Following from the death of that seven‑year‑old in traffic last year, Ville‑Marie borough is making directional changes and adding speed bumps to slow traffic on some of its streets, and not only in the eastern part of the borough – Peel, Ottawa, Hope and Sussex are also on the list.
Updates from April, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Thursday has been the warmest day recorded so early in the season.
shawn
Though I think the journalist is looking at the wrong table when he is citing the previous record high for this day as 22. That was indeed the record high from 2014-2022. But in 1945 it reached 26.7°C. I don’t know why Environment Canada can’t merge the two databases… either way it’s a record-smasher.
Kate
The Montreal Weather Records Twitter feed for April 13
shawn
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Kate
The Roman Catholic diocese is to pay out more than $14.7 million in a class‑action suit to victims of sexual aggressions committed by employees and volunteers and more than 30 of its priests.
JaneyB
“En 1960, par exemple, le diocèse de Montréal comprenait quelque 2000 prêtres, selon les statistiques, et 10 % d’entre eux ont commis des agressions.” Wow. Two hundred sexually abusive priests. That’s just the Montreal diocese and doesn’t include all the other church orders and organizations. This organization cannot discipline itself. I want the police to be called for every violation and the courts to access every church record just as if it were a crime by any other person.
Kate
Two hundred sexually abusive priests.
It’s probably too late now for an investigation, but there must have been so many others who were complicit in covering it up, even if they never committed any direct act themselves.
Ian
Another angle is that there are only 60 victims in this single class-action suit. We can safely assume the real number is way in the hundreds if not thousands in Quebec alone. I think to the Institut des Sourds run by the church – 60 ex-students spoke out against 28 clerics and 4 lay people – we know there were far more victims. Maybe even everyone that attended the institution, to varying extents.
10% of them fucked and beat their charges because they could get away with it.
THIS is why when Legault gets all nostalgic for the MBC vision of the church as a unifying force it’s offensive. Ah yes, we all had common goals back in the day – and only 10% of the priests were fucking our children, so let’s forget 1967 ever happened. What a piece of work.
It’s like the old joke – “I built a thousand bridges, and they don’t call me Father Tremblay the bridge-builder. You fuck one child in your care …”
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Kate
The McGill Tribune is dropping the university’s name from its masthead, saying the university should follow suit, because it has shown itself to be indifferent to its “violent, colonial and racist origins.”
We’ve debated here before whether McGill should change its name, and I tend to come down on the No side, for these reasons:
- A lot of things in Montreal are named after the university and it would be expensive, confusing and – I think – not particularly useful to the “Black, Indigenous, and racialized students and faculty” the change is supposed to benefit, for these names to be changed
- A lot of people have pride in having graduated from the university, and it appears on many lists of best universities – throwing all that history away would be silly and damaging not only to the university, but to many people connected with it, and, again, to the prestige of the city
- The MUHC has a name that it won’t benefit anyone to change
- If McGill wants to do anything of immediate benefit, it could start by paying its teaching assistants and course lecturers a decent rate, and divesting from fossil fuels
As an old white chick maybe I have no business commenting on this, but to me it goes on the pile of symbolic gestures, rather than of truly beneficial change.
walkerp
Orthogonal to your argument, simply changing the name also relieves much of the pressure for institutions like McGill to make actual substantive changes. You say this implicitly but I’m just reinforcing it by saying it out loud.
JaneyB
Have to agree with you, Kate. I wish students would take time off from the easy symbolic stuff and wrangle with the structural problems eg: divesting and paying the lecturers. (Some do, I know but not enough). How many of these historical figures mistreated the women in their lives? Probably all of them. Yeah crappy but…McGill right now underpays its contract faculty – disproportionately women. Where’s the student campaign to fix that? Grrr.
walkerp
Oh come on, that’s not on the students.
Chris
Yup, so many of today’s ‘activists’ are stupidly focused on symbolic salves like this, it’s pathetic really. Real activism is too hard, you can’t just press ‘+1 like’.
Also, class issues are much more important (a la paying staff more) but instead they pursue this divisive culture war stuff. I think the power elite must love it, as it keeps the working class fighting amongst themselves.
Tee Owe
OK, wading in where I probably shouldn’t – consider many names and whether they similarly deserve renaming – just for starters – Victoria, Champlain, Jacques Cartier, Rockefeller, Stanford – I’ll stop there. Do we really believe they were all so squeaky clean that we couldn’t find anything at all on any of them? How correct must we be? I’m not trying to justify outdated mores, just saying that once we start, where do we finish? Not coming back to this, that’s all I have to say.
shawn
Yep, I agree.
Kate
Also, Blork made the point last time around that nobody glorifies James McGill. The statue was a deliberately casual one and has been removed, nobody holds James McGill days or treats him as a hero. I’d bet that the vast majority of students of the university would have no idea that McGill Street is not named for the same man. The name is semantically very close to null.
