CBC has a good, detailed piece Friday on what police cost overruns are paying for, even as their budget continues to rise.
And yet, the police Équipe de concertation communautaire is set to shut down next month from lack of funding?
Updates from March, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Professors are panicking over artificial intelligence rather than getting ahead of things and teaching students how to use AI tools in their work. It’s the ones who learn to mobilize that kind of technology who will be out ahead. These students will always have technological help within reach. What’s the point of making them memorize things like they’re sitting in a 19th‑century classroom with a slate to write on?
Blork
Kate, I don’t think that’s a very good reading of the immediate situation.
Imagine a history teacher. You know history. You teach history. It’s not your job to teach students how to use AI to write their history papers.
Similarly, you’re a psychology teacher. It’s not your job to teach students how to use AI to write their psychology research papers.
In the meantime, your students are not studying history and psychology; they’re just getting the bots to do the research and write the papers for them. What are you, as a history or psychology teacher supposed to do about that now? Today? This week? Knowing that many of your students are not doing the reading and research because they know they don’t have to?
What if you don’t even understand AI or don’t care about it? You’re a history/psychology teacher, not an AI-usage instructor.
Kate
Then the colleges and universities have to get out ahead of it, because this genie is not going to be crammed back into the bottle.
AI text is useful. It also has to be recast and edited often, to get the information into the right order. I know, because I’ve done some of this when adding footnotes to a book about to be published. (I’ve never used it on the blog.)
I don’t see how you could write an extended essay using AI, not yet. But you can send it to get pieces of information that you need to support your subject. This isn’t something that profs should be trying to lock down, but the schools should instead be mobilizing their information studies people to help both teachers and students use the tools effectively.
jeather
I would love to see what AI would post on this blog, fwiw.
But I remember the concerns when online translations became available, and yet teachers have managed that. Wikipedia, same. Also, frankly, the teachers I have spoken to see two results: one, they edit the AI so much it’s honestly more work than doing it yourself; two, they leave the senences in about “I’m an AI and can’t write your homework”.
Spi
This is the same narrative that was advanced when search engines were a new thing. We don’t need to know everything just how to use Google, but much of education isn’t about simply using tools in order to achieve a result. There’s inherent value behind the process of learning/struggling and developing a deeper understanding of the subject matter rather than just a bunch of loosely associated facts. Most people understand that as it relates to basic/primary education, but it holds true for higher-ed.
Where as search engines are a more effective tool to access information for you to sort/ingest and make use of, AI on its current trajectory it entirely skips that and just outputs results. If you as a person/student don’t have the sufficient classical training/knowledge on a subject to correct/edit the AI and have just become a person asking it a question then what’s your value in the whole process?
Blork
AI is developing 10 times faster than anything colleges and universities can stay ahead of. That’s part of the problem; it’s rolling out so fast, with no checks or balances.
Colleges and universities are notoriously slow on things like this. It would probably take five years to put together a plan for dealing with AI and another two years to create any kind of training for students, and that training would probably not even be for all students.
Remember that the problem isn’t just the writing. College/university papers involve reading and research, and then the writing of a paper about that research. AI lets students skip the research and most of the writing. In other words, they skip 90% of the learning.
Kate
jeather, I hadn’t blogged this piece about a Montreal North bike demonstration of the need for more bike paths in the area, on the weekend.
I asked Chat-GPT to “write a very brief summary of this article in English.” This is the result:
The article discusses the importance of active transportation infrastructure, particularly for cyclists, in promoting safety and encouraging more people to choose biking as a mode of transportation. It emphasizes the need for improved infrastructure, such as protected bike lanes and safer road designs, to create a conducive environment for active transportation and reduce accidents. The article highlights the benefits of investing in cycling infrastructure and calls for increased efforts to prioritize active transportation and enhance road safety measures.
You’ll notice Chat-GPT makes general statements about cycling and infrastructure but overlooks the elements most people here would lead with: where the ride happened and political promises that have been made. So it’s not up to blog standard, not yet.
Blork
One of the key differences (I think) between the resistance to AI and the resistance to other innovations in the past (the internet, Wikipedia, Google, etc.) is that in the past it was mostly people who didn’t know much about the new technologies who were complaining about it.
With AI it’s people who actually know and understand the technology and the sociological implications who are raising the concerns.
The people who resist the resistance tend to be (in my opinion) people who don’t think long-term; they’re just looking at the immediate benefits. Faster letter writing! Faster first drafts of documents! (Etc.)
What they’re not thinking about is the long-term effect of losing a generation of literacy and apprenticeship.
For example, one of the issues with the writer’s strike in the US is the use of AI to create early drafts of scripts, and pitch documents. That benefits the people paying the bills right now. But traditionally that work was done by junior writers as part of their apprenticeship. Junior writers would often work in a writers room for a couple of years before they even touched a script, but in the meantime they were learning from their more experienced colleagues.
But now, AI and other cost-saving changes to writers rooms mean no apprenticeships. What will the result of that be a generation from now if there are hardly any writers that have had the chance to develop their skills and talents by coming up through the system? Plenty of AI bots writing your scripts, but no actual talent there to make them good and original.
Joey
Easy to say that teachers/schools need to ‘get ahead’ of technology that is developing in real-time. The only option I can realistically imagine is to make most/all graded assignments in-person written exams, perhaps using only pen and paper.
@jeather presumably your teacher friends are also considering the possibility that they are being submitted lots of AI-produced work that they can’t detect…
jeather
TBH I am talking to high school teachers, they have pretty good senses of how their students write. I assume this would differ in first year undergrad. But again, turning an AI essay into undetectable AI-ness does require a fair bit of active work (have you ever fixed something translated by a website? ugh).
Kevin
The CEGEP student in my household had classes this semester where they looked at AI text and essays, and they were pretty dismissive of it.
They said that, given the correct prompts, ChatGPT eventually turned out something equivalent to what a high school student would write if they just learned about the topic in the past week. It certainly wasn’t college-level writing and insight.Ephraim
Chat-GPT and the like also make up things when they don’t know. For example, when asked to write about the owners of a particular item, it just grabbed two random (CIS gendered) names as those of the owners and kept on referring to them.
We, as humans can do certain suppositions from standpoints that AI can’t. For example, we can argue an entire dystopian version of the world if France has won on the Plains of Abraham, whereupon Quebec remains a French colony. Then, would it have been sold by Napoleon as part of the Louisiana Purchase? Then, you need to argue it with citations, citations that you won’t be getting from Chat-GPT and arguments with no citations are just conjecture at University level.
But just to show how silly it can be. Here is some of what it said about “Craig Street” in Montreal. “Today, Craig Street is a vibrant and dynamic commercial district that is home to a variety of shops, restaurants, and businesses. From high-end fashion boutiques to cozy cafes and specialty food stores, Craig Street has something to offer for everyone. The street is also conveniently located near many of Montreal’s top tourist attractions, including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, McGill University, and Mount Royal Park.”
Of course, the problem is that Craig street no longer exists and hasn’t since 1976.
How about this article about Mordechai Richler street in Mile-End?
“Mordechai Richler Street is a charming and eclectic street located in the heart of Montreal’s Mile-End neighborhood. Named after the famed Canadian author and Montreal native, Mordechai Richler, the street is a testament to the enduring legacy of this literary icon.”
Garbage in… Garbage out
Meezly
Given how even the ‘godfather of AI’ had recently quit Google to warn humanity of the dangers of AI technology, it may not be so simple just getting ahead of things.
Kate
Ephraim, I asked Chat-GPT about Mordecai Richler Street in the Mile End and it said “I apologize, but I couldn’t find any information regarding a specific “Mordecai Richler street” in the Mile End neighborhood of Montreal. It’s possible that the street you’re referring to may not exist or may have a different name.”
It went on with a couple of paragraphs about Richler.
However! When I asked about Craig Street: “Craig Street, or Rue Craig in French, is a notable street located in the downtown area of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It runs parallel to the west side of Crescent Street, one of Montreal’s renowned entertainment and dining districts. […] Craig Street is known for its vibrant atmosphere and its association with nightlife and entertainment. It is home to a variety of restaurants, bars, clubs, and shops, making it a popular destination for locals and visitors alike, especially during the evenings and weekends. The street offers a diverse range of cuisines, from international flavors to local specialties, catering to different tastes and preferences” – and several more paragraphs of nonsense.
OK, a final sample, I asked about a nonexistent street and a nonexistent church, and it said in both cases that they didn’t exist. Then I asked about Saint-Enfant-Jésus church, and it says:
The Church of Saint-Enfant-Jésus is a historic Catholic church located in the Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie borough of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is situated at 5039 Saint-Dominique Street, near the corner of Laurier Avenue.The church is known for its architectural and historical significance. It was constructed in the Gothic Revival style and was designed by architect Joseph-Égilde-Césaire Daoust. The construction of the church began in 1906 and was completed in 1908.
The exterior of the Church of Saint-Enfant-Jésus features prominent pointed arches, intricate stone detailing, and a tall bell tower with a spire. The interior of the church is adorned with beautiful stained glass windows, elaborate woodwork, and decorative artwork, creating a serene and reverent atmosphere.
So you see, you do get some useful stuff, but you have to use your judgment.
thomas
@kate In case you are interested here are the results from Google Bard (released last week and I find superior to GPT-4 for summarization) using your prompt.
Here is a brief summary of the article:
Dozens of cyclists in Montreal-Nord protested on Saturday to demand new bike lanes. The Association for Safe Mobility in Montreal-Nord has been advocating for better cycling infrastructure in the borough for years. The city has promised to build two REVs (Réseau express vélo) and a major street bike path in Montreal-Nord by 2027, but cyclists are concerned that these projects will not materialize soon enough. Some elected officials attended the protest, but they were unable to provide any concrete timelines for the construction of new bike lanes. Cyclists are hopeful that their continued advocacy will eventually lead to the creation of safer and more accessible cycling infrastructure in Montreal-Nord.
Here are some additional details from the article:
The Association for Safe Mobility in Montreal-Nord has been holding a “protest ride” every year since 2021 to raise awareness about the need for better cycling infrastructure in the borough.
The group has also been meeting with elected officials and city planners to discuss their proposals for new bike lanes.
The city has said that it is committed to building new bike lanes in Montreal-Nord, but it has not provided any specific timelines for the projects.
Cyclists are concerned that the city is not doing enough to address the need for safer and more accessible cycling infrastructure in Montreal-Nord.Note that Bard does not currently handle French so I provided it with a translation from GPT-4.
Blork
What a lot of you are missing is that it’s not about the writing; it’s about the research and the learning.
If ChatGPT can write up a reasonable account of some event or thing, and then you spend a few minutes fixing the language so it doesn’t sound like AI, what you have NOT done is the research and reading on the original topic.
You have not LEARNED anything. You haven’t learned HOW to get information, how to SORT information, how to DISTILL information into an idea and a coherent message, and how to WRITE that message.
Before AI ever existed, those were the goals of assigning papers to students. It was not about just having an end product (the paper). It was about CREATING that end product and all the things you would learn in the process. That’s what’s at risk here.
Tee Owe
Totally agree with Blork – the whole point of being a student is to learn, and to learn how to learn. AI is to learning what GPS is to geography – useful adjuncts maybe but in the absence of core knowledge, potentially dangerous.
Tim S.
The irony is that as technology advances, more students will be asked to work with pen and paper and oral exams might even make a comeback. I’ll just take a moment to pat myself on the back for using the lockdown to teach cursive writing to my eldest.
And as Ephraim and Blork are saying, garbage in garbage out. AI is great at digesting what humans have already created, but I don’t see how it will create new knowledge, except through massive output of the thousand monkeys variety.
Blork
Garbage in, garbage out. If we don’t train people how to create non-garbage, we will become more and more reliant on the garbage producers. Result: a generation from now all we will have is garbage and nobody will be smart enough to know the difference between garbage and non-garbage.
Kate
thomas, Google Bard says it doesn’t work in Canada yet! (Yes, I know – use a VPN.)
thomas
Google Bard doesn’t work in Canada because it is only in English, if you sign up with a VPN US server you can use it.
