La Presse’s Maxime Bergeron tells a hair‑raising tale of ending up in the intensive care unit when a splinter turned to strep A, flesh‑eating disease. This scary condition is on the rise, but doctors aren’t sure why – so it’s worth knowing the signs.
Updates from August, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
I didn’t link to this story on Friday because it was locked, but the basics are in the headline: Michael Raffoul, the owner of Metro Media, wrote himself a $2.57M cheque in 2021. Some of it was taxpayer money: Monday, the mayor called him out for pocketing public funds because the city had given the business $2 million and Quebec $1.3 million to keep the media platform running, not so Raffoul could treat it like a lottery jackpot.
I also want to call out Aref Salem in this piece, where he says of Mayor Plante, “Est-ce qu’elle peut exercer un leadership pour une fois dans sa vie.” I don’t even like quoting Salem to this extent, but it’s worth it to show up his pettiness.
Taylor
Exhibit #57,318 that news media isn’t dying, but being brutally murdered by greed
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Kate
Does TVA sound exceptionally chirpy about how we can expect a traffic mess with the rentrée that will be back to its pre‑pandemic profusion?
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Kate
The city will be giving out a box of free baby supplies to anyone with a newborn as of New Year’s Day 2024. They’ll be handed out in the city libraries.
Just under 20,000 babies were born in Montreal in 2022.
JP
I understand that things don’t have to be mutually exclusive, that it’s not necessarily a zero sums game….but I truly feel this amount of money could have been better spent differently & elsewhere. Having children in this day and age is truly a choice or should be. At the very least, the distribution of this box should’ve been income based. Someone like me does not need a free $200 baby box if I were having a baby, which could happen sometime in the next couple of years.
Spent the day downtown and seeing so many people down on their luck really to me highlights where this money could be better used. Maybe distribute something the unhoused can use at all libraries?
JaneyB
That’s a nice gesture and the connection to libraries is good too since there are so many kid-friendly activities in the library system.
@JP – People who don’t need a free baby box can avoid picking one up. The unhoused/unwell already often spend their days sitting/napping in chairs at libraries – as they have for several decades. That’s not a great system but there it is.
Daniel
Many (all?) of the city’s libraries also provide free feminine hygiene products. JP, I see your point but this will be self-sorting. People who can readily afford this stuff won’t pick one up any more than they’re likely to grab something from the local food bank for a meal.
walkerp
I appreciate that this can seem on the surface like an unevenly needed distribution of goods, but like universal day care (albeit to a lesser degree), one of the important outcomes of a baby box is the levelling effect.
Daisy
I believe there’s a Nordic country (Finland?) that gives a box to every baby. The box itself doubles as a crib. Apparently it’s a much beloved custom.
CE
Joey
Shame Mtl didn’t copy some of the more interesting aspects of the Finnish baby box – they only offer it to expecting mothers who get a checkup during the first four months of pregnancy, the box doubles as a crib, it contains more practical items (balaclava, diapers, a thermometer, etc.) and parents who don’t need it can get an amount of cash.
Ian
When my first kid was born we got a gift certificate at the hospital from Pharmaprix for a bunch of basics – a starter pack, if you will, of newborn diapers,some literature, some small washcloths, and a couple of other things I now forget. By the time my second was born that was discontinued.
Tim S.
Some of the stuff has some cool Montreal-branding. Creating a sense of civic identity and pride is probably always a good investment.
Also a way to get parents into the library and connected with community resources.
Daniel
Can confirm, Tim S. I recently went to the library with a person who is applying for asylum in Canada. She was surprised to learn the library had a place for her children to play, as well as computers for internet access, the aforementioned feminine hygiene supplies, and now this baby box.
When you’ve grown up here or in another highly developed country, it’s easy to take for granted that these things could be available and free at a library. But for someone who comes from a place without the resources Canada has or without a good public library system, it can be quite a surprise. And it has the potential to make a big difference.
