s a victim of its own success. The huge surge in membership since Car2Go shut down, and especially since the pandemic started and rental car prices exploded, has really led to some serious growing pains.
There are some big issues that Communauto has been a bit slow to deal with, like reservation hogging (people who make “just in case” reservations for every single weekend) and the imbalance of Flex cars, which means there’s always a shortage in high-traffic areas and an abundance in low-traffic areas near the edge of the zone.
The Facebook group dedicated to Communauto is full of people who say they’ve been pushed to buy a car for the first time because the service has become so frustrating. I find that a bit mystifying because the only way it makes sense financially is if you’re driving nearly every day, but I suppose some people are very heavy users. I use the cars as much as I need, for short local trips or longer road trips (I just got back from a week in New York with Communauto, for instance) and I end up paying an average of about $150 per month. That includes gas and insurance, so there’s no way a personal car would be cheaper.
MarcG
They have 2 stations in parking lots near me that are planned to be turned into housing. One of them is actually an interesting social housing project. They’ve added a ton of cars to the “downtown” Verdun parking structure which makes up the loss. I’ve considered buying a car recently myself because of how hard it is to get cars on the weekends and also because of the condition the car is left in (either full of garbage or no gas or no wiper fluid or dog hair everywhere, etc, etc).
Kate
Oh man. The tragedy of the commons.
John B
Also in Verdun, also often find cars full of dog hair & garbage.
They have added a “report” option to the app, which I have started using, especially for the two trips I took over the past week, where there were Timmy’s wrappers in the cup holders, Doritos in the back seat, and almost no gas, (1 car), and the car smelled like smoke and someone had left their cigarette pack plastic in the cup holder, (second car).
And forget about getting a car on the weekend unless you book as soon as you’re allowed 31 days ahead of time. No last-minute trips or changes of plan requiring a car are possible.
I spent almost $300 on Communauto in October, but that’s high for me. If I end up averaging $300/month I’ll be looking into what it would cost to become a car owner again. Maybe offsetting some of the costs through Turo or Locomotion.
DeWolf
The dog hair is a common issue, but having travelled with a dog before I can understand that it’s hard to avoid. In this case Communauto really needs to promote the fact that they’ll compensate you for the $2.50 gas station vacuum. If anything they should give you a $5 or $10 credit for cleaning the car.
The trash problem has become much better since they’ve made it easier to report issues. At the beginning of the pandemic I made some complaints about particularly dirty cars, but in the past year all the cars I’ve taken have been pretty tidy.
Spi
Since the start of the pandemic I’ve hopped into more than one Communauto with used masks on the seat, that’s more than enough to keep me away for a while.
dwgs
I have been checking out Communauto and was considering getting a membership. A monthly run to Costco would probably cost between $20 and $25, which isn’t too bad but if we wanted to do an all day outing away from the city it gets pretty expensive. I have to travel next weekend and just checked Kayak for rental cars, cheapest option is $22 per day with unlimited mileage and plenty of availability. Doesn’t make Communauto look so attractive.
GC
If you’re going to run numbers, keep in mind that the Communauto price includes all the fuel and the traditional rental does not. That being said, the traditional rental is sometimes still going to be cheaper.
The past few years, I’ve wanted to default to Communauto after too many experiences with rental agencies that don’t have the car ready anywhere close to my reservation. If I reserve it for 10 AM or whatever, and show up earlier than that, it’s because I have some hope of leaving around then. Maybe not right on the dot, but there are times it’s taken up to an hour or more to me to get in the actual car and get out of there. One time, I complained and got a small credit from Enterprise, but I was still an hour late to my destination. My Communauto has always been there, ready to leave, whenever I booked it. And I can return it at odd times, like 3 AM on a Sunday, if that’s my travel schedule.
That being said, I will echo DeWolf in that it’s been harder and harder to find a car the past couple of years. I do find that a lot of those “just in case” reservations will usually be cancelled a couple of days before. So availability opens up, but it can be really challenging to find something 1-2 weeks before the day your need it.
John B
The draw of Communauto is convenience and, despite what I said above, flexibility. You can rent a communauto for a few hours, and you’re not beholden to the business hours of rental car offices, (which are often closed on weekends).
That said, for multi-day or long excursions it’s usually cheaper to rent from a traditional rental agency. Living in Verdun, Globe car rental is great because it’s usually competitively priced, open weekends, and at the forum. That said, for a while pre-pandemic Enterprise was quite a bit cheaper, and since the pandemic Globe wants printed proof of insurance if you don’t take their insurance, which is a pain.
I think it comes down to Communauto needing competition. If they’re the only game in town why improve?
John B
I’ll push back a bit on the Communauto always being there. I’ve had two instances where it wasn’t there this fall – once the previous person simply hadn’t returned it on time, and the other time it was parked a block away from the station. When your car isn’t there you have to call, then wait 10-25 minutes on hold, and they may or may not be able to help.