Ephraim
@Kate – Depends on how you ask ChatGPT… I emailed you a copy of the output for the non-existent street
The worry isn’t simply about universities, because with universities, you require citations and well, you have to do it yourself. But with discrimination and not understanding why AI makes certain choices. For example, if AI handles loan applications, we may not understand why it’s turning down an application and if that relates to discrimination. Does it relate to what time I filling in the application? Does it relate to the postal code, neighbourhood, housing, the birth date, their birth day of the week? We don’t know. AI might notice a pattern with people who fill in applications on Wednesday between 9:15AM and 9:30AM that we just don’t really see. But where someone lives might be considered and that might indicate something like the neighbourhood has a higher percentage of PoC. It’s one of the reasons that Europe is talking about a law that will require a way to explain such decisions, so they can be manually overridden if they are based on discrimination.
Ephraim
I also asked Chat GPT about my uncle, a well known holocaust survivor who has written a book about his experience. There are many articles on the web about him in different languages as well. The book is not available on the web, just to purchase, so Chat GPT couldn’t reference the book. But it also didn’t get the right person and mixed his history with someone else’s, mixing up where he met my aunt and said he had passed, when he is definitely still alive.
It also can’t really give good citations behind an argument of supposition, like what France would have done with Quebec if they hadn’t lost in the Seven-Year’s war.
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Kate
Barron’s, not a source I’ve linked before, has an AFP piece about how Montreal’s snow clearance is efficient but bad for the environment, truck emissions and road salt both doing damage.
jeather
“As a substitute, “we tried coffee grinds, it smelled good, but it was not a success,” Sabourin added.
Beetroot juice has also been tried, which is less corrosive than salt, “but it stained floors a lot, people were not happy,” he said.”
Who knew.
carswell
They’re not wrong but I do take issue with the following: “Some 3,000 employees and 2,200 vehicles go into action day and night every time it snows…” (emphasis mine).
Eventually electrification will take care of the emissions. Road salt’s a different issue and, with the CAQistes in power and car addicts, especially suburban ones, holding great political clout, the necessary lifestyle changes mentioned in the article won’t be happening anytime soon.
Kate
jeather, here’s a piece from 2015 about Laval using beet sugar to melt ice, although this piece says it doesn’t stain. I remember blogging about Montreal trying this out, but can’t find any postings about it in this recension of the blog, so it must have been around the same time. (There are no posts available from before October 2017.)
Never saw anything about coffee grounds.
Blork
I feel like that article was written by an AI bot. It implies that the salt issue is unique to Montreal, when in fact most cities in the high northern hemisphere salt their roads. It’s not like if Montreal switched to another abrasive then yay, the world is saved.
Also, what does this mean? “In Montreal alone, the equivalent of 150,000 tons of salt is spread on roads and sidewalks over the winter.” What is “the equivalent” of 150,000 tons? Does that mean SOMETHING ELSE is spread that would be the same as 150,000 tons of salt? Why not just say “In Montreal alone, 150,000 tons of salt are spread…”
And what about this one? “According to Barbecot, the city should simply use less salt, but that would require changing “the way we live” by limiting urban sprawl and driving less. / “That’s a societal choice,” he said. / In the streets, locals do not seem ready to embrace such a massive shift.”
Well, yeah, but this implies it’s just a matter of saying “OK, no more urban sprawl!” and all those sprawling suburbs will just melt into the earth and their residences will be magically teleported to condos in Griffintown. Oh, if only we had that magic button! Plus “In the streets, locals do not seem ready to embrace such a massive shift” implies that IN THE STREETS OF MONTREAL, people don’t want to stop urban sprawl. Um, no, it’s the sprawlers who don’t want to stop urban sprawl!
Chat GPT article FAIL.
CE
This is content farm writing. I’ve known people who work for these places. They find click-baity topics and churn out articles on them which are sold around to different properties, sometimes with minor changes so Google thinks they’re different stories. They’re written to maximize SEO and are vague enough that they can be published over and over for years. Editing is minimal, if it happens at all which is why you see all those weird sentences and structures that a good copy editor would weed out. Sadly, a lot of what you read on the internet is made up of this stuff. It exists to get you on websites where you’ll then be redirected to “native advertising” which is just sponsored content that looks enough like a news story or editorial that you won’t really notice that you’re being sold something.
carswell
The original French article (on Yahoo! and with no mention of AFP):
https://fr.news.yahoo.com/montr%C3%A9al-co%C3%BBt-environnemental-ramassage-neige-051215903.html?guccounter=1Blork
@CE, yes, exactly. And even if this one wasn’t written by an AI bot (probably wasn’t, I was just making a joke) it’s just a matter of time (and not much) before such content farming is totally in the realm of such bots.
carswell
The only mention of equivalency is in reference to the length of the streets and sidewalks being equivalent to the distance between Montreal and Beijing. So the English article is sloppily translated (maybe an attempt to cover for salt being measured here in metric tons?).
Kate
Oh dear. OK, will look out for these in future.
I sort of thought Barron’s was legit, but I don’t know that much about business publications (obviously).
mare
@Blork ‘equivalent of salt’ because AFAIK they try to not use NaCl (table salt) too much because it’s bad for concrete and we have enough bad concrete already.
From a casual internet search I found roadsalt can be Calcium Chloride (CaCl2), Magnesium Chloride (MgCl2) Potassium Chloride (KCl) or some combination of any or all of these as well. It depends if it’s used preventative, before an ice storm or snow, or has to melt existing hard ice and also what temperature. I think that when it’s very cold, NaCl works best.@kate Coffee grounds were used in our park on a corridor of ice between the hockey rink and a skating circle because it’s less abrasive as sand for the skates but still ‘dulled’ the slipperiness of the ice for crossing pedestrians. (Info from leaflets stapled to trees, I’ve no idea if it worked well.)
Blork
@mare, road salt is still salt. The problem is not “what equivalent is being used.” The problem is the pointless use of the word “equivalent.” As Carswell points out, the original French version just flat out says “150,000 tons of salt” (no “equivalent”). Specifically: Uniquement pour la ville de Montréal, ce sont 150.000 tonnes de sel qui sont étalées sur les routes et les trottoirs au cours de l’hiver.
So: sloppy translation.
Blork
Regarding coffee grounds and beet sugar, that falls into the “be careful what you wish for” category. Given the scale of road salting across North America (and elsewhere), you can’t change it all to bio materials, nor would you want to. They’re potentially useful in small scale situations here and there, but not at large scale.
It’s a bit like all the folks who think biofuels solve all environmental problems. No, they only solve political problems regarding oil drilling and trade, and to some extent solves some environmental problems around drilling sites. But you’re still burning stuff and creating greehhouse gases. And while the world is full of hungry people, there you are growing massive amounts of edible plants to be used as fuel for cars instead of food for people.
That’s not just posturing. During the brief biofuel boom a decade or so ago, vast stretches of the US mid-west were used to grow corn for biofuels. As a result, the price of corn around the world spiked, which caused a lot of problems in places like Mexico where corn is a food staple.
Andre W
The piece’s author is a trainee journalist — and it’s her first for AFP (according to her Twitter), produced in Paris. She probably never considered it would be held to such high standards, or that it would get a middling translation by AFP.
That said, it snows in parts of France, and that could have been an easy add for some contrast or comparison.Blork
I give a lot of latitude for trainee writers. In this case the culprits seem to be the lack of good editing and bad translation. Unfortunately, when it comes to content creation “trainee” often just means “underpaid” and they don’t even get properly trained (i.e., they don’t get proper editing and mentorship).
Jake
I really don’t understand some of the criticisms of this piece from the commenters on here.
This is an interesting, original, story that involved real reporting. Clearly, the writer did multiple interviews, which is not something that AIs can do, nor something that “content farms” (if such things still exist) do.
Yes, there are some issues with the translation — the switch from metric tonnes to the “equivalent” of Imperial tons is an odd one– and this is written primarily for an audience in France and other francophone countries outside Quebec, which seems to have caused some confusion here (there may not be a lot of outlets in Canada that publish AFP stories, but it is the world’s third largest news agency, after Reuters and the AP).
AFP does excellent work and its correspondents in Canada are probably the highest-paid journalists in the country. Barron’s is a fine magazine that publishes decent reporting — much of what it publishes is behind a hard paywall and it appears to be operating with a business model based around the idea that people will pay for original, quality reporting.
carswell
Couldn’t agree more, Andre W and Jake. The original article is a decent if lightweight overview of snow removal in the city and some of the issues it raises and the author appears to have done some legwork, getting actual quotes from a city official, a prof and a “snow man.” I’m sure readers in France will have learned a thing or two. Here, though, column inches of verbiage yet next-to-no discussion of the relevant issues raised.
FWIW I’ve often seen AFP-credited articles in English-language North American publications.
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Kate
The city has announced it will plow streets but hold off on snow removal till the snow stops.
…sometime in late March?
The Journal has some brief notes on where the snow goes.
Joey
The snow stopped on Thursday morning, yet the city only got around to plowing some of the major arteries (e.g., Parc, St-Laurent, St-Urbain, St-Joseph) yesterday. Is it just me or does it seem like the city is taking longer to start its snow removal this year? I thought it was because the first two big storms happened on Fridays, which might have meant lots of overtime $ if removal started right away, but this most recent experience undermines that logic.
Anyway, I get what they are going for but there’s been so much snow this week, I don’t think they can hold off much longer (and there are crews currently doing snow removal, notwithstanding the story)… like the piles on street corners are just too big, cars are parked too far out into the street, etc.
Kate
I know. I’m even wondering how Lufa will get my box of groceries over the massive pile of snow between the road and my front steps.
The Weather Network says we’re close to the record for snowfall in January.
Kevin
This weekend as we were walking around, my wife and I helped multiple seniors get out of snowbanks because they were stuck and could not get to the sidewalk.
I expect snow removal to be terrible following the first storm of the season as crews and managers relearn this essential task, but removal has been so bad this year that I am wondering if it’s deliberate.
This morning bus lanes weren’t cleared, there were lanes on thoroughfares that were impassable, and multiple streets where school buses let out students haven’t been cleared.
jeather
How do you plow snow but not remove it? All you get is street icebergs which can’t be removed until they melt in the spring.
mare
The courtesy of citizens to clear (and keep up) the passages from the street to the sidewalk seems to have been lost some time ago. This despite the fact that a lot of people have cordoned off their carré des arbres, to prevent the chenillettes from removing the snow (and top soil with plant roots). In that case I think [old person waves cane] that you have the duty to do some snow maintenance.
My neighbour and I are virtually the only people that do this on a large stretch of our street, so we have four passages over 20 metres, and we don’t even have a car or park on the street. [Insert self-righteous pat on our backs…]
The main reason I do it so I can get the compost, recycling and garbage bins to the street. And my bike if I’m lucky and there’s an opening in between the cars.
Few openings at the moment because people only do the bare minimum when digging out their cars and leave a lot of snow behind when they drive away. They shoot themselves in the foot because there will be less parking spaces available when they come back, and they’ll have to drive around in circles and be lucky to find a spot nearby.(Unpopular opinion) I personally think the city should spend less money on snow removal of *free* street parking. Let car owners do more themselves. Montreal’s yearly snow removal budget of 160+ million dollars is enormous and you could do more tangible things with even part of that money. Hire more cops for example. Or reorganize streets so they’re safer for pedestrians (most drivers are pedestrians too) and cyclists.
Kate
mare, it would take me all afternoon to dig a channel out from the sidewalk to the street here today.
jeather
I wouldn’t object to digging out channels if the snow removal trucks didn’t later block them right back off.
I do not think we need to hire more cops. At all.
Mark Côté
I get incensed by people who dig out their cars or plow their driveways and leave all the snow on the sidewalk after the chenillettes pass. It’s annoying to climb over but far worse if you have a stroller or mobility issues. Such rude, antisocial behaviour.
mare
@kate Yeah, if you start now it’s a bit much. You have to keep it up with the snowfall.
@jeather That was sarcasm, but that obviously didn’t translate very well in an internet comment.
jeather
Sorry, because the “reorganise streets” part seemed sincere.
Tim
@mare: where is all this *free* street parking located? Montreal has lots of areas that require permits which I would not qualify as *free*…
Ian
@mare “The courtesy of citizens to clear (and keep up) the passages from the street to the sidewalk seems to have been lost some time ago.”
I live in a Hassidic neighbourhood, they get their kids to dig those entryways and keep them clear. I chop them out with my ice cutter too.
On another note I was quite pleased that I got to deliver my first joke in Yiddish, as I was shovelling out my walkway yesterday, a guy walking past me was talking on is phone, complaining about all the snow. I said “only a little snow” nur ayn bissel shnay. He laughed, I’m practically Mel Brooks now.
