Relatives of people damaged during the 1950s in experimental brainwashing treatments at the Allan Memorial are still fighting for reparations, but the federal government and the MUHC – the present‑day incarnation of the hospital – say the lawsuit should be dismissed.
Updates from February, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Like the potholes of early spring, news stories that the Canadiens aren’t doing so well but have some great prospects for the future come around the news cycle like clockwork.
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Kate
A couple driving along Notre‑Dame East near the bridge was shocked when an SQ agent in a vehicle in front of them pointed his assault rifle at them in traffic.
Nicholas
You only point a gun at a person when you are willing, under certain circumstances, willing to shoot them. Even for transporting a mafia boss, a cellphone video is not in and of itself a threat, though it could (even if unlikely) indicate one is coming. Seems like a massive overreaction.
Also just wanted to note that they drove into downtown Montrea from Lanaudière to see an orthodontist. Sure there are specialists, but this kind of thing creates a lot of traffic, and makes it harder for those living in the city to access medical care.
Blork
Uh… that’s insane. And BTW, if you watch the video you see that TWO of the officers leaned out their windows with their rifles; only one is seen to point it, but still.
WTactualF is that about? Not only is it a danger to the people in the car shooting the video, it’s a danger to everyone on that road and in the area. In TV shows we often see shootout scenes from moving vehicles and nobody ever wonders “where do those bullets go? In particular, the ones that miss the target?” I’ll tell you where they go: into the sides of other cars, into houses, through baby prams, into bystanders, etc. etc etc. Dumb-ass “thriller” shows and movies never worry about that, but in real life cops are trained to worry about it, which is why they will only return fire in the most dire of situations.
This was not a dire situation. Of course they didn’t actually shoot, but simply leaning out of a moving vehicle with your rifle in hand is risky. No doubt the “safety” was on, but can we be sure? Shit happens. Accidental discharges happen.
FFS, they better have a good explanation for this. (I’m betting not.)
walkerp
WTactualF indeed. And why are they dressed in military fatigues. Civil rights aside, just the utter lack of professionalism and gun handling skills is shameful. These guys need to be fired. An embarrassment.
Joey
Has anyone ever heard an anecdote about the SQ that painted them in a good light?
Ian
People don’t jsut say ACAB becasue it makes cool knuckle tattoos.
Tim S.
Just to think through the other side, I’m sure that anyone transporting prisoners in Quebec probably remembers that Mom Boucher ordered hits on prison guards, two of whom were transporting prisoners (https://www.montrealgazette.com/news/article219874.html). Just because phones on cameras have become normalized doesn’t mean it’s OK to film whatever the hell you want.
Ian
Ther’s no law against filming cops, though.
Tim S.
And they weren’t arrested.
Ian
Oh well I guess it’s all ok then, who knows what people are making such a fuss about.
roberto
What happened before they started recording? Is spontanious recording normalized now?
I do hope they throw the book at these SQ goons. ACAB.
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Kate
If a new pandemic arises, we should be better prepared this time, with firms capable of providing masks and vaccines nearby. We won’t be able to rely on the United States for healthcare material.
MarcG
This is great, but masks and vaccines don’t do any good unless people use them. We need to be throwing big resources into public health education as well.
Those Medicom’s duckbill N95s are very comfortable.
Chris
>masks and vaccines don’t do any good unless people use them
And usage was quite high in the last pandemic.
maggie rose
I’ve been using Canada Strong N95 masks for a long time. Their breatheTeq ones are very comfy, and truly easier to breathe in than other similar ones. Also come in a nice lavender and a grey, both of which are a nice change from glaring white or black. S, M, L sizes. 10 bucks for Canada Post delivery seems worth it, fitting neatly in my mailbox. Often have sales. Extremely fast delivery too. Their charitable work also makes them very attractive. Their website is even fun to browse, very useful.
MarcG
- Only 81% of Canadians received any doses a Covid-19 vaccine as of June 2024
- There was never effective masking practiced in Montreal. I recall a brief period where there was a trend towards normalization in 2021 but it was killed with the push to accept infection in spring 2022.
