A homeless man living under an overpass in Hochelaga was severely beaten Thursday by several people, but there have been no arrests.
Updates from November, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
I was almost trying not to listen to CBC radio Thursday when they had Michael Sabia on, talking about how much Hydro‑Quebec is going to have to spend to build new facilities, and how rates are going to go up. We’re being softened up for the “inevitability” of the increase.
Anton
The inevitability is gonna be privatization
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Kate
A young man was found shot dead in a car in St‑Léonard on Thursday afternoon.
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Kate
A show called Projet Polytechnique at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde was cancelled Tuesday evening because one of the performers tested positive with Covid. But it will be shown tonight and till the end of the run with the sick actress on stage.
mare
After 3 years and 8 months of successful avoiding infection I finally lost the Avoiding Covid game on Sunday. I wasn’t informed that the rules have changed and that the current variants of the virus are incapable of crossing the fourth wall.
Despite me feeling much better now, my tests are still positive so I just stay inside and play for an audience of 1.MarcG
Is it too late to pool some money together and get Chris a front row seat?
Kate
: )
Daniel
That’s more than a little over the top.
Ian
That the show must go, on or offering our favourite “covid is over” armchair Minster of Health a night out?
Joey
I spent my whole life assuming that there are tons of understudies walking around just waiting for their big break. Guess not!
Chris
I’ll take a free ticket, sure! My most recent vaccination was just a few weeks ago too so it’s especially good timing.
Joey, yeah, that would have been a good question for the journalist to ask. Seems better than cancelling a show people may have scheduled around. Presumably at this point the actor is well enough though.
Ian, covid is not over, it never will be. That’s the point.
MarcG
Let’s make a list of things that will never be “over” and yet we spend lots of time and energy trying to prevent: car accidents, cancer, obesity, gun violence… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHW1y-FpyII
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Kate
The law
has passedto allow landlords to ban lease transfer. The law was championed by housing minister France-Élaine Duranceau, chastised Thursday by the National Assembly ethics commissioner for favouring the interests of a friend and business associate in the real estate sector.In the immortal words, what is wrong with this picture?
Nicholas
The law hasn’t passed yet. The section of the bill dealing with banning lease transfers, section 7 (article 7 en français) was the subject of amendments at committee, and Tuesday all those amendments failed. The committee, which previously passed some other amendments, still needs to report the amended bill to the full national assembly, and then the national assembly has to adopt it. There’s no way that doesn’t happen eventually, but the timeline would be tight to do it before the holidays, and they may need unanimous consent at this point, which they won’t get.
Kate
Thank you, Nicholas!
steph
As a tenant, PLEASE FORWARD A COPY OF YOUR LEASE TO NEW TENANTS!. pay it forward. Landlords are not always honest about the amount previous tenants paid. Rent increases from one tenant to the next follow the SAME rules as if it was the same tenant staying put. These type of rent increases CAN be contested at the TAL and your rent can be corrected despite it being a newly signed lease.
Kate
In the building where I live, as people leave, the owners have been doing some light renovations – things like a new kitchen counter and cabinets – but probably enough to justify a more than nominal hike between tenants. I imagine this kind of thing isn’t unusual and might account for some of the more abusive rent hikes around town.
steph
Nope. Unless they leave the apartment empty for a year, they can’t just change it willy nilly. Subdividing, enlargement or change of destination are the only ways landlords can get away with changing the rent to a new random amount.
Light, or heavy renovation costs all fall into the legal calculations. According to the calculation it works out to 3.8% of those renovation expenses can be pushed into the rent increase. 10,000$ of renovations works out 31.67$ of rent increase (monthly. but monthly forever). And that’s if the renovations are specific to your apartment. If it’s shared expenses (like the roof), it’s gets prorated to ALL the dwellings. https://www.tal.gouv.qc.ca/sites/default/files/CSAL_2023_A.pdf
You go to the TAL and they have to bring receipts if they want to include those renovations in the calculation.
I get it, landlords here in quebec have the short end of the stick. It takes over 25 years to recoup a renovation investment. A paint job only lasts 10 years, so they just don’t bother. The laws are leading some of our housing to fall into disrepair, but housing should have never been for-profit like the whiney landlords make it out to be. Hang the landlord, squat the world.
Kevin
As an artisanal landlord (I bought out my duplex last year) I understand the anger from both sides.
Don’t go stomping over my head and I’ll love you as a tenant. But also understand that it’s going to be 30 years of rent before I break even.
Tim
@Kevin, what do you consider to be your break even point? When you are mortgage free?