As a car owner I have to admit I was annoyed that the scheduled day plowing was cancelled today on my street (both sides) in the evening as I had to spend a lot of time cruising around for a parking spot on a street side that wasn’t scheduled to be cleared – when in fact none of them were cleared. F’ing Great. This also means I will have to dig my car out to go to work tomorrow morning again – & even the dug out spots are starting to be full of that nasty half-snow that has the texture of mashed potatoes that is impossible to walk, drive, or bike in. When the Hassidic ladies start pulling the strollers instead of pushing them you know the snow is ridonkulous. This is where we are. Delivery trucks are just stopping wherever, not even attempting to park. It’s crazy out there.
I’m still using the INFO-neige app – it was extremely annoying to search all over my parking zone to find a spot – only to find that in fact nothing is getting plowed tonight. Better than getting towed I suppose but I’m going to have to bring my ice cutter & good shovel 3 blocks over to get my car out at 5:30 tomorrow morning.
Kevin
The snowthrower ensemble just went down my street, followed by ANOTHER PLOW BECAUSE THEY LEFT SO MUCH BEHIND.
I am hoping the ‘thrower returns soon.
Joey
@Kevin that’s not new – for a while now (at least a few years) the big plows have been followed by smaller plows and chenillettes to pile up most of what remains, then they haul it away.
@Ian right there with you. Also the sirens at 6:45 AM when snow removal doesn’t actually get started until 8:15 are a nice touch.
@mare most car owners around my street dig their cars out and leave piles of snow either in front or in back of their car, not so much on the sidewalk (though it happens). Where exactly would you have these people put the snow?
Mark Côté
@Joey assume you meant to direct that last one at me. What you described is the best case and, I should note, the most common one. We’re bound to lose a few parking spots until the snow is cleared up. But on every block there’s always a big pile of snow right in the middle of the sidewalk, presumably from someone who couldn’t even bother doing what you said and just dumps shovelfuls of snow wherever is most convenient to them.
Kevin
@Joey
No, you misunderstand me.
The normal procedure in NDG is a trio of plows to push the snow into a long line, with the final step being a snowthrower putting snow in a truck.Last night my street had plows then a snowthrower, but there was so much snow leftover they needed to run another set of plows and another snowthrower to finally clear it.
Joey
@Kevin that’s exactly how they’ve been doing it on my Mile-End street for a couple of years now – plows make a huge hedge in the middle of the street (if you’re parked ont the other side, you can’t get out). Then a few hours pass. Then the thresher comes with the dump truck next to it. It churns up the giant hedge and spits it into the dump truck. Then a regular tow truck with a plow and some chenillettes come by and pile up most of whatever got missed. Then that gets tossed into a dump truck.
Also it feels like a good 10% of the snow being tossed into the dump truck never quite makes it in.
Kevin
Joey.
Okay…. This is the first time in 15 years that they’ve needed to have a snowthrower come along twice on my street.mare
I just saw a snowblower get stuck. The mountain of snow they had prepared for it was just too dense and high. It had to back up and try again, but just didn’t have enough traction. It was actually quite funny, but no one was laughing.
@Joey @Tim In my street in rosepatrie we don’t have vignettes en a wide space between the sidewalk and the street, 4 metres or so, so plenty of space to drop the snow. And still car owners leave it on the street, and only shovel away the snow one half side of their car and then drive off. Not all streets are this wide.
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Kate
Seeing a lot of discussion about Canada’s stern new directives on alcohol consumption: two drinks max per week, better to have none. Even the BBC asks why the rapid drop from the previous guideline of ten drinks a week for women and 15 for men.
jeather
I don’t drink two drinks per month but even for me that sounds incredibly low. And honestly, something like 90% of people drink on average less than 1 drink a day, 10% average less than 2 drinks a day, and the remaining 10% who drink 10 a day (IIRC these are American stats which I assume are similar to Canadian ones) aren’t the ones who are going to be convinced..
Kevin
One takeaway is that in previous research, the group of non-drinkers has included a lot of people who are ex-drinkers because they’ve already suffered a lot of damage. These new guidelines exclude those sick people — which makes it a bit clearer how much damage alcohol causes.
carswell
Neoprohibitionism on the march!
Kate
i was wondering whether there are statistics showing that lifelong non-drinkers – observant Muslims and any others – suffer less morbidity than people who drink even a llittle, socially.
On the other side of the coin, I’ve wondered whether the whole thing about wine in the Mediterranean diet being healthy wasn’t really more about the social connections that come with it than anything in the wine itself.
Kate
carswell, I’ve seen comments attempting to link this new directive with Ontario’s swerve to privatizing health care – setting up a scenario where patients could be blamed for their ills, which would then not be covered by insurance.
carswell
@Kate I also wondered about the drinking habits of the study subjects. How many of them drank but never touched the hard stuff? How many drank but only when eating? How many limited their consumption to minimally processed, low-alcohol beverages (e.g. “natural” wines)?
Wine is currently being stripped of several popular myths. For example, contrary to earlier claims, reservatrol is increasingly thought to have little or no positive impact on heart health.
Uatu
@kate I read an article that cancer rates in the middle East were lower than NA and that was attributed to no alcohol according to the article.
DeWolf
I wonder if these new guidelines won’t do more harm than good. The old guidelines, versions of which are still in place in most countries, felt like a reasonable goal. You could in theory follow them while still being able to have a drink with dinner or join your friends for a 5 à 7. But these new ones are so severe people are likely to ignore them completely. They’re basically saying we should all be teetotallers.
That doesn’t even begin to touch on the irony of the government telling us not to drink while also running a liquor monopoly with a big marketing budget.
shawn
Well, as someone who is basically a teetotaller with little interest in drinking, I do think that should be encouraged. It’s a Level 1 carcinogen. If it’s any small consolation we’ve seen a similar shift for processed meats. In the past they were lumped with red meats but now they’ve been split off and guidelines are saying basically zero consumption to avoid increased cancer rates?
Kate
shawn, that’s so depressing. One of my personal treat rewards is a “petit ménage” from Les Cochons Tout Ronds and a glass of red.
Kevin
I don’t think we’re at the level of California, where everything is a known carcinogen — but I do think it’s an honest attempt at opening a discussion about risk factors.
There is risk in everything — my preferred mode of transport is an engine with two wheels strapped to it — but we should be adult enough to accept it with eyes wide open.
shawn
Well, Kate, and just as much a treat for me is the occasional bit of bacon or a pepperoni pizza!
Blork
I don’t think this is a “directive” from the government, although some alarmist media like to present it that way. At this point it is a change in the GUIDELINES published by the government. (Maybe splitting hairs here, but in English a “directive” is essentially an order from an authority whereas a “guideline” is a suggestion, or the presentation of data to allow for your own informed decision making.)
I’ve heard a number of health experts speak on this, and most of them, when asked directly, say something along the lines of “this is to inform people that our perception of the risks has changed, and to use that information to make your own decisions.”
That said, drinking culture is definitely shifting away from its former state of being fully integrated with all aspects of “society.” Not only are people on average drinking less (I don’t have those stats on hand, but I’ve seen it reported many times in the past few years) but there are more low alcohol and even zero-alcohol alternatives on the market than ever before. I haven’t tried any, but there are zero-alcohol sprits (gin, and even whiskeys) available, and not just in niche markets. My local Provigo stocks quite a few, along with zero-alcohol craft beers.
Personally, I have largely shifted to “session” beers over the past year or so, although they’re not easy to find at pubs and whatnot. But the beer stores have a lot of craft-brewed session beers and even “nano” beers, such as Vagabond Hop (a 2.5% IPA that is actually pretty good). Boreal makes both a nano-IPA and a session IPA, and they are essentially my house beers now.
Read a novel set in the 1950s or 1960s and you can barely go two pages without someone getting a drink. Drinks were ubiquitous. All conversations started with a drink. All evenings ended with a drink. All moments of personal reflection took place over a lowball glass.
We’re very far from that now. Drinking as a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon is receding, not unlike smoking has over the past couple of decades. (Does anyone remember the DOOM SAYERS who all claimed that every bar and pub in the city would be out of business within six months once they banned indoor smoking? Ha!)
Side note: the bit about connecting this to the privatization of healthcare is right out of “Conspiracy Theory Theatre” and is just silly.
(For the uninitiated, “session” beers take their name from the lower alcohol beers that people would sometimes choose in the UK and Ireland when they were at the pub with their friends for a drinking session but they didn’t want to get drunk. They knew they’d knock back six or eight pints before the night was over, and if they wanted to stay relatively sober they’d drink a lower alcohol “session” beer, which in Ireland also had the advantage of being less expensive because the taxes on beer were related to their alcohol content. In recent years the “session” moniker has been picked up by craft brewers for lower alcohol brews, typically about 3.5% alcohol.)
shawn
Yes there’s lots of articles and opinions about the “Prop 65” warnings, courtesy of the state of California and the litigious legal system. It slaps labels on things that you may not ingest at all.
H. John
I’m struck by the difference in tone between the Radio-Canada article, and the one by CBC:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/alcohol-cancer-risk-warning-1.6715769
From the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction’s web post:
“CCSA proudly led the initiative to update Canada’s Low-Risk Alcohol Drinking Guidelines (LRDGs). The project, funded by Health Canada, began in July 2020. The two-and-a-half-year process culminated in the creation of Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health, which replaces the LRDGs.
Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health provides people living in Canada with the information they need to make well-informed and responsible decisions about their alcohol consumption.”It is not based on a single study:
“Paradis says the panel spent the last two years combing through nearly 6,000 peer-reviewed studies,…”
Their report:
H. John
The CCSA web site explains who they are:
“An Act of Parliament created the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) in 1988 as a non-governmental organization to provide national leadership on substance use and to advance solutions to address alcohol- and other drug-related harms.”
Blork
I wish it were easier to get a clear sense of what those risks are. For example, if you take two drinks per week and you have a one-in-a-million chance of getting cancer from it, or you take 10 drinks per week and you have a two-in-a-million chance of getting cancer from it, then OMG YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING CANCER HAVE DOUBLED but it’s still pretty darn low.
I’m not saying the numbers are like that. I’m saying nobody is discussing the actual numbers so we don’t know if they’re like that or not. All we have are subjective words like “increased” and whatnot. Show us the numbers!
H. John
jeather
“Increased” is not subjective. It doesn’t give a lot of detail, as you note, but it is in fact objective.
MarcG
@Blork: The closest the report comes to your request seems to be in the “Risk Associated with Weekly Levels of Alcohol Use” section: 2 drinks per week = 1 in 1,000 risk of premature death, 3 to 6 drinks per week = 1 in 100 risk of premature death.
PatrickC
@Kevin and Shawn, a belated note about California and carcinogens. Last year, LL Bean wouldn’t ship me some mocassins with rubber-like soles, similar to older ones I had used for years, because some component in them violated California rules. had to get them wen I traveled to another state.
Blork
Thanks @MarcG. That is a significant difference!
shawn
PatrickC, that’s funny. I’ve never been sure about the ethical stance of LL Bean – or maybe it’s just fear of litigation. Don’t eat your shoe soles!
Meezly
I agree with Blork about the cultural shift in attitudes re: alcohol consumption is similar to the public campaign against smoking and that the CCSA updates are merely guidelines, not directives. I also agree with John H. that the CCSA guidelines are only recommendations based on hundreds of studies done by other entities. There has definitely been a surge of new research on the effects of moderate alcohol use on health, which is a good thing, but it’s also a very complex area to draw clear evidence-based guidelines from.
I believe that the CCSA is using a lowest common denominator approach with the goal of minimizing health loss across all alcohol-attributable outcomes in a population. Thresholds exist for different purposes; in terms of injury prevention, several countries have moved to a zero-tolerance threshold that is consistent with evidence of the entirely harmful effect of alcohol consumption on injuries, as well as triggers for domestic violence and abuse.
I find it interesting that the CCSA guidelines didn’t seem to consider key recommendations from the Lancet study last year that looked at alcohol consumption on a global scale (funded by the Gates Foundation so they had tons of money): https://www.healthdata.org/news-release/lancet-alcohol-consumption-carries-significant-health-risks-and-no-benefits-young
The findings of this study suggested that guidelines should not incorporate sex-specific recommendations, given the absence of data by sex across geographies and locations, but instead should focus on age and region. An example is that the majority of the world’s population consuming harmful amounts of alcohol are young adults and predominantly young males, so in order to minimize health loss due to alcohol consumption it is important to prioritize interventions targeted at these demographic groups. Another example is that alcohol use poses a greater risk to population health in areas with a high prevalence of tuberculosis than in areas with low prevalence.