- It’s well understood that trust in science has been eroded by disinformation over the past few years and we are in a worse position to respond effectively compared to 2020/21.
- We know that Covid and other viruses are airborne, and that surgical masks provide insufficient protection, yet we continue to promote them as effective PPE.
Chris
“only 81%”?! That’s “quite high” in my books. I struggle to think of other things with such a high level of agreement / conformance.
MarcG
- Indeed, it’s not easy to find something to compare a world-changing event like the pandemic to, so you need to consider the context. Over 3.3 million people had been killed by the virus when the vaccine was made available to us. There were so many dead in NYC that they had refrigerated trailers converted into makeshift morgues and they dug mass graves on Hart Island. Someone offers you a free vaccine that’s proven to reduce your risk of harm and you say no thanks? I’d say “only 81%”.
- On the same Health Canada page I linked above you can see that ~3.9% of Canadians are Covid-vaccinated according to recommendations.
- 95.3% of Canadians wear seatbelts.
- In order to establish herd immunity to measles we need 95% vaccine coverage.
Kevin
MarcG
I could be wrong, but I think the current Covid vaccine recommendations only apply to a small segment of the population (mostly 65 and over, plus some vulnerable populations) and a couple of provinces aren’t reporting date (Quebec, Alberta). By putting in an end date of June 30, and a recommendation that some people get a dose every six months, people won’t be covered by the fall campaign that provinces seem to think is sufficient.MarcG
I guess it depends whose recommendations they’re referring to. In the spring of 2024, the feds recommended the XBB.1.5 vaccine for everybody, whereas Quebec and Ontario’s spring campaigns only mentioned specific groups. So it could be that the very low number is because of that discrepancy, in which case it’s not particularly useful for the purpose of discussing people’s willingness to follow public health advice.
MarcG
Looking at the other stat for “people who have received an XBB.1.5 vaccine”, Ontario recommended this for everyone in the fall of 2023 and only 14.9% got it. Maybe not as dismal as 3.9% but still pretty crap.
Tim S.
“There was never effective masking practiced in Montreal.”
I was here. I don’t think that’s true. I would agree that the quality of masks left something to be desired, but during the height of the pandemic I very rarely saw anyone without one.
Joey
@Tim S. agreed – didn’t Mayor Plante even announce a mask mandate before the province did? Like summer 2020? My hazy memory of the first phase of COVID (i.e., the pre-vaccine period) was that there was tremendous solidarity and an overwhelming willingness on the part of the population to make big sacrifices to stay alive – checking online, I see that Legault’s approval rating was above 60% until fall 2021, and only really dropped starting in summer 2022. By and large, Quebecers were on board.
Generally speaking, my memory is that we were all terrified of getting sick and making others ill. Until a vaccine came around, we were willing to deal with closed schools, queuing to get into stores, masking, etc. Wasn’t Xmas 2020 the one where we were told not to gather? The curfew that followed was perhaps the beginning of the end of that solidarity phase, but I think deep down we were much more willing to accept whatever measures were necessary until the vaccines arrived. Interesting to ponder the fact that the vaccine skepticism/ignorance and misinformation era really only got going once the danger had broadly passed (even if ‘acute’ COVID danger has remained for lots of folks). A lotta tough talk now that we’re basically out of the foxhole.
MarcG
This Léger survey published June 29, 2020 shows 55% of Quebecers wearing masks at the grocery store, 53% at the pharmacy, and 18% on public transit (with slightly higher numbers for urban areas). This was after 2 months of soft encouragement by government officials. In July they started making them mandatory.
