Updates from May, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • 20:10 on 2012/05/29 Permalink | Reply  

    A government minister wants to see the co-organizer of Monday’s lawyer march punished to the full extent of the law.

    For some reason it’s news that Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois got a top Millennium scholarship. It’s hardly a scandal – actually it’s testimony to the guy’s brains, so I say bully for him.

    A photo of a man with a bloodied face being stretchered away from a demo May 20 has provoked a lot of rumour, but OpenFile was unable to track down any definite information about his identity or his current condition.

    A blogger has collected a bunch of links to things connected with the protests – videos, news links and so forth.

     

  • 20:01 on 2012/05/29 Permalink | Reply  

    A study by the CMM says suburbanites are coming into town less often as a decline in work commuting and trips into town for shopping or entertainment was noted between 1998 and 2008.

    This has its downside for Montreal business and employment, but shorter commutes for everybody – and fewer users of the bridges at rush hour – can also be seen as a net plus for the entire urban area.

     

    • walkerp 23:19 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      This is the factor that is hurting business in the Plateau and it is much broader and longer term than simple parking issues.

    • steph 00:18 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      While I’d blame the crumbling bridges, closed highway lanes, turcot interchange construction and orange cones everywhere causing a ridiculous amount of traffic, I’m sure the new might find a way to blame the students. World economy is down, tourism is down – but that’s the students fault that people are not booking up the hotels.

    • Hamza 07:30 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      The reason is that the Lavals and Brossards of the day have far more facilities, malls, parking lots and big box stores than they did ten or twenty years ago. Hence, little reason for carfaring suburbanites to haul their kids into the family Dodge and head down to the Main. That is, if they want to endure the traffic on our collapsing bridges.

      Did someone say something about ‘culture’?

      They have TVs. That *is* their culture.

    • C_Erb 07:51 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      Our inner-city commercial streets shouldn’t be relying on suburbanites for their survival. They’re not regional malls, they exist to service the people who live near them (with some options that are unique to the neighbourhood that outsiders can use of course). This is why my brother, who lives in the Plateau on St-Denis near Roy needs to walk about 4 blocks to the nearest grocery store while I have about 10 grocery stores within 4 blocks of my apartment in Parc-Ex.

      It’s good for commercial streets to have things that draw outsiders, my streets have Greek bakeries and Indian restaurants and clothing stores that bring people from all over but these also serve the locals as well. My brother, on the other hand, has never or rarely stepped inside most of the stores that surround him on St-Denis because they’re geared towards outsiders and don’t cater to his day-to-day needs.

    • Bill Binns 08:12 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      @Hamza – The lack of a proper cultural life in Canada (or the western hemisphere?) is a common theme in your comments. It’s true that TV is a part of the culture here but just about everything else you can think of is available as well. People who want to watch TV can do that but people whoare interested in art or religion or music have all that here as well. What is it you think we are missing out on? Which countries in the world do you think have a satisfying cultural life?

    • Kate 08:16 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      Actually, if anything it’s qatzelok who bemoans the lack of a Canadian culture of any kind.

    • Bill Binns 08:20 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      I thought Qatzelok’s major theme was The Evil Automobile.

    • Jack 08:32 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      @walkerp do you know what the Plateau looked like in the 70′s,80′s,90′s? The businesses that you see now are pretty recent phenomena and are not fed by Greenfield Park and St Hubert.The stats used by this group are trumped by demographic changes and government( developers) encouragement of sprawl.

    • Hamza 08:32 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      What art Bill

    • Lee 09:07 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      Anyone else read this as submarines?

    • qatzelok 09:08 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      People who have allowed themselves to be lulled into the suburban mallscape have inadvertently killed any hope of culture. See, to create a culture, you need two things: regular, spontaneous contact with other people AND free time and proximity to socializing venues. The cultureless suburbanite commutes in an enclosed box (car) and drives to hermetically sealed “activity centers” that frequently have only one use. This has lead to a very dismal existence of freeze-dried commercial slogans and worship of status symbols (in lieu of any real status which is a product of having an actual culture).

