Opioid overdoses are on the rise in town. Fentanyl is being used to cut everything now, and many people have no idea what they’re actually using. Do our cops carry a naloxone kit in their cruisers?
Updates from July, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Mont-Royal Street has been thriving since lengthy pedestrianizations, with fewer vacant storefronts since they were counted five years ago.
Chris
How is this possible?? Losing all that car access should have bankrupted them, no?? /s
waffles
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* It’s time to put a real bike lane on mont-royal *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
Tofu va Vohu
I was walking there yesterday at the north/east end, and people were enjoying themselves even though it was crazy hot out. People were strolling, socializing, biking, dining, and shopping. I saw one woman using a scooter to transport a large potted plant she’d bought, and another couple carrying some lumber. The public piano at Parc des Compagnons de Saint Laurent was played by several people. It was all really pleasant and enjoyable!
Forgetful
waffles, I’d rather see high quality bike lanes perpendicular to Mont-Royal; providing better active and micro mobility access to the street, but keeping Mont-Royal itself a priority pedestrian space. Kate surprisingly didn’t share the news, but don’t forget that e-scooters and other throttle vehicles are now allowed on paths. The volume and speed of bike path users is increasingly becoming incompatible with pedestrian spaces.
waffles
Mont-Royal needs a proper bike path to keep cyclists in a lane of their own. There’s already a bike paths on streets that run perpendicular & parallel to Mont Royal, but folks want to bike on Mont-Royal too, to get to the shops n things. Currently, the ‘priorité piétonne’ , 1-metre distance thing isn’t being respected: cyclists are dinging their bells to disperse pedestrians, MAMILs and other cyclists who ‘gotta go fast’ get upset at having to use their brakes, fleets of chaotic bike tour groups (mostly inexperienced cyclists in neon helmets). I see lots of pedestrians having close calls with cyclists razzing by, often older folks and women. It’s causing many pedestrians to be too scared to actually walk in the street, the sidewalks are the only safe spot for slow & unsteady walkers. A delineated bike path would make scrapes easy to avoid.
Nicholas
The closest bike paths parallel to Mount Royal are Rachel and Laurier. That’s just not enough for a high density area like the Plateau, especially for a street with so many destinations. Gilford is under construction and Marie-Anne only has a contra flow lane east of Brébeuf, and both are too narrow to comfortably salmon west of there. Both those streets should get more diverters/modal filters (like the kind on Gilford at Lanaudière that stops through car traffic but allows bike traffic), and that would help alleviate some of the pressure on Rachel. Mount Royal itself is tricky, because it really does deserve bus service, an actual bike lane, and pedestrianization (plus morning deliveries), all year round, and the street is just not able to support all that comfortably all the time. Maybe the solution, in addition to routing through bike traffic on adjacent streets, is more pedestrian streets in the Plateau (Laurier East, Duluth year round, Rachel, dare I say St Laurent and St Denis) so fewer people come to walk on Mount Royal, and then it won’t be so crowded that bikes make pedestrians uncomfortable.
Ian
Maybe if bicyclists want to use pedestrian areas, they can get off their bicycles and walk them. If that’s too inconvenient, they can lock the bike up and continue on foot, unencumbered. Even car owners don’t insist that they be allowed to drive on the sidewalks, that cyclists and now e-toy enthusiasts insist they should be allowed to go wherever they want is just weird.
I get the whole urge to reduce the number of cars in the city & I absolutely see the value in pedestrianization – but I really don’t understand why the mixed-use implementation is allowed, as it’s at the expense of pedestrians and the mobility impaired.
Tim S
Thank you, Ian.
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Kate
La Presse’s Stéphanie Grammond has an editorial this weekend on an issue that can sound dry, but makes a difference to how the city develops. She thinks that the law allowing a few residents to squelch developments is badly conceived, such as the recent example where 26 people in Pierrefonds managed to squelch a project that would have created 111 residences, mostly because they were afraid of the extra traffic.
What’s the point of building a REM to these places if the existing residents won’t allow densification, she asks.
carswell
Fear of extra traffic and of increased demand on municipal services, especially sports facilities, is why TMR nixed residences being added to the Royalmount project, even after it was pointed out that the project was likely to have better facilities than any the town could offer.
DeWolf
It’s pretty remarkable on the surface of it. 71,000 people live in Pierrefonds, and according to La Press, polls show that a majority are in favour of this development. But the cost of running a referendum is no onerous that, even if it was successful, it wouldn’t be worth the cost to the developer. So the development gets killed because 0.03% of Pierrefonds residents were vocally opposed to it.
This wasn’t even about demolishing people’s houses or anything like that. It’s an abandoned autobody shop right next to the train line. If that’s not a perfect candidate for densification, what is?
People on the West Island are going to have to accept that they share an island with Montreal and the island isn’t getting bigger. (Pierrefonds doesn’t even have any excuses – they’re literally part of Montreal.) The suburban model that has existed for the past 60 years isn’t sustainable, ecologically or financially. Something has to give.
