Summer weekend dog days of news are settling in nicely. Several items about artists, places where they work and live: three artists to discover; an artist’s house in Rosemont; artists’ working spaces.
While the MMFA presents a selection of Roman sculpture till mid‑July, the Pointe‑à‑Callière museum is doing ancient Greece this summer, with 400 objects on display till March next year.
Police are seeking Christopher Watts, 66, a man with a long history of sex crimes described as “unlawfully at large” and as un incorrigible délinquant sexuel.
I find it circus that the Radio-Canada version gives very little information while the English versions provide more info, ie. the nature of his crimes involving the death of a 13yo girl. Radio-Canada also only converted his metric weight to imperial but doesn’t bother with his height (he’s 6’1). Is it because he’s less likely to seek out francophone victims because he’s from Ontario?
It’s hard to say. It’s probably a safe guess that some editorial choices are made with subconscious assumptions. Since this fugitive has an anglo name and is described as possibly being in Montreal or somewhere else in Canada, it might be felt that he’s more likely to be spotted by other anglos, or in association with anglos.
Or maybe the Radio‑Canada news editor flinched from too much detail about Watts’s sordid past?
Issues with the new digital health record are not troubling the Quebec government and Christine Fréchette is unaware of any issues.
So it’s all fine, then.
As usual a human sacrifice must be made (aka somebody dying from an error) before anything happens.
Water consumption is slightly down since the city asked us to reduce our usage while the Atwater main is repaired.
It’s not a big drop and I suspect it’s mostly due to the city itself cutting back on watering trees, washing down streets and so forth.
Inconveniently, Environment Canada is predicting a summer that’s to be hotter and drier than average. Maybe the city should distribute kits of bottled water and deodorant.
Early Friday, a building CTV describes as “a synagogue in Westmount on the Island of Montreal” and TVA as “un lieu de culte” (religion not specified) was the site of an attempted arson. CTV’s photo shows a broken back window and smoke damage to the outer wall.
CTV’s description of the building as being on Sherbrooke near Wood, in Westmount, makes it clear this was the Temple Emanu‑El‑Beth Sholom. The Gazette does name it in their report, and interviews the rabbi.
A man was arrested and charged Friday afternoon with arson and related items.
Meantime, Projet Montreal plans to present a motion to city council condemning Israel for its genocide in Gaza. No matter what the rabbi says about not importing foreign conflicts here, it’s already happened.
Later, TVA emphasizes that the synagogue building has a daycare in it. But like the report of a shooting in Villeray – which was near a play park but happened in the middle of the night – this incident also took place when no children were nearby. So I wonder, why mention kids to pull the heartstrings?
La Presse doesn’t usually get clickbaity like this, but they’re headlining three homicides within 36 hours and emphasizing that one was in a park near a kids’ playground (at 10:30 pm mind you – not many kids out), asking should we worry – then backing off saying the answer is “nuancée”.
The journalists then go on to say that the Walmart stabbing and a shooting in a Villeray park happened in the same neighbourhood, which simply isn’t true. If anything, they should make a point of the park being right next door to a hospital, but I haven’t seen that mentioned anywhere.
Is that what the story says? The quote is: “D’abord, quatre jeunes de 15 ans ont été arrêtés et trois ont été accusés en lien avec le meurtre d’un homme de 22 ans dans un Walmart de Montréal-Nord, mardi après-midi. Puis, mercredi soir, un jeune homme de 22 ans affilié à un gang de rue du quartier Villeray a été tué par balle au parc de Turin, dans le même quartier.” It seems to be that “dans le même quartier” is comparing the neighbourhood of the park to the neighbourhood of the street gang, both mentioned in the same sentence, though I agree you could interpret it as referring to the neighbourhood of the previous sentence.
You are right.
Weekend notes from Le Devoir, CityCrunch, Journal de Montréal, CultMTL.
Roadblocks and other driving crises of the moment.
La Presse talks to the two women who were shot at the École privée nightclub a month ago about their experiences.
A map posted by the STM showing various bus stops finds a stop at Beeshop between Guy and Drummond. The slip is being blamed on AI, but it could just as easily have been human error, or an internal joke that slipped into print.
I actually sent the STM an email about that map the other day. I counted nine errors. Also I agree with you about how it probably happened; AI tends to create weirder problems.
Loïc Cordelle, CEO of Pulsar, which operates the REM, has been dismissed. Pulsar isn’t directly cited as saying it’s because of all the interruptions and slowdowns on the system, but the article certainly says so.
A man who produced and sold fake parking stickers has been sentenced to probation and community service, but no jail and no criminal record.
