Updates from July, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 21:39 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

    Michel Vautour, who snatched a teenager off an Outremont street in 2020 in an attempt to show people what a savage is, is trying to avoid being named a dangerous offender, a label that would likely see him jailed for life. The 2020 kidnapping was only the latest in a string of sexual attacks that had put him behind bars previously.

    Three years ago, when the kidnapping was first reported, La Presse delved into Vautour’s sordid history and Global spoke with the unnamed victim about her experience.

    The judge’s decision will be made in October.

     

    • Kate 20:14 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

      I was looking back through some old posts and was reminded about the issue of proving one’s anglo status. It was suggested I email the EMSB and ask them, since I went to school here in English, albeit under two school commissions which no longer exist.

      The commission where I spent most time was the Montreal Catholic School Commission, which was mostly French, but ran some English schools. It mostly evolved into the CSSDM. Most schools on the English side were under the PSBGM, which mostly evolved into the EMSB. So if anyone has my records, which one seems more likely?

      I did email the EMSB. They never replied.

       

      • Ephraim 22:23 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

        All the English Catholic schools were dissolved into the EMSB. Commission scolaire Jérôme-Le Royer (Italian English) and Commission scolaire Sainte-Croix (St-Laurent English) schools in English were all part of the EMSB. But likely you can ask the Ministry of Education for your certificate that would allow your children to go to English schools.

      • Derek 22:42 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

        Kate, that was me. If you emailed the EMSB now it is likely they are short staffed since they are on vacation. I would try again in August (oddly enough when they are busy gearing up for the new school year).

        As I think I mentioned in my original post, I thought I had lost my eligibility certificate so I emailed them to get a copy of it. This was in September of that year. Got my copy about a month later but found my original from 1978-ish in the meantime. My school board was the Commission Scolaire Ste-Croix, a catholic board that obviously no longer exists. But the EMSB will have your certificate. Call them if nobody replies to your emails. They are disorganized but will help you if it means the potential to get new students into the system.

      • Kate 10:35 on 2023-07-20 Permalink

        Derek, thank you, but I can assure you I will be putting no new students into the system.

        This is really for me to have on file so, in future, when I’m old and addled, I may have some basis for asking for care in English. My dad forgot his French as he reached his eighties. I have to think ahead.

      • Thomas 10:47 on 2023-07-20 Permalink

        As an out of province anglo, I too am supposed to have ‘historic’ status (at least I did under Bill 101) — now you’ve got me thinking I should get my paperwork in order too. I came to Quebec as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed francophile, and have been slowly turned into a militant anglo, a process accelerated by the policies and especially the rhetoric of the CAQ lol

    • Kate 19:46 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

      Thierry Karsenti, a once renowned UdeM professor of education, an expert in using technology for educational purposes, was convicted Wednesday of sexual interference on an 11‑year‑old. He’ll be sentenced later.

      What an example of someone making a conflagration of his career.

       

      • Kate 19:37 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

        Two SPVM police who admitted they gave false information to the “police watchdog” were suspended for 22 days each. They’re now appealing the suspension because they were not explicitly told that the admission would be used against them.

        What did they think disciplinary hearings were for? Therapy?

         

        • Ian 20:34 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

          Maybe we need a Quebec-specific Miranda Rights for cops because they are simply too stupid to realize that the law applies to them.

        • Ephraim 22:25 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

          They are officers of the court. If they don’t know that, they shouldn’t be cops in the first place.

      • Kate 19:31 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

        The Roman Catholic archdiocese is paying out $14.8 million to victims of sexual assaults by its priests and lay workers. This doesn’t cover cases involving members of specific orders.

         

        • Ian 20:35 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

          Remind me again why churches are tax exempt.

      • Kate 17:14 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

        A reader has pointed out to me that Valérie Plante is on this list of the 100 most influential urbanists of all time.

        So are Frederick Law Olmsted, who wasn’t a Montrealer but did design Mount Royal park, and Buckminster Fuller, ditto, who designed the Biosphere.