    • Kate 10:49 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      qatzelok, that’s well put.

      anyone who wonders why he’s here, this kind of analysis is why.

    • Josh 16:08 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      You seem to know a lot about this suburbanite lifestyle, qatzelok. Have you lived it? In multiple communities? Or you just think you know other people better than they do?

    • MB 18:05 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      @qatzelok, I call them “pod people.” You live in a pod, get in a pod to go to various purpose-built pods, eat food that is contained in pods, and consume culture from the screen of a pod.

      @Josh, I grew up mainly in the American suburbs, which are frankly not really any different than they are here save slightly better access to transit. Those few chances to wander around the city were so looked forward to because it felt like freedom, compared to being shuffled back and forth in the back seat of a van.

  • 19:54 on 2012/05/29 Permalink | Reply  

    Not really surprising that a study finds it’s better to have a French surname if you want a job in Montreal. At least, you’ll have better luck than if you have an apparently African, Latino or Arabic name.

     

    • Spock 19:56 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      That is true. I know people who fell prey to this name based racism.

    • Jack 20:31 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      So true Spock as Applebaum, Deros, Campbell, Fotopulous and DeSousa’s membership on the 11 person Montreal City Executive Committee indicates.

    • Spock 21:59 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      And how many Mahmoud, Ahmad, Xinhua, Mbesu, Haryander do we have?

      The names you mentioned are white. What Kate and I refer to are those for non-whites…

    • Kate 22:08 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      That leaves open an interesting question: were people preferring French surnames because they assumed the person would be white, or because the person would be francophone?

    • Steve Quilliam 23:36 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      Oh please will you stop trying to find small tiny itsy bitsy hint of racism in just about every corner of our society. If our society was racist don’t you think people would go somewhere else ? Don’t you think haitian, african, arab or latinos would come here en masse like they do ?

      I dont know if you peope take buses and/or metro but i can assure you there are plenty of arabs and blacks…..and women !

      Now what about Frantz Benjamin in Villeray ? Harout Chitilian in Ahuntsic (that doesn’t sound very french) ? Ana Nunes in Outremont ? Lionel Perez (CDN) ? Aref Salem (St-Laurent) ? Plus the dozens of italian, greek, jewish and english name that can be found only at city hall.

      Now we can do the same exercise at the provincial level with many non white and the same at the federal level. Both on the island of Montreal.

      It’s only normal that the latest immigrant group to settle in the city will struggle a little bit more than the other groups for a while. It’s like that every where. I should know because my name isn’t very french. Some people think i am irish, others that i am english, others that i am armenian etc…

      Oh, and by the way, my friend who’s algerian, is working for an algerian pharmacist who only hires algerians or north african people….right here in Montreal !!! Go figure !

    • Hamza 03:27 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      ‘only normal’ – and that is the problem defined

    • Spock 06:39 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      Steve, immigrants come here because they have, sometimes, no choice. Tell me if Quebec isn’t more racist than ROC, Then answer me this:

      Rogers CEO = Muslim Desi
      Quebecor CEO = ?

      Calgary mayor = Muslim Tanzanian
      Montreal mayor = ?

      Vancouver police chief = Asian descent
      Montreal police chief = ?

      Yeah, no racism there…

      Also about your friend’s boss, he doesn’t that because if he doesn’t, his fellow paysans probably wouldn’t have jobs or would be paid less elsewhere.

      Additionally, I know first hand of many a Quebecer who would rather stay on EI than work for a brown skin ethnic…

    • Kate 08:14 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      Steve Quilliam: I linked to the story because I thought the report was interesting, not because I wanted to bemoan racism exactly. It also interested me that the report didn’t talk about reactions to other non-French surnames (like my own – although there are francophones in Quebec with Irish surnames, certainly). Also you’re dealing with the interesting fact that sometimes people from Africa – from the Maghreb or sub-Saharan countries – speak French just fine, so in theory they’re not being rejected because they don’t speak the language. It’s a complicated situation we’ve got here, and this report only looks at a slice of it.

    • Jack 08:33 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      @spock if De Sousa is white I am green.