The CCSA guidelines don’t seem to be considering these factors. But as the Lancet study states: “countries navigate the epidemiological transition and their background rates of disease evolve from infectious diseases and injuries to non-communicable diseases, policy recommendations will need to evolve as well.”
I remember the scare-mongering articles from a couple of years ago about a study that showed evidence that alcohol consumption can cause cancer. I found the study to read for myself and learned that they only looked at individuals who lacked the enzyme needed to break down the ethanol, because it’s much easier to see the direct causal relation of how alcohol as a potential carcinogen can impact a healthy human body. But they didn’t look at how alcohol could affect people that had the enzyme.
Obvs, alcohol is a legal, regulated drug that’s quite easily accessible, so that’s another reason for the lowest common denominator approach of these guidelines. The positives of the CCSA guidelines is that it’s educating the public. And obvs, if you have a family history of cancer, then definitely try to follow the guidelines and try to cut down on drinking if you’ve been well above the guidelines.
GC
Thanks for quantifying that, MarcG. That is a big difference!
shawn
I don’t know about that, Meezly. When we drink alcohol, our body breaks it down into a chemical called acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde damages DNA. But yes: there is a recent study that suggests that some who lack an “ALDH2 enzyme” would be even more susceptible to DNA damage.
Meezly
There are apparently two distinct mechanisms in our bodies that can repair this type DNA damage, according to a 2020 study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2059-5.
Obvs, alcohol abuse will result in an accumulation of ICL damage that may lead to cell death and cancer.
“The first line of defense against ICLs caused by acetaldehyde is the ALDH2 enzyme, that largely breaks down acetaldehyde before it causes any harm. However, not everyone profits from this enzyme – about half of the Asian population, more than 2 billion people worldwide, possess a mutation in the gene coding for this enzyme. Because they are not able to break down acetaldehyde, they are more prone to develop alcohol-related cancer…. the second line of defense against alcohol-induced ICLs: mechanisms that remove the damage from the DNA. The investigators studied these mechanisms using protein extracts made from the eggs of the clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), an animal model commonly used in biology research. By using these extracts to repair an ICL formed by acetaldehyde, they discovered the existence of two mechanisms that repair ICL damage: the previously known Fanconi anemia (FA) pathway and a novel, faster route. These two mechanisms differ from each other: in the FA pathway the DNA is cut to remove the ICL, whereas the enzymes in the newly discovered route cut the crosslink itself.”
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Kate
City emergency rooms are over capacity and there seems little hope that this situation will improve.
mare
Since the rest of our healthcare system (GPs, ‘walk-in’ clinics, CLSSCs, specialist clinics) is also overwhelmed and thinned out, some people need to go the ER (and have to wait 5+ hours) for relatively innocent things. Or they don’t, and then those innocent things become serious things. People are dying unnecessarily early of Covid, but also because of Covid.
Anecdata: I had to have my stitches removed after hand surgery. The automatic message when you called the number to book appointments was ‘we’re busy, call back later’ and then it hung up. For three straight days. When I finally reached them the first appointment they had was in two weeks, so they said to go to the ER. Eventually I needed up removing them myself (it’s not rocket science, I’ve seen it being done, and it was my non-dominant hand) but that’s not for everybody.
I’m very worried it will get worse, people working in healthcare are burning out and I personally know two people in their fifties who are looking if they can retire early, or leave the profession. The pipeline with new people is also very empty. Both at schools, new inscriptions are low, or by immigration, because all countries are fishing in the same pond and Quebec is not exactly welcoming at the moment.
Kate
mare, you have no GP, or have never signed onto the list for one?
I have a feeling you could still go to a CLSC to get stitches out.
(Why is it that one of the few Dutch words I know is the word for a GP? huisarts!)
Joey
@mare consider checking out local nursing services at your local pharmacy. I had a bad cut that didn’t require stitches but needed to be dressed by a nurse (in the ER, naturally). They sent me home with gauze and antibacterial pads and instructions to change the dressing in 48 hours and possibly again, depending on how it healed. I found an appointment at a nearby pharmacy a day later – for $20 a nurse took the time to undress the bandage, inspect the wound, clean it and re-dress it. She gave me gauze, a saline solution to clean it and even a pair of safety scissors. Best $20 ever spent. The finger is pretty much fine by now.
mare
@kate, I’m lucky to have a GP, but he is also overworked (he took over all the patients of another doctor that went to a private clinic last year) and it takes 2 weeks before I can see them. And stitches need to be taken out at a certain point. I used to work with surgical equipment and I steam-sterilized it before using, and kept an eye out for possible infections. All is well, the skin has healed. This was just minor surgery, a carpal tunnel release. Using my hand is still very painful but that’s normal.
JaneyB
@Joey – thanks for the tip. I’m really liking the expansion of services at pharmacies. It really fills some gaps.
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Kate
Taylor C. Noakes argues that, if Ryerson could change its name to Toronto Metropolitan, McGill University should follow suit, although he doesn’t propose any alternatives.
Tim S.
Really, no. I’ve long argued on here against renaming streets because they’re navigational aids and changing the names just creates confusion. Maybe even more so for universities, where name recognition is a very big deal for the hundreds of thousands of people, me included, who have it on their CVs. If we decide not to name things after people any more, cool, but we can please accept that referents have a value beyond the merely symbolic?
Taylor C. Noakes
@tim – I’m sorry but that doesn’t add up in the least. Stores change locations all the time, people still figure out how to get there. Waze and google maps and the internet has ensured people will never get lost again. Streets are renamed frequently and everyone adjusts (we renamed Amhearst street a couple years ago, no harm no foul).
You can update your CV, everyone else does, and companies change their names all the time. HR managers are usually the first people to know about this.
As to name recognition, I get it that McGill sounds nice and authoritative, but the man enslaved children, two of whom died in his employ, and there is evidence to suggest that one of the people he enslaved may not have been told about his emancipation. McGill made his fortune from a slave-based economic system and further traffickec in enslaved people to settle accounts after a war of empire and colonialism.
If you want to be a McGill grad that’s fine, but that legacy needs to be out in the open, and quite frankly the more people know about it the more pressure there will be on McGill to change its name simply to be a viable business. McGill will likely be better off changing its name and having an open and transparent discussion of McGill’s legacy. James McGill will always be the founder, and no one is proposing to remove his remains from the grounds, but his connexion to slavery is evidently making the students and staff uncomfortable at this point.
@kate – that was a deliberate choice, I felt like it would detract from the bigger issue of McGill enslaving people.
But I do have some ideas to share (in no particular order):
Hochelaga University
Bethune University
Montreal University
Mount Royal University of Montreal
Tiohtià:ke University
Carrie Derick University
Kondiaronck University
Abbott University (for Maude Abbott)
Brooks University (for Harriet Brooks)
Courage (for Hugh MacLennan) UniversityI think we have options
Kate
TCN, it will cost the city a fortune to rename McGill. Renaming it will also mean renaming McGill College Avenue and McGill metro station, all of which will cost the city, the STM, and innumerable businesses that have the street or metro station names on their material, all the signage in all the underground city stuff, and that’s beside Tim S.’s point, plus things I may not be thinking about.
Is it all worth it to make a Mea Culpa gesture?
What McGill needs to do is divest from fossil fuels and move forward. The past is the past.
Ephraim
@Kate – There are more than one McGill. James McGill of the College/University. Peter McGill the mayor (who was not related to James McGill). There is also John McGill, Peter McGill’s father-in-law (Peter McGill changed his name to McGill), though John is more famous in Upper Canada. Couldn’t they simply rename it McGill after Peter?
Kate
Right, McGill Street down by Victoria Square is named for Peter McGill, the city’s second mayor, about whom I’ve seen no dirt dug up. It would be casuistry to claim to change the university’s name from McGill to McGill, though.
Blork
Unlike Ryerson, which is a technical school that only achieved university status a couple of decades ago, McGill is a huge university and healthcare megastructure system with branches and tentacles that reach around the world and far back in time. Changing that name will cause organizational and administrative chaos for years.
Dan
LOL at McGill grads boo-hooing about name recognition and having to add an asterisk to their CVs.
Anyone who has had to deal with them know that universities are already organizational and administrative nightmares, so I say bring on the name change. Anyone proud of the name McGill should really check their privilege. Make the change – let’s do better in 2022.Kate
Blork, I didn’t even think of the MUHC and its many tentacles.
Taylor C. Noakes
@Kate – no, I don’t buy it. The station and street are named for Peter McGill and McGill College could easily be renamed ‘college’, university’, or ‘rue de la place Oscar Peterson’ which I think they were going for anyways. It’ll cost some massive corporations some scratch for new stationary and signage. I don’t feel bad for Bell, BNP Paribas, BMO, Industrial Alliance and whoever else has their offices there.
Yes, rebranding costs money. But it’s untenable to continue having a prominent institution named for someone who literally enslaved children, trafficked in enslaved people, built a fortune off slave labour, and maybe didn’t tell one of his servants he had gained his freedom.
The past is not dead, it’s not even past, after all.
And that’s the whole point – there is a history here that’s been buried for a long time, but it was inevitable it would get out and rub people the wrong way. The students don’t like it, and profs given the James McGill award aren’t keen to receive it.
But this is all, at the end of the day, about a for-profit, publicly-subsidized institution’s viability as a de facto commercial enterprise in an era in which an increasing number of consumers don’t want to buy services or in any way shape or form be related to something with such a negative history.
And the consumer is always right.
Bad press will inevitably force McGill to do this anyways; it’ll be no different from the Bay taking down that stupid daughter’s of the confederacy plaque.
As a public historian, my only concern is that the renaming effort is done in a way the stimulates rather than stifles public discussion.
And yes, they should also fully divest from fossil fuels, get out of serving the military industrial complex and leave the SSMU alone when they opt to boycott Israel too. If they want that sweet sweet student cash, they need to play ball with their customers.
Taylor C. Noakes
@Blork, @Kate – we all know the MUHC has been planning to rename itself the Arthur Porter Memorial Health Complex for quite some time.
SMD
McGill grad here — please change the damn name. I don’t think there would be a need to change any street names, as has been noted there are other McGills out there.
Kate
For what it’s worth, the STM says the metro station was named for “avenue McGill College, that leads directly to the university that was established in 1821 according to the wishes of James McGill (1744-1813), a successful merchant trading in furs.” There is an image of Peter McGill in the station, on the stained glass panel, but the station itself is named for James.
TCN: They were going to name the road into the complex Arthur Porter Way until we found out what his ways actually were. (I half suspect the guy is still alive somewhere.)
walkerp
organizational and administrative chaos vs. a near destruction of an entire people.
Not a difficult choice.
Also, as someone who administers, if you can’t handle a name change, you suck at your job.
Blork
I suppose some people think it’s important to rename the university because we need to stop glorifying James McGill. I’m not buying that because there is no glorifying of James McGill. There are no “James McGill Days” or parades in honour of James McGill. Aside from that one statue and a few short blurbs at the back of some documents that nobody reads, James McGill is irrelevant. The name, as the name of the UNIVERSITY, superseded the name as the name of the PERSON, long ago.
Given the dire state of the world at the moment, on so many issues, this kind of thing feels like fiddling while Rome burns.
Blork
@walkerp, I’d be with you if the name change CHANGED that. Or somehow prevented it. But the name change will make no difference on that issue.
Here’s the easiest thing to do: declare that the university is no longer named after James McGill. No, it’s named after Peter McGill. Or the Metro station. Or that kid named McGill who delivered the Saturday Gazette back in the 70s.
There. Job done. Same symbolic effect but without all the cost and chaos.
Uatu
I would like the road to the hospital named after Porter just as a permanent reminder of the complete incompetence of the executive committee of the hospital (aka the suckers)
Michael
There is a clear tangible value for people that graduate from McGill and have it on their resumes vs other less prestigious universities.
Same if you had Harvard on your CV vs a random name like Sanders University.
If McGill was some a bottom the line university that nobody knows or cares about, then a name change is fine.
But since it’s not, I disagree with changing my alma meter’s name. I graduated from McGill, not Concordia or Laval or UQAM.
