There were two serious earthquakes Monday on the border between Turkey and Syria, so people here will be collecting donations in support. CBC radio had someone on earlier who said the best way to donate is via UNHCR.
Updates from February, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The SPVM is flying the Pan‑African flag outside its headquarters for the month of February. The item gives a brief explanation of the origin of the flag.
Pursuing Black themes for the month, CTV looks at the rise of Black‑owned restaurants and CBC profiles the retired assistant principal at Concordia’s Science College.
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Kate
In the West Island there are a lot of business names visible on snow pickets but most of them belong to the same two guys. Allegations of creating false competition hang in the air.
Blork
Side note: one of the ones on the south shore is called “Progazon” which is obviously a landscaping company that does snow removal in the winter. But that name sounds like it should be medication for depression or ADHD or something, resulting in the recurring Dad joke by me of whenever my spouse and I pass one of those pickets I say “Have you taken your Progazon today?”
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Kate
Five years ago, a man died in a cell while in police custody, and the two SPVM police responsible claimed they had no idea he was unwell. But the evidence shows the man told them he had sickle‑cell anemia and didn’t have his medication with him. Punishment for the police will be announced later.
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Kate
Yannick Nézet-Séguin won two Grammy awards in Sunday night’s event, best opera recording and best classical solo vocal album.
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Kate
The byelection in St-Henri-Ste-Anne to replace Dominique Anglade has been officially declared for March 13. It’s foreseen to be a tight race between the PLQ and Quebec solidaire.
CBC says the PLQ is running Christopher Baenninger, who lost to Manon Massé in Ste‑Marie‑St‑Jacques in October.
QS had already announced the candidacy of Guillaume Cliche‑Rivard, who came second to Dominique Anglade in October.
The CAQ is taking the opportunity to give a 21‑year‑old some practical political instruction.
shawn
I guess [Baenninger]’s paid his dues, losing twice to Manon Massé. Still, this ad agency guy doesn’t seem like an impressive candidate for the Liberals, who are at a critical juncture, obviously.
Kate
Edited shawn’s piece to make it clear who he’s talking about, as his comment was made when my post had less detail in it.
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Kate
A parade queen has been chosen for the St Patrick’s parade next month.
Also note the big green Celtic cross logo further down. I once asked a parade marshal what “faith and fatherland” referred to, and he had no idea of either.
In this day and age do we need a beauty queen to “crown” an event, and an organization using a cross and the motto “faith and fatherland” which nobody can explain? What exactly is it that we’re hanging onto here?
Joey
Agreed re: the beauty queen. Faith and fatherland seems fairly self-evident, no? A quick googling suggests an Irish take on “Queen and country,” with a sense that, for some, ‘Irishness’ is fundamentally about (presumably) Catholic faith and fealty to the ancestral homeland. I kind of prefer this approach – crosses, religious nationalist mottos, etc. – to a half-hearted attempt to make the St. Patrick’s Parade some generalized/corporatized meaningless marketing exercise.
JS
I marched in the parade last year with my Joycean colleagues for Festival Bloomsday Montreal, waving and shaking my noisemaker at the attendees. It was cold and rainy, and the St Patrick’s Day parade was less well attended than the viceregal parade that makes its way though Dublin in Ulysses. Can someone tell me what’s in it for the people who actually wake up and go downtown to watch the thing in the cold?
Kate
JS, there are usually floats from anglo media and marching entities from other towns, but – as this piece notes obliquely – that wasn’t the case last year, since next month’s is being billed as its “first full-scale return” since the pandemic.
I’m not sure why anyone would thrill to see e.g. Mutsumi Takahashi on a float, but people do.
Of course there’s also a tradition of getting drunk in the various drinking establishments along the route.
Joey: to the Irish, “faith” can be a very divisive thing. From what I can tell, Faith and Fatherland is a motto of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which came about in response to the militantly Protestant Orange Order and its activities. That bit of history involves not only Ireland but also Canada and the U.S., and is a real mess.
Not sure the link to all that is still an element in what has become, basically, as you say, a meaningless marketing exercise. Most people now are not aware of it, nor of its originally divisive intent.
