A fire broke out Monday in a container of lithium batteries in the Port of Montreal. Toxic smoke seeped out into the adjoining streets and people have been told to stay indoors – dhomas, are you and your household OK?
Updates from September, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Quebec has edited its health language decree, ordaining that people don’t have to show up for health care with documents supporting their linguistic status.
jeather
Honestly surprised they walked it back that actively.
Uatu
Yeah everyone keep thinking about this and not about how we screwed up hydro and need to jack up your bill lol
Joey
I suspect when the lawyers in the Ministry of Justice got to this file they screamed bloody murder.
Orr
So if I am keeping track how many tiers of QuebecCanadian citizenry with different levels of human rights are we at now?
JaneyB
I doubt it was ever even really going to happen. Doctors need insurance to practise and the risk of language issues interfering with the practise of medicine would be a red alert to insurers. I suspect that liability is probably the main incentive to back down – more than rights anyway.
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Kate
Appeal court has upheld the ruling that the La Tulipe show venue must stop making any noise that could be heard by the residential building next door.
It’s a brief report, but this is a major screwup by the borough, ending La Tulipe’s long history as a live venue.
Here are blog entries on this situation from 2021, and some discussion.
DeWolf
Lots of unanswered questions. Does this mean La Tulipe must cease operations immediately? (I have tickets to a concert there next Friday!) And what are the implications for other venues? The judge’s ruling is excessively strict and it could mean that all Plateau music venues could face similar repercussions.
Of course the simple thing to do would be for the Plateau to change its noise regulations. Given the full-throated support the borough administration gave to La Tulipe after the 2023 ruling, I would be astonished if they didn’t find a workaround. Especially since the Plante administration has already indicated they will reform noise regulations this fall.
Kate
If I were you, I’d get in touch with them and ask whether your show is going ahead.
dwgs
The owner of Turbo Haus put it well, https://x.com/TurboHaus/status/1838375347609571446
Meezly
If you asked me a decade ago, I’d say no way would Montreal ever go the way of Vancouver aka “no fun city.” Nowadays, well…
Even now, there’s really no nice venue downtown for mid-popular music acts. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds will be playing at the beautiful Orpheum Theatre in downtown Vancouver, but here, they’ll be playing at the a sports stadium in… Laval. I guess Place des Arts is busy enough without being a venue for live rock shows?
I’m glad Place Bell has been a place for arena-sized music shows, but it’s another blow to Montreal’s downtown scene.
Kate
dwgs, also a terse and relevant tweet from the same guy, Sergio da Silva of Turbo Haus.
Glenn Castanheira also tweeted “Avec cette logique, ce n’est qu’une question de temps avant qu’on déménage toutes les salles de spectacles au Royalmount.”
Kate
Meezly, Place des Arts has always held itself above rock and pop, although now that the Maison Symphonique exists for orchestral works, a lot of what PdA stages is so beige and bland and tasteful that you never hear about it.
DeWolf
@Meezly The Orpheum has a capacity of 2,700, which is similar to the Metropolis/M Telus (2,300) and Olympia (2,400). There are even more one step down in terms of capacity, including Club Soda (1,000), Corona/Beanfield (Le National (750) and Studio TD (700).
Place Bell has a capacity of 10,000 so either Nick Cave has a lot more fans here than in Vancouver or the downtown venues were simply too busy to accommodate his tour.
GC
Is Place des Arts really that exclusive? I saw Lauryn Hill there in 2016. She’s probably not what Gen Z are listening to, but she’s very firmly in the hip-hop/reggae sphere and not classical or adult contemporary that one might stereotype as being at Place des Arts. (I’ve also seen Loreena McKennitt there and she is probably closer to who one might assume they’d showcase…)
Kate
Before posting that comment, I looked at their upcoming schedule and it was honestly a big yawn. Did anyone find a way to dance to Lauryn Hill at PdA?
