Does anyone find something odd about this account of the death of a 15‑year‑old boy from an opioid called isotonitazene? “I told him, ‘don’t touch the little blue pills,'” his father [said].” And then “The teenager apparently thought he was taking oxycontin” – as if that would’ve been fine?!
And we’re trying to keep vapes out of their hands?
A bus bound to New York from Montreal crashed Friday afternoon, killing one and injuring others.
I took that bus overnight from NYC a few months ago. It’s a direct route with no planned stops so the driver told us before we left that he’d be going fast. We arrived in Montreal about an hour and a half before we were scheduled. I didn’t feel unsafe but an unexperienced driver trying to beat the clock could flip a bus even in good conditions.
Glad you made it in one piece, CE.
How long were you stopped at the border?
Going into Canada, they make you take your luggage in but so long as there are no special cases, it’s pretty quick. The problem comes when there’s a bus ahead of you because they can only process one at a time. (Our driver seemed to be happy he got there before the Trailways bus so I suspect they race each other)
My job requires me to be on charter and intercity buses quite a bit through the winter and spring. Sometimes between NYC and Montreal so these types of accidents freak me out a bit (although buses are likely safer on average than going by car).
Last time I took that bus I got viral bronchitis. Looks like I got off light.
Second piece I’ve seen about a new book on Goose Village, demolished during the Drapeau era to make room for a sports facility, the Autostade, which only lasted a scant decade. Also from Émilie Côté In La Presse.
The city is pondering running a tramway along Jean‑Talon from Cavendish to Park Avenue, alongside a bike path along the same route. It’s meant to provide transit for the eventual Hippodrome development. Wouldn’t it duplicate the blue line for some of its extent?
The blue line only follows Jean-Talon street from around Park metro Eastward to the end of the line, currently at St-Michel and eventually at Galerie d’Anjou when the extension is complete. Westward, at Park metro, it veers South starting at l’Acadie metro. Having a tramway from Cavendish to Park could make sense.
You can see a clearer map of the blue line stations here:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1oi9seY0rR_ZMNkMeSEuqXM84qtU&hl=en_US&ll=45.52287112609856%2C-73.61383400000001&z=14
Cavendish to Acadie is pretty underserved but through Parc Ex is pretty tight. They’ll do what they want though so whatever.
I suspect we’ll be seeing more pieces on the tough times for restaurateurs as we proceed through 2024. Restaurants are coping with rising numbers of cancellations and no‑shows as well. Le Devoir says more restaurants are closing.
I always wondered what the options are other than charging for no-shows. Also why are other people/etc allowed to do that — or do they just do it illegally?
Pet peeve: if someone charges a last minute cancellation fee, I expect a similar courtesy in return if they cancel on me last minute (usually a discount on the rescheduled appointment). When I have the option, I always choose someone who offers this.
The main option is to either refuse all reservations or have a deposit on all parties of any size.
I think the problem is that restaurants are not allowed to do that. They want the right to ask for a credit card to be put on hold when a reservation is made, but Quebec law won’t allow it.
Shouldn’t OpenTable (or the other services that manage reservations) be able to find a loophole – such that the no-show charge is technically a violation of the OpenTable terms and not actually charged and collected by the restaurant?
QMI says the average price of a 3½ apartment is now $1599, an odd number.
A lot of people in this city are students working part time, or people with modest service jobs and so forth. How can so many people afford to pay $1599 a month rent?
My guess is that they pay a bit more for a bigger place and get roommates. Super sad situation though.
I remember in the early 90s, in my 20s, when it was $350 for a 3 1/2. I also remember that hardly any of my friends had decent jobs. Almost everyone had roomies.
That said, I was making 5 bucks an hour back then and the minimum wage now is $15.25 so I guess a reasonable rent would be $1055 or so? Also consider how many more subsciption fees people pay – I just paid heat, hydro, and a phone bill, I didn’t even have a TV.
A few things to consider. First, that “average price” is the average price of apartments that are advertised as available now. It does not consider what people who already have apartments are actually paying.
Not all apartments for rent are advertised. In fact, the cheaper ones are likely not listed; the cheapo (and typically run down) ones are either not advertised at all or just have an “a louer” sign taped up in a window.
Also consider that this is the AVERAGE price, which means there are plenty that are cheaper (and plenty that are more expensive). So it’s not like every single working student has to pay $1599. If they’ve had their apartment for a few years already they’re likely paying much less. It can also be lower because they simply aren’t shopping in the “average” range. And as Mark Côté says, they likely pile up with roommates in two or three bedroom places.
For some reason, my FB feed is full of apartment buildings and their listings. Sometimes I peek. I do see 3-1/2s in that price range pretty frequently, but they’re almost always newly renovated places with gleaming breakfast bars and new floors, new bathrooms, etc. You never see the listings for the 3-1/2 on the top floor of a creaky triplex in Rosemont or Hochelaga.
None of this is meant to undermine the very real problem of too-expensive housing. Just adding a bit of perspective.
Ian, I too enjoyed the cheap rents of the late 80s and early 90s, but I was very broke for much of that time so even then it didn’t seem cheap. Generally speaking a $400 apartment from 1990 is about the same as paying $1000 now. Those $1000 places exist now, but proportionally they are rare compared to how available the $400 places were back then.
Biggest rent mistake I ever made was moving out of a (1 bedroom) 5-1/2 in 1999. I had been there for 4 years and was paying $600 a month with no rent increases during those 4 years. Boy, what a job to find another place on the Plateau for anything near that rate. (1999 was peak “no availability” in that area.) The only place I saw that I’d actually want to live in was $1400, and there was no way I was going pay that much back then. Every other place literally had people lined up down the block to view it, many of whom had envelopes full of cash to try to bribe their way into a lease. (True story.)