I have an Ancient Order of Hibernians watch chain which belonged to my grandfather, so I assume he was a member. He died before I was born so I was never able to ask him about it. I know he walked in the parade when it was mostly a matter of men from Irish Catholic parishes walking down Ste‑Catherine Street, not commercial floats.
shawn
Someone better than me might relate the pivotal role that long-gone raconteur Nick Auf der Mar once played in keeping the thing alive? Something like it was going to be cancelled and Nick and someone came out of Darwin’s pub drunk the night before and painted a green line down Ste-Catherine?
MarcG
Dug up this old gem from the sludge of Montreal history https://web.archive.org/web/20110403143016/http://www.mook-life.com/st-patricks-day-parade-maximum-mookness/
Kate
Mooks! Thank you, MarcG.
Just don’t anybody write about “St. Patty” around here.
I vaguely remember about the green line painting, but not why it was being done.
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Kate
A firebombing overnight in Pierrefonds luckily hurt no one and did minimal damage.
Siddiqa Sadiq 09:42 on 2023-02-07 Permalink
I want to send some things
Kate 10:23 on 2023-02-07 Permalink
Depending which side of the border concerns you, you could get in touch with a Syrian church – there are several (Google for “syrian church montreal”) or the Turkish Community Centre (Facebook link). TVA has a piece about collection by that centre.
But often when a situation is chaotic, the best thing to do is make a monetary donation.
shawn 10:43 on 2023-02-07 Permalink
One thing I would say is that I made a bunch of donations for Ukraine, but the one with the Red Cross results in a lot of junk mail promotions after all. I’ve gotten pens, twice they’ve sent me mailers with small change glued inside. Their mailers are rather fancy. I can see why some people have expressed concern about the administrative expenses of the Red Cross.
Blork 11:52 on 2023-02-07 Permalink
Unfortunately the Red Cross is not the only one guilty of that. Fundraising is big business, and there are marketing people who specialize in it, and boy can you ever see that when you make donations. I’ve literally stopped donating to a few charities and asked to be removed from their mailing lists because I couldn’t stand the constant barrage of emails, snail mails, and even phone calls asking me to increase my donations.
Kate 11:57 on 2023-02-07 Permalink
Yes sadly, I donated to Médecins sans frontières just after the big Haiti earthquake, and received email and snail mail requests for ages afterwards, even after I told them it was necessarily a ONE TIME ONLY donation. Has anyone ever studied how much of a deterrent these pushy responses are?
Blork 12:07 on 2023-02-07 Permalink
I still donate to MSF despite the e/snail mails. For them I make an exception. And they aren’t nearly as bad as some others whose name I won’t write even though their solicitations are full of puppies (not referring to SPCA). I really draw the line at phone calls. FFS!
Anecdotally, I seem to recall reading (or maybe seeing a TV report) on this a few years ago, and apparently (if I recall correctly) the net gain in constantly asking for more outstrips the loss of people who push away, which sounds Faustian, but then Marketing people only think in terms of metrics, not literature.
NOT measured in those metrics is the ill will caused by all that soliciting and how much money in charity donations is lost overall because of people who have been burned by it and no longer donate anywhere.
Chris 14:26 on 2023-02-07 Permalink
BTW it’s “Türkiye” now, not “Turkey”.
Tim S. 19:17 on 2023-02-09 Permalink
For what it’s worth, here’s a take from Ukraine about the most effective aid organizations, who I expect will also be present in the earthquake region:
Answer: Since the earliest days of the invasion, when they received criticism for their slow response to the refugee crisis, big organizations like UNHCR, UNICEF, Save the Children etc. have not been present in the hardest-hit front-line areas.
Of the big-name international non-profits, the one famously doing the most valuable and no-nonsense work has been World Central Kitchen – they are on the ground helping people in any and all conditions, including cities that are actively being shelled. Though they are often distributing aid packages from larger organizations like the World Food Program, the majority of humanitarian aid work in the hairiest areas is being done by grassroots Ukrainian groups, sometimes without any brand or public face, just collections of friends and colleagues doing whatever they can. – Francis Farrel, reporter
(from Kyiv Independent: https://kyivindependent.com/national/our-readers-questions-about-war-answered)