Meezly
@DeWolf. A lot of big name acts that don’t necessarily draw stadium-sized crowds have played at Place Bell the past few years. I suppose what makes Place Bell a desirable venue is its flexibility in accommodating small to big acts: https://placebell.ca/en/rental/rent-place-bell
GC
HA, Kate. Maybe some chair dancing! I had previously seen her at L’Olympia, which is definitely much more a get-up-and-dance venue, but I actually thought the acoustics that night were pretty awful. At least, when I see a show at Place des Arts, I’m confident it’s going to SOUND good.
dhomas
I went to go see The War on Drugs and The National at Place Bell last week. It wasn’t full, but I’m pretty sure there were more than 2400 people there. The acoustics were not great and the seating was kinda meh. The location was ok, since you can get there pretty easily via the orange line metro. But I still much prefer a downtown venue (orange AND green line, plus yellow or REM from the south shore), or something in the city.
The food options around Place Bell were mostly pretty cookie cutter, food court fare (Amir, Subway, etc), or faux upscale where I couldn’t tell if the food would be good, but I could tell it would be expensive. (I ended up eating a burrito at Ke Paso since we were late and ended up missing the first opening act, Lucius).
I suppose there is still the Corona Theatre that is similarly sized to La Tulipe, but it’s in a completely different part of town. I really hope they are able to come to some kind of agreement to let La Tulipe continue to operate. The TurbaHaus guys is completely right in his indignation.
Joey
Yeah Place Bell is a good option for bands playing to 12-20K fans in other cities who don’t appeal to Francophone audiences. PDA’s biggest venues (Salle Wilfrid Pelletier and Maison Symphonique) top out around 3,000 seats; MTelus is in that ballpark as well. So we have a solid venues for bands playing large intimate shows, with both fussy and unfussy options.
Place Bell is a good size for bands who can sell, say, 6,000 tickets – though the location isn’t ideal and the acoustics aren’t amazing. Definitely feels like Bell Centre Lite. I assume it’s a cheaper venue for bands and is a good option to work around the Bell Centre calendar – more than 10% of the year is booked off for the Canadiens.
Nick Cave is an unusual case because he’s got a strong Montreal following and typically plays here on every tour, if not more often. I don’t know that he could sell out the Bell Centre, but he’s played PDA and MTelus recently, plus Place Bell next spring.
JP
I think Sting has played Place des Arts (and maybe even Prince, though I’m less sure on that one)
Joey
@JP yeah the big established older artists all pass through PDA because their target demo is well off slightly older people, so they need a venue that seats 2K-3K with actual seats. Depending on the tour they may be able to stretch up a bit and play a larger venue (before Place Bell the Bell Centre would often be converted into a “theatre” with 2/3 of the sections and the entire upper bowl blocked off), but I’m guessing they make more money by selling expensive tickets at a poshish venue (PDA) than more cheaper tickets at a hockey arena.
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Kate
Sunday’s marathon had a record 27,000 runners. The women’s side was won by Winnipeg’s Mélanie Desautels and the men’s by Kenyan Philemon Kiptanui.
The race was also a charity fund‑raising event, a fact that isn’t often mentioned.
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Kate
The idea of repurposing church presbyteries as social housing is out there, but there isn’t even a definitive list. These are often quite grand houses, seemingly too big even for a time when a parish could easily sustain three priests and a housekeeper.
I’ve occasionally eyed the house beside the big church on Jarry in my neighbourhood and wondered how many people could be living there.
rob
We should be able to tax religious properties without exceptions. Giving them funding for social work is a different bag (even if it works out even-Steven). I think it`s obvious that since the Quiet Revolution, that religious centers aren`t the center of our communities.
DeWolf
Somewhat related but Quebec still has no plan for the Institut des Sourdes-Muettes, which has been sitting empty for nearly 10 years. The city considered acquiring it but decided not to, so for the past four years the province has been sitting on it, doing nothing. It could easily accommodate hundreds of units of social housing, with new market-rate residential or commercial development on the large parking lots that could help pay the bills.