Blork
I was prepared to look for the other side of the coin, as a thought exercise if nothing else, and I came up empty. Nothing. Nada. Nixing that project is just all-around stupid, unless there is some other factor that we don’t know about. (Maybe something out of left field, like a competing developer paying residents to squash this project so they can take over with their own? Sounds absurd, but shit happens.)
The local residents are complaining about the extra traffic and the “loss of privacy” for the houses on nearby Andras street (because the proposed building is six stories, and that would supposedly mean a birds-eye views into their houses).
Hogwash.
Here’s a picture of the proposed building, with rue Andras on the other side of the REM tracks.
https://mobile-img.lpcdn.ca/v2/924x/b2614b1341783cdc901bb6ac2a6236a9.webpHardly a peeping Tom’s paradise. And the extra cars issue is bogus, as Sunnybrooke and Gouin are already wide boulevards with lots of car traffic. Also, there’s a good chance all those people on rue Andras will sell up and leave soon anyway, as their back yards are literally 20 metres from the REM tracks, so the noise will drive them out.
No, this is all shades of wrong and stupid. Picky point: the borough is “Pierrefonds-Roxboro” but the location of this is Roxboro, not Pierrefonds. Specifically, it’s here: https://goo.gl/maps/WHwEa3AeVB4ewCo9A
Debi
I’m pretty sure I know the person who gathered the signatures. While I agree on the need for housing, and there are a lot of good places it can go, doing spot zoning results in these problems because there’s no cohesive plan for an area.
In the case of the lady who stopped this project, her argument is that these projects kill small businesses, and she’s not wrong. While some projects do at least attempt to include some commercial space on the lower levels, many do not. Then you have a fully residential town with no jobs, and no services. Depending on the scope of the project, sometimes it means dumping parking onto side streets, or smaller roads becoming cut throughs. If you have a park with 4 swings and then double the population, the city needs to think about adding more resources for new residents. If they want to create a residential area in that part of town, then a grocery store would certainly help.
In response to the need for housing, cities like Dollard-Des-Ormeaux, Pointe-Claire, and Dorval are at least trying to set up a full scale urban plan to address their needs as a whole. This will put an end to this piecemeal spot zoning (which citizens protest), and hopefully actually build more functional cities and not just a hodgepodge of “condo locatif”s.
Forgetful
Debi, sounds really like opposition in bad faith; the 9720-9730, boulevard Gouin Ouest, coin Sunnybrooke explicitly offers first floor commercial space and on-lot parking. As if the blight of closed auto workshops didn’t hurt small businesses.
Blork, the people on Andras were already used to the much heavier and louder trains of exo, on top of the whistle and level crossing signal. In terms of noise it’s an improvement honestly.
Debi
Forgetful, I have trouble keeping track of which places offered up commercial space and which didn’t.
I’m not saying that the area isn’t PERFECT for development (it probably is), I’m just saying that I’d like to see cities try to make sure there’s more than a bunch of nail salons or trendy restaurants in these commercial spaces. That lady’s argument was that sometimes you need a mechanic or scrapyard or something unglamorous in an area for jobs and for local residents.
That’s why I really like the idea of cities looking at major streets and planning their vision around the whole thing. Especially if they can at least make it so residents can walk to buy a banana.
Blork
Forgetful: maybe so, but there’s a big difference between an occasional low-pitched rumble and a high-pitched roar every five minutes. As discussed here recently, the REM is louder than anticipated, and it’s a different and more startling sound than a regular train. And every five minutes!
The saving grace might be that the sound level is lower when pulling into and out of stations. I think it’s loudest when at speed. Also, they say they are taking measures to reduce the noise.
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Kate
CBC tells about a teenager whose parents rushed him from the Royal Vic to an Ontario hospital after a 15‑hour wait at the Vic ER. He proved to have a burst appendix. The MUHC spokespeople say their hospital was busy.
mare
[sorry, long,I have opinions]
I like that the MUHC spokesperson revealed what the normal staffing levels are, and how low they are. (Depending on hospital, there might also be some med school interns who see patients under close supervision.)
People don’t realize that a walk-in clinic has more doctors than the ER of one of the shiniest hospital of the province. The Glen was/is supposed to be a hospital only for severe and urgent cases, often from other regions of the province. Other hospital ERs might have bigger staffing. Going to the Glenn might not be the best decision if you want to be seen fast.
The way things work here, with the island sectioned in different CIUSSSes, is that if you call an ambulance, they will bring you to the nearest hospital. If you live in the centre of the city that’s the CHUM or The General. In the Plateau that would be Nôtre-Dame. There they stabilize you and if needed transport you to a hospital with more resources, like a heart surgery or trauma team. Walk-in patients ‘compete’ with those, because they mostly have a higher triage status.
(Shopping around can help, I always consult the capacity dashboard when 311 tells me to go to the ER.)
