Someone’s put up an online petition against the common ban on pets in apartment leases, named as one of factors in the widespread abandonment of pets in this city.
Updates from May, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Quel Avenir has been weighing up different transit funding options all week and now poses us the question: you have to fund the development and maintenance of transit in the urban area, which do you choose and why? An environmentalist also writes about the need for strong public transit to strengthen Montreal as it grows this century.
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What Le Devoir is calling a fragile tentative agreement between students and the Charest government is being discussed and described today. Tuitions will rise – although not for six months – but other changes will offset the increase: a reduction in other fees and the creation of a council that’s meant to monitor university spending are also in the agreement.
Student groups still must vote on the offer arrived at this weekend after a long negotiating session.
Victoriaville is recovering from Friday night’s battle, but friends and family of two young men are in shock at the seriousness of their injuries. Maxence Valade lost an eye and is suffering from other head injuries; Alexandre Allard also has head injuries. The Charest government says the fault is with the protesters, as the SQ can have done no wrong. The Journal analyzes their tactics.
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mdblog
I sincerely hope this situation is coming to a close and that the next time I have to see Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois is when he is sworn in as a cabinet minister in the National Assembly!
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Hamza
Hear hear .
I hope that this deal goes through and everyone gets to go back to class and complete their semesters and that , more importantly , any government Charest, Marois, god forbid le CAQ(a), thinks twice about messing with the youth again.
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Jack
Seeing that level of violence and hatred on Friday night was really stunning and then to read the details of the “agreement”, tous ca pour ca?
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Ian
It’s great to see the government making an offer – but I have to say that a six month tuition freeze so students can figure out with the universities how they might save some money isn’t much of a proposition – the government is still offloading its responsibilities, and nothing’s certain as to what savings the students might negotiate with the schools, if any, and on a school-by-school basis at that – or so it would seem. Or am I misinterpreting the offer?
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Bixi has become a big success in Toronto, with a cyclists’ group petitioning for more.
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La Presse has a feature about the estimated 40,000 people who live in Montreal in precarious lives without legal papers or status. Some discussion with people and groups who believe the idea of people being illegal is meaningless and should be scrapped; a woman from Africa who stays illegally because her child was born here; a Haitian man who was deported from Canada despite having a wife and kids here; the plight of illegals who are chronically exploited by employers who know they have no recourse.
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A committee is going to figure out what to do about the Cinémathèque québécoise, which is about 50 years old and has the main function of preserving Quebec’s audiovisual history and displaying it, but is chronically short of funding.
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Suitable Sunday brunch read: Bagels, Toasted, about the making of bagels and with an excursion to Montreal in the middle. And a recipe.
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A woman from the Hasidic community writes in Rover Arts about what it’s like to live here, where a small minority of angry people clearly hate people like her.
She links to the Friends of Hutchison Facebook page. They’re having a get-together today from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Mile End library (5434 Park Avenue, in the old church), hoping to bring together Hasidim and non-Hasidim for a friendly meeting. The Mirror has some background.
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qatzelok
I love reading about the “need for conversation” from people who have never bothered to learn French after living in Quebec for decades. Very sincere.
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Kate
That’s unimaginative of you. This woman’s already bilingual – Yiddish and English – and in her regular life is able to manage fine with those 2 languages. If you think that means that those Outremont yahoos are right to condemn and harass her – well, I feel sorry for you.
There’s such a weird thing in Quebec about how you have to conform to certain expectations before it can be reasonable to expect people to respect you. I think we need to be more open-minded about the needs and balances in people’s lives.
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qatzelok
@ Kate: “in her regular life is able to manage fine with those 2 languages”
Some people get by without ever talking to a Quebecois or visiting their neighborhoods. Her actions demonstrate no pressing need for a conversation with francophones whatsoever. Her call for one is pure opportunism. You can’t make both claims simultaneously; a need, and no need for a conversation.
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Ian
Here’s some food for thought – Everyone outside Quebec thinks of bagels, smoked meat, Leonard Cohen and Mordecai Richler when they think of Montreal. Now,the Hasidim account for about 25% of the population of Outremont. We have no problem calling the Park strip “the Greek part of town” or the lower Plateau around Saint-Laurent “the Portugese” area… when are we going to start calling Outremont “the Jewish neighbourhood”? Oh that’s right, we won’t – because somehow Jews have always been Montreal’s dirty little secret, as we can see by how the city ignores the contribution of the Jews to the Plateau even though they have done more to make this city internationally known than pretty much any other ethnic group… ask people outside Quebec about Montreal’s French culture, and besides speaking French and having excellent croissants most people will be pretty stumped. The Jews are an asset to Montreal, not a hindrance – and a greater asset than the dominant cultures seem willing to recognize.
