Updates from August, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 20:22 on 2024-08-03 Permalink | Reply  

    A man was stabbed in Lachine Saturday morning and is in critical condition. TVA found several people in the neighbourhood unsettled by the incident, especially as there was a shooting in the area in mid‑July.

     
    • Kate 20:19 on 2024-08-03 Permalink | Reply  

      CTV has a brief profile of Nick Farkas, who originated and continues to run Osheaga.

       
      • Kate 17:33 on 2024-08-03 Permalink | Reply  

        The Gazette claims that if you don’t already have an English eligibility certificate, and you’re an adult, you can’t get one.

        Even so, I think I’ll dig through my very old paper storage archive to find the final transcript of my marks from high school. They never gave us anything fancier by way of a diploma, but it does prove I was in school here in English, back in the dark ages.

         
        • Ian 08:41 on 2024-08-04 Permalink

          If this is going to be a thing, the CAQ needs to issue ethnic identity cards. Seriously. They need to mechanize this ethnonationalism or drop it; as it is, they are just being bigoted AND incompetent.

        • Uatu 08:44 on 2024-08-04 Permalink

          Well I know I’ll be served in French by my imaginary GP since I’m still waiting for one…. Priorities, right?

        • Kate 09:05 on 2024-08-04 Permalink

          Ian, that’s a great idea. A scarlet letter A for Anglo.

        • Ian 09:27 on 2024-08-04 Permalink

          I was thinking more along the lines of a code digitally associated with your medicare card but sure, why not? Or maybe a serial number with an identifying lettercode, in a convenient form that you wouldn’t forget at home like, say, an armband. Or a tattoo.

        • Blork 17:47 on 2024-08-04 Permalink

          I’m basically f*cked since I didn’t go to school here. I find it hard enough to understand what doctors and other medical people are saying even when they speak in English, so even if I doubled down on improving my French I’ll still always be lost. Plus there’s the frustration over the very Kafkaesque idea that when I’m speaking to an anglophone doctor I’m not allowed to speak to them in English because of some abstract paranoia-based law. I guess I need to get used to the fact that when it comes to healthcare I’m pretty much on my own.

        • Ian 22:32 on 2024-08-05 Permalink

          Me neither, but seriously, if you can prove that you are “ayant droit” for education or that your kids were/ are/ could be (whether or not you had kids) and it’s predicated on having attended primary or high school in English, then it shou ldbe a relatively easy process. Show your school record, your provincial ID gets chaged and it applies to you and all your descendants. This business of showing school records to show that one of your kids can go to school in English but not having it automatically apply to yourself and your other kids is just, well, stupid.

          I mean, stupid within the context of insisting that people show identification to prove their right to receive basic rights such as receiving provincial government services such as hospital care in their language as recognized by federal law. Shades of “geben sie mir seinen papieren”, nicht wahr? Camps weren’t the first step. Ethnonationalism and making the “other” into the “enemy” was.

      • Kate 17:26 on 2024-08-03 Permalink | Reply  

        This headline made me giggle: Candiac Man gets $2,752 in fines for driving 200 km/h. It’s the capitalization of “Man” – like Piltdown Man or Florida Man. Seems pretty typical of Candiac Man in his full expression.

         
        • Major Annoyance 19:35 on 2024-08-03 Permalink

          Doing 200 in a 70 zone and only $2,752? Dude got off easy methinks. I was once fined $500 just for absent-mindedly sharpening a knife on a near-empty bus.

          Yeah, I’m stupid.

        • Kate 20:17 on 2024-08-03 Permalink

          The bit that struck me was “His driver’s licence was suspended for seven days.” It should have been cancelled. Let Candiac Man walk.

        • Ian 21:31 on 2024-08-03 Permalink

          Well, it is being suspended for a year after that and he has to retake his driver’s test. The article is written sloppily, it’s not clear if he gets his license back between the time after the seven days are up and paying the fine …

          The tickets aren’t clearly described either,”The driver was issued a $2,430 speeding ticket, another for $322, and four demerit points for zigzagging between traffic lanes” doesn’t make sense but “The driver was issued a $2,430 speeding ticket, and another for $322 and four demerit points for zigzagging between traffic lanes” does.

          Finally, to cap this great bit of writing, “The Sûreté du Québec says that speed is one of the leading causes of fatal collisions on Quebec roads”.
          Well, duh.

