The Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador has adopted a resolution conferring legal personhood on the St Lawrence River.
Updates from April, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Part of the green line is down – Lionel-Groulx to Frontenac – for an indefinite period and bus shuttles are running.
The Journal says cracks were seen in the tunnel between Berri‑UQAM and Saint‑Laurent stations.
CTV notes that heavy traffic has been diverted between Berri and St‑Laurent.
Joey
Good thing we’re taking care of the orange cones, though!
Kevin
The tunnel will be inspected more overnight.
So much for returning to the office…
Mozai
Didn’t we have a similar problem a few years ago? I think it was June 2020 under Place-des-Arts. I remember hearing the city didn’t have any blueprints for the underground construction, since they let private companies do their own thing and not file with city hall… private companies that didn’t file their plans or they just didn’t exist anymore, so the inspectors had no map while they were underground.
Kate
Mozai, the one I remember was back in 2007. Cracks were seen in a major slab of concrete behind the Bay store on the de Maisonneuve side, and this revealed that between the metro, the underground malls, the passageways, all the buried pipes and cables and other stuff, there was nobody overseeing the big picture of how all these dependencies interrelate.
I don’t know whether that’s changed in the intervening time, but I’d say odds are it hasn’t. They seem happy to let the lawyers and engineers argue it out after the fact.
…But maybe the fact of the REM going through there has made them sort out who’s responsible for what?
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Kate
The SPCA is seeing a lot more pet abandonments this year than last, and is blaming the trend on inflation.
dhomas
My cat’s cat food (Hill’s Science Diet) is literally double the price it was 2 years ago. I have to make sure I stock up when it goes on sale, but I realize not everyone has the space to store it. I think lots of people also got pets during the pandemic for company (I also know at least one person who got a dog for the express purpose of circumventing the 2020 curfew), and who are now struggling to keep up with the associated costs.
Kate
I know. I buy primo cat food for Madame, and it’s also become much more expensive.
jeather
I’m super glad my cats are on a diet now (regular food, less of it), because I’ve been tracking the food costs and yikes. I buy not the most expensive food but higher end stuff as well.
Kate
jeather, my cat needs to slim down a bit too, but I haven’t yet figured out how to do it, since I work from home and she’s noisy when she’s hungry, and greedy for my food too sometimes (even when I’m making something like a tomato sandwich which would be of no interest to her).
jeather
Mine were pretty good at switching from free feed to limited. They do start coming well before breakfast time (I pretty consistently feed them 7:30-8 on weekdays and . . . not on weekends) to see if maybe I’d be into feeding them already, but also they’re generally not talkative. I give them people food on occasion, if I’m cooking with raw meat, though one of them doesn’t understand it. She follows the others, who absolutely get the concept of raw chicken, but doesn’t try to eat it. (She is similar with cat treats. Perhaps not coincidentally, she’s the only one at a healthy weight.)
I’m told that an auto feeder can help. I switched down their food from 1 scant cup 2x/day to 3/4 generous cup 2x/day and so far, so good. (I occasionally give them wet also.)
Blork
My cats are extremely fussy eaters. One of them will barely tolerate dry food and insists on wet. We give her a mix of both. The wet food is just “Whiskas” from the grocery store. Last year a box of 12 sold for about $11. Last week it was $18!
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Kate
The tent encampment under the Ville-Marie has been spared again by a judge, this time till June 15.
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Kate
With the ban impending on the delivery of unsolicited print material, Metro is making a plea for the city to do more to support local media.
I support this. Metro has stepped in to cover local affairs in a way no other news platform does, and I’ve often found their coverage more thoughtful and more complete than the bigger players in the city.
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Kate
It’s a grim story all around. In July 2020, Stéphanie Brossoit, a woman at grips with drug addiction, killed her six‑year‑old daughter. Last month she was sentenced to ten years in prison.
Now the child’s father is suing the DPJ for having closed the dossier about his family prematurely.
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Kate
Picketing by federal workers blocked the Port of Montreal on Monday for an hour or so.
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Kate
A man who was tormented by the noise from an all‑night car wash near his apartment has won his case against the city for not having enforced its own noise laws. Both the city and the Couche‑Tard that operates the car wash have to pay up. The plaintiff has since moved to a quieter location.
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Kate
La Presse, which has been on something of a toot about road cones being left in place for a long time, has succeeded in getting a promise from Quebec that cones will be removed after 72 hours of inactivity.
mare made a very sensible observation on a recent cone thread here. The upshot will probably be that workers spend more of their time shuffling cones around.
