Every summer, François Legault gets all lit up with the idea of putting a roof on the IGA stadium even though it’s something nobody in the area wants, and he wants Montreal to spend millions upgrading that stadium for a tennis event that lasts one week in the summer.
Legault talked about it in 2019 and La Presse argued against it.
Jessica Pegula won this year’s tennis outing on Sunday.
Good Globe and Mail piece this week on how doctors are leaving the public system in Quebec, where contraventions to the Canada Health Act are permitted by the provincial government.
Also ignores the fines GPs get if their patients go to the ER for an insufficient reason, or go to an urgent care clinic that isn’t the one they are affiliated with.
Doctors in the private sector should be shamed. Our public education didn’t pay for that.
These policies are from all the parties except for NDP, QS. PQ, Lib, CAQ are all to blame for creeping privatization. And despite what they say the private sector hasn’t made our system any better. You still have to wait forever to get a doctor (if at all).
Successive governments have made dumb decisions to penalize family doctors. Med students choose other specializations rather than be blamed for not seeing people fast enough.
jeather – what? If I go to the ER and my problem is judged not serious enough, my GP gets penalized?
Yes, my understanding is that if you go for something that could have been seen by the urgent care clinic your GP is associated with, there is a penalty. (This is from a friend whose GP complains about this, though that doctor’s urgent care clinic has not had any appointments for months, so who knows what they expect their patients to do.)
A similar editorial from La Presse, with the startling info that a specialist can, legally, jump from the public to the private system or vice versa 19 times in a year.
A centre offering supervision for people inhaling drugs, and places for them to live, will open soon opposite Atwater market, the first of its kind in Quebec.
Interesting, I just assumed that project was more condos.
Suggested by a reader, a lengthy piece about how the REM took some inspiration from the Paris RER.
Yeah except the capacity. And the compatibility with heavy rail lines.
It’s really more of a light metro, cdpqinfra fought hard agains efforts to make it an actual RER.
Items Sunday are emphasizing that the Pride parade will actually be held, after last year’s was cancelled mere hours before start time.
Update: The parade had a record number of participants.
There were two fatal accidents overnight: a pedestrian knocked down and killed on Park Avenue and a car crash on Île Bizard that killed a 16‑year‑old passenger.
The northern half of St Joseph from Parc to St Urbain has been closed all week, as the city changes the lead entry pipes. So there’s only one lane open in each direction (east/west), which might have been a factor.
Interesting three part report in the [Journal](https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2023/08/12/exces-de-vitesse-depassements-imprudents-cellulaire-au-volant-ca-roule-en-malade-sur-nos-routes) about carbrain insanity.
“carbrain insanity” lol yeah when I get behind the wheel I just go nuts. We all do! This is what all cars do to all people all the time! /s
I see it happened at a quarter to two in the. morning … One of my friends was struck and killed at Parc and Saint Joe some years back as she left a bar. That area has always been sketchy for pedestrians stumbling home.
Ian, over the years I’ve noticed that some people change when they get behind the wheel – allowing themselves to be angrier and more volatile, mostly. It’s part of our culture, which is what leads to weird things like the “brake check” (I could hardly believe this happens when I saw it from inside a car – it seemed so unnecessarily risky and stupid).
Which isn’t to say everyone does.
I got brake checked on the 40 when I was in driving school. Some people are just assholes. Most drivers just want to get where they are going. I am loath to blame cars for some people being assholes – I’ve had bicyclists get up in my grill, too.
This is the conundrum of living in a city – the assholes make it troublesome and are often aggressive dopes. Blaming their delivery system is unfair to the majority that just want to get on with their day, but the temptation exists to say all BMW drivers are assholes, ACAB, all homeless people all white people all men all anglos et cetera
Ian up here serving some good false balance, because otherwise who’s going to come up here and brush aside issues with platitudes.
The expectation isn’t that the “delivery system” is a problem, but that designing Montreal and our burbs mostly around it as the default and particularly refraining on delivering harsher penalties on “assholes” is making this relevant mode of transportation more ruinous to public finance, everyone’s health and cityscape than it ought to be.
When 70% of Québécois can’t even respect speed limit school zones, this isn’t a matter of being “unfair to the majority”, we know the majority doesn’t care enough to be fair about very basic road behaviour. Me included, I’ve remind myself of doing some pretty dumb stuff behind the wheels, years ago, just for the sake of getting on with my day. The temptation is great to excuse some really objectionable stuff for the sake of a performative fairness.
There’s something about being on wheels – in a car, bike, probably scooter and skateboard too – that makes you really want to preserve your momentum. I don’t know if this is a recognized psychological phenomenon, but I know I have a different mindset in a car than walking and have to make an effort to control it.
