It’s a bit of a puff piece for the benefits of police on horseback, but this 24 heures item is quite interesting about the horses and how they’re looked after.
Updates from September, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A piece of ceiling fell on a student at Notre‑Dame‑de‑l’Assomption, an east‑end grade school, on Thursday. It’s being blamed on heat and humidity. The kid was only a bit banged up.
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Kate
This is a first in my neighbourhood: a man apparently planning to camp out on a Jarry sidewalk, in front of St Vincent church.
waffles
Folks, pls don’t photograph homeless people’s faces, they deserve privacy even though they’re forced to live outside :’(
Kate
I photographed him at a steep angle that would make his face unrecognizable, while still giving him a sense of identity. I didn’t intend any harm or mockery.
Meezly
Hopefully he was asked to give his consent for his image to be published.
Kate
No. He wasn’t. I thought it newsworthy that things have come to such a pass that someone would camp out on a sidewalk. I felt this was a social phenomenon, not a portrait of an individual, and I didn’t want to get into a debate with the guy.
Chris
Kate, your photo is fine. Quite discretely taken, as you say.
But anyway, he’s in public; your picture can be taken in public. And it is, constantly, by security cameras, doorbells, cars, etc. It’s allowed for all of them, and it’s allowed for you too.
dhomas
If you’re in a public place, having your photo taken is fair game. Your photo, Kate, is actually quite discreet. Try going to Walmart. They no longer employ any cashiers, so they are constantly filming you at the “self-checkout”. Now THAT’S intrusive!
Blork
While I agree with Waffles that we shouldn’t gratuitously photograph homeless people without their consent (particularly if the photograph shows them at their most vulnerable, but that’s a whole separate discussion) I am not offended by or opposed to this particular photograph. As Kate says, it’s somewhat newsworthy, and the person isn’t really recognizeable.
But Chris’s comparison isn’t valid. While there are indeed security camera galore, the images captured by those cameras generally are not published. It’s one thing to capture an image of a person, while it’s another thing to publish the image.
But even that is fraught with grey areas and fuzzy edges. Thanks to Aubry vs. Editions Vice-Versa (1998) the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that everyone in Quebec has the right to their own image, according to section 5 of the Quebec Charter. This has largely been interpreted as meaning that even when out in public, you own the right to your image and it cannot be published without your permission (barring certain conditions such as a significant newsworth event, etc.). This basically means that (technically speaking) street photography is illegal in Quebec (unless you get permission from everyone you photograph, which is highly improbable and impractical when doing candid street photography).
And although this might seem like I’m contradicting myself WRT what I said about Chris’s comment, the Aubry vs. Editions Vice-Versa ruling can be interpreted to mean you cannot even take such photographs, let alone publish them. But I don’t think that has ever been enforced or challenged.
It’s a sticky quagmire, but as far as I know it is largely unenforced because it’s a civil issue not a criminal one. So a cop won’t stop you from taking street photos, but if someone you photograph sees the published photo and objects, they can sue you. In practice this rarely happens, if at all.
Such is the nature of civil law.
You can read all the gory and mundane details here: https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1608/index.do
Blork
(My comment about Chris’s comment also applies to dhomas’s comment.)
Kate
Blork, I don’t believe the ruling in Aubry vs. Editions Vice-Versa has been challenged since the web, but the definition of “publish” has changed since that time. Lots of people take candid shots and post them to Instagram or Facebook, or sites like Flickr, or personal blogs – and I don’t believe it’s been tested whether that’s legal. It may not be socially acceptable to some.
But I maintain that my photo here was not done to mock or criticize. I was struck at the necessity for someone to bed down on the street. When I was a kid I remember accounts of places where people had to do that to get by. I never expected to see it here.
Blork
Frankly, I don’t think the ruling of Aubry vs. Editions Vice-Versa has been challenged since Aubry vs. Editions Vice-Versa (I might be wrong). It’s true that social media and Flickr are flush with candid street shots, and few people are complaining. I suspect few people even know about Aubry vs. Editions Vice-Versa or at least understand it.
Bear in mind this is civil law, not criminal law. So it’s only a thing if (a) someone SEES their photo used somewhere, (b) feels they have been harmed or “damaged,” (c) understands that Aubry vs. Editions Vice-Versa gives them recourse, (d) has the gumption to lawyer up and sue. That’s a lot.