Nicholas
What if when they move the cones off the roadway they stack them, maybe even into a thing built to hold them all on the side of the road? Better yet, for places with frequent closures they can put an arm (this one is used for hurricane evacuation) or a rising bollard, plus a red light they can turn on. Controlled remotely this would pay for itself quickly and be much more responsive.
jeather
I see various closures on Decarie all the time, and yet they manage without letting the cones live there full time.
Reprogramming of red lights would be great. I live near the stretch of St-Antoine that is under construction (again) and, for instance, there’s a light at St-Antoine and Greene that normally has 3 statuses — St Antoine green, Greene southbound green, Greene northbound green (I don’t think there’s an all-red/pedestrians only status). However, the latter two are both blocked, so there really needs to be two statuses: St-Antoine green, and pedestrian crossing. But there isn’t. On weekdays they have someone there to wave people through, or block them because a truck is moving, or whatever. But the rest of the time, it’s just well, gotta wait. And this happens at every light with construction happening — there’s no way to just temporarily change the setup for lights.
Andrew
Last week I made a left from Atwater onto St-Antoine, that same construction site, the same intersection where that guy started running over the signaller. I noticed the flashing green was gone. I assumed they took it away when St-Antoine was closed completely and didn’t put it back when they opened one lane. I think they can change the lights, they’re just bad at it.
jaddle
They seem very bad at lights. All along President-Kennedy, where the bike path detours around the Maisoneuve construction, they’re very inconsistent. At Union, the bike light stops about 15 seconds before the pedestrian light, for no reason. At Bleury, there’s a bike light in one direction (Westbound) that follows the pedestrian light, but in the other direction, the light is covered up by plastic, so cyclists presumably are supposed to follow the car lights – it’s ridiculous, and rather dangerous, since it means there’s no way to actually tell who has the right-of-way. Those intersections have been like that for years now… And there are many places where, with one-way streets, it would be easy to have the pedestrian lights stay on longer when there’s no [legal] way for anyone else to be in the way, yet they almost never do this. I can think of one or two in westmount on Sherbrooke that do, but not any others.
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Kate
Another car was torched overnight in the east end, out by the Repos Saint François d’Assise, only a few blocks from a similar incident in March.
In other car news, a car thief was pursued and caught by police overnight.
shawn
In brighter news, I see the new Mile End SQDC in the old Bank of Montreal branch at Laurier and St-Laurent opened this morning at 10 am.
Kate
That’s a nice building. Nice corner, actually – vintage buildings on 3 sides, and the park on the 4th.
But, as far as I know, SQDC workers are still in a labour standoff, although I can’t find any recent news about the situation.
carswell
The employees of some SQDC stores are on strike. Twenty-five of the 26 stores unionized by CUPE are affected, about a quarter of the total (98). The new store is unlikely to be among them.
Am surprised that locale meets the government’s distancing requirements. Would have expected there to be a nearby school or daycare centre.
The latest news release dates back to Easter: https://www.sqdc.ca/en-CA/about-the-sqdc/medias/2023/04/06/Français-Horaires-des-succursales-et-des-services-en-ligne-de-la-SQDC-à-loccasion-de-la-fin-de-semaine-de-Pâques-2023
shawn
Yes I was a little surprised at the location at first but it’s far enough away from the schools on Fairmount, clearly.
It’s my assumption that all of the newer stores are non-unionized but I haven’t been following that closely…
shawn
… and I didn’t think there was a distancing requirement from daycares?
shawn
In fact I just Google mapped it and there’s 290 m between the closest school, École secondaire Robert-Gravel, and the new store. That’s almost twice the 150 m required.
shawn
Sorry, me again. Tho it occurs to me that if you take into account in the adjacent soccer field behind the school which borders on the playground, which then faces the Parc Lahaie, I can feel a lot closer for people who may do concerns…
Kate
Thanks for the clarifications, carswell.
Daycares, really? Somebody expects toddlers to pop in for a pack of pre-rolls?
walkerp
These are the stupidest regulations ever. Quebec is embarrassing itself.