Kate
I know! An entire city block, and bound to deteriorate over time if it’s not inhabited and looked after. Of course it would cost a pretty penny to bring up to modern standards, so I can see why the city was unwilling to get involved.
We should be able to tax religious properties without exceptions. That would go nowhere. Church properties are not owned by a huge wealthy Vatican combine. They each belong to a parish, and Montreal’s parish churches are already in disrepair because there are so few people left who contribute to their upkeep.
Orr
Speaking of the Institut des Sourdes-Muettes, my personal dream (as its neighbour) is that the hideous prison-like chain link fence surrounding the parking lots at either end could be one day removed.
GC
Is that the building on St-Denis, near ITHQ? Such a central location, too.
Kate
That’s the one, GC. It was originally a big residential school for the hard of hearing, and then – for how long I’m not sure – a headquarters for part of the health and social services administration, which left about ten years ago. Alexis Hamel says it was built between 1898 and 1900.
Meezly
The CAQ are obvs too busy with much more important things than figuring out what to do with a historic complex in a prime location in Montreal.
GC
I lived close to there from 2010 to 2014, when I suppose it was still occupied. I was a bit curious to see inside, every time I walked by.
jeather
It’s a great scam, the Catholic church runs: all the money flows right into the Vatican, who have no financial liabilities to any of their parishes or parishoners, so sorry your church is falling apart, but what can we do? so sorry you have huge legal liability from the abusive priests we sent to you, not our fault.
dhomas 21:35 on 2024-09-23 Permalink
All ok over here. I wandered the streets looking for the source of the terrible smell. It was so pungent, I was sure it must have been one of my neighbours houses. Eventually, I called 311, who referred me to the fire prevention department, but they were closed when I called at 18h. So I finally called 911 and they told me to close my windows and that fire department would contact me if we needed to evacuate. No evacuation order and the stench is starting to dissipate. I’m a little over 4km away and the air was really bad.
walkerp 21:52 on 2024-09-23 Permalink
Maybe batteries are just not Quebec’s thing.
Chris 22:08 on 2024-09-23 Permalink
Wow. So if a kidnapping happens 1000s of km away, my phone blares “red alert” at 0400 in the morning, but if a toxic fire is burning 10s of km away in the middle of the day, zilch! Genius system.
yasymbologist 23:04 on 2024-09-23 Permalink
better relocate for now if you can still smell it indoors. I’ve read an article saying some of the pollutants from burning lithium batteries are potent carcinogens.
su 07:01 on 2024-09-24 Permalink
Good point Chris. Considering ; https://theloadstar.com/toxic-smoke-from-battery-fires-a-hidden-but-major-risk-says-tt-club/
dhomas 13:32 on 2024-09-24 Permalink
Ya, i’m pretty close to where it was happening and I needed to call 911 to get the details. We have a system to give people information about such things (Québec En Alerte: https://www.alerte.gouv.qc.ca/fr/apropos.html). Seems like this would have been an appropriate time to use it.
Also, can we stop harping on the Amber Alerts? Sure they can be annoying, but I think it can be a good thing to make people aware of such situations. So long as it doesn’t become “noise” where we just ignore it like we do spam. I just wish they would ALSO use the alerting system for toxic air pollutants.
I polluted my lungs for a good 15 minutes walking around my neighbourhood, looking for the source of the stench thinking one of my neighbours might have been in trouble. It really smelled like burning plastic, so I thought it could be a poorly installed EV charger or some other electrical fire. I wouldn’t have bothered looking had a got an alert.
Joey 14:17 on 2024-09-24 Permalink
I am mostly OK with the Amber Alert system. I do wonder, though, what the idea is supposed to be when the alert comes in during the middle of the night. Like, if the thing wakes me I’m not going to get out of bed and start hunting around for a kidnapped child. To the extent that I might see or suspect something (which is extremely unlikely but that’s OK given the size of the population), it won’t kick in until the morning. In other words, perhaps Amber Alerts sent between, say, 11pm and 6am, shouldn’t override your phone’s do-not-disturb settings.