Kevin
Tim
I’ll likely be mortgage free in 24 years, and assuming it is consistently rented during that time, it’s around then that the rent paid will come close to the principal, the interest, taxes, maintenance, renovations, furniture and utilities.
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Kate
The National Assembly unanimously adopted a motion Wednesday to defend Christmas.
This followed from the question whether Christmas is racist which has been giving some politicians grist for trolling. The Bloc’s Yves‑François Blanchet challenged Justin Trudeau on Wednesday in Parliament to respond to the question, Trudeau’s response being “I’m very pleased to stand up and try to answer a totally ridiculous question.”
The Canadian Human Rights Commission had pointed out in a recent paper that Christmas and Easter are the only two statutory religious holidays in Canada, meaning that adherents of other faiths are often unable to celebrate their holy days and feasts. Trudeau hedged on this, saying that “all holidays and festivals that take place this time of year” should be recognized. I wonder which ones he had in mind.
Meezly
So heartening to see the nat’l assembly act so swiftly and unanimously to adopt a pro-Christmas motion.
If only they can move even half that fast to resolve the ongoing negotiations with our public sector unions!
Ian
I demand a Festivus for the rest of us!
bob
Abject stupidity. The CHRC is increasingly incoherent as it wallows in faux-progressive jargon, and the National Assembly is not voting *for* anything, it is voting *against* “money and the ethnic vote”.
jeather
I can see the argument for Christmas as a stat holiday, though it is a religious holiday, even if some people celebrate it secularly. But Easter?
In any case, the question was never “is Christmas racist?” (no), it was “is having Christmas and Easter as stat holidays giving Christians rights that people of other religions don’t have?” and anyone saying the answer to that is also no is lying.
dhomas
Everyone else in the province: “hey, I wonder when my kids will be able to have an education with teachers that are paid and treated properly?”
Politicians: “I wonder what fake controversy we can create to distract people from the important matters we should be discussing instead?”.Blork
I agree that Easter is an odd one, as it’s so very obviously Christian. But Christmas (despite the name) has evolved to become largely a secular holiday.
I’ve argued this before and I’ll do it again. The big attraction of Christmas as a holiday is that it comes at the end of the year, and is only a week apart from the actual year-end holiday. That doesn’t mean much to some people, but many people do measure their lives by various time-based touchstones, and one of them is the end of the calendar year.
The fact that Christmas and New Years (a totally secular holiday) are only a week apart means a lot of people take that week off work. In fact, many offices close for that week. This isn’t a religious thing, it’s a “marking the end of another year” thing.
We’re heading into the longest slog of winter (only an issue in northern places), the financial year is over, the calendar year is over. It’s a good time to take a break, spend time with friends and/or family, think about the year gone by and the new year coming up, etc. etc.
This isn’t religious. And it applies to everyone who is using the Gregorian calendar for everyday practical purposes, so therefore everyone. The fact that this pair of week-apart holidays has been around for as long as we can remember — and combined with the relatively recent tradition of some offices closing that week — and the fact that it applies to everyone, means it has evolved to be a secular tradition not a religious one.
And for what it’s worth, there’s nothing stopping people of other religions from using the last week of the year to get together with their friends and family too, the same way they do on Canada or Labour Day. It’s just a holiday! The fact that some people go to church that day doesn’t mean it’s only for the church-goers.
There, I said it. Again. If people would just stop seeing Christmas as an exclusively Christian holiday we would not have any of these time and energy wasting arguments.
H. John
The CHRC published a “discussion paper” in October.
It stated:
“The purpose of this discussion paper is to explore the concept of religious intolerance, its history in
Canada, and the mechanisms that perpetuate it.”And in one paragraph, in an 11 page page document, it states:
“Discrimination against religious minorities in Canada is grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism. This
history manifests itself in present-day systemic religious discrimination. An obvious example is statutory
holidays in Canada. Statutory holidays related to Christianity, including Christmas and Easter, are the
only Canadian statutory holidays linked to religious holy days. As a result, non-Christians may need to
request special accommodations to observe their holy days and other times of the year where their
religion requires them to abstain from work.4”The footnote refers to a “policy” of the Ontario Human Rights Commission which was published in 2015, and in place for the last eight years . The Ontario policy states:
“Faithism can also take on less obvious and more systemic forms which can be “hidden” to the people who don’t experience it. Systemic faithism refers to the ways cultural and societal norms, structures and institutions may directly or indirectly, consciously or unwittingly, promote, sustain or entrench differential advantage or disadvantage for individuals and groups based on their religion or belief. [38] Systemic faithism may appear neutral on its surface, but have an “adverse effect” or exclusionary impact on people belonging to particular communities of belief.