I don’t mean to shit on people, my point was simply that we never internalized masking as a society. We used the same old paternal carrot (get “back to normal” sooner) and stick (arrest/ticket) approach, with a small dash of “save grandma/do the right thing”. We didn’t develop a true understanding of what it means for a virus to be airborne and how masks work to block them. So we got a bunch of people wearing surgical masks under their noses and chins and a group of idiots hijacking the conversation and making it about “freedom”. If a new Covid variant or other virus showed up tomorrow and started wrecking us, I’m not sure having a stockpile of masks is going to do us much good without a serious educational campaign behind it. We’ll probably have to resort to lockdowns and mandates again which would be tragically stupid.
CE
From the beginning of the pandemic to whenever the mask mandate started, we were getting so many mixed messages around masks that nobody really knew what to do. One day we would be told they don’t do much, the next that they’re effective. Do homemade masks work? Who knows! Surgical masks? Yes, no, yes, no. We were also told not to use PPE because there was a shortage in hospitals. It was a confusing time. After the mask mandate came into effect, almost everyone was wearing them indoors; it would be very rare to be in a grocery store, office, pharmacy, etc and not see people wearing masks. Even my boss at the time who was a conspiracy theorist anti-vaxxer still made us wear masks at all times while inside the building (and even safety glasses for about a week when we were being told we could get Covid in our eyes). Quebec kept the mandate much longer than almost all other jurisdictions and Quebecers overwhelmingly wore masks when they were required to do so and mostly stoped when they were no longer required.
I suspect we won’t get the same buy-in when the next pandemic rolls around and expecting people to wear them without requiring them is a waste of time because it’s obviously not happening.
Kate
Unless the next pandemic is more horrible and lurid. I recall Bill Binns saying something like “people would be complying if Covid meant you were shitting yourself and passing out in public” and I suspect he was right about that.
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Kate
Some snow gets piled up, and some gets flushed down a snow chute, eventually – after some sanitizing – into the river.
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Kate
Even though many streets are still piled with snow, parking tickets have been handed out. The city’s lightening up on some parking rules but tickets are still being issued. TVA got an influencer to say he doesn’t like it.
Joey
The fact that 85% of tickets involved cars being towed suggests that the city really is indeed focusing on getting cars out of the way of snow removal operations – sucks for drivers, but too bad so sad. Park your car indoors at Marche Centrale or the Big O or god knows wherever for a few days, or consider the ticket the cost of doing business and move on with your life. Before the diagonal parking story was a CTV piece it was a big thread on a FB group.
roberto
They’re clearly some tolerance about the parking rule “not more than 30 centimetres from the near edge of the roadway”. Somtimes the snow bank takes up much more of the roadway. It’s obviously tolerated when you’re not impeding into the passage of vehicles on the roadway. I’d assume the diagonal parking would be treated with the same tolerance. Parking diagonally can make it easier to get in/out of those treacherous snow bank spots.
Joey
I think in this particular situation the problem was that Hutchison is a two-way street – the big snowbanks combined with the cars on both sides of the street being parked diagonally (actually closer to 90 degrees than 45, based on the photos) meant that there was no way that anywhere close to two lanes of traffic remained open.
roberto
“we’re not blocking the way” . But in this case many actually are. There’s nothing exceptional about a snow storm in Montreal.
In the case of Hutchison, as a two-way street, using one of those lanes for “parking” converting it to a one way street is completely unnaceptable. It’s not even about “diagonal parking” anymore. Left parked cars are facing the wrong way & in the MIDDLE of the street!
jeather
As far as I saw, of a lot of diagonally parked cars, as long as there was a proper lane per direction, they let it all go — St-Antoine lost an entire lane that way until it was cleared, but it did have one slightly extra wide lane left. They ticketed cars that actually blocked traffic.
Kevin
Roberto
Philippe Sabourin told drivers repeatedly this winter to park at least 30 cm from the curb so sidewalk plows could pass.Ian
I live on Hutchison, and yeah it was down to one lane more or less after Sunday… with or without parked cars. The plows were only making a single lane. TBH I was surprised the city didn’t make it one way until it was cleared, i even saw cop cars block each other once, trying to pass in a narrow spot at a bulb out. A few xars were parked badly but most of us dug in as best we could . Most of the problem was simply snow nit being pushed aside. The sidewalks never got cleared either.