Taylor C. Noakes
@Kate – I’m of the same mind, though I also thought Andre Arthur was Arthur Porter in disguise
@Blork 1 – McGill’s highest honour for their scholars is the ‘James McGill professorship/chair’ and yes, plenty of people *do not* want it specifically because of who he is and what he did (I asked)
@Blork 2 – If the name of the university is detached from the person, all the more reason to rename it, no? I think you just made an excellent point in my favour
@Blork 3 – We can walk and chew gum; this issue isn’t taking anything away from any other issue out there. Periods of significant societal change often involve many different kinds of change happening simultaneously. No one told the anti-Apartheid movement to stop sucking the air out of the save the whales campaign. Decolonization can happen at the same time as the movement for Palestinian rights, the renewal of organized labour and the effort to end global warming. In for a penny, in for a pound.
@Michael – if the institution was less prestigious, what, McGill’s enslavement of other human beings could matter more? do you hear yourself? The prestige of the institution doesn’t matter, McGill’s slave driving does – and that’s why it needs to be renamed. Also, Harvard is currently trying to deal with their history of slavery. Paris numbered their universities, and they’re plenty prestigious.
Chris
Morals change over the centuries, and will again in centuries to come. We’ll never be able to name anything after anyone. No one will pass the purity test. When speciesism is as abhorrent as racism in future centuries, woketivists will want schools named after Martin Luther King Jr renamed since he was a vile meat eater.
>We can walk and chew gum
Only to an extent. Every hour spent lobbying for things like renaming McGill is an hour NOT spent lobbying against actual slave labour that still exists on this planet.
Renaming McGill solves no real problem, but advocating it sure does prove one’s woke bona fides to other in the clique.
Taylor, I’m curious based on your positions stated here, what do you think of the Mahatma Gandhi statue in the eponymous park in Cote Des Neiges, given that he was clearly a racist?
DeWolf
McGill is not a “for-profit, publicly-subsidized institution,” it’s a public university governed by a number of different Quebec laws. In terms of its legal status, it has more in common with the University of California than with Harvard.
Phil M
The University Formerly Known as McGill.
Problem solved on all sides.
Blork
I was half kidding when I said above to change it so the “McGill” refers to Peter McGill instead of James McGill, but now I’m saying it for real. Why not?
(1) It solves the problem of the stink of James McGill.
(2) It disrupts nothing in terms of changing all those names, logos, titles, etc. (which is not a small consideration).
(3) It does not disrupt or otherwise affect the prestige associated with the McGill University name.
Because really, the problem isn’t McGill University; the problem is James McGill. So just pick a different McGill. When it comes right down to it, nobody is sentimental about James McGill, but lots of people care about the McGill name (not because of James; because of the university) and lots of people care about the disruption of re-naming a major institution that has many tentacles.
Declaring that it is named after the OTHER McGill fixes everything and costs almost nothing.
Taylor C. Noakes
@Chris –
1. I sincerely doubt there’s any future in which slavery becomes okay again (aside, of course, from the slavery that currently exists that was resurrected by the ill-advised NATO bombing of Libya in 2011, which our corporate media refuses to talk about, but I digress).
2. I would say social mores may change, and in our present day the change is towards openess. Morality is a little more consistent, with some important exceptions. The question you need to ask yourself is: was the institution of slavery considered immoral in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, and the answer is evidently yes given abolitionist groups were well-established at the time and that’s when anti-slavery laws went into effect. The idea that being held in a state of human bondage is bad and that people shouldn’t do it to other people are ideas as old as time. It’s a lot like the idea that murder is bad, or that rape is bad. Some things have been bad forever.
2a. There’s a remarkable hypocrisy in Canada wherein we scold the Americans for not getting rid of their Confederate statues and for all the things they’ve named after slave-holders, but the same people are then saying ‘hit the brakes’ when it comes to the people on this side of the border who did the same thing. What’s bad is bad is bad. James McGill enslaved children. Whatever good the man did needs to be weighed against the fact that he looked at two children and said to himself, every day for many years, ‘you are my property, you work for me, you will not be educated, you will not have any parents, and when you die, I shall discard of you like the trash.’ Like it or not, that’s exactly what the man did.
3. Every hour spent lobbying an institution to adhere to a higher set of principles and be wholly transparent about itself is a step in the right direction that will bring about other kinds of change. This isn’t a zero sum game. People successfully protested the Viet Nam War and civil rights and women’s liberation and somehow also managed to have a lot of sex, drop acid and go to the Moon all at the same time. If you can’t keep up, get out of the way.
4. I have nothing to prove to anyone. Read my articles, that should become very clear quite quickly.
5. Gandhi was a racist in his 20s, very much a product of his age, background, social status (etc). He also later rejected the racism of his youth, and worked towards a pluralistic, multi-cultural India. It’s the second part that’s pretty important. Nehru told Attenborough not to make a saint out of him, something that unfortunately happened anyways. If Gandhi’s racism was too inexcusable for Montreal’s Black community to bare, and they wanted his statue removed, then by all means. That said, Gandhi inspired MLK, so I doubt there will be too strong a push to remove his statue. But consider this: Gandhi never organized a genocide, he never fought to defend slavery, he never owned other people, so he’s coming out head and shoulders above a lot of other people.
5a. I’m saying this as a public historian who works with and writes about monuments: most people aren’t worth putting on pedestals, and doing so makes critical evaluation of their lives very difficult. That’s incidentally why it’s done – so that the elites can essentially say to the masses, ‘this is something we value, you may not judge it’. But that only lasts as long as there are institutions to maintain that kind of thinking. When societies change, as they do, it’s inevitable that the people they venrated will be reconsidered.
6. At the end of the day this will be a business decision made by an institution that cares about its reputation and bottom line, and if students and faculty make it clear they’re not comfortable with this, it’s inevitable the name will be changed. This is no different that a sports team changing its name, and I can’t imagine anyone here was too broken up about the renaming of the Washington football team. The world turns, get used to it.
GC
“We’ll never be able to name anything after anyone.” And why is this a bad thing? As others have said, let’s stop doing it.
Michael
If McGill was less prestigious, like some random university that nobody cares about in Montreal, I wouldn’t care about a name change. If I graduated from that no name university and they changed the name, I would shrug my shoulders and not care.
McGill being #2 in Canada and #30 worldwide means something today.
What McGill did 300 years ago doesn’t.
It’s like renaming the Washington Monument -> Hochelaga Monument or something foolish because George Washington owned slaves. For things that have prestige and value and recognition, keep the name.
Michael
Also, “McGill” is more than just the man that owned a few slaves. Just like George Washington is more than just a slave owner.
McGill is the premier institution of Canada that has taught hundreds of thousands of students, saved hundreds of lives, raised hundreds of millions of dollars for public research for 200 years.
We are going to throw McGill into the dustbin of history because he owned some slaves?
Would be extremely shameful of us to do that.
Not everything in life is about finding new ways to be outraged.
JaneyB
I don’t see any reason to change it. So he owned a few slaves. Yes, odious. Many good people have been associated with McGill University since and I think that’s worth something. There is no sinless past. I assure you that basically every family and every last name includes rapists, thieves, and slavers if you go back even as recently as 3 or 4 generations. Really, almost half the women I know have been raped; that wasn’t all by the same man. Vile deeds are everywhere. If people want names free of moral awfulness, they’ll have to turn to plants and verbs. Nothing associated with a living person will ever be clean. Might as well keep the name. I’m not sure where the renaming activists live; are they really so certain that their own great-grandfathers were men of unimpeachable honour?
MarcG
The reason McGill University has so much prestige and value today is because James McGill was wealthy and left land and money to build the school. He was wealthy because he was a good business person, which at the time meant enslaving people. You cannot disconnect the prestige from the slavery. Changing the name today sends a signal to present day ‘good business people’ that the horrible things they are doing to advance themselves are not acceptable and can’t be bought-off by doing good deeds with their filthy lucre when they’re dead.
Meezly
@JaneyB
“Really, almost half the women I know have been raped; that wasn’t all by the same man. Vile deeds are everywhere.”Rape is a systemic problem, shrug, so might as well live with it — is this you’re line of reasoning for dealing with a university named after James McGill?
It makes me think of descendants of Nazis, like Rainer Höß, whose grandpa was a top exterminator at Auschwitz. If he took your line of reasoning, he’d be going, hey, those were my grandfather’s sins, they have nothing to do with me. I’m a good person, that should be good enough. And besides, what can I do anyway?
What’s remarkable is that Höß chose to actively make amends and right the wrongs of his family’s past. He connected with Auschwitz survivors and their families, spoke at many high schools, participated in documentaries. He didn’t have to, but he chose to because it’s the right thing to do. He even became persona non grata with his own family for this because they still think of his grandfather as a war hero.
Based on your curious and rather dispassionate line of reasoning, anyone who has ever fought for social justice was supposed to have a family history free of vile deeds, we’d still be in the dark ages.
Tee Owe
Montreal College Giving Inspiration Literature & Learning
Chris
>The question you need to ask yourself is: was the institution of slavery considered immoral in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, and the answer is evidently yes given abolitionist groups were well-established at the time and that’s when anti-slavery laws went into effect
The question you need to ask yourself is: was speciesism considered immoral in the late-20th and early 21st century, and the answer is evidently yes given vegan and animal rights groups were well-established at the time and that’s when anti-animal cruelty laws went into effect. i.e. you seem to be confusing what the avant-garde consider immoral vs what the average person does. All this really establishes is that McGill was not at the avant-garde, it does not mean his morals were outside the norms of the time.
>Gandhi was a racist in his 20s, very much a product of his age, background, social status (etc).
And McGill wasn’t a product of his age, background, social status? Also, 20s seems plenty old enough to know better, no?
>Gandhi never organized a genocide, he never fought to defend slavery, he never owned other people…
Well, yeah, by then those things were outside the moral norms of *his* time.
>If Gandhi’s racism was too inexcusable for Montreal’s Black community to bare…
Why only “Montreal’s Black community”? Non-blacks can’t be offended by Gandhi’s racism and lobby for his cancelling? As you’re no doubt aware, his statue has been toppled at several African universities. Maybe Montreal will be next!
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Kate
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois has successfully needled François Legault over the baseball stadium. Go go Gabriel!
MarcG
Nothing quite as depressing as watching government in action. That big baby needs to go. Can’t even answer a simple question.
jeather
Can someone explain the hot dog part? Is there some story about hot dogs I don’t know about? Is it some weird “all dressed” being an anglicism?
Kate
I don’t think it’s subtle: “Moi, mon steamé, au baseball, je l’aime all dressed ketchup, mais pas d’argent public.”
Nadeau-Dubois was born in 1990, so he would’ve been 14 when the Expos left. Was he buying himself hot dogs at a baseball game before that? Maybe.
The only political reference about hot dogs that comes to mind was when Pierre Trudeau called Robert Bourassa a mangeux de hot dogs but I don’t think it’s involved here.
dhomas
Nothing like an ad hominem to deflect, right M Legault? Wow! Didn’t even answer the damn question. I wonder why…
PatrickC
All of this talk is irrelevant unless Major League Baseball is in fact open to expansion. Is it? The question of TV revenues, for example, is not just one for Montreal itself but for MLB. I have no idea how they compute these things, but it’s amazing how little attention is paid to the organization that actually decides which cities will get a team, not to mention their expectation that governments will subsidize private ownership without getting any stake in return.
Also, there was comment a few days back about tourists filling the seats. But don’t professional teams rely on season ticket holders, not to mention corporations renting luxury skyboxes, as a more stable source of money?Joey
@PatrickC MLB has stated it won’t address expansion until it has a new collective agreement (MLB locked out its players a few days ago) and its problem child franchises (Tampa Bay, Oakland) resolve their problems, chiefly by shaking down municipal governments for new stadiusm. That said, the Mtl baseball plan is to build two (!) new parks in Tampa and Montreal, with the team playing in TB during the spring and late fall and Montreal hosting the summertime games. So it would be neither an expansion nor a relocation, but a newfangled “sister city” type of deal. I assume the game plan for Bronfman et al all along has been to use this model to eventually have the team move permanently to Montreal but the level of commitment to this idea seems pretty strong. Hard to imagine the politicians in Tampa paying for all or part of a new facility – I’ve been to the TB stadium and it’s as dreadful as the Big O – and then letting the Rays up and walk away, though stranger things have happened. Anyway, MLB seems open enough to the idea, and I suppose it makes sense – you get all the revenue of operating in two markets, you get two new stadiums built, and you don’t have to split the new $$ with a separate new owner nor do you increase the number of players. If the calculation is that Mtl and TB are both viable as part-time MLB cities but not full-time ones, this model actually makes a lot of sense…
@kate have we forgotten Luc Ferrandez’s “anglos who like to eat hot dogs”???
