Monthly Archives: July 2007

| Blogosphere, Business, Technology

Lots of words, no information

Nicolas Ritoux, my francophone counterpart who freelances for La Presse, has a long post on his blog about a super-secret new project he’s working on with Evan Prodromou. Probably more interesting is that he’s no longer writing, throwing his weight behind this super-secret project that we don’t know anything about (other than the fact that it’ll be bilingual).

The announcement will be on the agenda along with a demo at DemoCamp on July 24. Evan certainly has the experience in startups. We’ll see how good an idea it is when we actually hear the idea.

| Blogosphere, Media, TV, Video

DOA

Dominic Arpin has made it official: he’s no longer a journalist. He’s leaving TVA’s newsroom to start a new show called Vlog where they show videos they got (and hopefully licensed) online. His co-host is Geneviève Borne, so you know which one is the eye candy. (His blog, meanwhile, will continue as is.)

I’ve got to give the Domster some credit: At least he doesn’t call what he’s going to do journalism. It’s entertainment, produced on the cheap since they just have to find other people’s original ideas instead of coming up with their own.

I’m not sure how successful this show is going to be. It’s hard to say especially knowing so little about it. But I’m not holding my breath. I hope Arpin surprises me.

His post about the new show is interesting, because he talks about leaving the comfort zone of a unionized job for a high-paying, high-profile but incredibly risky gig that he can be fired from at any time.

Dominic: If you find yourself out of a job after a few episodes, you can always come work for Fagstein WorldMedia Ltd., provided you don’t mind being paid in Froot Loops.

| TV

Music music everywhere!

Live Earth is all over cable TV today. With concerts happening all over the world, there’s too many feeds to be handled by one station, so they’ve split it up:

  • CTV is roving around, picking up from the different concerts as they become interesting
  • MuchMusic is showing pretentious alt-rock from New York
  • MuchMoreMusic has all the cool bands in London
  • MuchVibe, because they’re black I guess, is showing Johannesburg
  • Bravo has some cool stuff in Hamburg (this relieves me – I thought they were speaking French for a minute and was wondering why I couldn’t understand anything)
  • Star TV is showing the Brazilian hunks in Rio de Janeiro (I assume — it’s a cold day in hell when I add Star TV to my television lineup)
  • UPDATE: NBC has joined the fray as of 8pm with some highlights from the day (read: more Foo Fighters) — CTV is picking up the NBC telecast, throwing in their own commercials, and sending that feed to cable companies to put back on the NBC channels. Don’t you just love Canadian television broadcasting?

And while I have the floor, memo to the performers (Dave Grohl, listen up): It’s bad enough when other people usurp your music’s lyrics to suit their message (an entirely inappropriate repurposing of words based on a three-year-old’s understanding of what the chorus alone may be referring to), please don’t make me cringe by doing it yourself. That song is about how your ex-girlfriend dumped you, not about the need to conserve electricity by using fluorescent bulbs.

Thank you.

| West Island

Northern West Island gets no respect

I come from Pierrefonds, a long, multicultural former city (now the borough of Pierrefonds Roxboro), which is so boring that two of its logo’s three elements come from the fact that it’s long and narrow and that it’s next to a river. (The third is borrowed from Pierrefonds, France, the town it was named after.)

Hello?

But as boring as it is, there are thousands of people who live there, and the population is increasing rapidly. I just noticed this week, for example, that service on the 68 Pierrefonds bus route has been doubled from two buses an hour to four during the day.

So why is it this city, along with its northern West Island neighbours Dollard-Des-Ormeaux, Roxboro, Sainte-Geneviève, Ile Bizard and Kirkland, always get treated like they don’t exist when it comes to the anglophone media talking about the West Island?

Case in point: The Gazette’s West Island section this week asks people to vote for its top icons of our little stretch of land. The choices (10, and you can’t add any of your own) don’t include a single landmark in any of these towns. Three are in Pointe-Claire, two in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, two span the southern towns, and one isn’t even on the island at all.

Specifically:

  • Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport: This is the great barrier (along with the Taschereau train yard) separating Montreal from the West Island, and it’s located in a West Island city, but I still don’t really think of it as part of the West Island. It’s more a part of the city as a whole. The people who go there come from all over the city, and there’s nothing about it that captures the identity of the place.

  • Fairview Shopping Centre: Certainly a must-have on any such list. It’s a big mall, and the bus terminal brings a lot of teenage traffic here along with commuters. But making this the West Island’s greatest icon would be a sad statement about life there, no?