Example: The standard work week and statutory holiday calendar in Ontario is organized around the Christian Sabbath and high holy days (Christmas and Easter). While this structure is understandable given Canada’s history and demographics, it may adversely affect non-Christians, some of whom may therefore need to seek out special accommodations to observe their own faith holy days.’The fake outrage over the CHRC discussion paper started when a “reporter” for Blacklocks (a group that the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery originally refused to accredit) wrote:
“Christmas is discriminatory, says a Canadian Human Rights Commission report. Observance of Jesus’ birth is “an obvious example” of religious bias rooted in colonialism, wrote the Commission: “No one is free until we are all free.””
Needless to say the word “Jesus” isn’t anywhere in the discussion paper.
The National Post’s Tristin Hopper wrote:
“The Canadian Human Rights Commission, which wields broad quasi-judicial powers, argued that a day off on Christmas is ‘discriminatory’”
It did’t say that, of course, but he goes on to write:
“Canada’s first Sikh temple opened in 1908 in Vancouver, and according to the Vancouver Heritage Foundation was an “inter-religious space where non-Sikhs also held executive positions.” The country’s oldest Jewish congregation dates back to 1768 in Montreal.
None of this is mentioned in the discussion paper. Rather, it focuses primarily on the one glaring exception to Canada’s record on religious tolerance: The decades-long state push to eradicate traditional Indigenous spirituality in favour of Christianity, mostly through the Indian Residential School system.”The phrase “… the one glaring exception to Canada’s record on religious tolerance…” let me know that Tristin’s opinion isn’t based on even a passing knowledge of Canadian (or Canadian Jewish) history.
If the CHRC’s intent was, as they stated, “to explore the concept of religious intolerance,… and the mechanisms that perpetuate it.” they have no better place to start than Canada’s press and its legislatures.Tim
@jeather: what rights of non-Christians are being infringed upon by having a stat holiday that falls on Easter?
Blork
@Tim, it’s not so much about “rights” as it is about… representation? Recognition?
In other words, I suppose it is annoying to non-Christians to have a Christian event given such status that it’s presented as a holiday while events from other religions do not get such recognition.
This in a society that’s supposed to be secular. So it essentially says “we’re all equal but some of us are more equal than others.”
The solution is to change it to a secular holiday. Sort of the way Christmas has become (defacto).
Blork
The irony of all this is that if someone from Mars were to come here and spend a year on Earth (living anywhere in North America) they would see the religious aspect of Christmas far more than they’d see the religious side of Easter.
The symbols of Christmas are a mix of religious and secular. But the symbols of Easter — at least the ones that are out there at large — are almost entirely secular. It’s all eggs and chocolate bunnies. When’s the last time you saw a store or business advertise Easter with any sort of Christian symbol? When’s the last time you saw any religious Easter decoration outside of a church?
Ian
Eggs and bunnies are Christian imagery, they come out of German protestant traditions.
MarcG
Thanks H. John for showing how easy it is for bad actors to sideline a fact-based adult discussion.
Kevin
Tristin Hopper was amusing until he moved to Victoria and realized that his uneducated self could not earn enough to pay for housing conpared to the stockpiles of accumulated wealth held by the vast number of seniors in the area.
As for Christmas, there is a meme posted two weeks ago: the guy looking back from a tornado and screaming “it’s coming”. Thr tornado is labelled “right-wing’s fake war on Christmas”
jeather
Rights is a bad word, fine. But if you’re Christian, you don’t need to get some kind of accommodation for two of your religious/cultural/familial holidays, and if you’re not, you do (unless they happen to fall on a weekend).
Christmas is not a magical, religion-neutral, secular holiday. Any given person can celebrate it in a secular fashion. I celebrate my holidays in a secular fashion. That does not make them religion neutral.
There are good reasons to keep Christmas as a stat holiday; I don’t actually think this should be changed. But please acknowledge that it is not secular (religion neutral), and calling it “December holiday with trees and Santa” will not change that.
There is no particularly compelling reason to have Easter as a stat holiday, and all of the decorations for it are religious (lights, at least, are very common in midwinter, and of course pagans have many of the traditions Christians do now as well).
Kate
Easter is a very bad holiday. Workers in Quebec get no statutory holiday between January 2 and a random date as late as April 25, and this during the depths of winter. We badly need a February holiday and we probably need a fixed holiday in mid to late March or early April to substitute for Easter.
