Updates from December, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 19:33 on 2024-12-18 Permalink | Reply  

    Montrealers Laurent Duvernay-Tardif and Joe Schwarcz were given the Order of Canada in a raft of honours on Wednesday, although CTV’s headline “Quebec doctors appointed…” is possibly misleading. Duvernay‑Tardif is a doctor; Schwarcz is a PhD, so his title might be “doctor” but he isn’t a medical doctor.

    It’s a shortcoming in our language that we use the same title for medical doctors, dentists, veterinarians and academic PhDs. Could we not have diversified this a bit?

     
    • Tim S. 21:07 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

      Physician is the word you’re looking for.

    • Kate 21:17 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

      Yes, but that word doesn’t put the word doctor out of play. We could also use “scholar” for PhDs.

      My main point was that while it’s correct to call such a PhD holder “Dr Schwarcz” it’s misleading simply to call him a doctor.

    • H. John 22:10 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

      Maybe they could correct the headline with a comma:
      “Quebec doctors, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, Joe Schwarcz appointed to Order of Canada”
      since the third and fourth persons listed are both physicians and scholars:

      https://x.com/RIMUHC1/status/1869452132719747486

    • Tim S. 23:10 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

      My point is that physicians are a sub category of people who have doctorates. As far as I can tell this is a North American anglo thing, I think in the UK physician is widely used and Dr for academics is much more common. Anyone know how this works in European languages?

    • Tim S. 23:12 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

      Or any other language, I should say.

    • JP 23:29 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

      I think in the UK, they also like to use Prof. quite a bit. I work in continuing medical education and when we have speakers from Europe, they often prefer to have Prof in front rather than Dr. (even physicians if I recall correctly…)

    • thomas 23:57 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

      Germany takes such distinctions in titles seriously. A professor with a PhD is addressed as “Frau/Herr Prof. Dr.”. “Dr.” alone is reserved for medical doctors. I recall an American professor (non medical) on sabbatical in Germany who was actually arrested for using ‘Dr.’ on his American business card.

    • Ian 08:56 on 2024-12-19 Permalink

      I used to work with a bunch of Russian chemsits at a software company, who all had PhDs in chemistry. One in particular insisted on being called Dr Pavel and wanted it on his business card – I had to explain to him that in Canada only medical doctors get to be Dr. as a title, he escalated it to the president of the company (also a PhD but also a professor at the University of Moscow) who called him stupid and kicked him out of his office haha

    • Tim S. 10:06 on 2024-12-19 Permalink

      So much for that theory. I do feel for Pavel though.

    • Kate 10:21 on 2024-12-19 Permalink

      Within the academic world, people do understand “Dr.” as meaning a PhD. But they still don’t get referred to as a doctor. Outside the academic world I think most people would take “Dr.” to mean a physician.

    • TeeOwe 12:17 on 2024-12-19 Permalink

      I was advised to not use Dr (non-medical PhD) on airline bookings to avoid the hassle and embarrassment of being called on if a passenger needed medical attention. But to contradict Ian and JP, in my academic world, people are usually referred to as Dr, as a default, until one knows more about their status – Professor is reserved for those who achieved that promotion. This is also the case in Canada (in my academic world anyway). I agree that it’s confusing.

    • jeather 12:20 on 2024-12-19 Permalink

      Though in fact surgeons (but not other medical doctors) in the UK generally do not use the title Dr and go by Ms/Miss/Mrs/Mr. No idea what dentists or vets do.

      Similarly to Germany, you can get in trouble for using a professional designation you are not entitled to here — chemist and biochemist are ones that I read something about recently.

    • JaneyB 14:25 on 2024-12-20 Permalink

      @Ian. No, in Canada, Dr is reserved for PhDs not physicians. Calling medical, dental, or law degrees doctorates is a practise no more than 10 years old and is usually accompanied by the words ‘professional doctorate’. It takes much less time to do than a PhD. Also, in medicine there are plenty of MD-PhDs so the distinction is familiar to all in that world.

      I normally use Dr when I’m teaching because I don’t have a permanent appointment in the university – that would allow me to use ‘Prof’. However, students don’t understand this so they call me Prof anyway. In non-academic life, I’ll use Dr but never where there could be medical issues since the public doesn’t understand the technicalities of this stuff. Medical doctors are and call themselves physicians (though are always paged Dr. Smith). Basically, ‘Doctor’ is an honorific to many people and people want to show respect for that very important profession. Medical doctors will usually have cards etc that say John Smith MD. Life is messy.

    • Daisy 16:22 on 2024-12-20 Permalink

    • Daisy 16:26 on 2024-12-20 Permalink

    • Kate 11:11 on 2024-12-21 Permalink

      Thank you, Daisy.