Joey
@Daniel I’d bet that most Montrealers aren’t even aware of the scope of free stuff they can get at the city’s libraries and the BANQ: besides books and periodicals, there are video games, DVDs, tools, board games, and lots more online (ebooks, electronic access to magazines and newspapers, the Kanopy streaming service, etc.).
Tim S.
The blog’s moved on, but the more I think about this the more impressed I am with how it’s designed to help the family get out of the house and involved in community activities. The reusable swim diaper for example – great idea.
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Kate
Two men were stabbed overnight in Montreal North, non‑fatally, but the circumstances haven’t been explained.
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Kate
Since the city passed a law saying all residential developments need to include some social or affordable housing, every developer has bought their way out of it with cash or property – but not enough cash to create the social housing elsewhere.
Ephraim
City needs to set up their own developer and start to develop some of their own lands. And needs to increase the fees for exceptions. You want exceptions, pay a social housing fee. We also need to make some changes. I still can’t believe that we don’t require sprinklers in all new housing in Montreal
Kate
You mean sprinklers in the actual living spaces? Or in the common areas only?
Nicholas
I mean, the city got $25 million and five pieces of property. They could supplement that with other city funds, or build smaller buildings: just that amount should get them like 100,000 square feet. As well, they don’t need to fund social housing from housing construction fees; they could just raise property taxes. A rise of 1% in just city property taxes, which would add $53 to the bill for a home worth $1 million, would bring in about $32 million a year, or about triple what this developer tax is bringing in (the $25 million is since April 2021). (And it’s not really a tax on developers, but on people buying newly constructed buildings and units inside them.) I agree the province should spend more, but it’s much easier to say someone else should pay than raising taxes you control.
DeWolf
@Ephraim How would that be different from what the SHDM and OMHM do?
DeWolf
There’s an idea out of Toronto that could work well in Montreal now that property values have exploded:
Basically, it’s a tax on profit earned by selling a property, with the highest rates for owners selling after a short time (ie property flippers) and lower rates for owners selling after many years. An average 10% tax could generate almost $3 billion a year in Toronto alone.
Nicholas
Requiring sprinklers in all new housing would be far out of step with most of the developed world, and increase housing costs for little benefit. Here’s a summary of laws in Europe, and it varies widely, and only Wales has rules that stringent. What a lot of places are doing is requiring construction be more resistant to fire, and to burn slower to allow more time for evacuation and emergency response, the outcomes we want, rather than focusing on the inputs such as sprinklers. The countries with the lowest fire death rates (Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Slovenia, Netherlands) have no sprinkler requirements for residential buildings or have them start at midrise (70-100+ feet). (That chart includes deaths from non-building fires, but more limited data I’ve seen on building fires is broadly similar for developed countries, as most fire deaths there are in buildings.)
But in the end, the most dangerous place to live for fires are older, softwood-frame single family homes. The harder and more expensive we make new, safer multifamily buildings to build for little if any discernable safety benefit, at least according to international safety rates, the worse off we’ll be.
MarcG
@DeWolf: That’s a great idea and it’s well explained on the site, thanks for sharing.
Ephraim
@Kate – Yes. It’s required in many other cities. It’s required in CSL. They have been talking about it for years. You build new, you put in sprinklers.
@DeWolf – The OHDM isn’t independent. The SHDM is non-profit. I would even consider hiring the CDPQ to do it, for a cut. But I mean write the whole plans, develop and build and then hand it over to either, though, I don’t think that either the OHDM or the SHDM do a particularly good job, as so much has gone into disrepair under their watch. The whole Blue Bonnets… get a real city planner, even if we have to bring in someone from Europe and figure out density, shopping, routes, parks, everything and get a plan. Then either hire a consulting company to build it, or work with Habitat to develop a rent-to-own with sweat equity. (There is a required sweat-equity component to Habitat for Humanity). And plan the whole thing out. With a good 25% being social housing. (Experience shows that you can’t make an entire area social housing). If you need to entice the CDPQ to run it, let them build the stores/cafe’s part of it and sell that or own and rent that you. But build for the future and show how to build in this social housing, shared apartments and mix-ed use area. And F*CK the developers. Just figure it out and stop trusting developers to actually build social housing. And make it cost efficient. If you put in the geothermal heating and cooling and make these buildings efficient, they will increase in value faster and give a push on developers to do the same thing. LEED certified condos, stacked townhouses and even rooming houses.