If they at least picked up the phone right away it would be ok, and that’s where, IMO, they need competition to force them to improve.
MarcG
Not sure everyone knows this but Costco delivers basically for free. The online selection is probably limited but if you’re just ordering essentials it’s the way to go.
Tim S.
Communauto was great when I needed to run an errand on weekdays, and a real headache if I needed it on the weekend. One of the reasons I gave it up was because it made visits to family in the suburbs dependent on the reservation grid and kind of stressful as I was always watching the clock.
I’ve said this before, but as a moderate car user (10,000km/year) owning isn’t more expensive than renting/communauto. This year is my break-even year on the capital cost, so we’ll see how things hold up over the next couple of years. And while I was dreading dealing with garages and maintenance etc, it’s actually probably taken up less time than booking Communautos and dealing with customer service when things went wrong.
Maja
We’re quite happy with Communauto, though the reservation difficulties are indeed a pain.
We use the Communauto flex cars a lot for the whole weekend because the flex rate maxes out pretty quickly so it ends up not being very expensive to grab a car on Friday and return it on Sunday. (It’s impossible to find a car on Saturday morning though.) Our friends grab a flex on Monday and return it every Friday to haul their kids to and from daycare and that’s still a good price. It depends on what kind of monthly membership you get but it’s worth doing the calculation to see what might work best for you. You can also park Flex cars just about anywhere, including stickered spots.
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Kate
A man was beaten badly early Saturday by a group of people in a location that makes me wonder why anyone was hanging around Chabanel Street at one in the morning.
JP
It’s not too far from residential streets…and there could also be late shifts at one of the companies nearby.
Kate
I suppose equally he could’ve been driven there and chucked out of a car.
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Kate
Villa-Maria and Pie-IX metro stations are now equipped with elevators. Eight more stations are in the process of being upgraded, but it’s an expensive business, Pie‑IX having come in at more than $81 million.
Taylor C. Noakes
That’s absolute insanity. I’m having a hard time imagining that the cost of retrofitting all the stations with elevators is less than adding staircase-mounted lifts, or just providing adapted transit services.
PO
Criminal. Going by Wikipedia, the Tour des Canadiens cost 230m. The Icône complex cost 120m. The Tom Condo building at 90 million.
One metro station elevator retrofit costs almost as much as a 40 story tower?
3 retrofits and you can build the seventh tallest tower in Montreal?
Taylor is right, absolute insanity.
Joey
The Pie-IX work was more than just a couple of elevator:
C’est à la station Pie-IX que les travaux étaient le plus imposants. Au-delà de l’installation d’ascenseurs, le chantier, lancé à l’automne 2020, impliquait également d’agrandir les édicules principaux et secondaires de la station, d’élargir le corridor souterrain, de revoir plusieurs systèmes électroniques ou encore d’ajouter un puits de ventilation naturelle.
Kate
I’m not sure it’s so wacky. Every station is different and is set in different geological conditions, so there’s no standard template for adding elevators. It has to be worked out in detail every time.
Also, the article did specify that the changes around Pie‑IX were also to align the station with the SRB Pie‑IX.
It’s a pity that, even if they hadn’t wanted elevators at the time, designers of the original stations couldn’t at least have engineered them to allow for potential future elevators to be implanted, but it seems not.
And as Joey says, other work’s been done.
DeWolf
Saying the Pie-IX elevator cost $81 million is like saying it cost $60 million to build a bike path on Pine Avenue, when it’s actually a complete reconstruction of the street and all of its underground infrastructure.
As for Taylor’s question about whether elevators are really needed – chair lifts are not a replacement because they only serve wheelchair users and only one at a time at that. And given that they are very slow, they need to be supervised by a metro employee and there are many, many stairs in the metro, it would be a pretty torturous process to use them.
Elevators aren’t just for people in wheelchairs. They’re for anyone who isn’t able to walk up a bunch of stairs: people with bad knees, people with lots of shopping bags, people with suitcases, cyclists taking their bike on the train.
Kate
People with kids, too, whether in strollers, walking or being carried. It’s a modern truism that you have to have a car before you can have a kid, but one way to push back at that is to make it easier for parents to use transit.
carswell
In case others interested in this issue missed it, the AgoraMTL thread on metro elevators has an interesting map in which all the stations are ranked by the technical challenges involved in making them universally accessible.The number of problématique stations is depressing.
https://forum.agoramtl.com/t/installation-dascenseurs-dans-le-reseau-du-metro/266/95
Kevin
I think the Villa Maria station is a good example of the problems faced.