So in the end, Aubry vs. Editions Vice-Versa is basically just a precedent that’s been sitting around idle for 25 years. The worrisome thing is just that it was such a wishy-washy case. The ruling talks about balancing “damage” to the individual (including a loss of their sense of ownership of their image) with freedom of expression, but the result isn’t very balanced if you ask me. The only “damage” that Aubry cited was that a few people at school laughed at her, which is weird because there is nothing embarrassing or laughable about the photo that was published. (I’ve seen it. It’s a dark B&W night shot of a backlit teenager sitting in the illuminated doorway of a store.)
And again, i don’t think there is anything wrong with your use of that photo in the original post.
Ian
TBH I didn’t assume this guy was homeless – he has a clean sheet, for one. Maybe it’s just hot in his apartment. Maybe he’s doing a bit. Doesn’t look homeless, though? This is not to say that he isn’t experiencing homelessness in some form but I certainly didn’t interpret it as suffering-of-others-porn as Waffles suggests.
Kate
Who would voluntarily bed down on a sheet of cardboard on the sidewalk of a moderately busy, noisy street, if he had any alternatives?
Meezly
Further to Block, it’s more a question ethics, not legality. It’s not about the photographer’s motives nor the viewer’s opinion – it’s about the person in the photo. Your intention may be harmless, but you can’t control how that person is going to be construed by others, and his image is being used to make a point (he is still identifiable by his tats and part of his face).
Just because other amateur image-takers do it all the time doesn’t necessarily make it right to take candid photos of the homeless and post it to a public news site without their consent. The ethics have definitely become blurred now that everyone has a camera through which they can instantly share images on the internet. But professionals and photojournalists are required to use consent forms if taking photos of people in public. If unsure, just a simple googling of the ethics of street photography of the homeless may help. Some ex’s:
“Some ethical considerations for the modern-day street photographer include: Respect the privacy and dignity of the people you are photographing as much as possible. Consider the power dynamics at play when taking photos. Be culturally sensitive so as not to feed into stereotypes and biases.”
“If you’re on a public street, you’ve given implicit consent to be observed. For homeless people, however, their consent to be observed really isn’t implicit. They can’t theoretically revoke or decline that consent because they have no place to go. One way around the ethical dilemma is to simply ask permission.”
Tim S.
I agree with your overall point, Meezly. I was struck by this line:”The ethics have definitely become blurred now that everyone has a camera through which they can instantly share images on the internet.” I would actually argue that this is where ethics become most important: just because everyone does it doesn’t mean it’s OK, and it would be very nice if we could set a social standard of what is and isn’t acceptable to go along with Aubry vs Vice Versa (which, when I last spoke to a lawyer a couple of years ago about this very topic, was still very much a consideration and not ‘idle’).
BTW Blork, back when I was doing my own research on Aubry, your comments on another forum were pretty high on Google. So I don’t really agree with your take, but good job getting it out there!
Ian
@Kate I was thinking maybe an artist making a statement but you were there so i defer to your judgement.
Blork
I want to be clear that I agree with the ethical position of NOT photographing homeless (or other vulnerable people) in a way that they are recognizable if you do not have consent. I see this a lot in the various photography forums I frequent, where someone will post a photograph of a poor and probably homeless person looking very down and out, and the photographer will use a caption that’s supposed to invoke our sympathy. No. Don’t do that. Or only do that if you are doing a legitimate documentary project in which you are working WITH those people to expose their lives and vulnerabilities. Doing a consentless one-off just to show that you can make photos like a “real” documentary photographer is bogus.
My concerns with Aubry vs. Éditions Vice-versa have to do with general candid street photography. And it burns me up in particular that many of the people who love to be first to complain about a street photographer’s lack of consent for the photos they show (not homeless, I just mean general candid street shots) are over in another forum praising the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Vivian Maier, etc., none of whom ever got consent for their candid street photos.
All that said, I still don’t think Kate’s photo was inappropriate, for reasons of recognizability (despite the tats) and intention.
Kate
Ian, I would imagine if he were an artist who wanted to make a statement, he could have found a spot with more visibility. Jarry’s a fairly busy, well travelled street, but there are many places around town where he could have found a comparable spot – even one on the same block as a big church because we have plenty of those – and had many more eyes on him.
