A CSN-backed union protest against Amazon was held Saturday afternoon along Mont‑Royal.
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Kate
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Kate
CTV has a brief profile of a store topically selling only local products. Toutes les choses parfaites is in Rosemont’s Angus neighbourhood.
Not mentioned in the article is Loco, which has four branches around town now, and also sells mostly local goods.
DeWolf
It’s a cute shop although wouldn’t go out of my way to visit it in particular. Luckily there are enough good things around Angus to make it worth a trip. There’s a good yarn store if you’re a knitter, the excellent Kujira café and La Chope Angus brewpub that makes some nice English-style beers.
The worst thing about Angus is the poor public transit. It’s very accessible by bike in the summer but in the winter it’s a bit of a pain and I usually end up going by Communauto. If only the Pink Line had been built…
Robert H
It’s wonderful to see that local shops selling mostly locally made goods can be a viable business model. I hope they represent the leading edge of what could become a more enduring trend. The potential on-going success of such retailers would be a sign of a collective raised consciousness among the public.
@DeWolf, Ah, The Pink Line is a dream. But at this point in my life, even if it ever gets built, I probably won’t live to see its completion, especially considering how long it has taken to extend the Blue Line a few more stations to the east.
Kate
DeWolf, I realize looking at Streetview that I hardly know that area at all, except for the big old shop building facing Rachel. Everything else is so new.
Chris
>I hope they represent the leading edge of what could become a more enduring trend.
That’s exactly the trend Trump wants too. Prefer local = local first = America first.
If you want that trend, globally, it will suck for our exporters, and we are only 41 million people, 0.5% of the world, so consume little domestically.
Kate
Chris, it’s not that we want this trend, it’s that it’s being forced on us.
Chris
Kate, I quoted Robert, he seems to be saying *he* wants that trend. Maybe he will clarify what he means. (Even pre-Trump many have espoused ‘buy local’. It’s hardly a fringe opinion. I’m not saying I’m for/against, I’m saying it would have repercussions if it was the global consensus.)
Robert H
Trump is relying on the demographic weight of the U.S. to successfully scapegoat Canada’s mere 41 million market. He thinks his administration can crack the whip on perceived trade imbalances, but still have unaltered access to Canadian resources and consumers. Encouraging increased local sourcing of goods and local consumption of those goods is a relatively modest response to the scale of what the President seeks to impose. This is not the sort of blinkered parochialism one sees in the States, and there has never been as much reciprocal reservation there about “buying American.” I don’t believe a greater attentiveness, not only in Quebec but across Canada to buying domestically will bring down the wrath of the mighty Trumpers upon stateside trading in Canadian wares. The Canadian and American economies are too intertwined for one party to engineer the consequences to fall on just one side.
Tim S.
It’s only because we live next to the US that we think 41 million people is small.
Kate
41 million people is kind of small when spread over a space as big as ours. A few comparable stats from Wikipedia:
Country Population % of World Population Area km2 U.S.A. 340,110,988 4.2% 9,833,520 France 68,615,000 0.8% 543,941 UK 68,265,209 0.8% 244,376 Italy 58,966,101 0.7% 301,340 South Korea 51,207,874 0.6% 100,363 Iraq 44,414,800 0.5% 438,317 Canada 41,465,298 0.5% 9,984,670 Poland 37,507,000 0.5% 312,696 Peru 34,038,457 0.4% 1,285,216 Ghana 33,007,618 0.4% 240,000 Australia 27,204,800 0.3% 7,688,287 Ian
True, but the vast majority of us live within 100 km of the southern border, so about 889,100 km² – still pretty spread out but yeah, kInd of like how almost everyone in Australia lives around the coast.
Kate
I’m afraid the way you have to think about it is that we’re a market one-tenth the size of the U.S.
Ian
That’s certainly how they look at it. Our main economic clout isn’t retail, though, it’s the integrated supply chain. But really, there are other areas we could really cause havoc – like patents.
