The flooding of the Bellechasse bus garage on July 27 will delay the opening of the facility, and it was already running late and over budget.
Updates from August, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A fire caused by the lithium battery in a scooter sent two people to hospital on Friday and damaged their Rosemont apartment. So far this year, the fire department counts 26 battery fires; there were 43 last year.
Nicholas
«On a parlé avec son propriétaire. Il a changé sa batterie et son chargeur avec un achat en ligne il y a trois jours, dit M. Rousseau. Il a dit que ça ne chargeait pas, mais l’avait laissé branchée.»
These batteries are no joke. NYC has tons and tons of stories of this, usually cheap, second-rate batteries and chargers that start serious fires. Buy no name ink cartridges all you want, but don’t skimp on batteries. There’s a reason airlines are so worried about laptop and phone batteries (which are much smaller than scooters and e-bikes).
Ian
For all the fuss about lighters and liquids on planes, laptop battery thermal runaway is much, much bigger issue.
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Kate
Two years ago, a 26-year-old man named Jayson Colin was shot dead in a Montreal North schoolyard. This was a man with no criminal history – in fact he was involved positively in the community. Aside from an assumption he was killed in a mistaken gang hit, cops have nothing, so they’re setting up a command post Saturday and putting out feelers for anyone with information.
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Kate
A record number of merchants have opened businesses along St‑Denis, and city hall is ascribing its resurgence to the REV.
Ian
Probably, but I also call COVID recovery. Things have been picking up all over town. Not being under construction probably helps a lot, too.
CE
I spend a lot more time on St-Denis (on bike and foot) now than I ever did. I’ve discovered a lot of shops and restaurants that I had missed back when I’d avoid the street due to the noise and traffic. I doubt I’m the only one.
Chris
It’s not the REV per se so much as the removal of 2 lanes of car traffic, thus resulting in less noise and smell.
Ian
There used to be a really great street vibe on St Denis, even up to the early 2000s but then it just kind of … fizzled out. The vibe now is different, but yeah, St Denis is back. I’m happy to see it.
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Kate
Most media have reports on the relentless rain Friday: CBC has text and video; CTV tracks event cancellations; some people are dealing with repeated flooding of their basements; some roads are flooded. Photos from CTV.
Le Devoir observes that cinemas and museums benefited from the rainy day.
Ian
It’s kind of weird that these photos and videos of flooding mostly don’t say what part of town they are in…
maggie rose
Darn – the heavy rain and high winds drenched my window A/C. I had it off and when the rain stopped I turned it on for some fan circulation – it kind of gurgled & only put out a small amount of air. I hope it’s just a question of drying out for a day or 2. Rain never affected it before, but those winds were howling here in NDG.
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Kate
Quebec has decided to cut upgrade money for universities, which will affect some of McGill’s plans, although the Gazette text doesn’t bear out the implication by the photo that it will specifically undermine plans for the old Royal Vic site.
Neither of these pieces (CTV and the Gazette) mention how these cuts will be affecting the Université de Montréal or UQAM, nor can I find any mention of concern about university funding cuts in the francophone media.
Joey
McGill is an outlier because so much of its building inventory is extremely old, poorly maintained and historically valuable. That means that, compared to every other post-secondary institution in the province, it has more capital expenditure/renovation needs, and it requires more money per project. It’s no surprise that the province finally decided that it would no longer “disproportionately” fund capital projects at McGill. Quite the one-two punch for McGill…
CE
That said, I can only imagine that McGill’s endowment is bigger than the other three universities combined.
Ian
I figure you mean McGill, Concordia, UQAM & UdeM.
Looking into it, I can’t seem to find separate information for l’Université du Québec à Montréal endowments as it seems to come out of a pool managed by the provincial government, so there’s lots of info on allocations but not so much endowments specifically.
That said, UdeM is suprisingly well-heeled with about $428.951 million, with Concordia waaaaay down the list at a mere $142.53 million.
McGill is 3rd overall nationally, with $1.822 BILLION. That said, U of T has $3.267 billion. With that disparity it’s pretty impressive that McGill has historically ranked hgher for decades.