H. John
Blork wrote:
“you own the right to your image and it cannot be published without your permission (barring certain conditions such as a significant newsworth event, etc.). This basically means that (technically speaking) street photography is illegal in Quebec”
Clearly that isn’t what Aubry says.
In Aubry the court went out of its way to state clearly:
“The respondent’s right to privacy must be interpreted in a manner consistent with the appellants’ freedom of expression and the public’s right to information, ….”
Freedom of expression and the public’s right to information was not raised or argued in Aubry (the photographer argued it was taken for artistic reasons), and therefore the decision did not include any analysis of those interests.
In fact the court wrote
“I do not think it appropriate to specify, in the context of the present case, the circumstances in which the public interest prevails over a person’s right to his or her image.”
H. John
@Chris, you wrote:
“But anyway, he’s in public; your picture can be taken in public. And it is, constantly, by security cameras, doorbells, cars, etc. It’s allowed for all of them, and it’s allowed for you too.”
Teresa Scassa, U of Ottawa prof who amongst other titles holds the Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy, didn’t see it as clearly as you do.
She wrote in 2010 “there are indications that the law of Quebec, at least, favours some degree of privacy in public space.” Her wording suggests she doesn’t think its settled law.
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Kate
Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery is to reopen to the public on Monday after a long cleanup following April’s ice storm.
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Kate
Quebec is going to appeal last month’s Superior Court ruling that would have allowed anglo school boards to continue to exist.
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Kate
Covid hospitalizations are rising in Quebec and Christian Dubé is warning us to expect a rise in cases.
The Gazette says that Quebec is expanding what Covid vaccination centres do.
carswell
Am pretty sure that, barring a total breakdown of the health care system, Dubé is never going to impose another mask mandate (let alone a lockdown) but what are the chances he’ll suggest people start masking again?
I’ve been going maskless in indoor public places, including buses and metros, since early July and have begun going back to the gym. My plan is to start masking again in a few weeks, get the new vax ASAP and maintain my current activities except, in all likelihood, eating indoors in restaurants. If the masking situation remains like it is now, I’ll be the only person doing so — I almost never see masks in public transit or stores and never at the gym.
Kate
If I have to take the metro I’ll be masking. I had to take the orange line for a few stops the other day and it was like being in a consumptives’ ward. Once it gets cold enough for the bus to be closed up, I’ll do the same. But luckily, my life doesn’t involve a commute these days.
I haven’t eaten indoors in a restaurant since the pandemic, except for two occasions when I was obliged to by a client. The rise in prices has admittedly also been a deterrent.
MarcG
The first Gazette article contains a lie: “None of the patients are in intensive care”. There are currently 16 people in ICU for/with Covid (source).
walkerp
I think we’ll see more masking as the weather gets colder. I’m planning on it in places where there isn’t good air flow and I’ll be there for a while.
Odds are most of if we do get covid it will just be like a shitty, weird flu that doesn’t go away, but personally I would like to avoid that if I can.
CE
My girlfriend got it a couple weeks ago. Somehow, I managed to not get it despite living in the same house and not really changing contact (and my last booster was about a year ago). I just figured I’d come down with it at some point. It was indeed like a weird flu except for her cough which is slowly going away but is really taking its time.
CE
Regarding tests, I tried to get her some at the pharmacy. They asked me some questions which I answered honestly, then declared her ineligible. I asked where I could get some and they said I’d have to go to a testing centre. The closest one was quite far away and didn’t seem worth the effort at that point. A neighbour gave us a couple dusty old ones from a while ago but, by then, the test just confirmed what she already knew.
jeather
I hear that the updated vaccines are expected next week in the US, so hopefully we will get them for the combined flu/covid timing. You can be fired for wearing a mask at work, so they’re not going to mandate them again.
MarcG
Judging a virus based on its acute symptoms alone (“it will just be like a shitty, weird flu”) is a mistake. We’ve known about long Covid since 2020 and more and more studies are being published which illustrate very unsettling, often invisible, damage.
Tofu va Vohu
I personally know someone who was in the ICU for two nights earlier this week due to covid. I went searching for covid tests and had a hard time finding any. Pharmacies didn’t have them in stock. However, there’s a popup inoculation center off Rue Wellington where they gave me a few.