I ended up moving into a building in lower Westmount for $800 (4-1/2). Ever since I love to tell people about the time I moved to Westmount because I could no longer afford The Plateau.
It’s cheaper to buy in Outremont than Mile-End these days, too.
rentals.ca monthly report says the avg 3½ in Montreal is $1805/month. If we go by the “use one third of your take-home income for paying for renting a home,” then a person living alone in Montreal needs a $102k job. At $1600/month, a person would need a $88.5k job. statistique.quebec.ca says the average person living alone ages 25-45 had a gross annual income of $51k, but their data only goes up to the year 2021.
The word “unsustainable” comes to mind. And we wonder why restaurants and boutiques are closing. Not only can people not afford to patronize them, they can’t afford to earn the low wages, either. We need some political leadership that’s capable of addressing the big picture ASAP.
Not any time soon, in my neighbourhood the political leadership has basically admitted it can’t do anything to control gentrification. They doubled the price of street parking permits, though. Again, less expensive living in Outremont than Mile End. Real food for thought there.
We just had the second warmest December on record, and our snowless winter is disappointing tourists.
More immediately, there’s no snow to hide trash so that some streets are already sporting that post‑winter grubby look. The city says it can’t run street cleaners when it’s below freezing, but it’s looking into ways of keeping cold but snowless streets cleaner.
We could do like zillions of other countries, buy brooms and bins, and hire human street sweepers. (Now give me my $100k consulting fee.)
My neighbourhood has that in the summer but I figured it was people working off parking tickets. I have no idea why the same isn’t done in winter.
jeather 10:30 on 2024-01-06 Permalink
Yeah that’s . . . I get being ok with your teen smoking pot, but oxy? Not that you can just tell a teenager who is that dedicated to drugs not to and they’d listen, I hope this is just leaving out a lot of context here.
dwgs 10:42 on 2024-01-06 Permalink
A lot of kids are doing a lot of different drugs. Xanax and Percocet are widely used by teens. Thankfully my kids seem to have listened when we told them we knew they would likely try alcohol and pot but to stay away from pills and powders at all costs.
Kate 10:55 on 2024-01-06 Permalink
Xanax and Percocet? Those don’t sound like much fun. You have to ask yourself what’s wrong with our society when kids choose to be on painkillers and anti‑anxiety meds.
Blork 13:07 on 2024-01-06 Permalink
I don’t find that accounting odd. The dad hears about a very dangerous drug on the street and he warns his teenage son about it because he understands the nature of teenagers (i.e., they will do shit whether you warn them or not). That doesn’t mean it’s OK to take the other drugs, but he knows that kids are going to take shit no matter what their parents say, so he was focusing his warning on the one particularly deadly thing.
And how do you interpret “The teenager apparently thought he was taking oxycontin” as “as if that would’ve been fine?!”? Nothing there says the dad thought it would be fine. Dad warned about the deadly blue pills. Kid though the pills he was taking was something other than the specific deadly thing his dad warned about.
Bearing in mind that the more things you warn about, the more diffused each warning becomes, so if there is one particularly sinister danger out there, it’s more effective to focus on that one warning.
I’m not berating, I just don’t understand how you arrived at that conclusion.
Ian 14:17 on 2024-01-06 Permalink
@Kate crazy kids, when I was their age we took normal drugs like acid, or coke that was mostly speed, or valium, seconol, or intramuscular demerol. NORMAL illicit street drugs. /s
@Blork agreed, I just told my kids not to take any street drugs as tehre’s probably fentanyl in it.
TBH I do know a guy who got dosed with fent buying DMT from someone he had bought from before … if people are cutting powerfull halucinogens with fentanyl, that shit is in anything.
walkerp 15:16 on 2024-01-06 Permalink
I think the article was awkwardly written. The dad wasn’t saying “it’s okay to take oxycontin just not fentanyl”. The dad said “don’t take any blue pills” and then afterward when the kid, tragically, did take some blue pills, the article stated that. Nowhere was it saying that was fine.
Basically, what Blork said. It’s really sad.
Kate 19:50 on 2024-01-06 Permalink
Well OK, maybe this is me reading Sherlock Holmes again… but if the boy was unconscious, how do they know he thought he was taking oxycontin?
Blork 23:44 on 2024-01-06 Permalink
He might have said so before he fully lost consciousness, or perhaps he was in and out before he fully lost consciousness. Alternatively, he might have been with another person who put that information forward. Or perhaps he shared that info with friends via text or social media before the drug kicked in (“hey guys, just took some oxy!)
JohnS 07:23 on 2024-01-07 Permalink
Or they found other pills in his possession that looked like oxy. The article mentions that some of the tainted pills are made to resemble the pharmaceutical product.
Kate 12:20 on 2024-01-07 Permalink
I wonder what’s the logic here. Is isotonitazene so cheap, or so easy to synthesize, that it’s worth killing off some of your customers so’s to sell more fake oxycontin?
Ian 10:47 on 2024-01-08 Permalink
Nobody’s trying to kill their clients – if one person cuts the supply, that’s not going to kill anyone. If another one further down the chain does the same though, that’s where it gets dangerous.
Synthetic opioids are used to cut supply for the same reason speed is – it’s a lot cheaper than the real thing. Of course if you end up with too much real speed it just sucks – too much fent or whatever and bang, your ticket is punched.
Kate 11:20 on 2024-01-08 Permalink
No, nobody’s trying to, but if these opioids are so strong – carfentanyl gets mentioned, and now isotonitazene – surely they’re dangerous to handle, especially if by people with no proper training? The people preparing them and selling them must have to know that, and have a sense how dangerous they are. But they don’t care whether it means a few users have to die.