  • Kate 19:28 on 2024-12-18 Permalink | Reply  

    Michel Leblanc, who’s headed the city’s Chamber of Commerce for 16 years, is vacating the post as of spring. CBC radio floated the idea he might try for the mayoralty but in this item he’s said to have more of an interest in Quebec politics.

    I have very little idea what Leblanc’s political views are or what he’s done for the city.

     
    • Nicholas 19:29 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

      Per your last line, that makes him very well suited for politics.

  • Kate 17:33 on 2024-12-18 Permalink | Reply  

    The Queen Elizabeth Hotel has been ordered by the Tribunal administratif du travail to stop obstructing the union that represents its workers.

     
    • Kate 16:43 on 2024-12-18 Permalink | Reply  

      Well in advance, some notes on what’s open and closed over Christmas.

       
      • Kate 10:46 on 2024-12-18 Permalink | Reply  

        An incendiary device was thrown at Beth Tikvah synagogue in DDO early Wednesday. Damage was limited, and there have been no arrests.

         
        • Ephraim 13:41 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          “The Canadian Muslim Forum also condemned the attack and expressed deep concern”

          FInally, now, the same should be done by the Imams

          There ar 4.3X as many Muslims in Montreal compared to Jews… so using the data provided by the SPVM in reported crime: About 35K vs 155K…

          “According to preliminary and subject to change data provided by the SPVM, 237 hate crimes (against the person or property) and hate incidents were reportedly targeting the Jewish community from October 7, 2023 to December 11, 2024. In addition, 81 were reportedly perpetrated against the Arab-Muslim community during this period.”

          That’s 237/35=6.77 hate crimes per thousand Jews and 81/155=0.52 hate crimes per thousand Muslims. So, someone want to tell me that we don’t have an anti-semitism problem in Montreal? Wonder why Jews don’t feel safe in Montreal? Property (reported) crime in Montreal is 19.54 per 1000. I don’t have access to the raw data, but I can pretty much guess that it’s statistically significant.

        • Ian 14:46 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          Not to disagree with the crux of your argument but rather to question your methodology… I thought you were the one who said we shouldn’t believe the statistics for “reported crime”. What if, an just hear me out, what if Muslims don’t report these crimes as much because they think the police don’t care about them?

          Of course nobody should be firebombing anything let alone synagogues and yeah, it’s pretty safe to say a synagogue getting firebombed is blatant antisemitism. That said, I feel really uncomfortable with anyone making “all Jews” or “all Muslims” arguments…

        • jeather 15:15 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          I’d assume that hate crimes against property are more likely to be reported (can’t hide a firebomb) — and I wonder what the ratio changes to when we include only those.

        • bob 15:24 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          Muslims haven’t reported mosques being shot at or firebombed?

        • jeather 15:36 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          I assume they have, I just don’t have the statistics. My guess, based on not much, is that the rate of hate crimes that aren’t reported are a lot lower when they come with property damage, while I agree with Ian that I imagine a lot of minorities, and especially Muslims, would not bother to report ones that are just words, so the number of property-related hate crimes is probably a better proxy.

          (Also, antisemitism and islamophobia show up in very different ways, and there’s no need to pit them against each other — they can, and do, both exist in the same place.)

        • Joey 16:15 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          So comments are back on this topic?

        • Ephraim 16:19 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          @Ian – Not the kind of unreported crime. Rape and especially rape of men… unreported and unreported to the extreme. Unreported crime tends to be crimes where people or companies see no point or want to hide the data, especially when shame or embarrassment is involved and/or people imagine that the police are totally incapable of actually pursuing or doing anything about. For example, banks don’t want embezzlement to be reported because they don’t want the public to know that someone got away with it. And people don’t report bike thefts, because they imagine that police are completely incapable of actually finding their bike.

          The opposite also is true, police don’t want drug crimes reported because they can’t really do anything about it and it just makes them look bad. And to make it look like they do, they inflate the value of what they do manage to catch by valuing it at the cut value on the street, rather than the wholesale value, which is where they are trying to stop it, because arresting 600 people per day in the city would just clog up the system. And prostitution, where you likely won’t get a conviction, it’s really not very illegal (solicitation is) and is a crime that should be regulated, rather than illegal, because any time where apprehension is particular hard, it’s easier to tax and regulate.

          But attacks on a building… big news. And I will make a bet that the number of letters, emails and other threats is MUCH higher. We should be more evolved than blood libel by now, no? And yet the new “Woke” seems to somehow embrace it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-woke-anti-semitism-11621881999

        • AMF 16:46 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          This is the second time this synagogue has been firebombed. There is a school inside. Other synagogues have also been firebombed, and Jewish schools have been shot at–so many times I’ve lost count–7? 8? A dramatic increase in antisemitism, and normalized and justified so much more than I ever would have imagined possible.