    • qatzelok 09:12 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      Spock, your list of “tokenism” actually makes the lack of any kind of English-Canadian culture painfully obvious. “We watch TV and do what it says.”

    • Steve Quilliam 09:26 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      Has anyone even asked who are the employers ? Who are the employers who are supposedly not hiring minorities ?

      On the island of Montreal you can bet that far more than 50% of the employers are anglos, jewish, greeks, italians, portuguese, lebanese and chinese. And just try to ask a chinese employer to hire blacks or arabs !!!!

      So according to spock (who’s only intention is to accuse this socitey of racism) the city of Toronto is racist because the mayor is pure white bread, very very very far from being a minority !

      No seriously, get a life, go out there and enjoy this great city instead of constantly bashing it. People like you are doing more damage to this place than the students in 3 months of protest. The things is after the strike is over the student will be back in school but our blogs and papers will still be filled by pure Montreal/quebecois haters, unfortunately !

      Please stop giving space to the loosers who are desperately seeking for something that it is more in their ”fucked up” head than it is in the everyday life of our city !

    • Kate 11:15 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      Up to a point we’re all likely to prefer the company of people who look like us and speak our language comfortably.

      Steve, to be cynical, employers of any colour will hire people of any colour if they can get them cheaply enough.

    • Kevin 13:48 on 2012/05/31 Permalink

      @Steve
      You’re ignoring the gatekeeping role of those schlubs who have the title of human resources officers.

  • 18:57 on 2012/05/29 Permalink | Reply  

    Headlines are reading that Anonymous is threatening the Montreal Grand Prix but don’t expect people in Guy Fawkes masks to run out onto the Gilles-Villeneuve track. The threat is to the websites.

     

    • Ian 19:04 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      Going after web sales is much more effective anyhow.

  • 15:45 on 2012/05/29 Permalink | Reply  

    Old Port boss Claude Benoit is answering probing questions about a trip to Oceania she partly claimed as a work jaunt. She did produce a 115-page report and says she looked into how different cities were styling their waterfronts. Some MPs find this dubious.

     

    • steph 00:23 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      I wonder if we’ll end up with a publicly funded Ferris Wheel to put at our new beach.

  • 15:30 on 2012/05/29 Permalink | Reply  

    A dismembered body was found Tuesday in some garbage in Snowdon – in a discarded suitcase says La Presse. No details yet on the gender or age of the victim. Meanwhile, someone mailed a human foot to Conservative Party headquarters in Ottawa.

     

    • Ian 19:04 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      I’m waiting for the reports of a horse’s head found in Charbonneau’s bed…

    • Spock 20:00 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      That is rare these days.

      The dead fish is still used.

  • 06:44 on 2012/05/29 Permalink | Reply  

    We’ve had some big weather today and the forecast is for a hot afternoon and possibly more thunderstorms.

     

    • Spock 07:30 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      It was rough early this morning!

    • Doobious 17:17 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      Nasty bit of flooding at PVM this afternoon. I saw about a foot of water collecting against the south side of Cathcart. A bunch of other buildings were evacuated on account of inundation too.

    • What 17:48 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      The corner of Workman and Greene had 3-4feet of water, still flooded though it is draining. Cars half underwater.

    • Kate 18:49 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      There’ve been a lot of tweets about flooding, a foot of water around Place d’Armes for example. Wacky.

    • Ian 19:05 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      The metro closed from flooding (orange line between HB and LG), and I saw the manholes popping on Sherbrooke at Parc.

    • Kate 19:32 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      Yep, lots of reports of flooding and damage.

      Youtube of a massive street geyser at St-André and St-Joseph. Reports of flooded underpasses on Twitter.

      As I was editing this, a fresh downpour began here in central Montreal, but it was short. Even so, we may not have seen the end of this weather system.

    • Spock 19:57 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      Severe flooding in my area…

  • 06:43 on 2012/05/29 Permalink | Reply  

    FECQ’s Léo Bureau-Blouin was arrested Monday night in Quebec City, and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois is threatened with prison for something he said on Radio-Canada back in April.