Tux
I agree that a name change does not really do much to make up for colonialism. Much like land acknowledgements – I always kinda roll my eyes when I see a show at the Centaur and they start out by saying “we’re on native land that was stolen” and it’s like, that’s great you’re admitting it but the unsaid part is “and we’re still profiting from it, and nah, we’re not giving it back”
So maybe changing McGill’s name is worth it simply because it would inconvenience a bunch of privileged folks. Maybe that alone is enough reason to do it. Other educational institutions named after James McGill later changed their names… Why not the big, well-known one? To be fair, as someone lacking post-secondary education I don’t really have a dog in this fight but I do enjoy it when rich people are uncomfortable, so there.
Orr
These students still pretty happy to have the status and prestige of McGill University on their diploma.
Colour me cynical, and them more than a little hypocritical.
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Kate
La Presse finds two more instances of what iit calls nids de cônes that have been left in similar locations for as long as 16 years. I like the evocation of “nests” as if they’re vermin.
Joey
Glad to see that my fear that the sole focus of the ‘gestion de chantier’ crisis would be the omnipresence of orange cones has come true!
Daniel
I have no doubt there are eleventy million cases.
What this whole thing has pointed out to me is that in some cases I don’t see cones anymore. Like, I acknowledge there are cones in those photos. And I have been there and seen those cones. But when I’m there they are apparently nearly transparent to my brain at this point.
mare
The cones are probably just there because that section of road/lane/entry has to be closed off rather often and *fast*. Because there’s an accident in the tunnel or ongoing road work, or fireworks or demonstrations or whatever. Keeping the cones at hand will facilitate that process. (Gee, I’m defending the cops and the city here. Who could have thunk that.)
Blork
Yeah, mare, the problem with that explanation is that it doesn’t spark outrage.
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Kate
Quebec Conservative leader Éric Duhaime is trying to mobilize feelings against drag queens entertaining children. Chapleau has an excellent comment.
MarcG
Same vibe as Rupublicans on IG https://www.instagram.com/rupublicans/
carswell
And Duhaime identifies as homosexual. Looks like his political ambitions trump his orientation. Like his Log Cabin Republican counterparts in the States, he can now be considered a quisling by most of the LGBTQ+ community.
Kate
He’s gay? I didn’t even know that.
Well, nothing automatically keeps a gay man from wanting to maintain traditional gender lines, even against the feelings of the zeitgeist.
jeather
If you, a parent, do not want your child being read to by a drag performer, then I believe this is a very easy problem to solve. (I have only heard of protests about this being done on weekends at public libraries, not at public schools here. I don’t know what the rules in general are here about taking your kids out of, eg, sex ed.)
Ephraim
Drag performers have no interest in children… children can’t go to the shows as they are in 18+ venues.
Now, the people in dresses that you need to keep away from children, don’t wear drag… they wear all black long dresses
As for Duhaime, he’s not just a Quisling to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, he’s thought of that way by some of the Francophones as well and the fact that he hid his name and that it was he who helped translate the leaked Macron emails.
Blork
Ephraim, the current kerfuffle over drag queens is because of the recent thing where drag queens are going to schools and libraries to read stories to children. It’s not about what they do in 18+ venues.
jeather
Kids can’t go to (some) drag shows — I saw one that was an all ages sugaring off thing — but performers can read books to kids while in drag. Trying to mix up what happens at an 18+ show with what happens when the same person, a drag performer, sits in a library reading a picture book is just another piece in the culture war. Many people like kids, or like reading to kids.
Ephraim
I know. But that isn’t really about drag at all. Kids don’t really understand any of that, they just think it’s someone fun who’s reading to them. Heck, they have programs where kids read to dogs… do people think that it’s sexualizing the dogs? No.
And if you don’t want your kid going to see a drag queen read to them, don’t take them…. seriously? And yet, you put your kid on Santa’s lap and you know nothing about Santa Claus. Heck, as a child, my parents had to watch out for all kinds of people trying to proselyte. We weren’t even allowed to go to the Boy Scouts because there was a prayer said before the meeting.
But the real threat to children? Definitely NOT the drag queens. How many articles a week do we need to read about Youth Pastors and Priests to finally realize that the predators aren’t in makeup.
thomas
Must be searching for new fundraising pitches now that anti-covid lockdowns are passé. Duhaime identifies more strongly as a grifter than to his sexual orientation.
carswell
Agreed that this isn’t about drag. Now that they embrace (former) commies, rightwingers, especially Christianist rightwingers, have seized upon drag queens as the new boogieman they can use to scare the paranoid and uninformed and get them to contribute and to vote, especially in primaries. Hence the constant beating of the “groomer” drum by red state politicians. Funny that when growing up they, like me, were regularly exposed to drag on TV, in movies and in cartoons to no ill effect. Even rightwing heroes like Bob Hope and Saint Ronald Regan did drag on screen.