  • Hudson Village & ferry: I fail to see how Hudson can be considered part of the West Island. It’s not on the island. It’s not that complicated. A case can be made for Ile Bizard because it’s part of the city. Hudson most definitely is not.

  • 211 bus: Certainly the West Island’s most important bus, and the second public transit related item on the list. Perhaps that’s what exemplifies the area: an express bus to downtown.

  • John Abbott College/MacDonald Campus & Weather Station: I’m assuming this includes the Morgan Arboretum, which is a very noble candidate. Nothing bad to say here.

  • Old Pointe Claire: Narrow roads, cute little shops and insufficient parking. OK.

  • Lachine Canal/Lakeshore Rd.: Lachine is barely West Island, and the canal ends just as Lachine starts. The canal is more an icon of the southwest borough or LaSalle. Lakeshore, meanwhile, is a good candidate, but shouldn’t that be grouped together with the 211?

  • Ste-Anne de Bellevue Village & locks: Yeah, another obvious choice.

  • Montreal/Dorion-Rigaud commuter train: See the snub? Where’s Montreal/Deux-Montagnes? Ours runs more often, is more comfortable and faster (and isn’t made redundant with an express bus service).

  • Pointe Claire Aquatic Centre: Pointe-Claire must have paid a lot of money to the Gazette to get it on this list so many times. Maybe we should add Pointe-Claire city hall? The Pointe-Claire library? The Pointe-Claire water tower?

So how about it? Does the northern West Island offer nothing of cultural significance?

Here’s some suggestions from me. Feel free to add yours below:

  • Cap St-Jacques (Pierrefonds)
  • Centennial Park (DDO)
  • Sainte-Geneviève (in its entirety)
  • The Ile-Bizard-Laval-sur-le-lac ferry
| In the news

Knowing when to laugh

I’m always a bit taken aback when people in serious jobs like police officers and ambulance technicians act in unserious ways. It’s hard to remember sometimes that they’re regular people with regular jobs, and they have to laugh and smile too, even when they deal with unpleasantness.

Police officers nowadays are even expressly putting themselves out there on a social level, so that people can feel more comfortable going to them. They want to be positive role models to troubled teens instead of evil authority figures to be hated.

But there is a limit to this humanity. For example, if you’re treating someone during a medical emergency, it’s best not to laugh about it in front of his niece.

Though they deny laughing during the call, the health board is taking steps to re-educate ambulance technicians on their conduct in these situations.

| Business

A nickel for your thoughts?

A Winnipeg Free Press story today quotes NDP MP Pat Martin saying we should do away with the penny once and for all.

I’m finding it hard to disagree with him. Things that accept coins no longer accept pennies, whether they’re laundry machines, bus fare boxes, vending machines or video lottery terminals. Businesses grab rolls of them from the bank, they hand them out to us when we pay cash, and the worthless pieces of copper-plated steel stay in our wallets, pockets and coin purses until we can find some way to get rid of them.

It’s just a waste of everyone’s time. As it is when I get pennies back at the cash I dump them into those take-a-penny leave-a-penny things, not because I want to be nice, but because I don’t know what else to do with them.

Elsewhere online: Don’t believe my common-sense argument? Read this fact-filled paper on the subject (PDF).

| Montreal

Monument to a scandal

Mike Boone suggests in today’s Gazette that part of the plans for using new space at Park and Pine should include a statue of Robert Bourassa, because he thinks the man still needs to be honoured in this city:

I know. Our revered mayor doesn’t deserve a consolation prize for the ham-handed and ultimately aborted plan to rename Park Ave. But the controversy shouldn’t obscure the fact that Bourassa was a brilliant politician and visionary premier who deserves some substantial form of commemoration.

This is true, but in a rare moment of stupidity on the part of the Boonester, his suggestion would do nothing but guarantee that the controversy obscures the commemoration. People won’t remember the statue without thinking about why it’s there, and this is a controversy that Bourassa never asked for and doesn’t deserve. Let’s find somewhere else on the island, not on Park Avenue, to honour this man.

Either that, or at least wait a while so the two aren’t so closely connected.

| Business, Montreal

St. Hubert Street is hot, wet, cheap and lusting for your business

I passed by the St. Hubert Plaza sidewalk sale today. It was raining, so most of the stock not protected by glass awnings had to be covered in tarps. But most of the businesses are out there, with big sales ($5 schoolbags, $10 wedding dresses) and even some good old-fashioned hollering from excited businessmen. It’s nice to see that associated with something other than strip clubs.

