The STM has been handing out free tickets at Radisson metro to encourage drivers to give up their cars (on account of the partial tunnel closure) and is now going to extend the offer to mid‑December.
If they’re doing this, shouldn’t it continue till the REM goes live?
A car going at speed plunged into the Lachine Canal on Sunday afternoon. So far, divers have not found any bodies.
Update: The body of a 76‑year‑old woman was found later.
That’s freaky I was at that intersection earlier today. It’s a little strange how the guard rail doesn’t full extend on the “east” side.
Isn’t this the second or third time in recent years that an elderly driver has landed themselves in the canal while driving at night?
Spi, this one happened at 3:00PM.
CBC radio said this morning that it was an elderly woman and the car went through that guardrail.
Wasn’t the eye exam requirement for senior drivers recently rescinded?
Cyclists have to be more vigilant then ever!
The Alouettes lost to the Toronto Argonauts on Sunday and are no longer in contention for the Grey Cup.
I was interested to see this anti‑COP15 poster in my neighbourhood on Saturday. The website of the organization lists arguments against the meeting, notably that private enterprise is given a voice and is permitted to capitalize on genetic diversity, and that poorer countries with wide biological diversity are asked to “share their resources” with richer ones. It’s not referenced or footnoted.
In line with the current COP27 in Egypt, I’ve been expecting to see claims that this meeting as well is mostly greenwashing.
The ownership of the domain is in Quebec but everything else in the registry is redacted for privacy. It may be hosted by Koumbit.
Here’s a brief piece in Metro on the Coalition anticapitaliste et écologiste contre la COP15.
The half-baked and over-roasted protests of semi-educated so-called progressives is merging with the over-baked and half-roasted complaints of conspiracy-theory misinformed so-called populists into a singularity of deep-fried ass talk.
There. Someone had to say it.
At least they are doing something. A lot better than smug complacency on a message board.
” For decades, governments and capitalists have been
aware of ecological issues and have done nothing that has had a significant
impact. The mere fact that the COP on climate change is now in its 26th
year – and getting worse – shows us what we can expect if we give a free
hand to those who are leading us down the road”
Sounds like a realistic assessment of the debacle. Not sure socialists have been any more successful though.
Just read the manifesto and it makes a lot of sense to me. Didn’t see any references to socialism, though, the collective says it is “anticapitaliste, anticoloniale et anti-impérialiste.”
Yes, I know. They seem to imply that only capitalism destroys the biosphere . Socialist states are also industrial extractivist.
The city’s in a race to clear streets of leaves before freezing temperatures and blocked sewers create those icy lakes we all know and love.
It’s somewhat perplexing that the city has an objective of planting hundreds of thousands of new trees when it already does such a poor job dealing with the ones we already have, whether it be picking up dead leaves or pruning dead branches (sometimes fairly large ones). In central neighbourhoods you’re practically guaranteed to see one tree with obviously dead branches looming over the head of pedestrians on each bloc, just waiting for a big enough storm to come crashing down.
Maybe they need to design better sewer grilles?
I reported last year seeing a large branch come down right in front of me, from a big tree in my neighbourhood. Every windstorm brings down a branch or two on my block.
A 150-year-old house collapsed on St‑Christophe on Friday. It had sustained a fire earlier this year.
It had been rather a handsome little house at one time.
STM buses will have to skirt around the COP15 security perimeter and this is starting next week, even though the event itself only runs from December 7‑19.
A chunk of lower downtown (map’s in the article) will be off limits to transit, and as of December 1st, Place‑d’Armes station will also be closed, and will be bypassed by trains. STM page.
Three people were shot near Collège Montmorency in Laval (TVA makes it four people) Friday evening and the school was locked down. La Presse says at least one of the victims was in a street gang.
Montmorency wasn’t even the only CEGEP locked down on Friday. In St‑Jean‑sur‑Richelieu earlier Friday, police told students to barricade themselves in and the school was locked down for seven hours. There was one arrest, although no weapons were eventually found.
The St-Jean story is bizzare. The kid had been wearing a bullet proof vest to school since the beginning of the year. No one said anything, everyone thought “someone else” had vetted the situation and it was all “A-OK” (it’s not exactly bystander apathy). Ten weeks into the semester, with the kid wearing the vest every day, someone notices (freaks out?) and calls the cops.
I can’t reason if the cops should have been called on the first day or not. When does tolerance become apaty?