        It’s an odd list, I have to say, which also includes Rosa Parks, Anthony Bourdain and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

        In Montreal’s name I’d also want to put up Blanche Lemco van Ginkel: “Lemco van Ginkel and her partner were responsible for designing the master plan of the world fair Expo 67, an important cultural moment in Montreal’s and Canada’s history. She even recruited Moshe Safdie, who designed the iconic Habitat 67. The van Ginkels are also credited with having saved Old Montreal from new development. A detailed report they prepared prevented the construction of an elevated highway project that would have cut through the area. They are also known for their conservation efforts regarding Mount Royal, leading a successful advocacy project to stop the development of the mountain park’s south slope.”

        Do we have nothing named after Blanche?

         

        • Kate 14:23 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

          Toula Drimonis sorts out the background to the rape victim story told as a language scandal last week by the Journal. If anything, it’s a story about a longstanding protocol for victim treatment that isn’t well enough understood, and likely an indication that the protocol is overdue for an update.

           

          • Blork 16:02 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            This would actually be a really good case study in how reporting of a story can go off the rails, not due to conscious propaganda or other nefarious reasons but simply by taking things at face value and running with them. Journalism schools (and anyone else who is interested in how things work/don’t work) take note.

          • Kate 16:45 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            Blork, you don’t detect any propaganda? It definitely felt to me like QMI was thrilled to have got hold of what looked like a story about an anglo institution behaving badly.

          • bob 16:48 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            This was a hit job. And the article as amended is still garbage.

          • MtlWeb 17:56 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            Anyone who has been employed at one (or more) of the McGill University affiliated hospitals during the past 33 years can attest that our centers are fully bilingual and will care for not just the francophone & anglophone patients/families but many of the other linguistic backgrounds who populate our city/province. In fact, contrary to popular belief, most of our patients are indeed francophones, which makes demographic sense. Also, most of our RN staff in the ERs are on average younger & francophone in origin, but also bilingual. The rest of the multi-disciplinary personnel, including the staff MDs, are bilingual and can communicate in both languages non-stop throughout their shifts. Yes, the residents/fellows who are from the Middle-East have little knowledge of written/spoken French but there is always another staff member available who will translate with them at the bedside; it can be difficult to expect these guys/girls to learn this language as they are here for 3-4-5 years and work a ton of hours during their residency. The public needs to understand that without these international medical students/residents/fellows covering our patient care units and surgical clinics/ORs throughout the 24h of each day, their hospitalized loved ones would not receive the monitoring and care they presently do in these university-affiliated sites. Without them ‘learning on the fly’ during their various medical/surgical rotations which includes covering shifts throughout the week and maintaining the care as managed by the staff MD, patients on the wards would be dependent on an ER doc being free to see them when called by the nursing staff for a developing event/issue…and if that ER doc is not available, then that care waits for the morning when the staff doc will start his day – this is what occurs in a non-university-affiliated hospital of which we have several examples across the 514/450 area…..so, yes, the data has shown that you do get better care in a teaching hospital even if you have to answer the same questions about your history 10x. It would be ideal if the media (Allison Hanes did in this article) would stop referring to these McGill-affiliated sites as anglophone hospitals but instead as bilingual.
            I wish the rabid click-bait media devoted even half the time it wasted on the language BS on how to better support a sexual assault victim in 2023, no matter their native tongue.

          • walkerp 18:03 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            There was clearly some hysteria here, but I think that we are too quickly how this impacts many francophones here. I get and broadly agree with Toula’s more nuanced take and that this issue is much more a problem of how backwards we still are when it comes to sexual assault (and how badly run our health care system is). However, a priori, it is pretty fucked that a francophone in a francophone province can be turned away from a hospital because the service they need can not be delivered in french. I know, I know, it’s the protocol, but still how crazy is it that there is a protocol that denies the native-speaking population from a crucial service?

            Imagine if there was the same situation in B.C. and a rape victim was turned away from a hospital because they could only be served in Cantonese or Urdu? People would freak the fuck out.

            There is a ton of ignorant nationalistic language propaganda here in Quebec, driven by Quebecor and Legault and his allies and it’s awful. At the same time, it doesn’t help us anglos to dismiss a situation when it does arise and try desperately to argue why language is not an issue.