CE
The developer quoted, Nicola Padulo, sounds like a real piece of work:
Padulo is already frustrated with tenant rights’ protection in Quebec under the province’s housing tribunal, which he says is biased “against landlords.” Now, he says, the city wants to “put its nose” in his business.
“If people can’t afford it, they should not live in the city. The city is made for the privileged,” he said.
Kate
Poor people have to live in the city, it’s where the accessible jobs are.
Ephraim, I would not want sprinklers in my living space. Do I need to have my computer equipment soaked and ruined because some idiot messed up in their kitchen and set them off?
Joey
I would imagine that sprinklers are much more sensitive than smoke detectors – and require a much higher temperature reading before going off. I wonder how often sprinklers deploy when they shouldn’t.
In his excellent and terrifying book about the 2016 Fort MacMurray fire, John Vaillant describes a research study that compared two fires, one set in a simulated living room, full of old-fashioned furniture, the other in a simulated living room, full of modern furniture. The fire was lit via a candle on the couch. The old-fashioned living room took more than 20 minutes to fully ignite, during which the couch burned slowly. The modern living room ignited almost instantly given the plasticky nature of the furnishings. We need to be concerned, in addition to the materials used to make buildings, with the materials used to make the things that fill the buildings.
Kate
I freelanced some years ago at a studio where, at the end of the day, we had to cover all the computer equipment with heavy plastic sheeting, because one time the sprinklers did go off and their equipment was mostly ruined, and they feared having it happen again.
This was in one of the many post-needletrade industrial buildings in the Mile End.
JaneyB
@Ephraim -Very interesting points. I could get behind CDPQ spearheading social housing development and involvement by Habitat for Humanity would be very innovative. I’ve done a blitz build with them back in Wpg, where they are very established and successful. It’s a real community-building experience. They really know what they’re doing with the sweat equity idea.
@CE – That developer Nicola Padulo needs some re-education. In fact, we could call a new gentrification tax the ‘Padulo tax,’ in his dishonour.
Ephraim
@Kate – Sprinklers don’t go off by mistake like that. Usually 68C is what’s needed to trigger it. It’s a glycerin ampoule that needs to expend to break. And they are individually triggered.
Kate
Ephraim: They don’t, until they do. It was some kind of false alarm at that studio, not a real fire. I would not take the chance of having a sprinkler head over my computer stuff.
Ephraim
@Kate – If you lived that cautiously, you wouldn’t want a bathroom on the floor above you, either. Also, it would be covered by insurance and my entire PC is backed up nightly. A hard drive can die at any time.
mare
@Ephraim They go off (pop) individually and if it’s a small fire it will be extinguished and that’s it. If more than a few sprinkler heads have been triggered and the flow of water in the sprinkler pipe has reached a certain level in the sprinkler control system at the entry point of the building* the water pressure is increased by a lot and they all pop, indiscriminately of there being an actual fire near them or not. If it’s a large industrial building there might be more than one system but sometimes it will rain in the whole building.
*Usually located where you see those red pipes coming out of the wall for the fire department to pump a lot of extra water into the system.
Kate
Ephraim, I live in a ground floor triplex flat. Twice since I’ve lived here (2005) I’ve had water pour down from upstairs. Once water came through the kitchen ceiling and brought part of it down; more recently, it just soaked my bathroom. Luckily, no electronics were in the way either time.
