Two days after the Maison Benoît Labre announced it was not going to move its contentious day centre, a woman was stabbed there Tuesday evening.
Updates from September, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The Gazette talked to an SPCA spokeswoman and to the woman who now runs Pussy Patrol in the Plateau about how to tell whether a specific cat is a stray and needs help. It’s useful information, especially for non‑cat people who may not realize that a particular cat belongs to someone and is just sociable or inclined to mooch for handouts. You don’t want to pack someone’s personal cat off to the shelter for no reason, but it happens.
jeather
One way to avoid this happening to your cat is to keep it indoors. Some cats really want to explore, but most of them are very happy to stay inside, and get happier as they get older. My cats very much want the balcony door open, but prefer to sit inside catching a breeze. My oldest ran away once, shortly after I adopted her, and was miserable and will not go near the edge of the balcony even.
Kate
My cat stays in my yard now. She didn’t always when she was younger, although she never roamed far. But the layout of this place would make it miserable in summer if I couldn’t open the back door, and she’s mostly happy out there on the back porch, or investigating whatever’s going on under the tomato plants, until winter comes.
(Did anyone else grow tomatoes this year? I have cherry tomato plants that got absolutely lush as plants, but have hardly produced any fruit.)
Kevin
Kate
My cherry and cocktail tomatoes were wonderful this year and are still producing. My full-size tomatoes were not that great.
My small cucumbers always grew very large before they were noticed.And I have too many grapes to harvest and turn into jelly.
Kate
Maybe squirrels are making off with mine.
CE
If my cat wasn’t allowed to go outside and walk halfway down the block to sit on a neighbours’ front step for half an hour (why, I’ll never know), he’d probably kill me in my sleep.
jeather
I’ve had indoor/outdoor cats but it makes me really anxious — one cat rehomed himself even. He used to hang out at the metro entrance, weirdly. Anyways, none of my cats want to go further than the balcony, and I’m on the top floor so they don’t get anywhere. One was an outdoor cat for her first year, so she knows that indoors is better, the other two just aren’t that interested. When they were younger they were a bit curious, and I guess if I had let them out they would have enjoyed it, but they didn’t try to sneak out so it was easier for me.
LJ
Another option is to walk your cat on a leash. Not all cats will easily adapt to that, but I have never had any trouble walking any of mine. My current cat wants to be walked for several hours a day, which we have been doing every day for six years now.
Ian
I tried it once with my cat and he just lay flat on the gorund and howled like he was in mortal pain.
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Kate
The ARTM is considering abolishing three Exo train routes to save money: Mascouche, Candiac and Mont‑St‑Hilaire. They’d be replaced by buses.
Uatu
Candiac will be bussed to the REM. Wtf. Are they out of their minds? Even more pressure on the orange line (which was delayed this morning because of foreign objects on the track.) Even more delays now….
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Kate
A murder-suicide left two bodies to be found on Frontenac near Sherbrooke on Wednesday morning.
More information: this was a couple in their seventies, and they were both shot. TVA says the man sent an email warning of what he was about to do.
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Kate
The STM has plans for an ambitious residential development around the Lacordaire station on the blue line extension, but it would need a change in the bill meant to create the CAQ’s pet Mobilité Infra Québec.
Mobilité Infra Québec is the brainchild of Geneviève Guilbault, a CAQ idea similar to the Santé Québec plan cooked up by Christian Dubé – an extra layer of well‑paid fonctionnaires that can push along politically based decisions without consulting anyone who’s actually studied a situation apolitically. The opposition doesn’t like it.
La Presse also reports how the ARTM fears that Mobilité Infra Québec is going to dream up expensive, pointless projects. It’s likely that the ARTM also fears for its existence once this dog and pony show gets going.
Nicholas
Expensive, pointless transit projects dreamed up in Quebec City for political reasons? Perish the thought! Now to read up on the Mascouche Line, a decade-old nine-figure project built in a swing riding with very low ridership that was immediately cut off from its slightly more direct route to downtown, in your post from later this morning….
Ephraim
I don’t suppose that we could build social housing on an Emphyteutic lease. They build 400 housing units and the edicule and 2 shops. It’s not like it hasn’t been done before.
