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With winter coming, the shortage of shelter places for the homeless is on the minds of those who operate them.
TVA also reports that a homeless camp is growing up around the Maison Benoît Labre in St‑Henri and that calls to 311 about homelessness and its problems are far more numerous now than before the Covid pandemic.
The bike path on the Jacques-Cartier bridge has been closed till further notice after the surface was made slippery by the application of a waterproofing agent yet no warning was given to cyclists using the path.
Where does that level of incompetence even come from?
In this case, the federal government.
Could be the same people who decided to close Pine Ave between at Penfield without providing any signage for those coming from the west. So if you’re driving along Penfield headed towards Parc, you’ll roll along until you get to the end and have to double back along Pine headed west – you can either turn down Peel and go to Sherbrooke (literally retracing your steps) or keep going and go over the mountain. A couple of signs at Penfield/Guy and Penfield/Peel could save a detour that might last an hour in traffic.
I saw that weird closure this morning from Parc. Did you hear about what’s going on? I thought maybe it was football until I saw the closures from teh other direction. Pins is another one that feels like it’s been under construction or closure for nearing a decade (no not the same worksite, deWolf, we know)
They’ve had the closure sign up on Parc for a few days (in advance, actually). It’s the eastbound route that leaves you dead-ended. Seems like construction again – not sure if it’s the roadway, the reservoir or the Vic site.
Concordia University has closed the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies for lack of funding.
Of all the times to pull the plug on a genocide and human rights institute…
I really wonder about Con-U’s decision making processes sometimes. They couldn’t find a single foundation in Canada with a bit of scrilla to keep this afloat?
I spoke to a couple of people recently who are currently students at Concordia and…budgetary restraints are being felt on a day-to-day basis, even down to the shuttle bus between the two campuses. I think Concordia’s days are numbered, to be honest. As someone who went there, I’m disappointed but that’s what it seems like.
It has to go. UQAM will pick up the pieces.
The shuttle bus has always been an issue. Back in the early 90s it was constantly breaking down, much like the Hall building’s escalators.
This has nothing to do with budget reasons and the gov raising fees for foreign students? rite?
One wonders what lies behind this bland explanation: “the academic orientations of Concordia researchers involved in the area of human rights have diverged from the work of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.” Is it that faculty no longer want to commit their time and effort to the Institute? Or are there ideological issues involved? This particular organization may well have done good work (I have no idea), but at many universities “Institutes” and “Centres” for this and that are mostly shells for getting external funding, and when that dries up, their usefulness to the university function ceases, while the work of individual faculty members goes on.
The prof who was the remaining driving force here, Frank Chalk, is also up in years. I suspect that’s unstated but played a part.
Escalators: The escalators in the hall Building were purchased from a company that went bankrupt a year after they were installed, and so the availability of spare parts was an issue as of the 60’s.
Buses: The shuttle bus service was outsourced something like 15-20 years ago. The buses got better (they used to be school buses), and the service was ok. Also, STM transit out to Loyola has gotten faster over the years.
MIGS: “‘the academic orientations of Concordia researchers involved in the area of human rights have diverged from the work of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.’ Is it that faculty no longer want to commit their time and effort to the Institute? Or are there ideological issues involved?”
Short answer, yes. The institute is (was) perceived as establishment and Zionist by the activist “left”. Concordia human rights studies leans very heavily into anti-colonial, “anti-Zionist”, anti-government, anti-authority, etc. But that faction couldn’t on their own kibosh something that brings the University good pr. I think the real reasons are institutional politics (*draaaamaaa*). Some years ago there was a kind of mini power struggle when Chalk retired from the institute, and a hostile takeover by the administration (as contrasted with the faculty) ensued. Basically, it is supposed to be a research institute, but it does not produce much research, and does not fund students much (if at all). It seems to have become more of a vector for schmoozing and publicity than anything to do with academic output. I think the knives have been out for it for quite some time. The money is probably not much of an issue, except in that it provides a justification for elimination.
