A man was sentenced to 12 years on Wednesday for a fatal stabbing the cause of which is not made any clearer here. Did the two men know each other? What was the dispute about? Who knows? It happened on the cusp of 2020, just making it into the 2019 homicide roll. Knife wielder Everoy Rainaldo Gerald has already done three years’ time behind bars.
Updates from February, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
It’s going to cost a cool $2 billion to replace the Île‑aux‑Tourtes bridge described in the CTV lede as both a headache and a nightmare.
Taylor
Not worth it. Just sell Vaudreuil-Dorion to Ontario and end this headache nightmare once and for all.
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Kate
Loto-Quebec wants to bring casino games to the Bell Centre, although they haven’t discussed the idea yet with the public health department, which usually looks narrowly at gambling risks.
Update: Quebec is putting two conditions on the plan: public health has to give its assent, and Loto‑Quebec has to reduce the number of VLTs in other locations.
Ephraim
So, how are they going to ensure that only people over the age of 18 can play?
Joey
@Ephraim they are taking over a restaurant with a street-facing door and an internal door – they can check IDs at both (and tickets for folks going into the arena)…
shawn
I’m 64 years old and I have to show ID each time I enter an SQDC outlet. I think they got this.
I’m guessing underage gambling is much more of a problem in those (semi?)illegal gambling sites?
Martin - ProposMontreal
I actually don’t know what I think about this.
shawn
There were a couple of times back in the day that I hauled myself out to the Casino de Montreal. I think it’s silly to think making it a car or cab drive is going to seriously deter problem gamblers, especially when there’s VLTs in local bars.
I think it’s a good area for it.
carswell
Tuned into part of the last hour of today’s Let’s Go, which discussed the proposal. One of the figures that jumped out at me was that 70% of the revenues from Loto-Québec’s VLTs come from 3% of the players. If that’s true, it points to a serious addiction problem, both present and potential, and should, in and of itself, be enough to scuttle any thought of putting the infernal machines or other gambling options in the heart of downtown and in one of the city’s spotlight venues, especially one that attracts a lot of young people and is within walking distance of several university campuses.
I see the CBC has just posted a follow-up article:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/gambling-downtown-bell-centre-1.6757051The proposal to open a casino in Griffintown was rightly rejected a few years back. This deserves the same fate. If people want to gamble, they (and the mob) can head out to Île Notre-Dame.
Taylor
If there’s one thing I like most about watching an underperforming hockey team well past its glory years, its doing so on a TV I can see out of the corner of my eye in a small room lit only by the intoxicating neon glow of a machine that exploits the poor and vulnerable.
Uatu
The underage gamblers are all probably online.
James
I really hate this idea. Basically a small casino in downtown by stealth.
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Kate
The city is dishing out $3 million for more than fifty projects for youth, proposed by people under 30.
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Kate
Shots were fired at a house in part of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve late Tuesday, nobody injured but nobody arrested.
Two men were stabbed in different parts of town on Tuesday evening. Nobody died and no arrests have been made.
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Kate
Food banks are responding to growing needs, so Centraide has given out an emergency $1.7 million to 36 community groups working in this area.
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Kate
Winter has been messing with us. We’re going to have snow starting at midnight Wednesday and continuing into Friday – 15 to 20 cm mentioned in the special weather statement.
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Kate
Nuit Blanche is this weekend and some bars along the Main will be allowed to stay open all night.
DeWolf
Many (most?) cities around the world have no last call, and things just kind of work out. Hong Kong has a handful of bars open 24 hours but most close at midnight or 2am or whenever they decide it wouldn’t be worth staying open any longer.
Kate
I wonder how many of our laws and customs still derive from prohibition and the attitudes around it. (People think of prohibition as a U.S. thing, but Canada had it too for a time.)
Blork
When I was growing up in Nova Scotia there were many old rules still on the books, some enforced and some ignored. For example, there were no sidewalk terraces for bars at all; in fact bars and taverns had to keep their curtains drawn because it was not legal to be able to see people drinking as you were walking by on the street. Inside the taverns there was a technicality seldom observed in which you weren’t allowed to walk around inside the bar carrying your drink. If you wanted to move to a different table, the waiter had to carry your drink. (Again though, that rule was seldom observed and most people were not even aware of it.)
There was also a gender divide such as we had here in Quebec, but the way it worked there was that most taverns had two areas. There was the “tavern” which was rustic and had only minimal comforts and was for men only, and there was the “beverage room” that was more comfortable (better chairs and tables, cleaner, nice things up on the walls, more subdued lighting, etc.) where women and couples would go. That divide existed well into the 80s, although by the late 60s (I think) the prohibition against women in the taverns was strictly cultural and not legal. As in, women were not prohibited from going into the tavern, but it was seen as very low-class of them to do so. (And most women didn’t want to, because the tavern was dirty and smelly and full of crusty old men spitting on the floor, etc.)
In some cases the tavern/beverage room divide was simply a wall running down the middle of the establishment with a doorway in between. In others it was two separate establishments, such as the tavern downstairs and the beverage room upstairs.
All that stuff was thrown out the window in the 1980s, fortunately.
Tee Owe
It was similar in Ottawa in the late 70’s. There the limits were number of glasses on a table (and thereby number of people at a table), I think no moving chairs between tables, and also the no-carrying drinks around rule. There was also a no drinks without food restaurant rule. If I disremember exactly then someone please correct me.