François Legault has said he’s determined not to give a February holiday because it interferes with productivity. He won’t say it, but the reason for the long dreary haul before Easter is Lent, a 40‑day period when Catholics traditionally undertake vows of self‑denial. (I wasn’t allowed any candy or soft drinks during Lent as a kid. My mother gave up smoking for Lent and was in a bad mood for 40 days. My father also gave up smoking and was crabby for a day and a half, then took to smoking on the sly outside, thinking we didn’t notice.)
Legault is such a hypocrite. Laïcité my ass.
Uatu
That 30% raise was really needed to attract top talent for debates like this. Well done caq! /S
Joey
@jeather it sounds like it wasn’t even a question, it was more of an offhand comment, i.e., we need to at least be mindful of the fact that our calendar is partially organized around the observance of Christian holidays, which very self-evidently is peachy for Christians but not so much for the rest of us, who may prefer to have some free time off to do our own thing according to our own religious calendar. In other words, the issue isn’t Christmas, it’s the colonial mindset that expresses itself in many, many ways, including which vacation days are free and which ones aren’t. In even more other words, what H. John said.
@blork I don’t disagree with much of your point about the role and timing and secular nature of Christmas. It’s still evidently discriminatory, though, that I’m obliged to take a vacation day to go to shul on Yom Kippur, whereas my goyish colleague gets a paid trip to church on Christmas and Easter. So, @Tim, my right to have free vacation days to celebrate my holidays is violated – because it doesn’t exist! Only Christians have it! You could argue that it would only really be discriminatory if non-Christians were *forbidden* from taking a free day off at Christmas, but that’s just high school debate club nonsense IMO.
Anyway, if I were Christian, I would find this comment from Minister Jolin-Barrette offensive and unsettling:
“It’s a celebration that is shared,” said Jolin-Barrette after in the press scrum.
“People come from all over Quebec, we are a welcoming land, and I think it is important to say that it is part of Quebec culture and to invite everyone to celebrate Christmas if they wish,” he continued.
In other words, if we can use the Christian religion to figure out who does and does not belong in Quebec society, we will.
Blork
Lots of moot points rolling around. Ian said “Eggs and bunnies are Christian imagery, they come out of German protestant traditions” but if you went out into the street and did a survey I doubt you’d find one in 10,000 people who know that, so it’s moot.
Joey, I see your point, but how many of your colleagues actually go to church on Christmas Day? Probably really close to zero, so that’s also (arguably) moot.
It’s useful to see things as they are, and not just how they offend us the most so we can have fun being outraged. The December 25 holiday, by whatever name, is a welcome holiday to anyone who wants a day off. If it has some old history from some dusty old books that hardly anyone (even Christians) really understand, so what?
In common use it’s a day or two off work, in some cases a week. Do whatever you want with it. But complaining about time off just because of some old attachments? What’s the point? (The point should absolutely NOT be to create more holidays for other religions; we should be taking the religion OUT of the holidays. To actually remove the holiday — which some people seem to want —is just shooting ourselves in the foot.)
Postscript: that quote from Jolin-Barrette that Joey posted, my face hurts from being palmed so hard. That line is tone-deaf, and offensive to everybody!
Ian
To be fair, those of us who actually grew up secular and not going to church or having any knowledge of Christianity per se just liked having the breaks and getting stuff. Christmas is presents and big meals with your family. Easter is chocolate. Hallowe’en is costumes and free candy, Yeah, yeah, I know Hallowe’emn isn’t actually a holiday – or Christian – but I bet most kids in Quebec, even those from ostensibly Catholic families, think Hallowe’en and Christmas are the only two “holidays” that really matter.
If we wanted to be really secular we’d say winter break and spring break. Done. All the rest is performative pearl-clutching that is frankly unbecoming to a society so secular (lol) it forbids teachers that wear hijab.
Meezly
Again, this highlights the hypocrisy of Law 21, which forbids the wearing of a head covering like the hijab or turban in a public position. Treating these items as mere religious symbols ignores how important clothing is a part of one’s culture and cultural identity. So to say that Christmas is part of Quebec culture is SO ridiculously hypocritical!!!
Side note: eggs and bunnies originated as pagan symbols of spring renewal and were part of many things that got appropriated into European Christianity when it eradicated paganism and other undesirable beliefs. It came in handy that Easter happened during spring. Many of our Christmas traditions have non-Christian origins, like decorating the tree, yule logs, gift giving, even Santa himself.
This may show how Christmas can be regarded as a cultural tradition, but also shows how the “nation” in power can decide how holidays get celebrate and appropriate the culture of the “conquered” into its own to form new traditions.
However, in a supposedly pluralistic society such as ours, even if we can make changes to accommodate everyone, it’s a good thing to recognize how our “Christian” holidays came from our colonial history and how that would favour people who belong in the “dominant” culture.