Joey
A lot (almost all) donated money is earmarked – you endow a chair in something, the university adds your donation to its endowment and funds the chair out of the interest income from your donation. McGill can’t just take its $1.8B and spend it on new roofs or HVAC systems.
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Kate
Workers at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel are holding a surprise strike Friday, following the more general hotel strike Thursday.
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Kate
Aaron Derfel fact-checks an open letter from three Quebec government ministers on access to health care for anglos. Derfel finds discrepancies which suggest that the ministers either aren’t familiar with the letter of the law, or are trying to soften the facts for political reasons.
We have to remember that, when push comes to shove, the law is what’s written in the bill, not what’s said by a minister in the media.
Some federal Liberal MPs are speaking up on the issue.
Ian
I wrote to my (Liberal) MP:
Trudeau has been useless wrt Quebec’s rise in ethnonationalism.
With Bill 96, Quebec insists anglophones show “ayant droit” papers proving they are “historical anglophones” under Quebec law to get medical service in English… that you can only get if you are under 18 and a resident of Quebec.
It’s alarming on a Federal level in that it means anyone from the ROC can’t get medical care in English- a clear violation of Federal charter laws. Do you intend to stand with Housefather and Gainey, and support your anglophone constituents?
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If you would like to write to your MP, here is how to find out who they are and their contact info:
https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/enAlso worth noting, mail may be sent postage-free to any member of Parliament.
PatrickC
I share Ian’s alarm, but let’s not forget that getting medical services in French in much of the rest of Canada is not exactly easy.
jeather
Ah yes, the “it’s worse for francophones in the ROC (except maybe NB) so quit yer bitching” argument. I see it in every thread on twitter.
Meezly
I guess the difference is that the CAQ are knowingly setting up English language barriers to deliberately restrict healthcare access for anglophones. See? This is what it’s like for francophones to live in an English-dominant society. Now we want you to experience it too. It’s malicious and spiteful. And then, to mislead the public with this open letter. Yes, alarming and dangerous.
Blork
What Meezly said. If a Francophone can’t get service in French in some town in Saskatchewan or Ontario it’s entirely because of logistics/demographs. It’s not because there is a law that says THIS FRANCOPHONE DOCTOR IS NOT ALLOWED TO SPEAK TO THIS FRANCOPHONE PATIENT IN FRENCH.
bob
I really don’t get the knee-jerk apologism for this endless stream of legislated bigotry.
dwgs
Stockholm syndrome
Uatu
Doesn’t he have other concerns like actually getting doctors in the first place?
Joey
An elderly woman in our family (who doesn’t really speak French, certainly not since her dementia took hold) has been in a CHSLD since the spring. There were no beds available in any of the facilities near her home (or family) so she wound up in a hospital – where she will live out her remaining days – where none of the staff speak English. The notion that “going forward” access to healthcare in English will be diminished/rationed mischaracterizes how much of the healthcare system already poorly serves non-majority citizens.
Ian
Ugh, that’s rough. 2nd languages often go fast in dementia. I was lucky with my Dad getting picked up and sent to the Jewish the first time he fell down and didn’t know where he was so we got in their system – and ended up in a home catering mostly to Jewish residents. Everyone spoke English and French, some even spoke Yiddish. I was briefly comnsidering bringing him to Gatineau before the home was a sure thing.
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Kate
It isn’t new news that our small Chinatown is coping with the presence of a lot of homeless people, but La Presse has a two-part analysis Friday, talking to people who live and work there but also re‑examining the notorious video from earlier this year which shows a business owner throwing water over an itinerant sleeping in his doorway.
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Kate
Forecast says Saturday will be mixed, but Sunday we’ll be back to rain.
Weekend notes from La Presse, CityCrunch, mtl.org, CultMTL, Sarah’s Weekend List.
Weekend driving displeasures. The rain is closing some roads.
MarcG
The Wundermap is a great tool for visualizing storms.
Ian
Definitely one of my faves.
Another is Merry Sky.maggie rose
Yes, Wunderground’s Wundermap is great, especially when you un-check the default ‘weather stations’ and check ‘Radar’ instead. Great at 30x speed, and you can zoom out to see what’s coming for rain, snow. ice etc.
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