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Kate
Ukrainians and allies marked the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of their homeland with a march downtown on Sunday.
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Kate
Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital closed half its emergency stretchers on the weekend because of staff shortages.
Meanwhile, Quebec government budget tightening means that necessary work on school buildings is being put off indefinitely – i.e., making it some other administration’s problem in the future.
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Kate
Garbage pickup is to resume Monday. This piece says nothing about recycling or composting pickup.
Update: La Presse mentions all three pickups are resuming.
Joey
I was going to chalk this up to CTV being, once again, fuzzy in their reporting, but I noticed that CBC and the Gazette are similarly vague. The city website only says “Waste collections will resume during the week of February 24.” I’m sure they use the term waste to include garbage, material for recycling and compost, but some prevision wouldn’t hurt. There was a a time, not too long ago, when even – especially? – vaguely written small-ticket items like this would inspire journalists to pick up the phone and seek clarification; now it’s de rigueur to just reproduce whatever social media post has gone out and pass it off as journalism.
Kate
People will just have to decide what makes sense. There’s still a ridge of snow as tall as I am between my sidewalk and the street. I normally put out my composting bin Monday night, but unless a miracle happens meantime, I’d have to climb the ridge and perch it on top. So, I think I’ll wait another week.
walkerp
I have a feeling the mandate is just pick up as much stuff as possible to get it off the streets so snow clearing can continue, which is why the city is vague about it. Though point taken about some journalist calling and getting a clarification.
I imagine they are feeling the pressure as we are going above zero for the next couple days then back into the deep-freeze. Not going to be fun if the sidewalk goat trails are all turned into ice!
Nicholas
On the city website they mention food waste and green waste as terms, and if you click on Français they say “Les collectes reprennent cette semaine” in plural and refer to collectes for everything on that page, including recycling and compost. So I think it’s just a translation that causes some confusion because a bunch of people up and down the chain sort of breezed through writing, and transcribing, this until Kate thought to ask the question.
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Kate
CBC has a piece on homelessness in the metro, as consultations continue over what can be done.
jeather
I was using the metro a lot this weekend and I was surprised at how little I saw of it, actually. All the news made me expect a lot more.
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Kate
A few glimpses of the possibilities in winter pedestrianization here and there around town.
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Kate
The REM is issuing a mea culpa and making its trains free this week but only during rush hour as defined in the story. They won’t be running at any other time for the moment.
Here’s the big question: will replacement buses also be free? We’ll be having some mixed weather this week.
(I still haven’t taken the REM nor gone over the “new” bridge in any vehicle.)
Chris
I visited a friend in Brosard once, and we decided to take the REM home, just to try it. Got there and it was shut down. Nearby employee didn’t know where busses were. Walked a fair bit to find them, waited forever, and the driver said the bus took a long winding route to the metro. We called a taxi. Never tried again since.
Nicholas
Article you linked says the buses will be free. And I’m getting to the point that jail would be too kind a punishment.
Kate
Ah, I missed that, Nicholas. Thanks.
GC
So, now it will (maybe) run ten hours per day, rather than the advertised twenty? This also feels like a bit of a middle finger to anyone with a monthly pass. Those people presumably ride it the most frequently, or they wouldn’t have bought a pass…and thus are the most often inconvenienced when it breaks down.
Joey
Isn’t the big question whether the REM is a lemon? I understand they are stretched as they prep to launch the next phase, but I don’t think we are obliged to give the powers that be the benefit of the doubt.
GC
Well, we had a preview from Ottawa using similar tech and it wasn’t a good outlook. I believe the models Alstom built for Montreal are different than the ones used in Ottawa…but are the actual trains the problem? Every time I see mention of an outage, it’s usually the switches that are blamed.
Kevin
I took the REM for the first time this past Monday.
It was somewhat prophetic that the area immediately around the station was shoveled, but nothing was shoveled between the station and the nearest sidewalk.I had to take the bus home, but the attendants were nice enough to tell me where to find the best bus station.