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Kate
The Gazette is doing a four-part series on the city’s garbage problem – starting with how we live and how we ship trash off‑island and put it out of our minds, even though that’s a situation that can’t continue indefinitely.
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Kate
The city is facing a slew of lawsuits over damage from the huge water main break last August.
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Kate
In past years, it’s mostly been federal or provincial elections that have caused local news to briefly dry up. As a local news blogger I’ve always found something to post about nonetheless, even when the focus of the media was mostly elsewhere.
But recent events and threats to our sovereignty and our social values are bigger than that. We all feel a cold wind, knowing that our lives and livelihoods are hanging in the balance of someone who can flick them away at a whim.
We’re lucky not to have felt this before.
I’m mostly mentioning this because I’m finding so little to blog about, Saturday morning. Our normal municipal and local concerns are withering away in the collective blast of uncertainty and fear that we’re all feeling.
Hang in there, mes amis. This too will pass. I’ll still find some things to blog about.
Ian
When I was a kid, I complained to my Dad that I had stubbed my toe and it was sore. He stamped on my other foot and said “See? Now you don’t notice your toe”.
This feels like that 😀
Kate
That’s a hell of a way to treat a kid.
Ian
Well, I would never do it to MY kids.
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Kate
Statistics show that every month, 30,000 patients fail to show up for medical appointments in Quebec, and don’t call in either. The doctor who wrote the report says there should be an app to make cancelling and rescheduling simpler; anyone who’s had to negotiate a phone tree then wait on hold to make or break an appointment would have to agree.
Another report says half of all ER visits are for non‑urgent matters.
MarcG
There was mention on this blog not too long ago about a new triage system in ERs where they determine if your case is a true emergency or not, and if not they found you an appointment with a clinic in the coming days. I’ve had to visted the Royal Vic ER twice in the past couple of months and didn’t observe this taking place, so maybe that was a trial run at a particular hospital, but it sure sounds like a good idea.
Kevin
Many doctors have told me that the no-shows do it frequently, sometimes multiple times per week.
Add in the inept receptionists that get assigned to doctors, and it’s not surprising public healthcare has so many issues.
JaneyB
Briefly worked as an ER clerk in Toronto about 20 years ago. It’s more like 2/3 of ER visits should be seen in walk-in clinics. Many – many – people come in with a sore foot or something that has been a problem… for months. It’s just insane. They wait more than 12 hours to be seen and overcrowd ER waiting rooms giving an air of crisis.
Issues are: not enough GPs in the system, no true walk-in clinics here in Mtl – and elsewhere not enough clinics after hours, and importantly, people everywhere think ER docs simply know more than GPs.
Kate
people everywhere think ER docs simply know more than GPs.
That’s interesting, because comparing them wouldn’t have occurred to me. I’d expect ER docs to be more focused on trauma medicine, given that they have to keep people alive who’ve been badly injured or faced with sudden unexpected medical crises, but I wouldn’t expect them to have the wider diagnostic skills of someone who’s been practising general medicine for awhile. But I wouldn’t think this means either kind of doc knows more than the other.
Mozai
I’d love to visit a walk-in clinic instead of going to the ER, but I (and my family doctor) get in trouble if I don’t go to one specific walk-in clinic that is only open during daylight hours five days a week. And sometimes I show up and they say “we’re full, come back tomorrow.”
jeather
Just to note that it is 2% of all appointments that are missed. And I get appointment notifications by mail, and there’s no obvious way to change the assigned time and date.
Kate
True, that 2% figure puts the issue into context.
Kevin
ER docs *are* family doctors.
Uatu
Not to worry! Sante Quebec has a solution! It’s called Biron clinics and you can get an appointment… it’ll just cost ya!
@kevin “Add in the inept receptionists …” Yep. All the good ones with experience have taken early retirement. They’ve had enough of austerity cuts and verbal abuse from just about everyone so can’t blame them.Chris
>ER docs *are* family doctors.
Yes, strange that is the not widely known. Something like 95% are family docs, especially in rural areas. There’s also a 5 year specialty program for just ER, but that’s only about 5% of ER docs.
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