It took three years to install 3 elevators, extend a building, extend platforms, move ventilation, move the bus loop… and all without shutting down the orange line because of some hiccup.Retrofitting is very hard. It is always cheaper and faster to build new from scratch
mare
The way our metros are build, with the ticket checking on a separate level of the actual platform doesn’t help with the installation and engineering of the elevators. Especially is some stations were there are stairs up and down to reach the platforms (example Mont-Royal), or where the platforms are far away from the entrance (Beadry, Beaubien).
Building two longer elevator shafts directly to/from the platforms to a small edicule above the ground would have been *much* cheaper. An automated opus card reader would open the elevator door, and the setup would also be easier for the actual users who wouldn’t have to descend with one elevator, go through narrow turn styles and then find another elevator.
A few downsides I can see, of the top of my head:
1) how do users without an Opus card enter, but with the availability of Opus cards in other places than the metro it’s less of an issue, and future technology might put Opus cards directly on phones.
2) The elevators have to be longer. Two elevators going to ‘deep’ stations like Lucien-Lalliers, will cost more so there a three tier approach might be better.
3) You can’t go from one platform to another one without paying again (although there’s an easy solution for that, swiping your Opus card when you exit gives you a 5 minute window to enter another metro entrance. Yes, can be abused.)
4) people might use the elevator entrances to “jump the stiles”, by sneaking in at the same time as a another user, but that can be done with the current installations too. (It also won’t cause millions in losses.)Ah well, the expensive solution was chosen, maybe because of the unions that didn’t want the job of ticket booth attendant have competition. Or other reasons.
Taylor C. Noakes
@DeWolf, that’s a fair point
I understand that a lot of these stations are getting other work done, and/or that the jobs are way more complicated than initially anticipated, but to me it still feels like a misuse of funds. I don’t want to sound insensitive, but my thinking is that every public transit dollar needs to be prioritized for system expansion and electrification, with a clear aim towards reducing CO2 emissions from other forms of transport. All of this elevator money could have been used to buy more electric buses (which are accessible), or getting going on a new tram line (which would allow more buses to be rededicated to the suburbs, where they’re more useful).
DeWolf
That’s fair enough Taylor, but I think it’s more of situation where we need the expansion you describe along with retrofitting stations to be accessible.
jfc
This is how drivers design transit systems.
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Kate
Actor, musician and senator Jean Lapointe has died after a long career in music and movies. His support of the alcohol addiction treatment facility that bears his name is also being remembered.
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Kate
One of the arguments for building a new MUHC hospital was that it’s important to have only one patient per room, to control infection as well as offer privacy. But so many kids are currently sick that they’re putting them in two to a room in the pediatric ICU of the Children’s.
In addition, throughout Quebec, teenagers from 16 to 18 are being directed to hospitals for adults.
Taylor C. Noakes
They haven’t really started work on the Vic yet, have they? There’s still time to save it. They knew they were decreasing the number of beds way back when.
Kate
They won’t use the old Vic as a hospital again. It’s too run down.
Yes, they consciously reduced the total number of beds available in the MUHC network. I don’t know how much of a reduction they made in beds for the Children’s specifically, but I recall a pretty sharp fall from more than a thousand to somewhere around 800 beds in the MUHC as a whole.
I don’t remember how they justified this, but it was during the period when everyone had been hypnotized by Arthur Porter so the decisions being made were not being properly questioned.
Uatu
Everyone thought it was nuts reducing the number of beds except the planners. People were sold on the idea by slick talking Porter and the combined media push by CJAD that ran infomercials (Health Matters) and CTV (Mitsumi etc.) They hand waved it off by saying that there would be additional beds on some other site to come and that modern medicine meant shorter hospital stays etc. Of course that was crap and now the pandemic and an aging population have come to slap them in the face with the reality that we all knew was coming. But what do they care? The planners, doctors etc. all have access to private clinics that the rest of the public doesn’t. Just be rich like the caq says and it’ll all be okay for you!
dhomas
The old Vic may be out of the question, but what about the old Shriners hospital? It was a kid’s hospital already. Has it already been repurposed?
dhomas
I just looked into it. It seems like the government of China bought the building around 2019-2020.
Ephraim 11:46 on 2022-11-21 Permalink
The trouble with this type of cyber pirating is that even if they do pay, there are no guarantees that they won’t release the data, nor or even in the future. I do wonder what kind of documents a city could have that would be so damn secretive anyway. And of course, if you do pay the ransom, what’s to keep them from ransoming you again and again and again
Kate 11:58 on 2022-11-21 Permalink
It does make you wonder what the top secret documents in a very rich little enclave would cover, doesn’t it.
Mark Côté 12:25 on 2022-11-21 Permalink
I read up on some of these groups a little while ago. Many are surprisingly “trustworthy” because they want new targets to pay, and if it got out that paying never helped, no one would.
jeather 14:41 on 2022-11-21 Permalink
As a rule if you pay you are safe because then other people will continue to pay out.
Joey 16:40 on 2022-11-21 Permalink
As Bob Dylan said, to live outside the law you must be honest.