Blork
Am I a bad person if I refer to it as the REM(on)?
Nicholas
Kate, it is possible the article was updated between when you first posted and when I saw it, maybe even in response to your question.
Ian
Oh don’t worry, I hear the REM isn’t any worse for downtime than the old train lines were. it’s all just in our heads. /s
dwgs
Rarely
Ever
Moves
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Kate
Aref Salem asks on TVA why, if Quebec City can do its snow removal in six days, Montreal can’t do the same. Maybe someone can draw the man a diagram.
CBC has a little video on why so many people didn’t know there would be no city pickups last week, leading to piles of recycling and garbage here and there.
A lot of people don’t pay attention to local news, is why. The city didn’t have time to do any PR, such as distribute notices, as some in the video seem to think they should’ve.
(My neighbourhood’s been really good about this – I haven’t seen anything like the messes shown in the video.)
MarcG
I got an email from the city about, but I think I explicitly signed up for notices about goings-on in my borough sometime ago.
Kevin
The city took its always-stated priorities of schools, hospitals, metro stations and thoroughfares and threw that in the bin.
Kate
After the first of our two big storms, the city said they’d do a quick cleanup, prioritizing streets with hospitals and fire stations but not mentioning schools or metro stations.
They’ve done an OK but not perfect job of clearing the sidewalks beside bus stops, as I noticed Saturday as I did some errands around town. Only once did I have to leap from the bus back door into a snowpile. Otherwise it was fine.
Nicholas
Last I was in Quebec they had a neighbourhood clearing method: every single street in an entire neighbourhood would ban parked cars for one overnight. I asked someone what do you do if you don’t have a private parking spot, and they said, well, just drive to another neighbourhood and walk home, then walk back the next morning. Yesterday I asked my neighbour, who used to work for the city in snow clearing, why they don’t just do both sides of the street at once, and alternate streets, rather than one side on each street. She said people would complain about having to park one block over.
Tim S.
I found the fact that they had to prioritize clearing routes for the dump trucks to get around fascinating. The kind of decision-making that goes into figuring those logistics would make for a great documentary (for me – not sure about the general appeal).
Kate: was not thrilled to see that the STM crew cleared the bus stop snow right onto the sidewalk in front of my kid’s school. Everyone’s got their priorities!
Joey
IIRC the city only announced the collection postponement on Monday – most folks in my area put their garbage out Sunday evening.
BTW they cleared our street today. One side had no parking signs, and they did both the street/parking lane and the sidewalk at once.
Nicholas
Joey, yes, they did some pickup on Monday until they realized the trucks couldn’t get through on many streets and that the bags ended up under snowbanks. So the Sunday night, absolutely, people were right to put things outside. The city could have done a better job alerting people, for sure. Maybe a cell phone alert, that would be one of the more useful ones ever done. (Probably not allowed, I know.)
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Kate
Don’t let your kids make snow forts, make them wear a helmet when sledding – actually, it’s safest to keep them inside, nice and quiet, with an ipad.
Nicholas
When I was a kid no one wore a helmet while skiing, except one person who liked to do tricks and go very fast. Last time I went skiing all the kids were wearing helmets. Not sure if it’s because of Natasha Richardson, but it’s night and day. Sledding seems much less dangerous, of course. Maybe it is a good idea to have at least one human, even a kid, outside the tunnels who can call for help, but that’s tough.
CE
I just went sledding with my friend and his 10 year old and nobody was wearing a helmet. It didn’t even occur to me that we should. While skiing and snowboarding, it’s probably not too bad of an idea.
Anton
Too much time on an ipad is dangerous for kids. Just sayin’.
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Kate
Friday, a La Presse journalist experienced getting downtown from Brossard on the REM. Or rather, not. Karim Benessaieh makes it clear that when the REM is “au ralenti” this is a euphemism for “not running at all” then gives us the navette bus trip (95% full, 26 minutes). He also shows how the lack of clear communication to passengers is a chronic problem.
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