All the while, the real groomers, indoctrinators and predators are religious types, not that the drag haters have any issues with that. Case in point: the Arizona supreme court has just ruled that Mormon bishops didn’t have to report a man’s confession to repeatedly raping his daughters and distributing films he made of it to child porn sites.
carswell
The AZ supreme court was upholding an appeals court decision BTW. And the suit against the church, which learned of the abuse in 2010 but waited three years before excommunicating him and still never reported him, was brought by the victims, the man’s daughters.
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Kate
The Port of Montreal and the Hydro‑Quebec website have been hit by cyberattacks, pro‑Russia hackers taking responsibility.
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Kate
Since the closure of the only grocery store in Ste‑Anne was a story a few months ago, here’s a resolution: the store will be reopened under a manager with experience.
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Kate
Illegal taxis are rife at the airport, but complicated rules that are evidently difficult to enforce are not making it easy to sort out.
steph
I don’t understand how this is a problem considering there’s a taxi queue, you can’t miss it. Anyone who travels internationally should understand that grabbing a ‘taxi” out of queue is probably not going to 100% along the rules. Can’t the drivers assist in identifying/policing the illegal taxis in the queue?
Ephraim
The pirate taxis actually have touts inside the airport as soon as you exit the doors of arrivals. They aren’t in the queue.
walkerp
LOL and it’s because the province caved to Uber. So pathetic.
Joey
This problem is similar to the Airbnb issue – the local overseer (City of Montreal, ADM) says that the proliferation of short-term rentals or non-cab/non-rideshare is a nuisance to orderly civic life, that they lack the legal means or operational capacity to do anything about it and that they need help from the province. The province says, Nah, you deal with it. And so it worsens.
dhomas 19:15 on 2023-04-13 Permalink
It’s good that they’re doing this, but do they need to wait for tragedy to strike before taking action? I’ve been asking the city to put speed bumps on my street for years (since at least 2019), since it’s next to a largish park with an unprotected bike path and there are some folks that completely ignore the 30 km/h speed limit. I participate in every meeting on the topic and all. I’ve also asked the city to extend some speed bumps into bike lanes as drivers will often veer into the bike path to avoid the speed bump.
Ian 20:52 on 2023-04-13 Permalink
I’ve heard from traffic engineers that speed bumps are the most effective form of traffic slowing but the main issue is buses and heavy trucks – most speed bumps are just asphalt that compress if heavy vehicles go over them regularly. The city was experimenting with bolted in plastic speedbumps and/ or raised rubberized mats around town, Chemin Remembrance for example – but they kept tearing out, leaving bolts sticking up out of the street.
Basically we can’t have speedbumps on main thoroughfares or where there are buses, but side streets? Bring it on.
Nicholas 00:20 on 2023-04-14 Permalink
Speed cushions have been around for decades (formerly called speed tables, but that’s now another thing). They are bumps that are wide enough so that passenger vehicles have to go over them, but firetrucks, ambulances, trucks and buses, which have wider axles, don’t, gliding through the opening. (Bikes can also go through.) I believe I’ve seen them here, but maybe I’m thinking of elsewhere, but they work great! The real issue, for ones bolted in, are snow plows, so you want to take them off for the winter, which is fine because of all the natural bumps in the road (potholes and snow). But permanent asphalt ones, like speed humps, can stay year round. I remember talking about this a ton over a decade ago, but it’s hard to change ways.
DeWolf 10:46 on 2023-04-14 Permalink
I try to avoid looking at the comments on CBC articles, but in this case, I’m glad I did. Someone named Brenda makes an excellent point:
“I live on a street with an elementary school. It’s always been one way. Signs, speed bumps, potholes and crossing guards didn’t prevent some drivers from turning on to it without looking and going over the speed limit especially on weekends and after school hours. I avoided crossing the street at that corner. You were much better off crossing in the middle of the block where you had enough time to get out of the way.
A few years ago the city started making improvements, widening the sidewalks, narrowing the street to a single lane at each corner, removing parking spots near the corner, closing superfluous entrances to alleys and further lowering the speed limits. They also converted one major corridor from one way to allowing traffic in two directions so that non-local traffic passing through the neighbourhood and buses can get where they’re going faster. Drivers no longer need to take shortcuts on local one way streets to save time.
These changes seem to have their intended effect. Our street is quieter and safer. I hope the city does something similar in Ville-Marie.”
Speed bumps work, but they work especially well in conjunction with curb extensions, filtered traffic, deviations and narrow lanes. When a car enters a residential street, it should be going very slowly and it shouldn’t be travelling for more than a block or two.
jeather 11:19 on 2023-04-14 Permalink
I would love the speed bumps to be returned to my street (they are historically a summer thing) but as it is currently a detour for Greene I am worried it won’t be, and we get a surprising amount of speeders.