Mayor Plante says the OQLF can deal with English signs in the Quartier de la francophonie – she’s not going to have the city police them.
Updates from January, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A couple of years ago the city acquired 14 croque‑glace machines at $25,000 each, but they’re still mothballed. They’re apparently only useful for very narrowly defined conditions, which never seem to apply. As it says in this piece, the sidewalk has to be perfectly flat for starters. Then if there’s not enough ice the machine will damage the sidewalk, but if there’s too much, the machine won’t do much good.
Somebody had a slick sales pitch.
Update: La Presse picks the story up from QMI, showing a croque‑glace looking nifty… in a parking lot somewhere.
Ian
“slick” haha I see what you did there
Joey
Turns out they only work on granite stumps.
Kate
Joey: 🙂
Mr.Chinaski
Not only that, but those machines looks wayyyy too big for a standard 1.5 or 1.8m sidewalk. You would need no cars aligned on the street when it passes, which it never happens of course except when they take the snow out.
Kevin
What kind of moron bought a machine that can’t handle a sidewalk with a dip for a driveway or alley?
Tim
@Kevin: a moron getting a kickback.
Ephraim
Who’s the moron who didn’t set a gear to change the depth of those spikes?
Ian
And increase costs for what’s already a white elephant?
@Tim exactly, as in most cases, cui bono
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Kate
David Lametti, who was dropped as justice minister from the federal cabinet last July, has resigned as MP for LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, effective at the end of the month.
carswell
Led by the self-enamoured Trudeau, the LPC is circling the drain and doesn’t seem capable of doing more than titanically rearranging the deck chairs. This puts the country’s future at risk (imagine Trump returning to office in the States followed by Poilievre acceding to power in Canada).
In the past, a chunk of the Libs’ votes have come from people who held their noses and voted strategically to keep the Cons out of office. My WAG is that Trudeau’s personal negatives are now so high and most people’s lives are so much harder they won’t be able to bring themselves to do that in 2025.
It’s past time for a reset.
Ian
Probably. It seems like every time the Conservatives get it it’s meant as an FU to the Liberals more than an embracing of the Conservatives, and by the end of the Conservative swing everyone is so unhappy they are thrilled to vote the Liberals in again. Swing of the pendulum of outrage.
The problem with Trudeau’s unpopularity is that the Liberals stayed out of power longer than usual because they kept fielding unlikeable candidates until finally someone realized anyone with an ounce of charisma would do. Who will step in? It’s a shame Singh is so sophomoric or the NDP might stand a chance. Even the conservatives realized if they could rebrand L’il PP as a “regular guy’s guy” instead of “irritating smug nerd” they would perform better at the polls.What does WAG stand for? Something-something guess? I only know it as “wives and girlfriends” in sports chat.
Kate
Wild-ass guess?
I can’t imagine Chrystia Freeland becoming Liberal leader. What happened to the rumour about Mark Carney?
Ian
To be fair Freeland was the first person that came to mind, but yeah.
Wild-ass guess works 😉Tim S.
I’m eally hoping for Rachel Notley to take over the federal NDP, but doesn’t seem in the cards.
Singh has a lot of the pieces, but it’s taking him a really long time to put it all together.
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Kate
The STM is deploying safety ambassadors in the metro system to advise and reassure passengers, deal with incivilities, and cope with the growing presence of homeless people. There are half a dozen now, but the STM hopes to have 20 of them by spring.
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Kate
Urgences-santé has been flooded by calls stemming from the icy conditions. And we’re expecting more freezing rain overnight into Friday morning.
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Kate
Canada’s highest Roman Catholic prelate, Cardinal Gérald Cyprien Lacroix of Quebec City, is facing sexual assault allegations in a class‑action suit against the archdiocese. This is the second Quebec cardinal to face such accusations, Marc Ouellet having been named in the same suit in 2022.
Both men have been accused by women. I admit I was expecting altar boys.
Ian
Hey now, the modern Catholic church has evolved to keep up with the times. Now they are equal opportunity rapists.
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Kate
Quebec has adopted a new law in an attempt to make it more difficult for
gypsyunofficial cabs at the airport.Daisy
Maybe we could avoid using that term?
Ian
Agreed. Yeah it’s a known term with history but hey, you don’t want to know what my grandmother used to call Brazil nuts.
Kate
I know what she would have called them, although I don’t remember why I know that.
carswell
Glad to say I didn’t know that.
For fellow ignorami, Wikipedia’s Brazil nut entry spells it out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_nutGC
Oof. I would not have known that.
JP
I wish I could un-know…
Ian
Yeah sorry. I was making an uneccesarily pointed example of casual racism that people don’t see as racist in the moment – but in retrospect, well, ick. My apologies for putting that example in people’s heads.
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Kate
Telling you now, immigration and asylum seekers are going to be the hot potato issue in upcoming elections at every level as Quebec reaches an estimated population of nine million people.
Just Thursday: Quebec minister asks prime minister to halt ‘open bar’ immigration – Cap on international students is here. But can it fix the housing crisis? – Notre frontière invisible avec le Mexique – Canada and Mexico in diplomatic talks over asylum claims – PQ leader refuses to debate QS MNA on the issue of immigration – Community organizations dispute Legault’s refugee claims…
I could add more, but you get the picture.
And yet: ‘Impossible challenge’ ahead if home care not improved in Quebec.
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Kate
The REM was down Thursday morning for the second time in 24 hours.
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Kate
As predicted, we’re under a layer of ice Thursday morning. People have been chipping it off their cars around here since the sun came up.
Some schools on the South Shore have closed for the day.
Blork
I’m a bit surprised they closed schools. I was expecting a lot of ice build-up, and the inevitable power outages from falling branches. But when I got up this morning there’s not even enough ice to make the cedars in the back yard droop. And we had no power outage chez moi (where all it takes is for two neighbours to sneeze at the same time and the power goes out).
The CBC article headline says the freezing rain “forces school closures” and the article says the south shore was “pummelled” with freezing rain. Really? Maybe I’m in a tiny enclave in Longueuil that missed the pummelling” but from my window it just looks like “oh hey, we had a bit of freezing rain last night.”
Kevin
I am surprised I have power, since the sidewalks and streets in my part of the island are still coated in a centimetre of ice
dhomas
My car windshield had a second, ice windshield over it this morning when I left the house at around 7h. It was easily 5mm thick, if not more. I live in the East, close to Radisson metro.
The sidewalks were decent as some chenillettes had already passed to spread salt. The ice was already breaking apart just by me walking over it. By around 10h, the chenillettes had passed a second time to remove the now-cracked ice.
Mark Côté
My girlfriend could barely walk down the block even with crampons this morning.
Blork
It sounds like it was much worse on the island than over here in lost wilds of Longueuil. Funny that we’re the ones who closed some schools.
Ian
I only had about 5mm on my windows today but my colleagues coming in from Vaudreuil had a full cm.
It was remarkably smooth, which was pretty, but super slippery at 6 am in Mile End.MarcG
Wife and I put our spikes on and went for a walk earlier. You can peel off big sheets of ice from on top of the snow and smash them on the ground to create a very satisfying and cathartic explosion. Free therapy!
Ian 19:00 on 2024-01-26 Permalink
I have a funny feeling that hastily fabricated banners & tarps with 2/3 French will be very popular in the next few years. Might be a good time to invest in local vinyl cutter/ plotter shops…
Kevin 21:07 on 2024-01-26 Permalink
This is going to wind up before NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, making the CAQ look like a bunch of losers.
Kate 23:26 on 2024-01-26 Permalink
Kevin, why would this go before NAFTA and the WTO, if Bill 101 never did?