Thanks, bob. I was wondering when someone would mention the fairly well-known internal political side of this. Most academic institutions are incredibly political so anytime anythign like this happens that should be the first thoguht that crosses anyone’s mind.
Eric Andrew-Gee of the Globe and Mail investigates how Montreal’s fabled nightlife lost its spark. He gets some quotes from reputable people, but some of the changes he touches on aren’t new. The red light district was closed down by Jean Drapeau and Pax Plante in the 1950s, and Rockhead’s Paradise closed in 1977. The city is always in evolution.
You can’t talk about a decline in nightlife without acknowledging it’s a global phenomenon. The same thing is happening in many cities post-pandemic. CityLab has an article about how the same thing is happening in London, Berlin, New York and many other places:
The Globe piece implies that what’s happened to the Latin Quarter is emblematic of what’s happening all over the city, but the Latin Quarter has been in decline since well before the pandemic. Saint-Sulpice closed in 2019, just for example. Nightlife has shifted to other areas. Mont-Royal and St-Denis seems even busier than before the pandemic, and there’s a lot more happening in the southwest which was never a nightlife destination in the past, except for underground punk shows.
There’s also this:
“Figures released in September by the point-of-sale company Square show that a lower share of bar and restaurant spending in Montreal happens at night than in any other big Canadian city, including Vancouver, Calgary and – gasp – Toronto.”
I’d be interested to know more about this data because Square doesn’t seem nearly as widespread in Montreal as in other places, and most of the places that use it seem to be cafés and retail stores, not bars and restaurants.
I was also struck by this recent Guardian piece on the decline of nightlife in Amsterdam. Its situation sounds familiar: “Meanwhile an expensive city can have issues with complaining neighbours, said Ariza Gallego, whose club was previously based at an old ship wharf. “In the final stages at our old location, we got a lot of complaints [over] the light we produce,” he said. “There is not [always] a fair interaction between the businesses, the cultural institutions and the neighbourhood.” “
Seems like the triple whammy of cannabis legalization (plus the huge increase in good quality dep booze) , COVID shutdowns, and inflation has inspired a lot of people to chill with friends and some weed in the park rather than sit in a bar.
Montreal was a lot more gritty & fun in the 80s and 90s, but then again we were all broke, too.
Workers at the SAQ are holding a one‑day strike Monday.
Conveniently, the SAQ provides a list of the 80 stores that are open today:
That’s a major annoyance, Major Annoyance. Nobody needs booze badly enough to cross a picket line.
Sadly, the addicts who drink 10 or 15 drinks a day do need it.
You’re right – for people whose whole metabolism has adjusted to running drunk, they might die if they stop. I was being flippant.
As for tomorrow, for anyone with anxiety about the U.S. election, we may all want a drink.
As noted in the article, this is the fifth strike day since the union got its partial strike mandate. Am expecting the remaining 10 days to be called more frequently than they have been to date.
First, we’re in the run-up to the holidays, when the SAQ’s sales skyrocket, so strikes hurt a lot more now than they will in the dead months of January and February, and that’s all the more true this year when the monopoly’s sales are already down — last quarter the SAQ reported its first loss (negative sales growth) in decades and people in the business are expecting the trend to continue. (The main drivers of the loss are demographics — last I checked, Quebec was the third-fastest ageing population after Japan and Italy, and old people drink less — and tight budgets, even as wine as spirits prices continue to rise, sometimes vertiginously.)
Second, the quarterly loss almost certainly means the SAQ, which has committed itself to constantly increasing the dividend (its profits) it pays to the Quebec government, will want to concede as little as possible around pay raises and other increased spending, will be a much more tight-fisted bargaining partner. And if they dig in their heels, the union probably will too.
How many people will just by their booze on Tuesday instead?
I imagine some people will!
Christian Dubé is proposing a bill to make new doctors practise in the public system for the “first few years” of their careers – a length of time that hasn’t been defined.
Make it 25 and we’ll call me satisfied.
steph, sure, if you want to chase our remaining doctors away to Ontario and USA. You know they aren’t government employees, right? They can choose to work anywhere, they are highly in demand everywhere.
