Excellent piece here by Alanah Heffez on the conflict between the museum and the condo builder, or urban plan as social contract: the Museum of Fine Arts stuck to the city’s zoning regulations while building its new wing, but the builders of the seven-storey condo tower on the location of the Redpath mansion had the height rules broken for them, creating not only a problem for the museum but a very bad precedent for those wishing to build on Mount Royal.
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The frozen body of a woman was found today on Dowker Island by a passerby; police are considering the death suspect.I’ve walked over there in winter myself (here’s a photo essay of one occasion) and there are ice fishers and other folks out there on the frozen river and the island, but it’s not really the sort of place where you’ll have lots of people passing by – and definitely not a place where you just happen to be. It takes a bit of effort to get there on foot – you’ll notice none of the media outlets have a stock shot of the place. Here’s one that Ben Soo took a couple of winters ago:
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This brief piece about a man in his 50s dying after being hit by a car downtown was heralded by a Gazette front-page link reading “Car critically injures Montreal pedestrian.”
The French version I see in Rue Frontenac is not much better, from this perspective. “Happé par une voiture” – “le véhicule roulait.”
It’s hard not to write such sentences. This isn’t a criticism of journalistic writing or anyone’s grammar, but it reminds me of a discussion we had on this blog at the beginning of December about language used to describe mistakes or misjudgements made by motorists. It may seem like a quibble to object to giving the car the agency to injure someone, but the implied passivity can’t be a good thing to accept. Cars don’t make mistakes and hurt people. Drivers do.
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billpedestrian
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Stefan
thanks for that reminder, hopefully this will lead to a better taking of responsibility.
in other news, since 93% of those ‘accidents’ are human error, google* and also a european joint project in sweden** explore autonomous driving. once those go live, we can talk about ‘car hits something’ …
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qatzelok
Placing the blame on drivers – who are just people just like you and me – takes the blame off of our death-defying supermachines, and gives a free pass to the state apparatus (government, car companies, oil lobby) that lets us (forces us) to drive them. The truth is that nice smart people kill other nice smart people with stupid, hateful machines like cars.
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Jack
I am also fed up with the constant,” the driver wasn’t injured in the collision” no sh_t !
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Stefan
qatzelok: sure, government, car companies and lobbies, societal forces and peer pressure may encourage cars and trivialize or hide the fact that it is a tool which is deadly if not operated carefully (as is any kitchen knife). but in the end it’s the driver who is responsible (at least morally, if not per la code routiere …)
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qatzelok
Stefan, the drivers who get in accidents aren’t “bad apples.” It could just as easily have been any driver. We are all perfectly capable of killing someone while driving. It is the technology itself that guarantees instant and brutal death.
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Stefan
qatzelok has an interesting viewpoint. but let me return to the kitchen knife analogy. when little, i was taught not to run with it, always cut away from the body, to pass to somebody such that they can grip the handle. in short, to handle this technology responsibly (or brutal but maybe not instant death or serious injury could occur).
i prefer alternatives to driving, only one of which reasons is that it is easy to endanger myself and others (and even more so if tired, drunk etc.). however, _if_ i drive, i am taking my responsibility in being aware that i am steering a mortal weapon and taking appropriate precaution. however, many people, based on previous experience (everyone starts out without collisions) and overestimation of their capabilities, don’t.
for example last friday the two guys in the car that crashed into the corner of the al-taib resto near concordia university. had they not crashed, they would have slid on the sidewalk and hit me and the girl before me (we were only metres away from the impact). i saw it happen and can not think of how it could not have been caused by lack of attention …
this is why 93% of collisions are caused by ‘bad apples’, or if seen the other way around: they boost the remaining 7% unavoidable accidents by a whopping 1400% and so we arrive at a pile of 600+ dead bodies in quebec, every year. plus tens of thousands of severe injuries.
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It’s not really news, but there are wind chill warnings for today and tomorrow, with chill factors like –39°C being bandied about as the cold snap deepens. It never got close to this chilly last winter, so maybe we’ve gone a bit soft.
Hydro-Quebec is asking people to cut down their energy usage, especially during Monday morning’s waking hours. In return, the utility promises to turn off its illuminated logo to save power. (You couldn’t make that up.)
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Stefan
i did not feel it was very cold today, biking to work. the sun warms a lot actually. almost no wind either.
i find it funny how these weather sites only subtract in winter (wind chill) and only add (humidex) in summer, but neglect effects of sun, summer wind chill and winter humidity …
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Le Devoir looks at the many angles involved in rebuilding or replacing the Champlain bridge. Comments point out that the Victoria, dating from 1859, and the Jacques-Cartier, from 1930, are not crumbling in the same way as the Champlain, which was completed in 1962, and ask why. Wasn’t technology supposed to be improving during this time, not declining?
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Relatives of the deposed Tunisian president are said to be in Montreal even though the official line is that they’re not welcome here. The National Post piece also conflicts with a Gazette report this week about the ownership of that stratospheric Westmount mansion which may have at some point belonged to Ben Ali or one of his relatives:
Later news says that the relatives are definitely here and some of them have permanent resident cards.
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Kristian has a fascinating look at the many quarries that have dotted Montreal from which we got all that grey stone for building institutions with. More info contributed in the comments, too.
Especially in Montreal, where the pedestrian is always at fault and the driver has the right of way.