St. Hubert Street is closed to cars between Jean-Talon and Bellechasse (Jean-Talon and Beaubien metros), today until Sunday July 8.

| Uncategorized

Private members (hehe)

I saw an ad today for public consultation concerning Quebec’s new gun law (you know, the one that doesn’t actually restrict the sale or ownership of guns). I went onto the Quebec government website to check it out, and started looking at the private members’ bills that have been introduced. Each has its story, and each is a political stunt that has no chance of passing.

Bill 190 (Stéphane Bergeron, PQ, Verchères) is the antidote to the Mont Orford problem. You’ll remember last year the government caused a ruckus with Bill 23, which says (PDF) it enlarges the park, but really reduces it by putting allowing some to be sold into private hands. Though the government said in May it was not going to sell the area, the bill still passed, and Bergeron wants it repealed.

Bill 191 (Daniel Turp, PQ, Mercier) is a proposed constitution for Quebec. Turp announced his bill in April, on the 25th anniversary of the 1982 Canadian constitution. It’s a shortened version of this old draft and includes provisions for a head of state (a Quebec president he called it in the earlier draft), Quebec citizenship, fixed dates for elections, the usual freedom guarantees, and a lot of sentences that end with “as provided for by law”. It doesn’t explicitly say that Quebec would be its own country, but this is definitely a step toward that goal. The bill hasn’t gotten much media coverage, except for an article in Le Devoir and a blog post from Jim Duff.

Bill 192 (Jean-François Therrien, ADQ, Terrebonne) is the “damn transit strikes shouldn’t affect me” law in response to the STM maintenance workers’ strike. It would guarantee 80% of regular service in case of a transit strike instead of the apparently vastly inadequate 60% of service we got in the last one. Like other private members’ bills, its language, though brief, is open to interpretation. It says “at all times”, which suggests that there wouldn’t be periods of inactivity, but maybe one in every five buses and metro trains would be pulled off the road.

Bill 193 (François Benjamin, ADQ, Berthier) is part “dub films in Québécois French”, part … I have no idea. Read it yourself. The preamble suggests it would limit English showings to be equal to or less than French showings of the same film, but I can’t find anything in the actual language to confirm this. Either way, it puts pressure on the small guys who want to show their films here. Unless it’s dubbed in French, or it’s an “art-house” film, it wouldn’t have permission to be shown here.

| In the news, Media

If wishes were Facebook groups…

Cassandra Szklarski of Canadian Press has an article this week summarizing the “controversy” surrounding CBC’s Facebook experiment, the Great Canadian Wish List.

To recap, it’s an experiment where Facebook users vote for their greatest wish for Canada’s future.

Simple enough. The “problem” is that the top five wishes are all divisive political positions (in order: outlaw abortion; keep abortion legal; a “spiritual revival”; ban same-sex marriage; and lower tuition fees).

Elaine Corden of The Tyee explains her frustrations with the results, saying that they represent positions that aren’t held by the majority. And, of course, they represent politics she doesn’t agree with.

There’s no arguing that this experiment didn’t reach a majority of Canadians. It didn’t even reach a majority of Canadian Facebook users, despite the CBC’s valiant attempts to publicize it. So like a U.S. presidential primary, when the turnout is low, it’s usually the hard-core extremists who show up instead of the silent majority, and the “special interest groups” take over the debate. This is precisely what happened here.

A key sentence in the CP piece comes from CBC reporter Mike Wise:

We stepped out into an area where, because it was on Facebook, it was beyond the reach of the CBC journalistic policy so it was edgier stuff that we had no control of. However, I think we should get some marks for trying something different.”

Trying something different. Yes. That’s what the CBC did. It got people talking, it got thousands of Canadians energized, and it had a result the CBC didn’t predict and couldn’t control. This is something the CBC should be praised for. Even if it had been a complete failure (and I don’t think it has been), at least they should get marks for trying. Media is changing, and the only way to adapt is to take risks.

I’m not letting the Mother Corp completely off the hook. This is still just another one of their un-thought-out gimmicks to get people’s attention, a sinkhole to throw money into instead of spending it on quality programming. And I still haven’t seen how they’ll deal with presenting both sides of the abortion debate on TV.

But the criticism of this experiment based mainly on the fact that its results were so political is just silly.

The complete list of top 30 Canadian wishes.

Similar thoughts from Mathew Ingram and Tod Maffin.

| Montreal, Web design

Good ol’ pageid 4397,6375618

The City of Montreal has unveiled a unified portal for its libraries, and just look at its easy-to-remember URL:

http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=4397,6375618&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Really, 4397,6375618? I would have thought 4397,5431618.”

But the city’s web design people, they have their quirky labels. And pageids, and dads and schemas (all of which are required values).