    (Bill 78 was passed on May 18. I don’t know much law, but I do know you can’t be jailed for breaking a law in April that didn’t exist till May.)

     

    • Kevin 07:14 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      LBB was not arrested. Police let him try to convince the people about to be arrested to leave, and they refused.

    • Hamza 09:31 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      Jean Charest demonstrates his gift for the art of negotiation. Force has worked so well for the government throughout the crisis. If he keeps it up, the students are bound to see his side of the story. Oh hai F1 tourists

    • marco 10:34 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois went against an injunction. That law has been around for quite a while and yes, it applies to students too. There was no mention of bill 78 in the article.
      He feels justified going against a court order because his group voted to bully students who didn’t want to be part of the boycott. Sorry Gabriel, you aren’t above the law.

    • ant6n 10:44 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      The globeandmail article says that Léo Bureau-Blouin, FECQ president, was trying to get protesters to disperse. It also says that Philipp Lapointe, negotiator for CLASSE, was “taken way by riot police”, Whatever that means:

      “Philippe Lapointe, the negotiator for CLASSE, had just left the bargaining table at the end of Monday’s meeting in Quebec City to witness the arrests of protesters outside the building where the talks were being held. He was promptly taken away by riot police.”

      These seemingly arbitrary arrests are becoming annoying.

    • steph 10:47 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      Between back-to-work legislation and injunctions, there’s no reason why the government even needs to ever negotiate. It’s a disgusting abuse of power. CP rail is abusing of those powers right now by not even sitting at the negotiating table with the rail workers currently on strike, just yesterday the federal government passed a back-to-work legislation. Why do we even have unions if they hold no powers? Here’s a good article on back-to-work legislation by the cbc http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/06/15/f-faq-back-to-work-legislation.html

    • Ephraim 11:05 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      GND told people to violate a court injunction, that’s well before bill 78. It’s one thing to defy government, it’s entirely another to defy a court injunction.

    • Steph 11:57 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      It’s worth noting that it’s a UofL student, Jean-François Morasse, that’s filed these charges against GND. It’s typical lawyer posturing and par for the course, obviously the media is going to shock headline “GND faces prison time”.

    • TiGuy 12:31 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      La peine à laquelle GND pourrait faire face n’a rien à voir avec la loi 78. Ce serait pour outrage au tribunal pour avoir incité les gens à ne pas respecter, voire à enfreindre délibérément, une ordonnance de la cour.

    • Michel 12:38 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      Anyone get the feeling that, with Phillippe Lapointe being arrested and separated-by-one-degree-from-the-PLQ that the government is somehow imprisoning its political opponents?
      It’s not so blatant, but I don’t like the current undertones.

    • Hamza 13:26 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      Yr basically right Michel. It’s the ol’ carrot-and-stick. Jean Charest showing up was the carrot. The arrests are the stick.

      Only problem is, Quebecers aren’t asses, the stick is small and his carrot is even smaller.

    • Kate 14:17 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      Michel, that’s exactly what I thought. Something creepy about a government trying hard to silence a critic.

    • Bill Binns 16:53 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      If these student “leaders” cannot even convince a few protesters in Quebec city to disperse, how exactly are they going to shut down the whole operation if/when a deal is signed? The government may as well have picked a few random wingnuts out of the mob to negotiate with. I suspect the guy in the panda costume has more influence over the protesters.

    • ant6n 17:42 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      They are not “leaders”, they are spokespeople. It probably would’ve been better if the crowd dispersed; but it also seemed that the police where continuing to arrest people (so the promise ‘if you leave there will be no arrests’ seemed weak), and the protesters also felt that they were engaging in a lawful assembly from their point of view.

    • Jack 20:33 on 2012/05/29 Permalink

      Arresting a person dressed up as a Banana was priceless.” First they came for the Banana’s….”

    • steph 00:26 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      I don’t expect the protest movement to skip a beat even if tuition hikes are frozen.

    • Spock 06:40 on 2012/05/30 Permalink

      Exactly what I have been saying all along. This has spiralled out of control!!!

c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
l
go to login
h
show/hide help
esc
cancel