The city firefighters’ union is asking the CNESST to let it stop doing river rescue after an incident last month around the Lachine rapids, and the death last year of firefighter Pierre Lacroix in a fire service boat. The union wants to see better training and better equipment before its members undertake this kind of work again.
A bit more Sunday about the recent incident and the wordage used by the union.
Maybe, as an island, we should have a kind of municipal coast guard that does this work specifically, and not as a sideline?
I agree, speciality training is needed for water rescues. Ever see the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution), entirely volunteer, do a river rescue? They work with the UK Coast Guard too when needed. I’ve watched some of several TV series they produce. Heart-stopping, and very heartening to watch. Sorry to veer away from Montreal, but they are awesome role models for this type of job. (5 min. video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3spiwPDRsM
Great video. But parts of the St Lawrence are more dangerous even than the Thames, which gives us an even bigger need for dedicated river rescue.
Things to do on the weekend from DailyHive, CityCrunch, CultMTL, Sara’s Weekend List.
The Court of Appeal is arguing this week on whether someone can run for provincial office or sit as an MNA with her face covered – not with a Covid mask, that is, but with a niqab. Bill 21, the law on laïcité, says she cannot, but this was invalidated by a court judgement at some point.
Now the Legault government wants to reinstate the law that nobody can sit as an MNA while wearing niqab.
Nobody has ever run for election in Quebec in niqab, let alone been elected or tried to sit, but never mind. Lots of detail here on whether she could run but not sit, or sit but not be allowed to become a government minister, with her face covered.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin will be decided later.
What if she wears the niqab and swears the oath to the king but does it with her fingers crossed?
The urban agglomeration is planning to consult on how to reduce garbage at the source. One of the things mentioned is to “encadrer” advertising flyers, something the city has already tried to do, and already been thwarted in.
Reducing packaging and single-use plastic is already under consideration – easy to say, not so easy to do. Most food for sale is protected by a film of plastic, and it would be hard to convince people to buy food that’s not presented in that way, and might not even be legal in some cases.
Lots of habits need to be changed, and it’s possible, but it’s not easy. I remember before recycling it was a credo that you couldn’t get Quebecers to recycle. But here we are. (It was also a credo that you’d never get us to obey laws about smoking indoors – and yet, here we are.) The CMM needs to choose its priorities.
Despite this, the city has been declared the most environmentally responsible destination in North America for visitors. Who would, most likely, fly here…
It should be fairly easy to reduce some of the single-use plastic; we’ve already made significant strides in that direction, and younger people (in general) seem to be on board with it. (Think reusable water bottles, take-out coffee cups, shopping bags, etc.) Much harder will be things like food packaging. You cannot overstate the extent to which food waste is reduced by simply wrapping it in plastic.
Bulk sales can help, but it’s not practical for everything or everyone or in all locations. Think frozen seafood, for example. Sure, some stores have bulk self-serve frozen shrimp or whatever, but that only works in high turnover places, and it eliminates any branding or specific suppliers. (E.g., I only buy wild-caught shrimp, but if I’m buying out of a bulk bin I don’t know where it comes from or who the supplier is.)
Let’s also not forget medical supplies, which is a huge industry. Sterile products such as syringes, bandages, infusion devices, etc. are all individually wrapped in plastic, and there aren’t really any alternatives that I know of. Possibly for institutional use they can be bulk-packaged, but there is a huge industry for medical supplies for home use by people with diabetes, cancer, and other ailments.
Which leads me to my next thought: what we need is a plastic-like substance that is biodegradable on demand. Something that has the air- and water-tightness of plastic, and the SHELF STABILITY of plastic, but is derived from something other than petroleum and when you’re done with it, can be decomposed/composed by exposing it to… something. Heat? Some kind of organic gas? A particular wavelength of light?
I’ll bet Elon Musk could have invented such a thing if he wasn’t such a dick and hadn’t let his ego blow $44 billion on Twitter.
The amount of unnecessary plastic wrapping on food is just insane and has increase massively in the last 10 years. There is no health reason to individually wrap heads of lettuce, for instance and that has gone from saran wrap to hard plastic shells. All that can be reduced and removed. The only resistance is the plastic lobby. We could also make selling water illegal, another massive and wasteful increase in plastic use (and consumer stupidity; where people actually believe the tap water they are drinking in a bottle is somehow healthier and safer than that same tap water from a tap).
I’d like to see a PR campaign talking about how our tap water is safe, but recent moves by the city to test for lead and advise people to use a filter is not going to build confidence.