Incidentally, I was on a road trip out west this summer -BC, Washington, Alberta – and pretty much everyone followed the speed limit, no one tailgated or passed on the right or was especially aggressive. My family remarked that at the end of the week I hadn’t sworn at anyone! So it’s not just that some people are assholes – it’s a local culture thing here.
Forgetful, it’s not a question of false balance, it’s a question of nuance and avoiding overgeneralizations – but I’m not surprised that eluded you.
I live on a residential street with school buses that pass several times a day. You know who blasts past buses when their lights are flashing so they can let small children on and off,, almost every time? Bikes. You know who blows through the stops at the intersections almost every time? Bikes. Are all bicyclists victims of “cycle brain insanity”? Of course not. It would be stupid of me to say so.
That’s the last I’m going to comment on this, but respectfully, your lack of self awareness is disappointing Ian. Hard numbers from the SAAQ and the SPVM are not overgeneralizations, it’s literally the empirical, careful and rigorous observation of the phenomenon. What is overgeneralization, however, is your anecdotal experience.
I also have anecdotal experience; I too live on a residential street with schools, and a daycare and a bike path, and there’s so many parents and kids on bikes on school days. You know who cuts off, swerves dangerously, drives counter traffic, and honks at children? Not other cyclists, not bus drivers. It’s car drivers (sadly some being possibly parents themselves). The difference between our anecdotal experience is that aggressive and wanton behaviour when getting in the driver seat is studied and recognized phenomenon, and far more devastating in an impact than the spandex assholes. Not excusing the behaviour of said spandex warriors, but it’s plain physics.
Real nuance is not moral grandstanding and false equivalencies; it’s recognizing multiple elements of an issue, being able to weigh relevant facts and information, actually engage honestly with the subject and avoiding fallacies.
Instead of the whataboutism you are trying to pass for nuance and critical thinking, maybe we don’t disregard our shortcomings of our local driving culture and see what we can individually and collectively do better as drivers. And let’s not get bogged down by some “not all cars drivers” mindset, when it is in fact just short of being “all car drivers” according to automotive insurance, police services, and transport engineering research.
Good day.
Most commenters are drivers, and many of them are bored, retired suburbanites.
Thus many comments on bike articles in newspapers claim that “bikes are more dangerous than cars,” or “I’m more afraid of bikes than I am of cars.” For people who actually think like this, I can only hope that you get struck by the vehicle you find less dangerous – whether it’s cars or bikes.
Gosh, Forgetul, you sure don’t like it when it gets personal, do you?
I might remind you that you’re the one that initiated the personal attacks.
I’m not going to pick apart your screed in detail but it isn’t hard to see through. 70% is not “nearly all” unless you are as innumerate, and for that matter, since bicyclists are unlicensed there wouldn’t be any SAAQ info about when they violate traffic laws, would there? For that matter, as we have often noted on this blog, there aren’t tracffic engineers involved with bike infrastructure in this city. What’s more, the police don’t ticket cyclists unless they are specifically on ticketing-cyclists-duty, which is part of an occasional rider safety campaign – ticketing drivers is way more profitable. A parking fine is 90 bucks minimum; what’s the fine for chaining your bike to infrastructure even if it blocks crosswalks? Oh right, there is none. So what do you think the cops are more motivated to do, ticket bikes, or cars?
But yeah, nuance. Using tems like “carbrain insanity” reveals your hand neatly, don’t try to play at Mr. Empirical Data now, the toothpaste is already out of the tube. You know what a lot of anecdotal experience is called? Qualitative data.
You obviously aren’t interested in having a discussion, and your confrontational manner is clearly an attempt to drown out any other voices. I for one don’t appreciate the bullying tone, and from how you express yourself, I don’t think your sense of superiority is warranted. In any case, I’m not interested in playing a game of pseudo-intellectual dickchicken with a reactionary ding-dong, so “good day” to you.
Can we all agree that bikes kill a lot fewer people than cars do?
Because that’s the fact the anti-bicycle people always choose to ignore.
Note to Kate: The tone here on this MCW thread seems less civil than usual, so I am trying extra hard to be civil.
It would be foolish to disagree, and I don’t think anyone has said otherwise here. I took exception to Forgetful’s overgeneralization of “carbrain insanity” as it’s unhelpful at best. Nobody has argued that bicycles kill more people than cars, that was a straw man that Qatzi put out there, wishing death on suburbanites, as he will.
I do believe that the majority of people really do just want to get on with their day and that to vilify people based on how they get around is foolish – this is basically saying that everyone in Quebec that lives outside a city is a cold-blooded killer just waiting for thier chance to commit vehicular manslaughter.
I know tempers run high around certain hot-button topics, I was actually trying to calm things down before Forgetful came at me as some kind of murderous apologist for the forces of evil. It is a weakness of mine that I will not suffer fools gladly.
In any case, I hope cooler heads preval. Thank you for the reminder, Orr.
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