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Kate
How is she going to start having this conversation unless she gets out and starts talking to francophones who are willing to talk to her first? You’re not seeing the picture here at all, qatzelok. Hasidim live in their enclave, speaking Yiddish among themselves. They visit other enclaves in Brooklyn and the Laurentians, and for getting around they mostly use English. That recent report in the Journal noted that some of them do speak French here. These are people with a very strong tradition for study and you can be sure that if they need to learn something, they will know how. But few people will put their minds to learning an entire language if they have no pressing use for it, and (whether you or other nationalists like it) not everyone in the Hasidic community needs French to get by.
What I’m hearing in your hectoring tone is more of the same treatment the Hasids and, to a lesser extent, Jews in general, have received everywhere over the centuries: why can’t they make more of an effort to integrate? But integration has to offer something. Are you of all people surprised that most Hasids may not see much point in integrating into the mainstream western society they see around them right now?
(Also, there’s a funny attitude in Quebec sometimes that sounds like “You could speak French if only you made a little effort” when actually no, it’s an entire language, you don’t get there by making a little push like lifting a few extra pounds of groceries. The situation has to be there, the reasons for acquiring and using another language are complex and it is not someone’s fault if that situation has not arisen in their life to this point.)
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qatzelok
About never having learned the language of Quebec in a few generations, Kate wrote: “it is not someone’s fault if that situation has not arisen”
So Kate, what you’re saying is that there is no need for a conversation with the francophones of Quebec, except in an emergency? Can you blame local francophones for fearing this exclusive and superstitious group of people who have snubbed them for so many years? The 13 colonies were full of “religious” gangs who snubbed the local cultures, and eventually, wiped them out.
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Ian
You do realize there were people in Quebec before it was colonized by the French, right? http://www.indianamarketing.com/nations/nations.html How long do people of any given ethnic group need to live in Quebec before they’re considered “from” here, or is that a designation only available to francophones of European ancestry?
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qatzelok
You’re right, Ian. And likewise, there were people living in Palestine before the Palestinians. Why learn Arabic?
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Ian
My point is that for all that the Québecois love to criticise Quebeckers for having a “colonialist” attitude, they are no less colonialist themselves. The first synagogue was built in Montreal in 1760. The Jews are an integral part of Montreal’s society whether they speak French or not. Even the Hasidim first started showing up en masse right after WWII. we’re talking our grandparents’ generation – pretty much everyone alive in Montreal now has grown up in a Montreal that included a pretty notable Hasidim population, and still we talk about “reasonable accommodation” and suchlike. This, a city made internationally famous by Jews.
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Anto
Ian: Their culture is anglophone, and so it has been exported successfully to English speaking countries. If you ask people from France about Montreal, they won’t talk about bagels and smoked meat. Nor will they talk about croissants. They will talk about its french speaking culture. If croissants are the only thing you can come up with when thinking about french Montreal, you are as much in need of opening your mind about it as we all do to the Hasidim.
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Kate
Anto, the Hasidic culture is not anglophone. It’s Yiddish-speaking. And it is inward-looking, I’m not denying that. qatzelok, you’re demanding of a woman who stays at home with her kids that she be trilingual, otherwise it is correct for people to shun her and her people and act against them?
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Anto
Kate: I was not talking about the Hasidic culture in my first sentence, I was answering Ian’s comment about the Jewish community in Montreal.
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Kate
OK Anto. But even the non-Hasidic Jewish community is not an Anglo monobloc. Some speak Hebrew, some speak French. It is much more diverse than you seem to think.
Do you think the French talk about our French culture? Again, my impression is different, and this is from talking to Europeans: North Americans are fascinated by European urban culture – the cafés, museums, the architecture, the history. Europeans, by and large, are fascinated by our wide open spaces, not so much by the ways in which our culture echoes and mimics theirs. I generalize, but the French are probably more fascinated by “le Far-West” than the fact that someone in Montreal has performed a Molière role. British people don’t go to America to see Shakespeare either.
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Anto
Kate: I was talking about the examples brought by Ian: Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler, which couldn’t have enjoyed the success they had if they had used a different language than English. However, French speaking countries, like France, will mostly have heard about the French speaking culture of Montreal and Québec: its singers, writers, actors, humorists… Sorry if it has little to do with the subject at hand, I just wanted to let Ian know Montreal’s french culture has more to offer the world than croissants.
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Kevin
You know, there are Jewish people in France…
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Ian
I assure you Anto, I am well aware of it – but I get a very distinct impression that the rest of the world isn’t. Most of the French people I’ve spoken with who aren’t from here think of us as quite provincial, generally. Personally, I think Montreal is the greatest city in Canada and one of the greatest in North America – but that doesn’t make a Parisian perk up their ears when Montreal’s name comes up in conversation. You know, since we’re dealing in broad stereotypes and all. It’s funny how upset people that identify with francophone culture get when the exclusiveness of culture politics gets inverted.