Blork
It was a mess, and not evenly enforced. I worked as a waiter for a short time at a place that was sort of rough and known for trouble, and got raided a lot for drugs and whatnot (never when I was there). And occasionally I was told by the bartender to go “by the book” on the moving drinks from table to table thing. Possibly because they knew they were being watched by authorities or something. Meanwhile, at more popular and less troublesome places people walked around with their drinks with no problem at all.
Side note, and a true story: when I applied for that waiter job, I had only been 19 (the legal drinking age in N.S.) for a couple of months. They hired me partially because I was a familiar face and had been something of a ‘regular” at that bar for at least three years. After I was hired and was doing the paperwork, the manager noticed my birth date. There was a pause. A sigh. And then we got on with it. 🙂
Ephraim
Didn’t NS also have these weird laws about carrying alcohol on a Sunday, even in the trunk of a car?
orr
I liked the now-gone maritime law where the beer store sold you beer, it just couldn’t be “cold” beer.
JaneyB
@Blork and Tee Owe – I remember the separate tavern and beverage room setup too, in Manitoba. My dad tells me stories of how private farms informally rented out rooms like mini-hotels and it was quite normal to stop by many of them for drinks and a meal as well. That was back in the 40s and 50s. All basically word of mouth.
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Kate
Festival operators that were supported by government grants to see them through the lean years of the pandemic have published an open letter in Le Devoir to ask for ongoing government support to counter inflation, increased artist fees and human resources troubles. The latter probably means the cost of living is so high now that festivals can no longer count on young keeners willing to work for peanuts because it’s for art.
Ephraim
Stop the Merry-Go-Round, I want to get off. Inflation means I need more money, so let’s take it from the government who then takes it from the citizens, who are also coping with inflation and now have to pay more taxes and can’t afford to eat, who…..
Kate
But who’s willing to offer themselves up to stop it? In a microcosmic example, as a freelancer, I’m inching my rates up this year. I have to keep some kind of pace, or else in a year or two I could find myself falling seriously short. My rent will be going up again this year (when have rents ever fallen?) and food keeps getting scarily pricier. But when I put my rates up, then anyone who does business with me will be putting their prices up as well because all their other suppliers are putting their prices up too.
Is it on people like me to hold off on price increases, tighten belts, and grit our teeth? I don’t see why it should be, but somebody’s got to hold the line somewhere on profits.
Speaking of profits, I just put some dosh into an RRSP against taxes, and my bank is offering 5% on short term stuff right now. That’s good in one sense, but that cash has to come from somewhere too, in this crazy captailstic system.
Ephraim
The way you stop inflation is… competition. And in this case, it has to be people saying NO at the grocery store. I can give a micro-economic example using a minor luxury item… McCain’s Deep and Delicious Cakes. It’s not the kind of thing that anyone really consumes as a staple. So the price as to be right in order to move the product.
Price went up to $7.49 earlier this year with “inflation” and now the prices are: $6.99, $6.49, $6.49, $6.29 and $5.57. When it’s not a staple, it’s easy to skip buying it at all…. and people are. In fact, I’ve seen it go down to $4.99, but usually on sale for about $5.99. And that’s the thing about inflation, you can put up your price as much as you want, you can even try to cheat us by changing the size of the package (I see you, Barilla with your 410g packages.) Or your change in the recipe (I see you, EDSmith with your watery pie filling). But when we are spending our money on staples, or stepping down brand, it doesn’t matter how much you put it up, we aren’t buying until you put it down again.
The other side of this is stopping buying things that can be put off. We had a period of time, with the shut down, that items weren’t being produced, so when demand came back, the amount available was lower and demand shot up creating price increases. Well, if you can just delay those purchases, as supply re-establishes, prices should as well. But also, if there isn’t the demand, the price will fall. Here I am talking about things like furniture, cars, etc. The BIG purchases. I’m on a 4 year old phone. I’ve looked at replacing it, but I’m still waiting for a price I’m willing to pay or a rebate. And it’s a fully functioning phone. The phone company is offering me $20 in rebate for a trade-in. Nope.
And finally there is the other way to remove demand… recycle. After my mother’s passing, we sold a lot of her items and that eliminated demand, as these people weren’t in the primary market. And there are plenty of items of value that you can get second hand. Go back to the previous paragraph… phone is selling on eBay for $120. And it still works great, still has a fingerprint sensor, still works with all the apps… nothing wrong with it. (And idiots are trying to sell it on FB marketplace saying “I paid $xxx”. Doesn’t matter what you paid, it’s worth $20 as a rebate, and guys are selling it for $120 on eBay… I’m not paying you $300.
Incidentally, if anyone doesn’t know, there is an app called REEBEE that lets you do a search to see who has what at the cheapest price this week.
JaneyB
@Ephraim – I totally agree. It is key to punish retailers who are inflating their prices. I just will not buy the 5$ eggs. I’ll eat something else until I see a reasonable price. Then I will buy several so that I can buffer myself a bit from these ridiculous price rises. I’m amazed when I see someone shake their head at the price, complain, and just buy it anyway. If retailers know they can move the product at a high price, they will keep it there. Why wouldn’t they?
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