          • Blork 18:07 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            Kate, I’m not saying there wasn’t a propaganda angle, but I’m not sure if it was conscious or just knee-jerk (as in: confirms the bias so just run with it).

          • bob 19:21 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            If it was knee-jerk does that make it better? I think it makes it worse when the natural reaction to something just happens to be bigoted distortions. And I think it is obvious that this is entirely intentional, given the lack of follow-up.

            walkerp – There was no denial of service, she was not turned away, and your BC comparison is absurd, because you can be served in French at the MGH, and for that matter any other hospital – even the Jewish, oh my!. The first words of the mission statement of the MGH are “As a leading, bilingual academic health centre…”

            She was not refused service, she was referred to a different hospital which by virtue of a *forty year old* protocol is better suited to take care of her, and in the same way she was not refused service at the CHUM, but referred to a hospital better suited to take care of her. If the protocol had been followed, her first stop would have been Notre Dame, and there would be nothing to talk about in the press.

            The Drimonis article tries to sideline the bigotry of the propaganda by raising ancillary issues that aren’t even really issues (and which the Journal article completely ignores). This protocol has been in place for forty years, apparently without raising these issues – and it makes sense on the face of it, more than a hospital the size of the CHUM not being able (read: not being willing) to process a rape kit.

            She quotes an anonymous bureaucrat: “Implementing healthcare directives based on language, such as directing English-speaking patients to the MGH and French-speaking ones to Notre Dame, seems anachronistic in the context of our increasingly multicultural society,” – cool, but Quebec is officially not a multicultural society – sayeth Legault, “It’s important that we don’t put all cultures on the same level; that’s why we oppose multiculturalism. We prefer to concentrate on what we call interculturalism, where we have one culture, the Quebec culture, and we try to integrate newcomers.” Anachronistic, sure – but it accommodates a prevailing anachronistic mentality.

            Here is a better comparison than that fatuous one. If it is true that she was refused service at the MGH because she is francophone, then it is equally true that she was refused service at the CHUM because she was sexually assaulted. There’s a different headline for you – “Victime de viol: le CHUM la refuse… car elle etait victime de viol.” I guess that didn’t dawn on her, or if it did it didn’t make it to the court records or the papers. Perfectly true, though – “the CHUM refuses services to women if they have been sexually assaulted”.

        • Kate 13:56 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

          Maxime Béland, gravely injured last week when a driver ran through a road construction site, has died. The Journal had interviewed his coworker before the death was announced, as did CTV.

          There’s no news yet of charges for the driver, who fled the scene but later turned himself in.

           

        • Kate 13:36 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

          La Presse profiles the growing Latino community around Plaza St‑Hubert.

           

          • DeWolf 17:00 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            I moved to the area 1.5 years ago and even in that time, it feels like the Latino population has exploded. That’s true for Montreal generally, but you especially feel it around St-Hubert/Jean-Talon. I love that there is now a tamale vendor tucked into the metro entrance. Plaza Juarez is also highly recommended if you want to plunge into a Mexican mini-mall with a birrieria stall, money changers and knick-knack stalls, a good taqueria and a weekend hair salon that operates out of what appears to be a closet.

        • Kate 10:12 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

          People living on the section of St‑Hubert north of Mont‑Royal, which is a narrow residential street in that area, say that the pedestrianization of Mont‑Royal is putting them and their vehicles at risk because large trucks keep using the street.

          I don’t actually get “cars and large trucks have nowhere to go and end up taking smaller streets” because there are other north‑south streets. This is just a few blocks east of St‑Denis and not all that far from Papineau if you’re driving. Obviously something has to be fixed but I don’t think it’s the pedestrianization at fault.

           

          • DeWolf 10:46 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            The only way this has to do with the pedestrianization is that trucks that would have turned onto Mont-Royal are now heading onto St-Hubert. In doing so, they are ignoring a flashing sign at St-Hubert/Marie-Anne warning them not to proceed, and somehow negotiating a series of plastic bollards at various intersections on St-Hubert meant to slow and divert traffic.