Kevin
The idea of moving a baseball team to Montreal came up years ago when the Rays were unsuccessful is shaking down Tampa Bay to build a new stadium.
This year the Rays finished on top of the American League, and Tampa has a new mayor who in the past week had talks with the team about funding a new stadium, and is going to send them a proposal by the end of the month.
Uatu
Nobody cares about baseball. I remember in the 70s and 80s when the world series was all over TV and radio. Now I don’t even know who won this year. Might as well just setup a cricket stadium as that would probably get more interest
Joey
@kevin the Tampa mayor’s office is working on a “scaled back” stadium plan specifically for a split-season club, meaning no roof, implicitly endorsing the sharing agreement with Montreal
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Kate
Various media are looking at the deepest station of the REM, shown to journalists Wednesday morning. The Gazette says it fulfills Jean Drapeau’s dream and says that Édouard-Montpetit station on the blue line has a “hidden chamber” meant to link the metro to a possible rail line below in the Mount Royal tunnel. Engineers talk about the difficulties of working around the hundred-year-old tunnel, equally old water mains and the infrastructure of the UdeM while constructing this thing.
Also video from CTV and photos in Le Devoir.
ant6n
I always think it’s funny that they keep insisting that the elevator ride only takes 20s, but they forget to mention the design isn’t exactly efficient. It includes long walk ways and stairs between the elevator and both platforms. I think it’s like that because they chose a design that would be cheapest to build – using a single giant shaft at a convenient location.
Oh well.
Joey
Would the alternative have been multiple elevators with shorter walks? I guess the trade-off depends on how you feel about standing and waiting vs. walking.
There’s a blitz to promote this aspect of the project, probably to distract from the nonsense happening with the REM de l’Est, but the construction is indeed impressive. I pass through that intersection a few times a day on weekdays and the impact on traffic/pedestrian circulation/bike lanes hasn’t been too bad (the bike lane on Edouard-Montpetit just kinda dies, but that’s par for the course I suppose). No major gridlock, etc. The work being done on the high-end condo project further east on is a considerably bigger PITA.
Kate
Joey, high-end condo project further east on where? (I can edit it in.)
carswell
@Kate Joey’s referring to Le 1420, the former convent scandalously sold by the UdeM to a mafia-related developer. https://www.le1420.ca
@Joey The Édouard-Montpetit bike path has been detoured to Willowdale between Stirling and Vincent-d’Indy.
carswell
Hasten to add that, due to those relations, the original developer was forced to abandon the project. AFAIK the current developer has no connections with organized crime.
walkerp
carswell, do you have a link to any story about the mafia-related developer purchase? I ask because I once literally saw a very high-end luxury sedan and a cop car parked driver’s side window to window on the construction site there very early in the morning. The image looked straight out of a mafia movie. So suspicious.
carswell
carswell
@Ian Super glad to be rid of Perez but it’s almost a given that one of the main reasons Projet parachuted in an unknown (to locals), non-resident, novice politician with no connection to the borough other than as a place she occasionally travelled to to work as a nurse was precisely because she would do what she was told to and not create friction with the borough’s functionaries, who rank among the most uncaring, unhelpful government employees I’ve encountered, or “head office.”
In the last days of her campaign and much to her credit, Montgomery said something I never expected to hear coming out of the mouth of any CDN-NDG elected official: that the borough should be split in two. We can probably kiss that enlightened idea good-bye too.
carswell
Please delete above post, now reposted in the right thread.
And an idea for a future upgrade since this kind of misposting is a semi-regular occurrence: a reply button on every post in the thread, not just the top post.
Joey
@kate the infamous 1420 Mont Royal, I believe. Also I think the city/borough did some curb extensions in the last few weeks that royally screwed up rush hour (and the construction on Remembrance/CDN means that if you’re going east/west you’re taking a bit of a gamble, meaning Cote Ste Catherine was seriously overwhelmed while Mont-Royal just east of Vincent d’indy was closed).
@carswell and yet many cyclists, especially those going up Vincent d’Indy to UdeM, opt to stay on Edouard-Montpetit.
carswell
@Joey Old habits die hard. Also, the detour is great if you want to get to and from the Côte-Ste-Catherine bike path. But not if you’re heading to upper Outremont and points southeast, in which case you’re best to stay on ÉMP to the end and jog up Vincent-d’Indy to Mont-Royal. That’s the route that a lot of fitness cyclists take.
Kate
carswell, I’ll look into the reply thing, but from bitter experience I know how difficult it can be to add features to a WordPress theme after the fact.
ant6n
@joey
A more effieicnt layout with less walking doesn’t mean more waiting for elevators. I think older plans for the Edouard/Montpetit station envisioned building a deviation tunnel on the deep level, then building centre platforms, with all elevators connecting to the platform. so one could connect all elevators to a mezzanine below/above the existing metro stations. Or even better, have two sets of elevators, one for each blue line platform.That would be very expensive, but there’s a spectrum between expensive/optimal paths and cheap/long paths.
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Kate
Public transit ridership is gradually recovering but is not yet at the officially aspired 75% of the pre-pandemic level. Numbers hover around 50% of their levels before March 2020.
This story contains a separate report about a hammer attack on the ticket booth in Côte-Vertu station on Friday night. Workers inside weren’t hurt, but the photo shows extensive damage to the booth glass.
Blork
I don’t even know how to take public transit anymore. My OPUS card has been suspended since April 2020, as I’m on the annual plan plus subsidized from my job. Since nobody was going into the office, they set up a “suspended” status. But what if I just want to do a quick jaunt somewhere? Can I buy a one-shot ticket from a bus driver? (I’m not going to un-suspend my OPUS until I’m ready to start using it daily or almost daily, and that might never happen.)
Kate
Is there any reason you can’t keep a few tickets on the same Opus, or even a different one?
I’ve used tickets for occasional trips since March 2020. Had a couple of weekly passes in the summer when my census work was at its peak and I was covering territory every day.
Kevin
I realized six weeks ago that my Opus card expired in mid-2020…
james lawlor
Kate: The STM has a problem with this issue. Your OPUS à l’année can actually be used with no problem even if it is currently suspended. You can even load a 10-pass onto it. Both these things cause problems for the STM.
If you load a 10-pass onto your OPUS à l’année, the passes will not be deducted when you scan it. Instead the system will think you want to use your monthly pass.
If you use your OPUS à l’année you will get an email from Telematik saying you violated their terms of service since you travelled using a non-valid pass.You actually need to purchase a seperate OPUS card to load your 10-pass tickets. You can get the tickets transfered from your OPUS à l’année card to a newly purchased card if you go to a service centre.
Source: Personal experience and 1 hour of wasted time to get it sorted out.
Kate
james lawlor, I thought something like that might happen, which is why I wrote “or even a different one” above. Blork knows more than most people about the stern requirements of the Opus card. He has written about them.
Kevin
A couple days ago I read a piece by TVO arguing that Toronto should rethink its transit expansion because of the pandemic. I believe Montreal should do the same.
https://t.co/C0cEV1KnrJBlork
Yes, I guess the solution is a separate OPUS card. I’m less COVID-nervous about using the Metro now, so maybe I’ll do that soon. It will make the occasional 5 à 7 more enjoyable, as I won’t have to worry about D&Ding.
Kate
You know, it would be nice if they had Opus cards in different colours. Then you could remember which card had which fares on it. But that would involve an explicit admission that the fare system has been so complicated that people might need to do this.
JP
So true. I currently have 2 valid Opus cards and a couple of expired ones laying around. It’s so annoying.not knowing what’s what and having to grab everything.
j2
Woah! No need to slander the RPGs! You can still game high or drunk – just as long as you don’t get behind the wheel.
jeather
I usually write the expiration date on mine If I had two for one of those reasons I would mark them with nail polish or something to distinguish them.
Blork
Or just use a Sharpie and put a piece of scotch tape over it so it doesn’t rub off.
dhomas
I use this app to see which Opus is which:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=card.opus
It also tells me how many tickets I have left.denpanosekai
WOW thanks Dhomas!!!
Kate
dhomas, that doesn’t need any special hardware?
Azrhey
I use that app too. @kate it uses the NFC thingamie used to for paying with your phone so if your phone is apple/google pay capable your good to go.
mare
@AZpzrhey I think it works with any Android phone that can read NFC cards.
@Kate
A version for iOS is probably possible, depending on what NFC tags are used in the OPUS card software. “Core NFC doesn’t support payment-related Application IDs.” I stopped doing programming and don’t have current enough hardware (neither Mac nor an NFC capable iPhone) nor a Developer account anymore to make one. Apple will probably also not let it on their store if it’s not sanctioned by OPUS.mare
There are several iOS apps that read raw NFC data, but the OPUS info is probably encoded, so that won’t help.
dhomas
Any Android phone that has NFC can use the app. If you’re unsure if your phone has that, basically any phone that mentions payment capabilities like Google Pay or Samsung Pay is able to use this app. They all is the same underlying technology.
Kate
mare was right, it isn’t on the Apple app store.
dhomas
It’s not all too surprising. Apple was quite slow to adopt NFC, and their M.O. is to mostly lock stuff down so you can mostly only use their ecosystem. That said, I have no iDevices, so I could not confirm if there was any such app for iPhone.
thomas
The iOS app Recharge OPUS, is currently under beta testing allowing one to refill a new version of OPUS cards. Note that the app can still read the expiry of current non-refillable OPUS cards.
dhomas
@thomas do you know where you can sign up for the beta testing for Recharge Opus? I know some people who might be interested.
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Kate
Mayor Plante is concerned about the atmosphere in Old Montreal these days, after a couple of mass gatherings and shootings.
I can just remember a time when Old Montreal was louche. There was at least one Fête Nationale thing that went over the top, down around St-Paul Street, as referenced in Les Blues de la métropole, but after that the area became stolidly respectable, a showplace for tourists and a residential area for people who can afford expensively converted condos in handsome old stone buildings.
It seems that without tourists it’s taking back its old vibe of a waterfront saloon quarter.
Update: the Old Port will be closed from midnight till 6 from now on.
Meezly
Nice analogy. Makes me picture our waterfront populated by desperate locals in lieu of rough n’ tumble dockworkers and salty sailor types, like a Last Exit to Old Port.
denpanosekai
I saw a ton of punk shows in Old Montreal! But I don’t necessarily want to go back to those days.
steph
FUCK normalizing cerfews. This is rediculous.
Kate
steph? Are you all right?
denpanosekai, I know. It’s still weird for me to think of tourists brunching at the Hotel Nelson where once we moshed.
steph
A cerfew for ‘sanitary crisis’ reasons that wasn’t based on science was a hard pill to swallow. Now they’re usimg it to avoid overflows. That’s not acceptable. It’s like the police forgot how to do their jobs and it’s easier to call impose a cerfew instead.
Chris
Hopefully someone will challenge this curfew thing. We’re supposed to have freedom of movement and assembly in this country. Temporary covid emergency was one thing, but we shouldn’t be reaching for this every time there’s a bump in crime.
Joey
Agreed 100% with Chris. Seems especially egregious that the federal government is acting without at least working with the municipal (and, I suppose, provincial) governments as well.
Kate
Parks have always had a closure time of midnight till 6. It’s posted in most of them, and understood generally to mean the police have a premise to move you along if you’re causing a disturbance in the wee hours.
The Old Port is simply invoking a similar measure for the area south of de la Commune.
I don’t find it unreasonable and it isn’t a curfew, it’s just a limit.
Blork
As Kate says, many (most? all?) parks are already closed between midnight and 6AM, so this is not something new. And it only applies to the area “south” (which is actually east) of de la Commune, which is the park/tourist trap area along the water. (I.e., the “old port” which is not the same as “Old Montreal” … yes, some people still don’t know the difference).
I’m not crazy about such closures either, but file this under “this is why we can’t have nice things” while holding up pictures of street gang and mafia thugs waving their guns around.
Kate
Right, Blork. A lot of folks have taken to referring to the whole Old Montreal area breezily as “the old port” in recent years. This new rule only applies to the area between de la Commune and the river, which is mostly federal land. The feds can’t shut down the rest of Old Montreal after midnight.
p.s. Blork, we both know that’s south, don’t confuse us with facts.
steph
okokok, i’ll calm my nerves – I imagined it was the whole Old Montreal.