And now. the new for a new security system. May I suggest a validating QR code that ties back to the database to issue tickets that prevents the agent from issuing a ticket based on GPS data. So if the QR code is fake, the printer will still issue tickets, but if it’s real, it just validates and says “NEXT”
Not sure I understand but the issue is that the ticketing agents can’t be expected to verify that every sticker is legit – there’s just far too many. No word about any kind of consequences for the buyers of these stickers, which feels like a huge failure for the cops.
The buyers absolutely should get it trouble too, as Joey says.
I bet there are a few ways you could do validation. A QR code, if large enough, could be scanned by a parking inspector vehicle without having to stop, just as it can scan for parking spots with vehicles that the system says hasn’t paid. But it’d have to be pretty large I’d think, or you’d have to get out in person. Another option is an RFID, but though it’s low power, it’s not no power, so you’d have to get out of the car and apply the reader to it within a centimetre, the same way OPUS cards can be read without the card itself having power, but inducing it from the reader. Maybe there’s some way to make it work without getting out of the car, but I fully agree it should be validated before printing a ticket.
They can already just check the database to see if the license plate is registered – the thing is that there’s no reason for agents to do that, unless the assumption is that there are many, many cars with counterfeit stickers. I guess with the automated camera system now in use it’s conceivable that you could scan a QR code on each sticker, but I would assume you’d get too many false negatives to make it worthwhile (my sense is the current system can quickly determine if there are any cars parked in a sticker zone without a sticker, without the agent needing to do anything other than drive down the block; validating that each sticker is legit would be a bigger task, though I suppose you could try a system whereby license plates are scanned, which might trigger fewer false negatives). Anyway, massive fines for the counterfeit ticket buyers would go a long way to preventing this kind of thing.
Metered spots are different, because the agents know which spots are not currently being paid for, and they can easily tell if car is parked there.
@Nicholas And how do they read the transponders on the A30 and A25? Obviously they can be read at not just a distance, but at speed.
You should try metered parking in Dubai and Abu Dhabi…. you better be quick and pay those meters or you will receive the ticket. Don’t even THINK of walking away for a minute…. or sitting in the car without paying.
Umm, doesn’t every sticker has a license plate number on it? The parking agent car can just use a license plate scanner and check the database to make sure that every car has a valid parking permit, if they have a sticker on their windshield or not (or when it’s covered my snow).
Of course that’s an expensive solution if the parking permits are so cheap. (The most expensive permit is $217 in my street, for I think 9 months. Compared to the cost of renting that amount of space for say, a garden, or to pitch a tent to live.)
Quebec had proposed a law giving it direct control over housing co‑ops, but has let it drop, preferring to focus on a law to bar 27,000 students from vocational training in English.
Yup, because 27000 people a year not getting a new job seems like a priority. The voc ed system also has French courses that they need to pass for proficiency in their new vocation…. because everyone needs to know that it’s a UCT instead of a CPU.
It’s ridiculous. They emphasized all the English institutions when bidding for that bank but when push comes to shove…this is what they care about…
Robins des ruelles have struck again, but this brief report doesn’t say what value of goods they made off with from Metro Bigras in the Plateau.
That is a very small store, barely smaller than larger fruiteries. 50 people would be a lot! There is only one Metro Bigras, so the franchisee isn’t spreading the losses around. When I’ve been in there there were just three or four employees. I wouldn’t be surprised if this theft cost them a week’s worth of profits.
They do seem to have picked on a store that was probably too small to have much security.
wait this is awesome
haha love it. now can you do this one? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Works for me!
Can we make the arms sway in the wind?
I’d pay good money for this.
Two tenants of a building in either Ville‑Marie or Hochelaga‑Maisonneuve have received $160,000 after it was shown that they were evicted on false pretenses.
It’s Ville-Marie; de Maisonneuve doesn’t continue through to Hochelaga. The details from the group helping them sue the landlord are here. The new landlords, Gabriel Fortin and Jacob Frappier, decided to merge two units on each of the two upper floors, so they could kick everyone out. But the reno was very small, $14,000, and would keep a kitchen in each side. The tenants complained to the TAL, who said they doubted the landlord, who contradicted himself, but said there wasn’t enough proof. The landlord put a door between the two halves but put a lock on it and when a friend asked once it went back on the market the new tenant said it was always locked, meaning they were kept as separate units. At the TAL again the landlord said oh while it seems they’re separate they’re actually joined, the two half tenants sign a joint lease. So the judge said let’s take a look, in three days. The day of the visit the landlord went in and removed the lock before the judge and other parties arrived to trick them. Later a current tenant spilled the beans. The landlord finally realized the game was over, and admitted it was all true, and so the judge found the landlord lied and tried to trick the court while acting illegally, and lifted the corporate veil so that the people are personally jointly liable.
The group claims they found similar fake merges to renovict in Rosemont, though no word if there are lawsuits.
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