Montreal blacksmith Mathieu Collette created sixty period axes that were sent to help re‑create the interior of Paris’s Notre‑Dame cathedral in a historically accurate manner. Collette won’t be going to the grand reopening on Saturday, but Premier Legault is on the guest list.
Updates from December, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Quebec has adopted a bill to restrict international student enrolment according to unstated “government priorities”.
The province is also worried about signs of religion in schools and is planning to strengthen the Loi sur la laïcité de l’État to make such outrages impossible in future and find ways to punish the offenders. Like maybe, penance?
Nicholas
Saw a doctor yesterday who was wearing a cross necklace. It was ostensibly under his scrubs, but the v neck was so low that it was easily visible most of the time.
jeather
Signs like schools with saint names? And though I don’t know what they refer to specifically re “missing school to be at the mosque”, is it taking specific religious holy days off, or is it a teenager just coming in late every day and saying it’s because they were praying.
Joey
I note that La Presse includes “teachers speaking Arabic to one another in the teacher’s lounge” as a violation of the secularism law. It seems to be conventional wisdom that French is the lingua franca of public schools, so much so that it’s common to hear of kids being yelled at by lunchtime monitors for speaking English in the playground, but what this has to do with religion is beyond me.
Spi
So is this an admission that banning religious symbols accomplished next to nothing in insuring that schools would be secular but was just a pretend measure
Margaret
If Legault’s intent is to stop prayer in public places, I think the Pope’s travel team need to know for a future visit. Also, are the more religious Christmas carols a form of prayer? Are holiday markets then restricted to carollers singing ‘Frosty the Snowman’ under his vision for strengthening the restrictions???
Uatu
Next Good Friday should be interesting to see the secular Inquisitors round up the scofflaw participants of the stations of the cross pilgrimage.
jeather
That’s just a historical recreation, Uatu.
Kate
Legault wants to stop all praying in public – so, as Uatu asks, what about that cross pilgrimage? What about the Portuguese parade for Senhor Santo Cristo? Will they too be shut down?
jeather
Kate, we all know that these will be waved away as somehow not falling into the category of prayer or religious. Cultural, or historical, or some other excuse. Perhaps the law will be carefully written to exclude them, or they’ll just find an exception later.
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Kate
Weekend notes from CityCrunch, La Presse, CultMTL.
Where not to drive on the weekend.
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Kate
Ceremonies and lighting will mark the 35th anniversary of the killings at the Polytechnique on Friday.
Rima Elkouri talks to the man who was interim director of the school at the time.
Videos from Radio-Canada and a long opinion piece in the Globe and Mail.
It’s noticeable how in recent years the massacre has come to be described as a feminicide or as an anti‑feminist act. It was only in 2019 that the plaque on the memorial park in Côte‑des‑Neiges was reworded to acknowledge this. For a long time after 1989 there was a strong tendency not to want to look straight at the killer’s motives – to kill feminists and keep women out of the public sphere – and acknowledge that they had been made as explicit as they could be.
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Kate
Shelter spaces are in such short supply that some are being offered a chair for the night because there are no beds.
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Kate
Radio-Canada has a short list and map of the most dangerous intersections topped with the corner of Crémazie and St‑Michel.
Joey 17:17 on 2024-12-06 Permalink
PMJT turned down the offer to go to Paris so he could be in Montreal for December 6. Is the laicite premier skipping the commemoration to go to Mass?
Kate 20:08 on 2024-12-06 Permalink
Yes, but I suspect his motive is more to hobnob with the bigshots in an attempt to put Quebec on the same level as France and other nation‑states in observers’ minds.
Joey 21:20 on 2024-12-06 Permalink
La Presse says Legault attended the commemoration. I guess JT just didn’t want to go to Paris.
walkerp 21:12 on 2024-12-07 Permalink
That’s weird because weren’t both of them at the polytechnique ceremony?
Kate 22:24 on 2024-12-07 Permalink
That’s what the media said – Legault is mentioned in this La Presse piece on the ceremony. He must have jetted off immediately afterwards.