Ant6n
Closing public parks at night is kind of ridiculous. What’s next, asking a fee to be allowed the commons (i.e. our natural heritage)?
fvr.mtl
@denpanosekai @kate
https://www.arcmtl.org/en/images/77-mtl-exhibit/Kate
Nice collection, fvr.mtl!
Ant6n, maybe there’s an argument, but the midnight-till-6 thing isn’t new.
Nicole
I don’t love the imposition of a curfew either. But some of the people complaining are talking like the pandemic is over. It’s not.
MarcG
@kvr.mtl: La Brique! That’s wild stuff, thanks.
Uatu
@fvr.mtl- thanks for the memories… Station 10, Genetic Control…sigh. I’m old
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Kate
The STM will not be reducing its services because of the curfew. I can already hear kvetching from Ensemble, but this is the right decision: anyone who’s out is working, and working people have to get to and from work.
Bill Binns
Agreed. Turning public transit on and off to control behavior would be a huge mistake. People don’t forget that stuff.
I would be in favor of credentialing essential workers and allowing cops to stop anybody after curfew to check for those credentials. The problem is that there are so many gigantic loopholes in this so called curfew that the credentialing would be almost as much work as the vaccine roll-out.
Uatu
I’m glad I’m not working evenings anymore. Every night heading home on the metro would probably be like a WW2 movie where I have to show my papers to the polizei
Kate
Bill Binns, you can download and print out a document from this page which your employer fills out, and which you carry to prove that you’re outside because of work.
Bill Binns
@kate I read that too. Not much of a credential though. More like the honor system. Are cops going to be making calls from the side of the road to confirm you work for a hospital or an essential florist? I haven’t seen anything saying people are even required to carry ID to match their home made essential worker form.
I think the cops have been set up to fail by the province on this. The rules are ridiculously broad and open to interpretation. They are the ones who will be publicly crucified if it turns out that one demographic received 8% more fines than another.
Kate
Bill Binns, I think we can assume that the people the cops will be dealing with most are not the kind who will think ahead about downloading a Word file, faking up a business name and so on. Yes, cops will have a lot of leeway on this, but they already do on many things.
Ephraim
How many people are we talking taking mass transit after curfew? Could it be cheaper to subsidize taxis and let the institutions print out special forms for those out after 9PM?
Kate
Ephraim, I don’t think anyone knows the answer to your first question yet. If after a month the Covid numbers are still bad and the curfew continues, I would hope the STM can assess whether there are any routes that are virtually unused after 8 pm, and maybe trim them back. They must already know where routes stay busy because of round-the-clock industrial installations.
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Kate
Fed up with federal inaction at the airport, Montreal plans to deploy public health workers to question and inform arrivals.
JaneyB
Good. I wish they’d actually just test arrivals too, not just at YUL but also traffic over the bridges to Gatineau now that there are community cases loose in Ottawa. I know it will only slow not stop the virus but who doesn’t love slow?
dmdiem
no. it’s counter intuitive, but the last thing you need to do is create a bureaucratic bottleneck. all it takes is one person in the line to infect everyone else.
Kate
dmdiem, with modern devices it doesn’t take long to take a person’s temperature, and ask anyone to step out of line if they’re feverish.
walkerp
But to what end? We don’t have quarantine centers set up. We don’t have a system to force self-isolation. Seems to me we should just let them through as quickly as possible with really strong communications that they all need to go home and self-quarantine for 14 days.
Kate
I suppose the public health agents can hand out a sheet (French and English, I suppose, but what about other languages?) explaining everyone needs to isolate for 14 days after arrival. Maybe if you have a fever the information would be more urgent, but we don’t really have a means of enforcing anyone’s behaviour once they leave the airport.
Joey
This seems more like “city is annoyed with Ottawa” than anything. Some of our friends came back from a week in Cancun the other day. They are in self-isolation for 14 days. It’s hard to believe that they are much more likely to have COVID-19 after being at a resort and on an airplane than we are after spending the same time period living our lives normally. In other words, we should all be self-isolating/quarantining – the idea that we ought to be making all kinds of distinctions based on age, recent travel, etc., seems a little too clever. My suspicion is that we will be locked down within days.
Francesco
Agree with Joey and dmdiem, but you already know that. Every airport I’ve transited in Asia has had infrared temperature screening on arrival since the original SARS-CoV in 2002. It didn’t do anything for SARS-CoV-2. Once the virus is in a community and active measures aren’t taken to prevent its spread within that community, it’s too late. As Joey said, we should *all* be taking active measures now.
Legault’s posturing is just once again to appease his base: a small minority of Quebeckers that just simply hate people who don’t look, sound, dress or worship like they do.
Francesco
Ugh just re-read that. Please excuse the syntax and poor grammar.
Kate
For once, Francesco, I don’t feel xenophobia in Legault’s measures. Closing schools, getting bars and gyms and all those other nonessential businesses to close, are not targeted at any ethnic or religious group.
Maybe people are right and temperature-taking is only pandemic theatre.
Alison Cummins
A friend of mine was pulled aside during routine airport check-in a few years back. « You aren’t feeling very well, are you? » asked a concerned airport officer. Well no she wasn’t, but how did they know? An infra-red monitor that discreetly screens everyone passing it.
I don’t know that the Chinese monitoring was useless. After Wuhan they were able to keep the rest of China under pretty good control. Maybe being able to identify people with fevers and track down their contacts was part of that?
I can see how it could be worth identifying people who might have it before they continue on their journey. Are they about to get on another crowded plane or transport vehicle? Are they going home to a large family? Does this seem to be a person who will respect quarantine measures?
A month ago (and possibly still) African countries decided that it made most sense for their nationals to stay put in Wuhan quarantine and not come home. Africa didn’t have any cases yet and China seemed to have a handle on the situation. Stranded Africans were bored and miserable but it was better than trying to contain COVID-19 in, say, Rwanda.
We’re taking the opposite approach. We’re being proactive about shutdowns which helps us track contacts. And we’re bringing home our nationals from countries that are making a mess of things. If someone is coming from a country that is encouraging young people to get sick (Britain) or that doesn’t have a functioning national public program (US) we can expect that they are at higher risk than people who have been self-quarantining in a country where everyone else is self-quarantining.
IF we can identify them easily without creating lineups and crowds, and IF we’re in a position to follow up with them, I’m all for infra-red monitors and asking people if they’ve been coughing lately.
(I’m also all for making screening available to other risk groups — teachers, cashiers, anyone who spends time with old people — not travellers specifically.)
Kate
I wonder if that temperature scanning device was put in for SARS, and whether it’s still operating.
Alison Cummins
Kate, possibly, or MERS. Apparently Istanbul airport is the only one to have it permanently installed, but it was broken when we went through a couple of weeks ago.
Also RE what we do with returning snowbirds:
nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/a-canadian-evacuee-describes-life-under-quarantine-at-cfb-trenton/ampFrancesco
Hi @kate I was specifically referencing Legault’s rhetoric about foreigners and his posturing about the feds not doing enough to stem the flow of foreigners through YUL. His comments are anything but science-based.
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Kate
Luc Ferrandez announced Tuesday that he’s quitting politics.
Ferrandez says his main issue with Projet is its inability to act firmly enough on environmental issues.
Update: There will have to be a byelection to choose a new Plateau mayor within 120 days of Ferrandez’ official resignation.
Ian
I’m glad for him that he got to go out on a noble note. The cynic in me says “fuck you” was a last straw in a series of bad optics. The even more cynical part of me thinks he was finally too much of a doctrinaire moron and Plante needed to cut him loose since she now needs to woo the CAQ and has to be seen as a team player. Welcome to politics, folks.
Douglas
“100% tax on on-street and off-street parking, taxing cars entering the downtown area, reinventing trucking plans within the city, taxing foreign investments, taxing waste, lobbying to prevent the expansion of the airport, limiting the development of the oil activities in the port and taxing meat.”
Good riddance. Good thing Plante was practical about running this city and didn’t give this guy more power.
Kate
Douglas, that’s exactly the kind of commonsense realpolitik that will doom us as a species. Ferrandez is right. You are wrong.
Tim S.
It’s a pretty good list Douglas quotes. Whenever Project calls me ask to me to renew my membership or donate or whatnot, my answer is always that I’m disappointed they haven’t done more (anything) to improve traffic safety and discourage the SUV takeover of my neighbourhood.
CharlesQ
@kate thanks! It’s exactly what I wanted to say. I’m still baffled by the narrow mindedness and short sightedness of so many fellow citizens. Cars are just a symptoms and they don’t make sense on so many levels (all the space taken up by roads and parkings, heat island effect, air pollution effects on health, greenhouse gases, etc), especially in central neighbourhoods. I don’t understand drivers who think they should be able to drive anywhere anytime when there are thousands of other drivers who also want the same thing… it doesn’t add up.
Douglas
Fellow citizens like me are just not falling over their heads believing that if Montreal was to eliminate all cars on the road the world will magically turn into a paradise utopia.
I’m glad Plante runs into the reality that in order to govern responsibly you don’t let the extremes of the spectrum run the asylum.
Jack
Douglas you are now the extreme, your shortsightedness is a danger to my children.
walkerp
I second what Jack said. We are in a global crisis. If anything is extreme its the fact that people think owning a gigantic box of plastic and metal that is killing them and the planet is normal.
Especially when the alternatives are viable and make for a much more pleasant life for everybody. Car owners are going to become very similar to gun owners in the U.S.walkerp
On a side note (and perhaps somewhat petty at this point), I wonder if the truth will come out about the North Field now.
Tim S.
Well, perhaps there’s some sort of middle ground between “all cars are evil” and “I need a range rover to get to my yoga class 8 blocks away”
John S
As a local I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see him go. And its not the “anti car” stance as much as his “my way or the highway” approach to local politics (irony intended). He really seemed like he wanted all aspects of life in the Plateau to conform to his vision of how people should live in general and F-you if you don’t like it. I’m thinking of his reactions to noise complaints re: bars on St Laurent and St Denis, the killing of the baseball field, and while I generally support a lot of his traffic calming measures there were a lot of ways he could have sold them better to outsiders – its not as if the Plateau has become THAT hard to visit. He just rubbed me the wrong way and I think in his later career he’s done that to a lot of people.
Kevin
Ferrandez’s list, as noted by @Douglas, is something I frequently vent about when it comes to life in Quebec.
The instinctive reaction in Quebec’s Francophone political class is to use the stick. I don’t know if it’s because they all had their knuckles rapped by their teachers, if they were terrorized by nuns, or have a big Catholic fear of hell, but the first reaction is always the threat.
And it fails. A lot. Which Ferrandez found out in spectacular fashion when the people looked at his pet project and firmly rejected it.
Seduction works a lot better, but Quebec’s elites don’t understand that concept. They could take a lesson from A&W.
Myles
Even making a dent in the problem of climate change and giving ourselves a decent chance at maintaining a functioning civilization is going to require collective mobilization and sacrifice on the level of World War II. Ferrandez’s proposals were the barest beginning of what we need to accomplish in the next 10 years, and even that was too much for people. It’s honestly getting terrifying to be stuck in a society that just doesn’t get the seriousness of this.
YUL514
Thanks Douglas, what we need to be focussing on is more electric/hybrid cars, much better fuel efficiency on current combustion engines. Cars will not disappear, especially with the cost of housing on the island. Families will continue moving to off island areas, for better or for worse. Cars aren’t going anywhere which means EVs are the solution.
Jack
YUL514 that ship has sailed. When you talk about housing are you talking two car garage, thermo pump , extremely low density, huge cost per citizen for sewage, water, roads, plowing etc.etc.
Because we all subsidize this “cheap” housing so developers can make a killing and destroy more.Douglas
Jack, car drivers pay the vast majority of municipal taxes collected in this city, not only am I not a danger, you should be thanking me for my contributions. You are welcome. Your kid too.
USA and China combined add 2-3 Montreals every year to their economy population wise and consumption wise. Us putting a rock in our shoe will do absolutely nothing to slow down pollution globally.
Jack
Rock solid logic , so essentially just stand around and play the fiddle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn3DQLH5bdYIan
Kevin is right when he says “The instinctive reaction in Quebec’s Francophone political class is to use the stick.” This is why Ferrandez was unpopular, he was seen as an authoritarian disciplinarian. His solution to too many cars on the road is to increase the cost of parking and hike taxes – Plante’s is to improve transit. Plante’s approach is more humane, forward-thinking, and ultimately effective – and will result in a more liveable city where Ferrandez’s plan is just to punish everyone for not immediately doing what he thinks is best. Honestly I think half his reason for quitting is the Camilien-Houde debacle, which is pretty much a slap in the face for him.