        • Kate 17:10 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          Joey, comments are on because this is a local incident. I’ve only turned comments off a few times when the topic is more specifically about happenings in the Middle East, because I don’t think there’s any way we can do or say anything new or anything helpful about all that, on a blog about Montreal.

        • jeather 17:40 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          That’s why I think that crimes against property are going to have the highest relevance — you might not bother with letters or other threats because you think (probably correctly) that the police will do nothing. But your insurance probably requires that you report crimes against property.

        • Ephraim 19:44 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          @jeather – That’s why I think that banks and other businesses shouldn’t be allowed to write/off credit card theft without having an actual police report. If we force them to repot it, we might realize that it’s in the best interest of society, shareholders and owners to do something about it… rather than simply hide it, statistically. They “estimate” it at $800M. But looking at BMO (just as one of the Big 5/Big 6), the word “FRAUD” appears 24 time in their annual report. And none of those are in their balance sheet. It’s hidden under “impaired loans” and if you look hard and find it, you find $366M in provision for credit card losses. And the whole CC portfolio is 12.294B. So about 3% of the total. But if just BMO is $366M, and by estimates, they are 12% of the market, so calculating… that’s over $3B in losses to credit card fraud versus telling the public it’s just $800M.

      • Kate 10:44 on 2024-12-18 Permalink | Reply  

        Le Devoir has a piece about the Mount Royal cross at a hundred years old, but this piece turns out to be more about a real estate developer who’s angry because he couldn’t build a massive tower that would be taller.

         
        • Ian 13:05 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          Lucky for him we’re a secular province.

      • Kate 10:26 on 2024-12-18 Permalink | Reply  

        Apartment vacancies are rising in Montreal but, contrarily to market theory, rents are not falling.

         
        • bob 15:25 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          That theory is for a free market, not for a corrupt one.

        • Blork 16:21 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          Doesn’t it take a while for those ripple effects to be felt? It’s not like landlords will just lower people’s rent in the middle of the lease just because the Market Fairy has sent a memo about supply. It takes time. (Also, obviously there are many other factors; just “supply and demand” is a bit over-simplified.)

        • Blork 16:25 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          …although the rent numbers cited in the article seems to be for new construction only. But still, those projects were built based on projections from a few years ago, so it still takes time for new construction rentals to respond to the change in supply.

        • Mozai 19:39 on 2024-12-18 Permalink

          If the goods were commodities, where it doesnt matter if which pound of flax you purchase, and you can easily switch between which pounds of flax you hold, then price and supply would be connected.

        • Mark Côté 14:19 on 2024-12-19 Permalink

          Lots of commercial landlords in NDG (and I imagine elsewhere in Montreal) seem to be content to just let their buildings stay mostly or entirely unoccupied rather than lower rents. It boggles my mind… I just can’t understand how the math works out in their favour when a building is vacant for years.

          (I know this has been brought up here before but I still can’t wrap my head around the reasoning.)

        • Kate 16:54 on 2024-12-19 Permalink

          Maybe they feel that property values will rise anyway, without the hassle of a tenant. That’s to ignore how buildings deteriorate over time if not occupied, mind you.

        • Ian 18:44 on 2024-12-19 Permalink

          Presuming you own multiple properties, a loss on one can be declared against profit on others, lowering your tax bill – so it works out to your advantage in the short term. The main strategy is to do that while waiting for either a good tenant, a good development opportunity, or a good sale price. Of course it’s tricky as if you wait too long the building becomes a liability in a sale scenario, but sometimes it works out in the long run – see the Overdale site which was a bunch of low-rent properties, sat vacant for 30 years, and is now an insanely profitable tower. This is not a short grift.

          I think what confuses a lot of people is that a loss on an empty building can be a good long-term strategy when leveraged against the rest of a profitable real estate portfolio as it represents a tax break, maybe even more than the profit you would get from shitty tenants and having to maintain a second rate property.

        • Joey 10:47 on 2024-12-20 Permalink

          I am reminded of the limits of market-based solutions every time I pass by the abandoned hotel structure at the corner of Laurier and Esplanade. You couldn’t ask for a better location for a boutique hotel or swanky condos. And yet the thing never got built and just sits there. Surely in an overheated real estate market there’s money to be made. I think someone here mentioned some rumblings that changes were afoot, any word on that?

        • Ian 19:10 on 2024-12-21 Permalink

          I noticed that most of the Shiller-Lavy properties on Saint Viateur are now up for sale via Collier’s. Perhaps related?

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