Tofu va Vohu
As for masking, I always wear an n95 or better elastomeric mask indoors, on buses, or in the metro. I occasionally get stares, and very rarely comments. I often get a nod from other mask wearers in the metro. There aren’t many of us, but the number does seem to be growing as the summer winds down.
Mozai
What about wearing a mask because the air-pollution in the Metro is like a bad smoggy day? https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2023/10/01/une-mauvaise-qualite-de-lair-dans-le-metro-de-montreal
Kevin
I was in Halifax last weekend and saw about 50 people wearing masks– about a dozen store staff and the rest were shopping. My local provigo has a few staff who wear N95s all the time.
carswell
Thanks for the link, Mozai. Unfortunately, the article is subscription-walled and I ain’t about to give Quebecor (which, irony of ironies, is spelled sans accents, even in French) any personal info. Care to summarize?
MarcG
carswell: It’s ugly, but you can read the text using this tool: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tvanouvelles.ca%2F2023%2F10%2F01%2Fune-mauvaise-qualite-de-lair-dans-le-metro-de-montreal
H. John
@carswell, Paul Arcand mentioned the Journal de Montreal article during his morning press review earlier this week. The article points out a major problem in at least 4 stations. It concerns the same “fine particles” found in smog. It does not refer to CO2 levels.
Translated from that article:
The air breathed by metro users and employees in some stations is so bad that it was recently compared to the smog caused by last summer’s forest fires in Montreal. It’s the equivalent of the concentration levels recorded in several Montreal neighbourhoods when the city was suffocated by smoke from forest fires at the end of June.
The Lionel-Groulx metro station is the one with the worst concentration of fine particles since the STM began taking measurements in 2019. Also readings at Snowdon in 2021 and Berri-UQAM in 2022 were 5 times and 13 times more than in the outside air on those days.
“These numbers are really high, you can’t see it any other way,” says Scott Weichenthal, an associate professor at McGill University in environmental epidemiology who has studied air quality in several public transportation systems.
The particles found in the Montreal network contain, among other things, copper, iron, chromium, manganese and nickel, according to a scientific article from 2017.
The same study estimated that 70 minutes spent in the Montreal metro accounted for more than half of daily allowable exposure to these heavy metals.
Kate
carswell, someone posted the whole text to reddit.
carswell
@MarcG and @H. John – Thanks to both of you. Had no idea it was a problem, let alone that bad. This is a workplace hazard. If I were someone working in the metro, I’d be pushing my union to raise a stink, goad the STM and governments into action, involve the CNESST and other workplace health bodies. If 70 minutes exposes you to half the daily allowable exposure, the exposure during an entire workday must be well into the red zone.
carswell
Gratitude, Kate.
Kate
De nada.
I was waiting for some other news media to cover the story without a paywall, because it’s a pretty important bit of news – but nothing.
mare
@carswell
If 70 minutes exposes you to half the daily allowable exposure, the exposure during an entire workday must be well into the red zone.It’s 5% of daily allowance, not 50%. Still not very good.
carswell
@mare From the article (emphasis mine):
La même étude estimait que 70 minutes passées dans le métro de Montréal, soit 5% d’une journée, comptaient pour plus de la moitié de l’exposition quotidienne à ces métaux lourds.
As I read this, the 5% refers to the fraction of the day, not the daily allowable exposure. But, as you note, not good either way.
mare
@carswell You’re right, my bad. I couldn’t believe the ‘half of daily allowance’ so I fast-read the article and saw 5% and that was more plausible. Should have been more attentive.
(Weird of the writer to use ‘5% of a day’ to describe a 70 minute time period. Nobody intuitively thinks of a day as being 24 hours, so 5% of a day actually ‘feels’ shorter than 70 minutes. And nobody is 24 hrs in the metro so it doesn’t even make )
dhomas
@CE we had a similar situation to yours. My wife caught it on/around July 29th, most likely on our plane ride home from vacation. Strangely, I didn’t get it and neither did our 3 kids. We shared the same bed and I didn’t try to avoid it because I thought it was inevitable that I would get it. Never happened. We have plenty of tests because the kids school were still giving them out regularly until June. My wife tested positive for nearly 3 weeks, much longer this time around. Also, we had both gotten booster shots about 3 or 4 weeks prior to her getting it (July 2nd).