From personal experience a doctor in the ER spends at least 15 minutes per walk-in patient, but probably longer. In that time they do diagnostics, order labs and other tests, maybe do a small procedure, plus follow up, write scripts and referrals etc. Plus extensive reporting and other paper work. So that’s max 8 patients an hour for the two doctors on night shift, and 12 / h during the day. If there are 50 people waiting in the waiting room *and nobody else comes in* that’s 5 hours just there. But of course new people *do* come in, and some by ambulance with severe trauma, some with heart attacks and strokes, some with other ailments that need acute care. So the people that were able to walk in have to wait longer.
Also, what people don’t realize is that behind the ‘front’ ER with the tiny rooms where most walk-in patents are seen and treated, there’s another ER, with little rooms or bays with curtains were patients lie in beds, for observation or until they can be transferred elsewhere, wait for surgery, or to get tests that are complicated or in high demand. And often lots of stretchers in the hallways were patients have no privacy. The doctors on staff have to take care of those patients as well. That part is the overcrowded part from the statistics, the part that says ‘beyond capacity’. Fortunately most walk-in patients will never see that, and that’s a good thing. But they also ‘compete’ with them for the limited resources.
(IANAD) My thoughts on this particular case: The appendicitis should have been picked up by the triage nurse, and im certain it was, but AFAIK an appendix bursting is rare. Travelling three hours to Kingston might not have improved his situation though, but unlike the sensational headlines (here and in other media) his appendix didn’t burst while they were travelling as the mother admits: “[…] potentially, it could have burst on the road […]”. They took a big risk doing that. Had it happened while in the Montreal ER he’d have been seen almost immediately.
Oh, and shouting at nurses *never* helps to be seen faster. On the contrary. Nurses are stressed and need to be treated with respect.
[Oversharing] My personal ER record is 1.5 hours in-and-out after 5 stitches, on Thanksgiving Evening. Walked past the Jewish and went to St-Mary’s. Worse was 13 hours in Nôtre-Dame, even after I arrived by ambulance after a bike accident. Sat in a full waiting room, with my head covered in blood and a neck collar, and two sprained wrists. But that was 20 years ago and things have surely changed a lot. Okay, the really worst was 20 days, a walk-in but that time I *did* see the ‘back of the house’ and spent 3 days and nights on a stretcher in a corridor. Masked, during the height of the Omicron peak. Then I had a test and got a room.
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Kate
The Globe and Mail examines Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie’s new parking law based on vehicle size.
Daniel
This is so interesting to me because I certainly agree with it on principle, but while the percentages are large — an 80 percent increase! — what we’re really talking about is a difference between about $100/year vs. $200/year. And I just can’t see that making a difference.
So bravo to the idea and perhaps we can hope it’s the start of something. I guess this helps get the discussion started but I’m impatient.
EmilyG
I used to live in Rosemont. Half the people on my street had those big SUVs.
I wondered to myself how many of them actually needed them.Chris
Daniel, indeed: double nothing is still nothing. 🙁
Looks like virtue signaling to me.
The parking vignettes are so ridiculously cheap, it’s depressing.
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Kate
Guys who let off firearms in town have been warned that prosecutors are preparing to ask for harsher penalties in cases like theirs, even for possessing an illegal gun but no ammunition.
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Kate
The people restoring Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris are attempting to do it with period technology, so the axes they will use are being made in Montreal by Mathieu Collette from Forges de Montréal.
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Kate
Amtrak and CN are each blaming the other for the suspension of the Adirondack north of the U.S. border.
Nicholas
Looking at how long everyone (MOT, MTQ, CBSA, Via, Montreal, Amtrak, CBP, DOT, NY, VT) has been blaming each other for not finding $20 million to build the preclearance facility at Central station (though Quebec just found a billion for the daily Gaspé train), or Quebec City to Windsor HSR, I predict this problem will just become the new normal, with service resuming after the summer heat. Maybe it’ll get fixed for next summer, but not this year.
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Kate
A pressure group wants the SPVM to record the race or ethnicity of people they stop, so they can collect statistics on cop behaviour.
mare 23:22 on 2023-07-08 Permalink
Yes they do. Everyone should carry one. You can get one at the pharmacy, no prescription necessary.
steph 10:32 on 2023-07-09 Permalink
Not all cops have them. I’ve heard of cops buying some out of pocket to avoid the personal trauma of having some drugged kid die.
mare 12:05 on 2023-07-09 Permalink
@steph They’re free at the pharmacy for everyone, so ‘out of pocket’ is not exactly an issue. I’d be hugely surprised if the SVPM wouldn’t provide them, and since almost all cops travel by car it’s not that the weight (12 gram) or bulk (9x6x2cm) per dose would cause a big inconvenience.
If they don’t have it, they’re just ACAB.
(As far as I know administration is not super time sensitive, so waiting for paramedics is probably not going to make a big difference, but still…)
I also hope cop cars have a first aid kit on board and cops have some training. A tourniquet applied in the first minutes can save someone’s life.
Kate 14:15 on 2023-07-10 Permalink
I wouldn’t know what to do with naloxone. I’ve never been trained in first aid, in determining whether e.g. someone’s passed out from drugs, alcohol, a heart attack, even extreme fatigue. I’d be too hesitant to stick a needle in someone or stuff another drug up their nose.