Joey
My understanding is that the model is supposed to be that the ministry (either health/social services or transport) does the high-level policy development and the new agencies (Sante Quebec, Mobilité Infra Quebec) do the operations; this all seems to have emerged from a sense among the CAQ leadership that the recurring problem is one of execution and not planning. I would imagine the *actual* reason has more to do with a desire to build around structural issues rather than solve them – presumably because of perceived challenges rooted in the union/management dynamic.
dhomas
I don’t understand your point, Nicholas. I’m not being sarcastic at all. What point are you trying to make?
About the Mascouche line closure, the route was not bad initially. My brother-in-law lives in an area served by this line (RDP station) and bought his house BECAUSE of the train. It was a major selling point for the new development there. He used to work downtown at Place Bonaventure and he and his wife would take it regularly. It was a straight shot from his house to downtown in something like 45 minutes (maybe less). The reason ridership was low was, as far as I can tell, due to the low frequency. If you missed a train after work, you’d have to wait about an hour for the next one. I think it also did not run on weekends (I know it doesn’t now). Increase the frequency and make the line more reliable, and the line would likely have been more successful and seen more ridership.
Now, with the line basically ending at Sauve metro, the whole raison d’être of the line has been destroyed. It was created explicitly to decongest the metro system by allowing users to go directly downtown without switching to the metro.
We have the same ridership problem with buses in the city. If a bus runs every half hour, people just won’t take it because if they miss it, they’ll need to wait another 30 minutes. If less people take it, then they decrease the frequency “because nobody uses it”. This creates a kind of death spiral for transit.
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Kate
Ensemble is trying to make a scandal out of how Mayor Plante has locked down her social media in response to an ongoing torrent of abuse. They can’t really think that she would even be reading the endless hateful insults she receives, but they’re pretending she’s “limiting Montrealers’ freedom of expression” and avoiding criticism by doing so.
Adding Toula’s response: “Those now upset #Montreal mayor Valérie Plante closed her Twitter account to comments are either oblivious or indifferent to the slurs, the sexist vitriol, the misogyny she’s been subjected to for years. Politicians should be accessible to their constituents, not online abusers.”
But that leaves open the question: how do you filter out the abuse yet allow legitimate comment to reach the mayor? I’m assuming that, till recently, Plante would have staffers scan her messages and hand off to her the ones they felt she needed to see. Maybe even these staffers got burned out looking at the abuse.
Maybe this is a job AI could do?
Joey
Yeah that’s really a stretch. For the record, I think we should follow three broad rules:
1. The personal accounts of public officials that are use, even occasionally, to do politics – at a broad level – should be considered public and accessible to all.
2. Official accounts should be open to all except those whose behaviour is really extreme (e.g., threatening, violent, etc., not just disagreement) – blocking should be a very last resort
3. Official accounts by all means should be able to turn off or restrict comments as long as the posts and comments are visible to all
Luc Ferrandez was notorious for getting into fights with constituents and then blocking them one-by-one. I think Trump has done the same. It’s not great.
walkerp
Send an email. Twitter is not a place of public discourse. It is privately-owned and managed as a fiefdom for Musk’s personal views. There is no obligation for politicians to participate freely there.
Nicholas
Should press releases have comment sections? Or the city website in general? CBC got rid of comments. QTs are still available, and people can still talk about whatever they want on the Nazi site. Why don’t we just let people do what they want, and if politicians are too restrictive they will get criticized for it.
Blork
That’s just stupid (referring to the closing of comments as a limit on freedom of expression). It’s a bit like when a store decides not to carry a particular book or magazine and people yell “censorship!” These dopes really ought to learn what censorship and “limits on freedom of expression” actually mean. (Pro tip: it applies if it’s by government or authoritarian decree and there are no other places to get/say the thing being contested. If you can go across the street and buy that book, or post your screed on your own Twitter account, then it’s not censorship and your freedom of expression has not been limited.)
Maybe we should just accept and declare that social media is a failed experiment. While it’s still useful and beneficial in a few niche corners, the broader scope of it has been enshittified beyond recognition. Ads, algorithms, and idiots have completely ruined it.
Social media platforms are (arguably) still somewhat useful as broadcast mediums (as in, for companies, politicians, etc. to get their messages out) but they’re only useful for one-way messaging. As soon as you open comments it all goes to shit.
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