Oh, and the newer tests (that come in white boxes, as opposed to the old ones in the green boxes) seemed more reliable somehow. They would almost immediately show the second pink bar whereas the old one took a while. Not sure why.
MarcG
@dhomas: Did you and your kids test even though you didn’t have symtoms? People often forget that a large percentage of cases are asymptomatic (e.g. numbers from the latest nursing home outbreak in the UK are 42%)
walkerp
Yep, same thing here. I got it, still don’t know where, had symptoms and tested strongly positive (the second line showed up right away, assertive almost bold). Neither my wife nor child caught it. I did mask in the house and ate separately and we kept the doors and windows open because it was summer. But still we had been in close contact for days before I tested. It’s a very weird disease.
Meezly
@jeather – when I checked the QC covid vaccine site a couple of weeks ago, it recommended to wait for the new vaccine which is due to arrive in October.
jeather
The flu vaccine doesn’t usually start until Oct/Nov, so I’m assuming there will be time to get both at the same time. I’m about 12 months out from my last shot.
Chris
>Strangely, I didn’t get it and neither did our 3 kids.
Unlikely. You probably caught it and just had no symptoms. That is quite common. Covid is usually quite mild after all, especially if you’ve been vaccinated.
>We have plenty of tests because the kids school were still giving them out regularly until June.
Those home tests only work if you are symptomatic. You’re just wasting tests.
>Neither my wife nor child caught it.
By which you mean they had no symptoms. They probably caught it. Or did you actually have a PCR test?
MarcG
According to this meta-analysis 17% of people who have an asymptomatic infection present with at least one long-term symptom down the road. I’ll say it again: judging a virus by the acute phase alone is a mistake.
dhomas
@MarcG @Chris we did indeed test (with the home testing kits). Nada. It was very strange. The only explanation I could think of was that we had caught it before my wife and had been asymptomatic.
MarcG
A study done between October 2021 and January 2022 showed:
Two tests within 48 hours catch 92% of symptomatic cases and 39% of asymptomatic cases.
Three tests 48 hours apart detected 94% of symptomatic and 57% of asymptomatic patients.Probably a bit less accurate now.
MarcG
Also note that a single RAT done on the same day that PCR returned positive caught only 60% of symptomatic cases and 9.3% asymptomatic.
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Kate
Weekend events from CityCrunch, CultMTL, Sarah’s Weekend List, Montreal Secret.
Big traffic woes of the weekend.
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Kate
Parking meters downtown will be in effect till 11 pm from Monday to Saturday. Item has details on exactly where this will apply.
Spi
Did anyone actually believe Plante when she said that no decision had been made and things were still up for consideration?
Spi
Also I’d be very surprised if they collect anywhere near that figure of $5 million in extra revenue. There is no shortage of underground parking lots after business hours and their rates are generally competitive. Someone that had plans of paying for street parking only until 9 might now find it more economical to use a private parking lot thus depriving the city of the before 9PM parking revenue it would have collected. It’s not inconceivable that they might take in less money because of this change, but I doubt that was the point in the first place.
Chris
>There is no shortage of underground parking lots…
When why are motorists always complaining it’s so hard to find parking?
jeather
It isn’t, people just want free parking.
Spi
Because a lot of people feel entitled to a parking spot right in front of their destination.
Ian
As a driver I can confirm that it is, in fact, difficult to find paid parking spots on the street downtown. Considering it costs around 16 bucks to park for four hours downtown on the street it actually is easier to and no more expensive to park in underground parking – if there is any available, which there often isn’t besides the very large lots like Guy-Favreau or PdA.
That said, I only drive downtown to bring people with mobility issues to appointmeents – with the years-long street closures for worksites with no central coordination, daily detours, and construction roundabouts much of downtown isn’t really accsible by car anyhow. It even sucks to be on most of downtown St. Kitty as a pedestrian.
I doubt this will make the city much money at all, it’s an obvious performative fiscal balancing/ anti-car act. I’d be more impressed if they could return the bus schedule to anything resembling useful. I’d way rather go downtown by bus but the schedule is so irregular it’s often easier & faster to just walk – and I live up at Van Horne.