Instead of encouraging the agricultural and artisanal traditions of Quebec culture by allowing people to grow their own and allowing for small, local enterpreneurs to produce hipster brands and edibles, they go with giant agribusiness crap, excessive plastic waste and a lot of stupid “what about the children” hysteria.Such a tremendous lost opportunity for the province because I guess “playing to the regions” or some nonsense like that.
shawn
Right, this comes down to Legault’s authoritarian side. He personally doesn’t approve of cannabis and neither does his base, from what I remember from the polling at the time. In fact, I think this province had the lowest level of support for marijuana legalization?
jeather
My opinion is that people — and especially cops — liked having it as a backup method for sketchy (but definitely not systemically racist) arrests.
jeather
If another party came in and legalized the four plants or allowed stuff like cannabis bath salts (which I definitely haven’t had a friend mail me from another province), I think probably the CAQ or whatever similar party could not easily re-ban it.
For whatever reason my home IP geolocates me in Ontario, and I got a lot of pot ads on twitter which I skimmed and mistook as being some group of small farmers trying to promote spinach.
carswell
The original minimum distance between SQDC stores and educational institutions — which the Cannabis Regulation Act defines as including preschools — was 250 m, except in Montreal, where it was reduced to 150 m. One of the first amendments the CAQistes made to the act on assuming power was to eliminate the Montreal exception (yes, they hate us). That’s why the Village store, first planned for Berri-Ste Catherine, was moved to the far east end of the Village, almost in the shadow of the Jacques Cartier bridge.
Since cannabis packaging is under federal control, blame for all the plastic and overpackaging can’t be placed on the SQDC or Quebec. The feds are reviewing current packaging requirements. Meanwhile, the cannabis control boards and the industry are seeking solutions within the current regulatory framework (eliminating outer boxes and other secondary packaging for some products, for example).
carswell
Neglected to mention that the original Village store got double-barrelled by the CAQ. The location wasn’t changed only because the government increased the minimum distance but also because it expanded the definition of educational institution to include universities.
So the store went from being in the shadow of UQAM (probably a good thing if, as claimed, the raison d’être of the SQDC is to draw users from the illegal market, no?) to being in the shadow of the bridge, far from the action, including the Village bar scene, and next to several largely unpopulated blocks.
The SQDC’s province-wide store network now appears set to plateau at around 100, a far cry from the original plan for 200+ stores.
shawn
Thanks for all that info Carswell. And I didn’t realize the minimum distance was reduced for Montreal. That is curious.
Tim S.
Yeah, I’m OK with having a minimum distance from educational institutions.
shawn
In other news, a segment of the Green line is now down until 2 am! Big one.
Here’s the tweet: “Interruption de service ligne VERTE entre L-Groulx et Frontenac. Incident. Reprise prévue vers 2h00.”Kate
Tim S., can you explain why? The stores aren’t allowed to put anything attractive in the windows. Nobody under 21 is allowed to buy. What kind of risk do you feel they pose to kids in school?
walkerp
The kids already have all the drugs they want. They can get better quality and prices from their existing sources.
Tim S.
It’s an intoxicating substance. On the one hand, I think people should be able to consume it in private if they want, on the other hand I support the government using the means at its disposal to signal its discouragement of consumption.
That said, I doubt walkerp is wrong.
shawn
People here would know, but I am pretty sure there are some other rules about having other establishments within close proximity to schools.
Oh and can I kvetch? Legault’s virtual signalling on cannabis means that everyone who goes in has to show proof of age. I’m 64 and believe me I look it. It’s absurd.
walkerp
Yes, don’t get me wrong, there should be regulation and restrictions (as well as education and treatment) around cannabis sale, especially for adolescents. It’s just that these specific regulations are not about actually reducing harm but basically moralistic virtue signalling. I mean are deps near schools not allowed to sell beer and wine?
Tim S.
Well, we have a culture where in general people don’t drink before mid-afternoon (school hours) and tend not to drink in parks, bus shelters, etc. (I’m not saying it never happens, but a lot less than say, the UK). On the other hand, people who would never take a shot of hard stuff at breakfast seem to be perfectly OK smoking a joint on their way to work in the morning. So in the defence of “moralistic virtue signalling” I think there are basic cultural norms that we still have to establish.
walkerp
Indeed, I once surprised a (remaining deliberately vague) political figure smoking up in the park behind my child’s daycare at 8:30 in the morning. Awkward! 🙂
jeather
I don’t entirely care if the stores have to stay away from high schools and younger — honestly walking near a lot of them you can get high on the volume of secondhand smoke. I don’t see the point of those rules for anything post-secondary.
qatzelok 20:56 on 2023-04-24 Permalink
“Get these tacky McMansions off my shoreline!”