Admittedly these were not sprinkler incidents. But perhaps this is why I don’t trust other people to be sensible about these things.
Ephraim
@Mare – That’s a pretty big building. The point is, it’s the crap in the house is generally covered by insurance except for human lives. Most humans don’t melt when they get wet. Okay, maybe one or two of our neighbours, but generally not.
Ian
If developers won’t build social housing despite a fine, the fine isn’t big enough.
Less carrot; more stick.Joey
The idea that X% of every development would be ‘affordable’ (as Kate always says, what does ‘affordable’ mean, concretely?) was kind of ludicrous, no? From the get-go, the city should have anticipated that developers would obviously prefer to just pay the affordability tax and go on about their business. If the tax isn’t equivalent to the cost of an ‘affordable’ unit of housing, the city should obviously raise it. If it is, the city should have no problem using the collected funds to finance its own ‘affordable’ housing stock. The fact that the city’s answer to this Ensemble-pushed story is ‘we’ll have the report that was promised this spring available in a few weeks but oh it’s the province’s fault’ does not inspire a lot of confidence.
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Kate
A 25-year-old man was shot dead in St‑Michel overnight. No arrests have been made.
Kevin 22:44 on 2023-08-21 Permalink
Our society really does not know when to go where in our medical system for treatment. We need a handbook.
jeather 09:53 on 2023-08-22 Permalink
Yeah I know a surprising number of people who have had it, and the trick is: you have a cut/scrape/I didn’t even realise I hurt myself that gets infected really fast (less than a day) and hurts a lot.
PatrickC 09:56 on 2023-08-22 Permalink
I can relate. This past February, I picked up what turned out to be strep from my grandson and thought I would get better easily, since he was fine after a day. But then my arm swelled up like Bergeron’s did, and by the time I got to the doctor my BP was so low I was hospitalized immediately. As with the reporter, they cut open my hand, but though I didn’t have the flesh-eating disease I was in sepsis. I spent 10 days in the ICU, where it was touch and go for a while, then three more weeks in the regular ward, and two more months recovering at home from various complications.
I was later told there was a wave of cases like mine this winter, mostly arising from contact with children or grandchildren. Anyway, I second the reporter’s warning to take infections like this seriously!
Kevin 10:09 on 2023-08-22 Permalink
Kate
I could swear I saw a post from you this morning — The version I got when I lived in BC is 400+ pages.
Kate 11:14 on 2023-08-22 Permalink
Kevin, I had commented that we could collaborate on the handbook you mentioned above. This morning it seemed like a silly remark, so I deleted it.
PatrickC: I always knew children were dangerous. But I’m glad you survived and hope you will be OK.
Joey 11:32 on 2023-08-22 Permalink
It doesn’t come in a cute box with Mtl-themed toutous, but when a child is born in Quebec they give you a really great manual…
Kate 13:05 on 2023-08-22 Permalink
They need to add some clowns to it.
Ian 21:13 on 2023-08-22 Permalink
But where are the clowns
Send in the clowns
Don’t bother, they’re here
FWIW I am in the midst of a very complex (to me) family emergency situation dealing with an elderly parent and you know what? 811 took care of all my concerns, right up to hospitalization despite refusal of care, the court system, and connecting me with care homes.
dwgs 09:51 on 2023-08-23 Permalink
811 is a great tool. Should be more widely known.
JaneyB 15:03 on 2023-08-23 Permalink
Also, you can get the more common kind of strep infection eg: cellulitis – also very dangerous. My aunt got it from a crack on her foot. She ignored it until someone else noticed a dark track had formed up her leg. Bad sign. She went to ER and was immediately put on a month of intravenous antibiotics with a nurse to check up on her at home. Watch your cuts and wounds, people. If she’d waited another day or two, she would have lost part of her leg or even her life. Sepsis is still often fatal, even with our remaining antibiotics.