Chris
jeather, Spi, yes, exactly (it was a rhetorical question). 🙂
I wish they would implement a Shoupista solution.
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Kate
CBC looks into why the debate about parking spaces vs. bike lanes is so heated in Park Ex. I’ve seen it myself on the Park Ex Facebook group. People are furious about the Querbes plan.
JP
I lived at the intersection of Querbes and d’Anvers for 12 years. I would be furious too if I still lived there.
DeWolf
I think the plan as it has been presented is flawed and should be revised. On a practical level, removing all the parking from the east side of Querbes will result in mass disobedience that will mean the bike path will be essentially useless. And it will create a lot of political bad will for any future projects of this nature.
North-south blocks are long in Montreal, so removing parking might work on a street like Bellechasse where you’re never more than 25 metres away from the nearest cross street. But on Querbes, someone who lives mid-block is a good two minutes from the nearest corner, or much longer if you’re less able-bodied.
For me, the obvious solution here is to make Querbes a one-way street. Keep one lane of traffic, two lanes of parking and you still have room for protected bike paths. Because the lanes are exist on Querbes are dangerous and the street is treated as a speedway by drivers who ignore the 30 km/h speed limit. It’s a residential street and it really shouldn’t act as a thoroughfare, especially when L’Acadie is nearby. There’s a strong case for protected bike lanes, but there’s also a lot of people on Querbes who need parking nearby.
Unfortunately the opposition to the bike paths isn’t helping their cause by acting like bullies and louts.
walkerp
That’s a good solution, DeWolf.
Change is hard. I’m sympathetic to people who need their car to work, but some of the older generation are just angry and resistant to any change.Nicholas
DeWolf has the right solution: take away a travel lane rather than a parking lane. It’s also a better layout for a more pleasant street. There are no bus routes on Querbes, and no reason it needs to be two-way; one-way pairs are very common in Montreal. It would also help reduce the rat running people use to avoid Acadie or St Laurent to get over the Met. You could make it even better by putting in some diverters to prevent people using the residential streets as cut throughs. But if for some reason it needs to stay two-way (traffic engineers will say traffic flow), then they can remove a lane of parking but alternate which side of the street it’s on. This kind of chicane allows parking on both sides, so spots can be put in front of homes of people who can’t walk far on both sides of the street. The borough could certainly compromise with any of these options, and strategically it pits different car owners against each other to choose which one they prefer, rather than against the bike lanes.
It’s worth mentioning that people don’t have a constitutional right to park directly in front of their building for free. There are only residential zones near the metro and Jean Talon, where people can optionally pay 19 to 41 cents a day for a sticker to occupy public space.
JS
How many of the parking kvetchers have green spaces behind their homes that can be paved over and made into private parking spaces?
Kate
Why don’t they pave over Howard Park and make it into a municipal free parking lot?
px_voice
@DeWolf interesting solution and in general I agree the proposed solution seems to be poorly adapted to the realities of the neighbourhood. I expect there could be some delays or modifications, but sometimes to get these right takes years of reiteration (as evidenced in repaints in other places I’ve been to in mtl)
@Kate, even paving over parks will never be enough for the volume of cars here. I think the battle is so divisive because there are significant and deepest differences in mindset and perspective over these issues. Also the neighbourhood is ‘grandfathered’ i.e. inherited wisdom or transferred behaviours around cars that are of quite a different complexion to adjacent areas, quite out of step with what is assumed to be a safe/valid position elsewhere.
To me, the bottom line is not bikes but the issue of travel speed and safety for all road users, and it is obvious from even spending a few hours around junctions that there is something significant needed to readress the balance, and reinforce the incredible advantages that p-ex offers – namely highly efficient access to multiple important public transport routes, structuring the relation between local, interurban and highway transport routes to plan and address vehicle speed (rather than mostly decorative flashy signs an bumps). The home run has got to be the growth of cycling, as it offers a mobility scale essential to cities today, and a lot of this work is through careful planning for future generations. To me parking, and access to commerce is part of a changing equation for cities in general, and parc ex has yet to embrace a public realm strategy that takes advantage of its walkable density, and deeply a strategy based on its unique commercial and cultural makeup. I think a more precise global vision needs to be developed that integrates education, public workshops and site-specific research, as things are changing fast, and without deeper thought we are left with… Toronto vibes.bumper carz
The “immigrants need cars” narrative in the article is very constructed and dishonest.