In truth though, you know what will solve the climate crisis? If about half the world’s population dies and the rest is forced to return to a pre-industrial largely agrarian lifestyle. Everything else is wishful thinking, there is no way the world can support human population on this scale. Even if everyone in Montreal stopped using plastic, driving, and eating meat now and forever, billions of people are going to die of flooding and famine. The real problem is large scale globalized industry, and even Ferrandez knows all our efforts as citizens of Montreal are a misdirection, like making people give up their wrought iron fences in WW2 to support the war effort. All this green citizen brigade stuff is to keep us docile and feeling good about doing “something”. The heads of a few fortune 500 CEOs on pikes would do immeasurably more for the environment than any amount of citizen eco-consciousness, but nobody wants to address THAT harsh reality. We don’t need the three R’s, we need revolution – or catastrophe.
Either way, as George Carlin says, the planet is fine – it’s humans that are fucked.
Chris
Douglas, “car drivers pay the vast majority of municipal taxes collected in this city” in the same way that right-handed people do: only because they are the majority. In fact, society subsidizes car use and ownership in so many ways: free roads, free parking, etc. etc. My coworker was telling me how he can get thousands in government subsides buying a new electric car, whereas my bike is 1000x “greener” but it’s not even exempt from GST/PST. 🙁
I for one like Ferrandez, sad to see him go. Plante has been disappointing so far (though not as much as previous mayors, but that’s a low bar).
The best thing one can do for the environment is not have children. Every human wants to maintain or better their standard of living, and our population continues to grow and grow. Those two things just can’t continue. Government should provide free contraception to everyone that wants it, that would help way more than crap like “turn off the faucet while brushing your teeth”.
Joey
Sounds like Plante was increasingly fed up with having to clean up after his tantrums. Recall that after his fuck-you Saturday, it was Plante who had to face the media and tell them that he had apologized (to whom? For what? We’ll never know, though I suspect one day he’ll let it be known that he made no such apology):
Luc Ferrandez a affirmé, en entrevue dans divers médias, qu’il avait été muselé par la mairesse, une critique que Mme Plante rejette. « Au comité exécutif, c’est lui qui avait la plus importante tribune. Je lui laissais beaucoup de latitude, parce que j’adhère à plusieurs de ses projets et à sa vision. De là ma tristesse devant son départ », a-t-elle dit.
The idea that Ferrandez has been muzzled doesn’t pass the LOL test, though I would be shocked if he didn’t feel it to be true. There is a limit to what a municipal politician, even one at the seat of city power, can accomplish – I think the frustration that did Ferrandez in is the same frustration many Plante supporters feel: decisions about the way the city runs are largely at the discretion of a provincial government that will never really give a shit.
Anyway, it’s time for some new leadership in the Plateau, which will be PM forever. Perhaps the environmental objectives that Ferrandez is now touting will be more attainable when the borough mayor pushing for revolutionary change isn’t a huge asshole.
Ian
Well they just named Norris interim mayor, so so much for that.
qatzelok
The reasons for Ferrandez’s resignation can be found in the comments of this article on this page: he can’t handle how backwards his own citizens are, and realizes they probably can’t be reformed. Only collapse will change our ways.
I hope he’s wrong about this, but he’s been front and center fighting our car-addicted dragons for a long time, and there are a lot of them. So I wish him a happy and relaxed retirement with lots of car-free moments.
YUL514
Qatzelok, why not push for more EVs and Hybrids instead of the far fetched notion of getting rid of all cars?
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Kate
Hasidic groups in Brooklyn have been the site of a recent measles outbreak, so with Passover visitors expected here, the local communities are bracing for trouble.
The item doesn’t explain where anti-vaxx ideas intersect with Orthodox Judaism.
Passover this year coincides closely with Easter i.e. this upcoming weekend.
Ephraim
This is a second case. There was a case earlier, but the measles never transferred to Montreal because they vaccinate here. The reason is simple… it’s free. A lot of the Haredi community doesn’t have full healthcare in the US… where you have to pay for it. And in Israel, fully socialized medicine is only from 1995, so those older generally didn’t have coverage. Of course, since you have to buy it, not everyone follows the law…
Kate
How much can an MMR shot cost? (I’m prepared to believe it’s hundreds of bucks, in the United States.)
Brett
Just over 21 bucks a dose c.f. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/vfc/awardees/vaccine-management/price-list/index.html
Ephraim
@kate – See https://www.walgreens.com/topic/healthcare-clinic/price-menu.jsp it’s $99.99 for MMR per dose (and this is given at the pharmacy… it’s even more at the hospital, doctor or clinic in the US) and you need 2 doses. Incidentally, if you wonder what the maximum the RAMQ pays for a medication is, it’s all published online at http://www.ramq.gouv.qc.ca/en/publications/citizens/legal-publications/Pages/list-medications.aspx but standard vaccines aren’t there, because you don’t buy them with the pharmacare program, they government buys them in bulk. But it’s much cheaper to vaccinate than to deal with the medical costs of not vaccinating… never mind the coffins for the 1 in 1000 that dies of measles.
Ian
“When asked why people are opting out of vaccines, the New York city health department said anti-vaccine propagandists are distributing misinformation in the community.
The fearmongerers include a group called PEACH — or Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health — which appears to be targeting the Jewish community with misinformation about vaccine safety, citing rabbis as authorities, through a hotline and magazines. Brooklyn Orthodox Rabbi William Handler has also been proclaiming the well-debunked link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. Parents who “placate the gods of vaccination” are engaging in “child sacrifice,” he told Vox.”
Each community follows the advice of its own rabbis, presumably the Montreal Hasidim aren’t on board with this particular line of thought.
Ian
But important to note, that is a small group –
“Some Jewish community leaders are not wild about New York City’s new, shall we say, vaccination edict, but they, their organizations, and the overwhelming majority of local doctors are resolutely pro-vaccination.
Ezras Nashim, the women’s ambulance corps that serves observant Jewish women in Borough Park and the surrounding area, issued the strongest of statements encouraging vaccination, citing, among other things, the Talmud’s declaration that “all of Israel are responsible for each other.”
Rabbi David Niederman, director of United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn (UJO), a Satmar community-service group, was equally emphatic about the Halachic demand to vaccinate children. He stressed that those who opposed it are part of a fringe group, much like the anti-vaxxers in the United States as a whole.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/283472/hasidic-community-health-emergency
Chris
Kate, there’s this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_and_religion
I could imagine a correlation between religiosity and vaccination hesitancy. Both groups are prone to believing in things without evidence. (i.e. if virgins can bear children, then vaccines can cause autism.) Not sure if anyone has studied that…
Kate
Ian, Ephraim, thanks for the research.
Chris, you don’t see it. Because a person or group of people is religious it does not necessarily open them to new irrational ideas. I was curious where anti-vaxxers had found an opening into Orthodox Jewish culture, which is in most ways pretty realistic about medical care.
Mark Côté
The anti-vax stuff I’ve seen has had very little, if any, religious content, unless you count “new age” viewpoints.
thomas
@Mark It seems anti-vax proponents will make up any argument if they think it will stick to a target audience. There was a nytimes article over the weekend where an evangelical family objected to vaccinations because they are made from human abortion DNA.
Chris
Kate, of course. I did not say it _necessarily_ does, I said I suspect a correlation/overlap between groups. Religion is the ultimate fake news, if one can fall for it, one could be more likely to fall for another kind. A quick search reveals there is at least some data supporting my suspicion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3906279/#R147
jeather
Wealth correlates negatively with religion but positively with anti-vaccine, so I wouldn’t think “those crazy people who believe in god probably don’t believe in vaccination” follows. (Historically vaccination and earlier variolation were invented and taken up by religious people as well-.)
Raymond Lutz
Wealth correlates negatively with vaccination? That’s not what Gapminder shows for vaccination rate VS GDP/capita
jeather
Wealth correlates positively with anti-vaccine in North America, the context of vaccinations is very different in other cultures and also not particularly relevant to the question of how it correlates with religion.
Chris
Correlation is not causation. I don’t think there’s a causal relationship like: religiosity -> anti-vax. I suspect it’s more like: predisposition to ignoring evidence -> anti-vax, predisposition to ignoring evidence -> climate change denial, predisposition to ignoring evidence -> religiosity.
jeather
Correlation is not causation, no. But your argument doesn’t even have the grace of actually fitting the evidence.
Chris
jeather, please reread my posts. I’m not even making an argument, I’m stating some suspicions that I indeed do not know are true, but merely suspect. I repeatedly used words like “suspect”, “could imagine”, etc. I shared two links showing that religion is indeed one (of many) reasons given by some for vaccination hesitancy. You’ve just asserted, showing nothing. Raymond already contradicted one of your assertions with data. How about you show something instead of just asserting? Show me a study showing no correlation, I’d genuinely like to know if there is or isn’t.
jeather
Low vaccination rates in Sudan are due to entirely different factors than North American or European rates and not relevant, as I mentioned.
Here are two links that show a correlation between wealth and lower vaccination rates in the US:
https://www.cnn.com/2015/02/03/health/the-unvaccinated/index.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4695929/Here is one link that shows an inverse correlation between wealth and religious belief:
https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/income-distribution/Feel free to imagine all sorts of new ways to dislike religious people. I’m not going to change your mind.
Ian 21:10 on 2024-03-01 Permalink
I actually posted this link on page 2, thinking nobody would appreciate my constant carping about the city overspending on cops.
I think this passage is the most on-point:
“Although Montreal does have fewer officers today per capita than it did a decade ago, it still has more officers per capita than cities like Vancouver and Edmonton, which have higher rates of severe crime, according to data from Statistics Canada.
Massimiliano Mulone, associate professor in the department of criminology at the Université de Montréal, thinks Montreal’s police force is far from understaffed.
However, the amount of overtime and the number of tasks they take on, from responding to calls involving mental health to homelessness, might cause fatigue and stress, he says, making them feel there is a need for an even larger police force.”
This is the whole point to defunding the police – not that we should not have any police at all, but that we are inflating the police budget to make them do things that would be better performed by other community services – basically losing money on worse services.
Also, this:
“(Mulone) says there are other ways to roll back spending, such as stopping the practice of having highly paid officers do some forms of administrative work or direct traffic.”
Well, duh.
Kate 23:18 on 2024-03-01 Permalink
Ian, that is so well put I want to call it out:
This is the whole point to defunding the police – not that we should not have any police at all, but that we are inflating the police budget to make them do things that would be better performed by other community services – basically losing money on worse services.
jeather 23:27 on 2024-03-01 Permalink
If anyone ran for mayor on this, I would vote for them in a heartbeat. I am beyond unimpressed with Plante on this topic.
Joey 16:25 on 2024-03-02 Permalink
@kate that’s why “defund the police” is a terrible slogan
bob 16:42 on 2024-03-02 Permalink
Overtime is the contemporary form of police corruption. It is part of a larger trend. As old-time corruption becomes more difficult, stuff like plain extortion, the corrupt slip into legal forms of fraud and abuse, and in the case of police continent-wide that has been excessive overtime and hyper-defensive unions. It was formerly a small-ish percentage of police employees who put in for the excessive overtime, skewing the numbers, but it has become widespread, because it is not seen as obviously fraudulent or corrupt (if it is seen at all), and police get away with everything because no one polices the police.
I don’t have data at hand, but the last time I looked there was an association between the highest amounts of fraudulent overtime (employees claiming to have worked 70, 80, 90 hour weeks) and things like complaints for excessive force and other misbehaviour.
In line with the “defunding” sentiment, and mirroring what Ted Rutland said in the atricle, here’s a recent quote from the Comptroller of New York City, whose police overspent their overtime budget by 93% (about $1 billion over) in 2022: “If New York City had unlimited cash, it would be lovely to allow teachers unlimited overtime to stay after school to help every kid learn to read or pay social workers unlimited overtime to help counsel New Yorkers struggling with mental illness. But other agencies aren’t allowed to show total disregard for their overtime budget, and we can’t afford for the NYPD to do so year after year.” But, of course, they do, and so does the SPVM.
Ian 18:54 on 2024-03-02 Permalink
I’m not even allowed to have a substitute teacher if I’m sick for a day. There are no “budget overruns” for most public workers. I get the argument that police are an essential service – but not all of their services are essential, and as Mulone pointed out, not all police work falls within essential services either.
If we actually had social workers doing sociall work (for instance) it would probably even lead to a reduction in crime.