Le Devoir’s park series continues with a look at Jarry Park and the many roles it plays for people in the surrounding neighbourhoods.
Updates from August, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
TVA reports on consequences to workers not directly involved in the rail lockout but with no work to do while the trains are stopped. Some workers will be laid off till the labour action is settled.
TVA also emphasizes the inconvenience to people who normally commute via the train lines stopped by the rail lockout.
Update: The federal government is imposing binding arbitration.
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Kate
Quebec promised to bring an end to the use of private agencies in health care. Agencies skim off so much public money by hiring people out to the public system at higher rates than staffers hired directly. The practice was meant to end in October but has already been given an extension of six months and it would not surprise me if the promise is conveniently forgotten, since it was profitable, and profit is the most important thing in the world.
jeather
We will find out eventually which high ranking ministers or their families is getting all this profit.
Ian
Absolutely. As in all things political chez nous, the first question should always be, “cui bono?”
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Kate
As a first step in fixing the housing crisis, Quebec’s own real estate agent France‑Élaine Duranceau has put out a tender for 500 prefabricated homes.
I don’t think she’s wrong to want to build, but let’s hope these new units aren’t made of ticky‑tacky.
Ian
And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the sameKind of sounds like the CAQ dream, no?
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Kate
A woman has been arrested in the June kidnapping of four people in Old Montreal, one of whom was killed during the incident – even though the body of the murder victim, a cryptocurrency influencer, has not been found.
La Presse says Kevin Mirshahi was killed in the basement of a mobile home belonging to Joanie Lepage, the woman who’s been arrested. But all I can think is: mobile homes have basements?
Blork
Ah, you city slickers. Here’s the thing; a house can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. A mobile home is just a small prefabricated house, except it costs tens of thousands of dollar (or much less if it’s old). So if you’re a working class small-towner or country bumpkin without a lot of money but you have a patch of land, you can install a basement sized for a mobile home and then stick a mobile home on top of it. You end up spending about 25-30% what you’d spend if you had a “proper” house built.
Where I grew up it was not unusual for people to dig a hole and install a concrete basement, put a temporary roof on it, and then live in it for a few years while scratching up the money to stick a house on top.
Kevin
Or until insurance companies had decided the mobile home had reached end of life, around 25 years
Blork
Planning decades in advance is a middle class luxury not afforded to many in the working class. Also, does that mean they save money by not having to pay for insurance?
I know people who live in mobile homes that were built in the 60s. Plenty of models from the 70s and 80s are still around too,
CE
The one I grew up in is from the 80s, my mom sold it to a woman fresh out of university and she couldn’t have been happier with her purchase.
Ian
We lived in an old train station when I was a kid but it burned down some years ago. Anyhow there was a lady up the road that got a double wide put up on blocks when I was about 9. They built onto it every year as they got the money. That was about 45 years ago now, like I said our old place is gone but hers is still there and it’s got a full basement, two stories and a solarium now.
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Kate
Neither CN nor CP are operating on Thursday morning. Workers are locked out, an unprecedented situation that will have effects on consumers and industry here and down into the U.S.
CBC offers advice to train commuters stranded by the impasse.
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