            Le Devoir had an article on this yesterday that notes that it has always been illegal for heavy vehicles to use St-Hubert between Mont-Royal and St-Joseph. It also notes that this is an issue that predates pedestrianization, it’s just that the pedestrian street has made things worse.

            This is a very legitimate complaint from the residents and their proposed solution is the best one: make St-Hubert one-way to the south from Gilford to Mont-Royal. That would completely eliminate any through traffic on this extremely narrow residential street. The only reason it is treated as a through street in the first place is because traffic engineers in the 1960s dreamed up a way for commuters to travel through the Plateau at high speeds north from the giant Berri tunnel.

          • Kevin 10:50 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            Google Maps (or whatever service drivers are using for directions) need to implement a “driving a big truck” button that eliminates the option of taking narrow streets.

          • Kate 10:55 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            It spins off from the bad intersection where the wider, southern section of St‑Hubert meets Mont‑Royal then suddenly turns into a narrow residential street. They should consider renaming that small section because it really is not a continuation, it’s a discontinuity.

          • DeWolf 11:13 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            Exactly.

            Incidentally, this is from an article in La Presse about the spot in St-Michel where the young woman was killed while crossing the street recently:

            “Hélas, la décision d’installer un simple panneau d’arrêt serait devenue fort complexe en raison de la Loi sur les ingénieurs entrée en vigueur en septembre 2021. « Il faut maintenant un plan de marquage scellé par un ingénieur, plan qui découle lui-même d’une analyse de circulation coûteuse effectuée par un ingénieur en circulation », a expliqué sur Facebook le conseiller municipal Sylvain Ouellet en réagissant au texte de La Presse sur la mort de Dilan Kaya survenue dans son district de François-Perrault.

            L’administration municipale a d’ailleurs mandaté SNC-Lavalin pour évaluer la possibilité d’ajouter des arrêts, dont certains dans la rue Bélair.”

            Yet another provincial law that makes it more expensive and time-consuming for the city to do anything about making public space safer, with the added benefit of lining the pockets of SNC Lavalin!

          • mare 11:59 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            What makes St-Hubert a beloved through-fare is that the lights at intersections are all very favourable for traffic driving on it. The wait times at stoplights for traffic from side streets are often twice as long. I don’t know why this is, it might date to the 60s as @DeWolf writes above, but it’s a very weird thing. As a driver taking St-Hubert and crossing the Plateau to the North is faster than taking St-Denis, until you reach Plaza St-Hubert, where you have to drive 20 km/h. I did it all the time when I still had a car, and do it often even now on my bike, despite the lack of a bike path.

            This is for all side streets, with a notable exception the complicated intersection of Mont-Royal where the grid shift of St-Hubert and traffic from rue Resther complicates things. It’s especially very noticeable as a cyclist, at crossings with St-Hubert of bike paths, like the REV on Bellechasse, and the bike paths on Villeray, Rachel, Cherrier and De Maisonneuve.

            Next time you drive or ride and cross St-Hubert, please notice how long you have to wait, and how short the traffic on St-Hubert has to stop for a red light. Those times are ridiculously slanted in favour of St-Hubert, even though there isn’t actually much traffic on the street. I’m a very law-abiding cyclist, bit even I am often tempted to just go and ignore the red light there, because it’s weird to wait for minutes when there is absolutely no traffic on St-Hubert. And I confess, sometimes I even do, and follow the many other cyclists. (You can report me again Kate.).

            As a side note, I was riding in Laval last week and I encountered several crossings where, after you pressed a button as a pedestrian or cyclist, you had to wait just *five* seconds before you had a green light. The inconvenience of having to press a button almost outweighed getting the royal treatment. St-Hubert would be a prime candidate for something similar, but preferably by induction sensors in the bike path. In the Netherlands they are very ubiquitous.

          • Blork 12:43 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            What mare says is true; St-Hubert is the preferred way to go north in that part of town. It’s faster, and the street is wider most of the way, as opposed to St-Denis, which crawls and has much more pedestrian crossings. If you’re a delivery driver who is downtown or in Old Montreal and you need to get up to the Plateau or Petite-Patrie, you’ll probably take St-Hubert.