What they need to do is fix the back and forth — you shouldn’t be able to switch between public and private twice a month. (“Well, in the public system, it will take 12 months to get this surgery with me, but I will be in the private system in 2 weeks if you want to do it privately.”) I don’t think anyone who isn’t a doctor likes this game.
Allow family doctors in clinics and hospitals to hire their own support staff — instead of getting whomever the people at the local health board sends to them.
Allow family doctors in clinics and hospitals to work with their own patients five days a week — instead of insisting they spend one day doing other duties.
Don’t let patients cancel their early-morning appointments with less than 12 hours’ notice.
If the province is going to insist that doctors can only see patients who live near their clinic, then make that declaration public and publish ads about this new policy.
There was a big fire in Rosemont overnight, with 100 firefighters mobilized.
Joe Ortona and his team won the EMSB election held Sunday.
I wish someone showed historical voter turnout — is 22% a lot or a little?
I tried to find out, but the Elections Quebec page tells us who to ask, but doesn’t say.
Ah, found this:
In 2014, 21 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots in the EMSB election, compared with five per cent for the French-language Commission scolaire de Montréal.
So it’s probably average.
Eligible voters in this case only means people with kids in the boards’ schools?
No, you needn’t have kids at all to vote.
Not to vote, but to be automatically registered to vote. I’m a Montreal anglo with no kids, I’m not counted among eligible voters.
Surely being *on* the voter roll (automatically or not) makes you “eligible”. And you don’t need kids to be on the roll.
Chris, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The roll for school board elections isn’t the regular electoral roll. You’re automatically on it if you have kids in an anglo school, otherwise they don’t know you exist unless you deliberately sign up.
I believe that in this context eligible voters means people who are on the list to vote, so those with kids in an EMSB school and those who asked to be on it (like me).
>…unless you deliberately sign up
Exactly. And once you’ve deliberately signed up, you are an “eligible voter”. i.e. “Eligible voters in this case only means people with kids in the boards’ schools?” -> no.
That leaves unexplored the proportion of people without kids who register, and I’d bet it isn’t a significant percentage of the list.
What about people who *had* kids in the schools but they’ve since graduated. Do they get spammed by the EMSB for the rest of their lives?
We had kids in the EMSB, the last one finished two and a half years ago and we received our registration in the mail a couple of weeks ago. I wouldn’t call one letter every time there’s a school board election spam.
Yeah I was being facetious, but also imagining they send you other stuff that’s no longer relevant and just goes straight to the bin. Does this policy mean that the percentage of people on the voter roll who currently have kids in school is ever-diminishing? I guess grandparents could be interested in the politics of their grandkids schooling.
(Oops, I forgot that people die. Don’t do math on 4 hours sleep, kids!)
MarcG, even with a child in the system I have never gotten mail from the school board other than the registration card. The odd robo-call but even those have diminished recently.
I also assumed school board elections were mostly about property taxes. If you own property, you’re register with a school board and, if they’re anglo, you get to vote. The process to get added to the list if you’re a renter, or switch from anglo to franco and vice-versa, is not that difficult, it seems.
I would’ve voted, but despite doing this blog, I wasn’t aware of the election till it was too late to register (as a tenant with no kids).
FWIW, I asked, and my mother did NOT get a notification she was eligible to vote, though she has only ever had children in the EMSB.
Did anyone ever explain what the difference between the main candidates was? I’m on a mailing list with a candidate who posted a very nice message but it excluded any discussion of what her slate would do compared to the competition.
The EMSB sent out a mailer with a statement by each candidate. They had pretty much the same bullet points, one may have had a slightly greater emphasis on support for special needs kids.
MarcG 10:22 on 2024-11-05 Permalink
Just passed by Maison Benoît Labre and it’s covered in cops.
Kate 11:44 on 2024-11-05 Permalink
TVA reported a possible overdose in the camp, but that was posted Monday and it wasn’t clear from the story whether someone had died.
I’ll look out for reports on what’s happening Tuesday.