Tim S. 17:56 on 2024-09-24 Permalink
My guess is the thinking behind the Amber Alerts is, for 99.9% of us, it’s useless. But they’re probably very useful for tracking a person through their extended network, especially given how many of them are for abductions within families. So an Amber Alert might get me to think, yeah, I did see my neighbour’s ex’s car parked outside last night, or something. Which I would guess is how most of these things get solved, rather than a stranger driving down the highway at 2AM and noticing a given make of car. So given that, I’m OK with the 2AM warnings (in theory, maybe not on any given night!)
Chris 19:41 on 2024-09-24 Permalink
>Also, can we stop harping on the Amber Alerts?
No. 🙂
The concept is fine, it just needs to be more finely tuned.
How many truckers fall asleep at the wheel because they couldn’t get back to sleep? How many nurses administer the wrong dose because they are even more sleep deprived than usual? How many people are climbing ladders and get frightened and fall off? Amber alerts are not an unmitigated win, they have real downsides too.
Progressive warning would help. Start with only a vibrate, increase to gentle noise, and only eventually progress to ‘red alert’ (unless a meteor is actually incoming). They also need to better take into account the distance away of the event. And honour do-not-disturb in the dead of night except for real emergencies. Some of us (not me) actually have life-or-death jobs that require us to be rested.
CE 07:45 on 2024-09-25 Permalink
“So long as it doesn’t become “noise” where we just ignore it like we do spam.”
I would say this has already happened. When I hear the noise coming from my phone in another room, I don’t run to check it because I assume it’s just another Amber Alert. If it were telling me to duck and cover because the bomb had just been dropped or to close my windows because a bunch of batteries are on fire, I’d likely miss it because there’s no way to distinguish between a child getting kidnapped in Gatineau and an emergency that requires immediate attention.
walkerp 08:41 on 2024-09-25 Permalink
Count me among the skeptical/suspicious of the amber alert. Now I am ignorant of its efficacy and I would be interested in hearing from somebody who actually works in the field if it has been effective. But it feels very much like a program that is driven by the “What about the children?!” reflex rather than an actual social need. It’s always an estranged family member, not some sex trafficker in a van. Is the risk to the child so great that we dedicate a society wide alarm to it (with the associated Never Cry Wolf phenomenon that CE describes)?
walkerp 08:51 on 2024-09-25 Permalink
The wikipedia page on Amber alerts is quite interesting and informative. Scroll down to Controversies in particular.
su 09:16 on 2024-09-25 Permalink
So anyway – no doubt there will be a federal investigation into the nature of this massive 15,000‑kilo! shipment of lithium batteries.
When importing lithium batteries, you must comply with the TDG Regulations. The TDG Regulations specify requirements for classification, documentation, labelling, packaging and training. You must declare them to postal carriers, couriers or transport companies.
Make sure that the lithium batteries in your shipment are not counterfeit before importing them into Canada
Transport Canada regulates the safe handling, offering for transport, transporting and importing of lithium batteries by specifying classification, documentation, labelling, packaging and training requirements.
All designs and types of lithium batteries must meet the requirements of the UN Manual of Tests and Criteria to be shipped safely.
Shippers and importers must meet the requirements set out in the TDG Regulations for the handling, offering for transport, transporting and importing of lithium batteries in Canada. The requirements vary by mode of transport.
Lithium batteries are subject to rigorous testing according to the UN Manual of Tests
dhomas 14:06 on 2024-09-25 Permalink
@su The article said it was a reefer (refrigerated container): “conteneur réfrigéré contenant plus de 15 000 kg de batteries au lithium”. At first, I thought it might be a new type of refrigeration unit in the container, but then I realized that 15000kg is a hell of a lot of batteries, more than any single device battery pack would need. So, maybe they were shipping the batteries themselves. But I can’t think of any reason to keep litium batteries in a reefer. There will need to be some investigation done, for sure.