            The pedestrianizing of Mont-Royal is only a minor obstacle for these delivery drivers. (And remember, these are just working class people trying to do their job; don’t blame them.) If you’re making deliveries in a big panel truck and you’re going up St-Hubert and you see that flashing light at Marie-Anne that says to not proceed… you roll your eyes and proceed, because you have a job to do and a schedule to stick to. What are your options? Are you going to pull a U-turn on St-Hubert and go back down to Rachel? Are you going to go left on Marie-Anne and inch along on a street that’s too narrow for a truck and then try to make that tight right onto St-Denis? Probably not.

            I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just trying to put myself in the shoes of those truck drivers, and the result is, as usual, “it’s complicated.”

          • Nicholas 13:19 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            There are a few things wrong going on, and a few fixes. Truck drivers should have truck GPS devices that have truck routes built in and don’t suggest using non-truck routes except for local deliveries. Many truck drivers have this, it’s your business, you can’t just rely free software and then blame it when you don’t follow the no truck signs.

            It’s also true that with the pedestrianization the no trucks sign should be at Rachel, not Marie Anne, which is too late. Really, though, trucks should be taking Cherrier to St Denis, or Sherbrooke to Papineau.

            But St Hubert really needs a redesign. The entire section through the Plateau is badly planned, with sections far too wide both south of Mount Royal and north of Laurier. I understand truck drivers will want to go through, but they don’t fit on the Mount Royal to Laurier section. Either they need to remove a lane of parking from Mount Royal to St Joseph (like is done from St Joseph to Laurier) so trucks can fit, or, better, they narrow the rest of the street and ban all but local trucks, forcing through trucks to use St Denis or Papineau. This local residential street shouldn’t be a through route. We could also force the issue by flipping some sections of St Hubert and Resther to one-way in conflicting directions, as suggested, so it’s impossible and illegal for any traffic to use it as a through route. The whole neighbourhood around Bienville should be like Milton Park, with only a few ways out so it’s really just local traffic.

            Lastly, the cult of the traffic engineer continues. Engineers should be there to calculate turning radii and construction designs. Traffic generation and modelling is largely a pseudo-science that traffic engineers have used to gain a veto over too many parts of our streets. Keeping cars moving quickly is an option (that many disagree with), not a commandment from God that everything else must conform to.

          • Blork 13:32 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

            Another thing, and this might be too much to ask… But WTF are trucks as big as the one shown in the CBC article even doing in residential areas of the city? Do we really need such gigantic vehicles just to deliver a few flats of drywall or whatever?

            You don’t see trucks like that going through most cities in Europe. Even the garbage trucks are smaller. Why do we still think it’s normal to drive such huge vehicles around residential areas?

        • Kate 09:46 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

          This is not the first time I’ve seen a report on the growing numbers of homeless people making it difficult to do business in the Palais des congrès concourse. La Presse reported on it last November and, going by the current Radio‑Canada report, the problem is worsening. Radio‑Canada even ledes the story with a complaint from a homeless person that people are too crazy in the area so she’s going to move on.

           

          • Kate 09:35 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

            In another story about delayed renovations, school buildings around town are standing empty as funds and manpower to repair them are wanting.

            Although the Académie de Roberval is in Villeray I wasn’t even clear on where it was, but I realized after some googling that I’ve seen it. It’s on the eastern spur of de Castelnau in the quiet streets north of Jean‑Talon hospital, and feels like it creates a whole zone of deadness around it. Letting these buildings fall into disrepair doesn’t just inconvenience students and their families, it afflicts whole neighbourhoods.

            Google locates the current Académie de Roberval behind another secondary school – the École secondaire Georges-Vanier, a slab of 1970s Quebec educational brutalism on Jarry. Many students will graduate from the Académie without ever having set foot in the building.

             

            • Joey 11:58 on 2023-07-19 Permalink

              Send the crew from city hall…

          • Kate 08:56 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

            Environment Canada lifted our smog warning Wednesday morning.

             

            • Kate 08:45 on 2023-07-19 Permalink | Reply  

              Between pandemic and mission creep, the cost of renovating city hall has grown and the deadline for completion keeps receding. Half this brief report is given over to Ensemble kvetching.

               

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