@Blork : I’m with you on the meds! I live with my dad (turning 70 next week!), between the two of us and our assorted issues, it’s over 20 different little plastic medication box per month, and not small ones either. I don’t know what the solution would be? specially for people who have script meds for years and years. Could be a small metal pill box, glass box, that you return at the end of the month and they power wash it or autoclave or whatever it and then use for the next patient?
At least most of Europe gives you the meds in the original cardboard box and blister pack…but those aren’t recyclable either. It’s just an annoyance every month so much plastic (the plastic wasted in insulin needles is a rant for another day).
There is a pharmacy on the corner of De Lorimier and Rosemont that offers reusable pill bottles with their prescriptions for a small fee
Regarding medical stuff, I’m not just talking about pill bottles. Any home treatments that involve jabbing yourself involves a tremendous amount of single-use apparatus, all individually wrapped to keep sterile.
When paramedics leave a scene there is a ton of plastic debris in their wake.
I can’t speak to the medical packaging issue but I think most SQDC clients here know that those similar child-proof cannabis containers can be returned to the dispensaries where they are returned to manufacturers (I think). Recycled if not reused.
Like Montreal, Ottawa has a HUGE problem with landfills quickly reaching capacity. The city is furiously consulting the public for ways to reduce garbage. A “pay-as-you-throw” (PAYT) system seems inevitable but there are no easy solutions to overconsumption. Ottawa’s diversion rate is only 43% and much of that ends up in the landfill anyway. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/proposed-waste-management-system-could-force-residents-to-think-twice-about-what-they-toss
Cancelled for two years because of Covid, the Remembrance Day ceremony is back Friday in Place du Canada.
Update: I watched a bit of it, streaming on CTV. It was something of a statement to see the mayor, the premier and various of their sidekicks and much decorated soldiers all lined up with the empty plinth in the background where Sir John A. used to be.
Also, nice to have a reading from an Indigenous man following the “they shall not grow old” bit. I admit I don’t know which language (probably Mohawk, correct me) or what it said, but it was longer than the single verse of the poem that was read in both French and English.
No heads of state are expected in Montreal next month for the COP15 on Biodiversity, despite previous indications some might come.
I suppose the silver lining is that this might mean a little less worry about security.
Le Devoir has produced a fine‑grained election map for the recent Quebec election, showing how different riding sections voted. If you’re at all curious, it’s worth clicking to full size and looking around.
Anyone reading this from Anjou? Can you explain how that riding breaks into distinct CAQ and Liberal sections (and ended up flipping CAQ in the end, sadly)?
Why are people in Côte St‑Luc and Hampstead voting Conservative, of all things?
St-Laurent has one little section voting Bloc Montréal!
Regarding the people voting Conservative, I also had the same reaction after the election. A little research showed that it was the candidate, former city councilor of Hampstead and disgruntled by the Liberal flip flop on Bill 96, that got the votes: https://globalnews.ca/news/9054060/liberal-bonnie-feigenbaum-joins-quebec-conservatives/
The phrase “sea of CAQ” comes to mind when I look a that map.
A reader emailed to point out “The Conservative Party of Canada is a big supporter of Israel and that matters to some people” – and Côte St‑Luc and Hampstead have the largest concentration of Jewish voters in town. But I don’t know whether Eric Duhaime’s gang said anything either way about Israel.
The Conservatve Party (QC) was pretty also aggressive about posturing in favour of anglo rights. If you’re a well-off anglophone who felt betrayed by the Anglade Liberals, the Conservatives were right there campaigning for your vote. The CAQ and PQ would be perceived as non-starters (Bill 96) and QS would be expected to tax you until kingdom come (and would then try to separate QC from Canada). Throw support for Israel into the mix and it’s a wonder the Conservatives didn’t do better in, say, Hampstead.
steph 23:32 on 2022-11-13 Permalink
Why do the “free busses” go to Radisson (through the tunnel)? Why didn’t they just send some to Longeueil metro?
Spi 11:12 on 2022-11-14 Permalink
Presumably because they’ve done the data gathering and concluded that having the bus go to Radisson gets most people closer to their final destination or is a better commute than routing them through Longueuil.
Blork 11:29 on 2022-11-14 Permalink
Yeah, getting from Boucherville to the Longueuil Metro can be a slog during rush hour, plus the yellow line is already pretty jammed. Radisson is closer, and if there’s a dedicated bus lane then it should be considerably faster.