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Ian
This is true, but we’re talking specifically about Montreal & how apparently “certain kinds of Jews” aren’t really “from” here so they should assimilate more to blend in… if that’s not oblique racism, I have no idea what is.
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qatzelok
@ Ian “Here’s some food for thought – Everyone outside Quebec thinks of bagels, smoked meat, Leonard Cohen and Mordecai Richler when they think of Montreal.”
Could this be because they get their information from a media that only promotes their own tribe? I didn’t know much about French Montreal either when I used to read about it in our tribal-owned commercial media. The fact that Jewish writers/media outlets snubbed all the non-Jewish institutions demonstrates why there was no conversation. Conversation includes more than one voice.
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Ian
Ah, there we go. I knew I could count on you for some open anti-semitism in the end. Well played!
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qatzelok
Ian, accusing people of having cooties is a great way to end (or prevent) a conversation. Bravo! Three thumbs up.
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Kid A
@qatzelok It’s not about ending or preventing discourse. A lot of what you post here has an anti-semitic tone, whether it’s explicit or covert. And that has NO place in ANY conversation.
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Kate
qatzelok sometimes offers interesting insights, but this sure as hell is not one of them, and I’m afraid it rather taints the rest of what he has to say.
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Marc 21:26 on 2012/05/06 Permalink
This no pets allowed rule must go. In Ontario and possibly other areas, no pets allowed is not tolerated. The other thing I’ve never been able to figure out is why people who have pets accept a dwelling where pets aren’t allowed. That leads to abandoned pets.
Kate 21:48 on 2012/05/06 Permalink
That’s an issue, and it’s sad, but I think we’ve had seasons with very low vacancies and poorer people being forced to move out of buildings being turned into condos – it adds up in some cases into people accepting lease conditions they don’t like. I can’t imagine willingly abandoning an animal that trusts you, though.
steph 21:50 on 2012/05/06 Permalink
I’ve heard that the regie will not evict anyone for disobeying this clause in the lease for small pets. It doesn’t help your relationship with your landlord though.
Susana Machado 01:57 on 2012/05/07 Permalink
I know anecdotal evidence counts for nothing, but here is a story. When my parents bought a duplex about 20 years ago my mom wanted a no pets rule because she didn’t want the noise or the trouble. The first tenant, what appeared to be an otherwise normal lady told my mom that she only had a cat that was well behaved and never scratched anything. So the parents decided, it’s a cat, how bad can it be? Well the cat was not very well trained and she kept the litter box on the (carpeted) stairs going upstairs. Within a couple of weeks it started to smell downstairs in our appartment. Dry cat pee. The cat seemed to pee on, behind, on top of, next to, under and above the dumb litter box. Not that she changed it very often, so I don’t really blame the cat. We told her about the smell, but she said it didn’t bother her. The Régie said they couldn’t do anything. When she left the next year the carpet had to be removed and the five lower steps removed as well because the pee had gone through the wood. For years later when it got very hot and the AC wasn’t on it still smelled. Not much, but to this day cat pee beings awful memories.
I know most tenants aren’t like that. But you go through 10-12 tenants in a lifetime as a landlord and and you really don’t want to deal with animal pee smell seeping through the walls. Sometimes it is just easier to say “no pets”.
Raoul 07:31 on 2012/05/07 Permalink
Stinky litters suck, thats why i do mine twice a day and prefer clumping litter so it doesnt smell –
but honestly, an unhygienic person isn’t limited to just cat litters in their laziness – theyre the same people who leave garbage bags in a closet/under-staircase for weeks before taking them out, who let publicsac pile up in a box in front of their door, etc. etc.
A pet ban might eliminate one of those nuisances, but i would argue that pets arent the problem, its the owners who dont take care of themselves, their space or their pets. Anyways you know what im talking about, cat pee is only one of half a dozen smells that i would rather not live next to.
Raoul 07:37 on 2012/05/07 Permalink
by the same token ive also known plenty of people who werent suited to take care of animals. mostly lonely types who want the company but wont actually take care of their pets, simultaneously driving up demand for petshops (and puppymills) while creating more abandonment.
Chris 07:57 on 2012/05/07 Permalink
Forcing landlords to allow pets could have unintended consequences. There are already many disincentives to property owners renting. Chiefly, they can’t raise prices to market rates, and so it’s often much more profitable for them to sell. That’s part of why our rental stock is going down and down. Forcing yet another rule upon them could make matters worse. I’d certainly have the worry of something like Susana’s story happening.
ant6n 10:44 on 2012/05/07 Permalink
Mmmh, maybe they could have a rule to always allow pets if the renter gives a 2/3-month deposit that can be used for any damages of the apartment related to the pet. Still doesn’t solve the noise issue, though.