Ian
@Meezly I thought so too about bunnies and eggs, thinking they were adopted from Eostre and fertility symbols… but apparently that’s been debunked.
“The False Pagan Connection
The oft-repeated story that the symbol of the rabbit stems from pagan tradition, specifically the festival of Ēostre – a goddess of fertility whose animal symbol was a bunny – has been debunked. The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore states “…there is no shred of evidence” that hares were sacred to Ēostre, noting that Bede does not associate her with any animal. Although eggs have long been a symbol of new life and fertility, an egg-laying bunny is a bit more difficult to explain. But there is some Christian tradition related to the rabbit at Easter.The ancient Greeks thought rabbits could reproduce as virgins. Such a belief persisted until early medieval times when the rabbit became associated with the Virgin Mary, tying in nicely with Christian doctrine. Rabbits appeared in ancient illuminated manuscripts created by monks to symbolize the virgin birth.”
https://www.german-way.com/history-and-culture/holidays-and-celebrations/the-easter-bunny-is-german
Chocolate has only been associated with Easter since the mid 1800s. A grreat improvement, if you ask me,.
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Kate
The STM is going to cut 250 positions to save money, but details aren’t available yet. The unions aren’t happy about the uncertainty caused by an announcement like this.
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Kate
It’s off-island news, but pretty major when a town as big as St‑Jean‑sur‑Richelieu has no running water for a week.
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Kate
Catching on very late to a trend, someone’s opening a Harry Potter store on Park Avenue. I predict imminent picketing by trans activists.
Ian
He should have used a spell of divination … no business has stayed open more than a couple of years in that particular location for over a decade.
The storefront will get stickered up with trans flags pretty fast though, yeah.EmilyG
Considering that the author has said that people spending money on Harry Potter items support her transphobic views, I wish there would be less Harry Potter-themed items around. I wish this store weren’t opening. But what can I do.
Kate
Ian, I’m glad you’ve noticed that tendency too. Once a couple of businesses fail in a location, it creates a vibe that’s hard for any new business to overcome. It’s subtle, but everyone in the area subconsciously perceives it to be a bad spot. There may be nothing objectively wrong with the place – on paper it might look quite promising – but it has a lingering hex on it that can be hard to dispel.
Somebody has to remodel the frontage or do some other radical thing to shake it off. I don’t think Harry Potter has the mojo for it.
Ian
If only the Queen TERF had heard of feng shui all of this unpleasantness could have been avoided 😉
Kate
There is something feng-shui-ish about it, although without the mysticism. The simplest form of FS is about how we feel at ease in some physical layouts, ill at ease in others.
For example, some years ago, friends of friends opened a restaurant on St‑Denis, somewhere around Marie‑Anne. I went along with them for a look and a nosh. The space had previously been a gallery that had gone out of business, leaving a front door decorated with ironmongery and set at an angle perpendicular to the sidewalk. And it was heavy to pull open.
I could feel this was not going to work, and I was right. They didn’t stay open long.
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Kate
The city has no plans to bill festivals for police presence. Mayor Plante contradicted the police chief on this point on Wednesday.
Ian
It’s not the “big, big conversation” about defunding the police we were promised, but it’s a start.
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Kate
A man died in a house fire in Tétreaultville Wednesday evening.
Ian 13:49 on 2023-12-01 Permalink
The article is very nudge-nudge wink-wink about the location. Does anyone know what “l’endroit où s’est produit le crime a été le théâtre de plusieurs crimes de nature sexuelle au cours des dernières années” is about?
Like, did some homeless dude make the mistake of falling asleep in some kind of hookup spot? Was it some kind of gang thing? Is this a location where people get brought to get raped? Is it a known hooking zone of some kind? Sex for drugs?
All very vague.
JohnS 08:33 on 2023-12-02 Permalink
It’s a well known gay cruising spot, mainly late at night. Although there is certainly some drug trade that happens there, most of the clientele are just thrill seekers for whom the anonymous sex on offer in appealing. It’s rather inflammatory to refer to “dépravés sexuels ” and “ le théâtre de plusieurs crimes de nature sexuelle” – remembering that most of this activity occurs in the dark of night, and very much fits the definition of “victimless crime”.
MarcG 09:18 on 2023-12-02 Permalink
There’s a photo on Google maps that shows a ton of foot traffic in the snow. https://maps.app.goo.gl/dxTYm5QX8QFSms8A6
Ian 11:43 on 2023-12-02 Permalink
Yeah agreed, shades of Drapeau.