What about the “immigrant children need space to ride bikes” or “Immigrants deserve access to active transportation options” narratives that the article could have included?
Were these other possible angles of opinion not car-centric enough for commercial media? Is it really acceptable to allow the car lobby to use immigrants as human shields for their propaganda efforts?
Ian
DeWolf has my vote, too. It’s always a better traffic calming measure to remove a driving lane.
Politically I suspect one of the biggest issues with ViSaMePEx is that these are actually pretty diverse neighbourhoods demographically, not just by ewthnicity but also by income. Historically a lot of the people that worked in the garment district lived in Parc Ex and aspired to cars so they wouldn’t have to rely on the terrible bus service from one side of the 40 to the other.
When I worked in garment, I was a salaried worker – I rode my bike to work and was one of the only ones. People would take the bus until they could afford a car. Now I know most of the garment business is gone in Montreal but there is still tons of light industry in St Laurent north of the 40 and the people that work there still mostly live south of the 40. Just take a look at the bus schedules to light industrial VSL, even just across Acadie form Marché Centrale. It’s pathetic.
Ian 23:15 on 2023-09-08 Permalink
It’s remarkable that using animals as weapons is still tolerated.
Chris 12:48 on 2023-09-09 Permalink
No more remarkable than us breeding them for slaughter, confining them in tiny cages, pumping them full of drugs, and torturing them. As that is all fine (according to most), then of course “using them as weapons” is no big stretch.
Kate 13:25 on 2023-09-09 Permalink
I find I don’t actually mind the idea of mounted police. It makes sense for them to be above a crowd, and people will always get out of the way of a horse if necessary. And it’s more humanizing than a motor vehicle. This is also not the first time I’ve read about how well the police horses are treated – much better, as that piece notes, than calèche horses used to be.
In all the time doing this blog I’ve never seen a single report either of a person getting hurt by a police horse, or a police horse getting hurt in a situation.
Ian 19:40 on 2023-09-09 Permalink
In Montreal, no, not recently anyhow, but animals die when used as “tools” by the cops all the time. Fun fact – if one of their dogs attacks you or you are getting trampled in a horse charge and you try to defend yourself in any way, you will be charged with assaulting a police officer.
Horses:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/woman-police-horse-truck-protest-ottawa-siu-1.6408118
https://www.newsweek.com/video-appears-show-police-horses-trampling-canadian-trucker-protesters-1680847
Dogs:
https://plaintiffmagazine.com/recent-issues/item/the-inherently-dangerous-nature-of-attack-trained-police-k-9s#:~:text=Attack%2Dtrained%20police%20canines%20are%20taught%20to%20apprehend%20suspects%20with,a%20person%20by%20the%20dog.
https://globalnews.ca/news/9837379/london-police-dog-bites-off-suspect-ear-no-charges-siu/
https://globalnews.ca/news/9812467/police-watchdog-charges-dog-bite-surrey/
Then of course there’s sniffer dogs. Guess how they train them to find drugs? They give them drugs, and they seek them out. If they get those drugs they will eat them.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/woodstock-ont-police-dog-dies-in-the-line-of-duty-after-ingesting-drugs/article_e29fc327-c04c-54d9-8fc7-3161faaa7fc3.html
We consider dogfighting unethical but will intentionally send dogs into policing situations as fighting dogs that put their lives in danger. Using horses for crowd control also puts them in danger. In some instances where police have charged crowds on horseback, the protesters have responded by dropping boxes of marbles or ball bearings to stop the charge. If a horwse slips on marbles and breaks a leg …
These tough guys have training and equipment. They don’t need to use animals nto attack people. It’s unethical and animal cruelty.
@Chris ah I see, you are ok with some forms of animal cruelty since other things you consider animal cruelty exist. You are very clever, I appreciate your input.
Chris 15:54 on 2023-09-10 Permalink
>@Chris ah I see, you are ok with some forms of animal cruelty since other things you consider animal cruelty exist.
Ian, why would you conclude that?! I think you misread my comment.
All I was saying is in in a society that accepts and condones so much animal cruelty, the use of ‘animals as weapons’ is in fact not that remarkable. This is the case whether I am ok with any of it or not.