Kate 16:45 on 2012/05/07 Permalink
Well, my cat doesn’t make a bad smell AND she does her bit to discourage mice. So should the landlord cut my rent? : )
Josh 17:46 on 2012/05/07 Permalink
Aren’t there allergy considerations that play into this, too?
Ephraim 17:49 on 2012/05/07 Permalink
It also has to do with the fact that in Quebec we can’t ask for a security deposit. If you can’t ask for one than you want to limit the damage that can be done. Even if you can go after a tenant with a judgement at the regie for up to 30 years, the likelihood of collecting is minimal.
There is a woman who has cats, dogs, squirrels, pigeons, etc in an apartment. Who is responsible when she leaves for the costs of cleanup and detox. Cat pee is actually considered a toxin (ammonia) and has to be removed, cleaned with enzymes and then painted with oil or shellac based paints. If pet owners were responsible, that’s one thing, but there are those who aren’t and the landlord shouldn’t have to bear the costs, it’s not normal wear and tear.
ant6n 18:33 on 2012/05/07 Permalink
@Kate
A security deposit is not effectively increasing rent, except for the interest on the deposit.
Alison Cummins 06:06 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
We’ve included a statement that our tenants can’t keep a dog larger than 10 kg. Our thinking is that a small, old and incontinent dog produces less pee than a large, old and incontinent dog.
We haven’t (yet) had to deal with misplaced cat pee. It will piss us off, but people need their kitties.
Frances 06:14 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
Dogs bark. Big ones bark loudly, small ones yap annoyingly. When they run and jump, you can hear them on bare floors (i.e. no carpets). The sound carries every bit as much as a loud stereo. I support retaining the right to have a pet ban in apartment buildings. One issue that hasn’t been talked about very much is the whole idea of keeping pets to begin with. An argument can be made that keeping dogs – especially large ones – in the city is not appropriate at all. Their barking, in aggregate, outdoors is essentially noise pollution, and is disturbing at night.
And, (in case someone is tempted to reply to this)… No, I shouldn’t have to move to the country. I have the right to expect some peace and quiet in my home (apartment) in a residential area of the city. Dog barking is every bit as a disturbance as car alarms going off. In my experience, too many dog owners don’t take adequate responsibility for their pets, and other people’s needs into consideration.
david 08:27 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
Children make noise. Big ones shout loudly, small ones cry annoyingly. When they run and jump, you can hear them on bare floors (i.e. no carpets). The sound carries every bit as much as a loud stereo. I support retaining the right to have a children ban in apartment buildings. One issue that hasn’t been talked about very much is the whole idea of keeping children to begin with. An argument can be made that keeping children – especially large ones – in the city is not appropriate at all. Their joyful playing, in aggregate, outdoors is essentially noise pollution, and is disturbing at night.
And, (in case someone is tempted to reply to this)… No, I shouldn’t have to move to the country. I have the right to expect some peace and quiet in my home (apartment) in a residential area of the city. A noisy child is every bit as a disturbance as car alarms going off. In my experience, too many parents don’t take adequate responsibility for their children, and other people’s needs into consideration.
Lighten up Frances (sorry, couldn’t resist).
Kate 08:54 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
I tend to be in the camp that the human benefits offered by animals are so important that a little pee or barking is negligible. And unless you ban dogs completely, it’s kind of meaningless anyway. Where I live, the owner doesn’t allow dogs, but I still have to hear several dogs out back at times, and a woman across the street has a beagle that doesn’t just bark, it produces a loud hysterical baying that sounds like someone’s killing it with an axe.
Also yes, the kids playing in the back alley can be loud, especially when they do that competitive screaming thing kids always do, sooner or later. But what can you do? It’s life, going on around you.
Diane Perodeau 09:17 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
We should be aloud to have pets, pets are the best thing that can happen to people who live alone, Animals are not worst them kid!
Mary 13:24 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
If I was a landlord, I would just love to be able to ban children in my property, but I can’t. They are far more of a nuisance than any pet can be. As far as pets go, I live in France and you cannot ban pets in rentals. I’ve lived in many different appartement buildings and have never heard of any problems caused by people’s pets so far.
ant6n 21:10 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
Well, kids will one day pay our pensions, dogs won’t. Even worse, dogs are parasites that replace human children. And living in a city, they are much more likely to have psychological issues than children. Overall I’d say it makes more sense to have kids in cities, rater than dogs.
MdC 03:22 on 2012/05/09 Permalink
Kids won’t pay for MY pension (where I live) and I think you may be a bit deluded if you think you’ll actually get a pension someday. In the mean time, I am the one paying for people breeding with my taxes, so that they can have all the benefits that I can’t get as a childfree person. So please don’t lecture about pets vs kids, at least you don’t have to pay for my pets.