      • Kate 12:21 on 2024-08-03 Permalink | Reply  

        We have two weather warnings in effect – the heat warning we know and love, and a severe thunderstorm watch, starting around 3 pm.

        Let’s hope for rain!

         
        • Ian 17:22 on 2024-08-03 Permalink

          Looks like it’s been downgraded to midnight drizzle, with a possibility of a storm tomorrow or Monday depending on which weather service you check.

        • Kate 17:29 on 2024-08-03 Permalink

          They keep promising us a thunderstorm, then giving us a sprinkle. So annoying.

        • Meezly 11:03 on 2024-08-04 Permalink

          In the Outaouais region this weekend and a mild thunderstorm passed over us last evening.

      • Kate 09:19 on 2024-08-03 Permalink | Reply  

        Ian Austen writes on Kamala Harris’s time in Montreal for the New York Times. Aspiring vice‑president J.D. Vance has called Harris a “phony” who “grew up in Canada” so clearly she will have to work hard to live down the few years she spent here. At least the NYT is doing its best to underline how much she disliked the place.

         
        • Blork 14:45 on 2024-08-03 Permalink

          To be fair, if I was a 12-year-old girl from California and my mother made me move to Montreal where there’s no ocean, nasty winters, a whole different mean girl culture, and language tests for a language that had no personal relevance (there was never an intention that she would settle here), then I probably wouldn’t like it either.

        • Ian 16:46 on 2024-08-03 Permalink

          The US can have her. She’s a fine sight better than Trump, but still way right of even Obama…
          Via The Guardian, 5 years ago:

          Kamala Harris: can a ‘top cop’ win over progressives in 2020?

          In her career as a prosecutor, the Democrat supported increased criminalization of sex work, took no action in key police abuse cases and defended a troubled prison system

          For decades, Harris’s law enforcement credentials were central to her appeal to voters. Now, as the Democratic party continues to reckon with its history of endorsing racist, ineffective criminal justice policies, her background has become, for some voters, a liability.

          As her critics on the left put it on Twitter: “Kamala Harris is a cop.”

        • Ian 17:26 on 2024-08-03 Permalink

          Also FWIW the only beach Oakland has that isn’t an estuary beach is Alameda, and that’s a bay beach so not exactly “ocean”. Shallow and warm, more of a family/ kiddie beach. Nicer than Cap St-Jacques though 😀

        • Chris 19:43 on 2024-08-03 Permalink

          But it’s not 2020 anymore. That was the heyday of anti-cop sentiment. Things have changed. Now that record is probably of benefit to Harris, ex:

          https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/23/kamala-harris-crime-00170463

        • Ian 19:58 on 2024-08-03 Permalink

          That is perhaps true in the context of US politics. I more specifically meant we are lucky to be rid of her.
          I know you like cops, maybe even US style cops, but lots of people here in Montreal don’t – myself included.

        • Blork 23:56 on 2024-08-03 Permalink

          Ian, maybe Oakland doesn’t have a beach, but it’s a heck of a lot closer to the ocean than is Montreal. Just a BART ride away!

        • Ian 08:46 on 2024-08-04 Permalink

          When Harris was 12? That would be about 1975, according to Wikipedia the BART initial system only opened to full service in 1976.

        • Uatu 08:47 on 2024-08-04 Permalink

          Beach? How about 23c in February as something that you’d miss moving to Montreal lol

        • Ian 08:49 on 2024-08-04 Permalink

          Haha fair, THAT is a compelling argument 😀

        • Blork 12:40 on 2024-08-04 Permalink

          Ok, so no BART but her dad could drive her to the ocean in 45 minutes!

        • anton 10:46 on 2024-08-05 Permalink

          better a cop than a criminal

      • Kate 07:59 on 2024-08-03 Permalink | Reply  

        A company that claims to do recycling in Montreal East has lost its provincial permit. Service 3R Valorisation is basically a huge pile of trash: the fire department already has a plan in case it catches fire.

         
        • Kate 07:55 on 2024-08-03 Permalink | Reply  

          La Presse found the person who’s been stencilling Bonjour-Hi around NDG. He spoke with them anonymously. A borough spokesman says only that the graffiti is not authorized.

           
          • Kate 07:50 on 2024-08-03 Permalink | Reply  

            The Pride festival is strengthening security after encountering a certain amount of hostility this year. Radio‑Canada also examines the fading phenomenon of bars for lesbians.

            Le Devoir has a whole section on the festival.

             
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