Schools, hospitals react swiftly to boil water advisory

CBC News: May 22, 2013

Today’s widespread boil water advisory has had many Montrealers scrambling, including employees and administrators at schools and hospitals around the city.

The Jewish General Hospital’s communications director Glenn Nashen said the hospital has enough water to last at least a couple of days.

“We do have an emergency supply of drinking water on hand at any given time and we immediately put in orders for additional emergency supply,” Nashen said.

All McGill University Health Centre hospitals are distributing bottled water to patients, and have put certain procedures on hold.

Richard Fahey, the MUHC’s director of public affairs, said all non-emergency dental operations were cancelled when they received the city’s communiqué around 11 a.m. this morning.

He also said the Lachine Hospital was not affected by the advisory.

Over at the English Montreal School Board’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau Elementary School in Rosemont, school principal Michelle Stein first heard of the boil water advisory from a concerned parent.

Then, she said, she got a ding on her computer alerting her to a new email from the city issuing the advisory .

“I thought, ‘Oh dear, I have 323 children at the school I have to provide for,’” Stein said.

She immediately ordered that the water supply to the school’s fountains shut down, and then sent staff members to “raid” a local depanneur for water.

She’s asking parents to send their kids to school tomorrow with a day’s worth of water.

Related articles

• Water in most of Montreal unsafe to drink (montreal.ctvnews.ca)

Water boil advisory in effect – Avis d’ébullition de l’eau

Fiddler on the Roof opening this week in CSL

The competition for CSL’s students

The Montreal Gazette – By Janet Bagnall, Gazette education reporter May 20, 2013 6:06 PM

MONTREAL — The EMSB plans to open a public high school in a city that has been without one since Wagar school closed in 2005

It was standing-room-only at this month’s inaugural meeting for students, and their parents, interested in attending Wallenberg Academy — a hauntingly named Côte-St-Luc public high school that for now exists only on PowerPoint.

The future school has been named after Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved as many as 100,000 Hungarian Jews during the Second World War and who was last seen at Moscow’s notorious Lubyanka prison.

Mona Weinstock, mother of four children — 16-year-old twin boys, their 12-year-old brother and a 7-year-old daughter — was at the May 8 meeting to learn more about what kind of new high school the English Montreal School Board intends to offer families in or near Côte-St-Luc, a predominantly Jewish borough.

So far, the Weinstock children have attended school at JPPS (Jewish Peoples and Peretz School) and, in the public system, Royal West Academy, Westmount High School and Edinburgh and Elizabeth Ballantyne elementary schools.

Looking around at the crowd of about 200 people, Weinstock said, “I see a lot of parents here whose kids are in the Jewish private system.”

Weinstock would like an option that is close to home; she’d like there to be Jewish heritage content; and she wants a public school. With four children, the fees involved in a private education impose too high a financial burden, she said. She also thinks her children would be better prepared for life in Quebec with more emphasis on French and less on Yiddish or Hebrew.

“If Bill 14 passes, there’ll be more and more French proficiency exams,” she said. “You have to keep up.” Bill 14, a proposed law brought in by the Parti Québécois government to increase the presence of French in school and in the workplace, would bring in mandatory French proficiency tests for high school and CEGEP students.

In this one, small, mid-week meeting, you could see the forces buffeting Quebec’s schools, public and private, with or without religious or cultural content. Public boards like the EMSB have been struggling to retain or even add to their student population. In 2011, of the board’s 1,727 Grade 6 graduates, 235 left for the private system; in 2012, the figures were 1,684 and 261. (This is on par with an overall shift from public to private at the secondary level in the province: More than 125,000 students go to private school across Quebec, with 6.7 per cent of elementary school students attending private school, and 19.6 per cent doing so at the secondary level.

With the proposed creation of Wallenberg Academy, the EMSB is taking steps to get some of those students back. But the question is whether there are enough families like the Weinstocks to bring the Wallenberg Academy to life in 2014. EMSB officials told the May 8 meeting that a minimum of 60 students must sign up for Grade 7 to get the school underway, and they’d prefer 100.

Demographic change enters into the equation. According to Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies, Montreal’s Jewish population decreased by about 5,500 between 2001 and 2011, from 88,765 to 83,200. There was a drop of about 1,000 in the 14-and-under age group, down to 16,055. Within that age group, 3,585 youngsters claimed Yiddish as their mother tongue, suggesting, said Jedwab, that this is a group likely to be interested only in Orthodox Jewish schooling, not schools in the public school system.

Côte-St-Luc, home to a sizable English-speaking Jewish population, is also becoming more francophone, said Mordechai Antal, president of the Federation of Teachers of Jewish Schools.

“The Jewish system is no different from the English system overall,” he said. “The population of kids who are eligible for English education has declined and within the Jewish school system, because of immigration, the population has also shifted from English to French with French Jewish day schools seeing increases in enrolment.”

There has not been a public high school in Côte-St-Luc since 2005 when Wagar High School closed, a victim of declining enrolment. But at the May 8 meeting, board officials, including former Wagar principal and current EMSB school commissioner Syd Wise, told parents they believe the support is there for a new public school. The new school would condense the regular province-wide curriculum to allow most of the afternoon free to pursue sports, heritage or music concentrations. Which sports and what heritage would be determined by the students who sign up for Grade 7.

The May 8 meeting was just the latest in a series of temperature-takings since 2005 in which the EMSB has held out the prospect of restarting Wagar High School. EMSB’s gamble may rely, to some extent, on the troubles of Bialik High School, the board’s closest competitor for Côte St-Luc students. Bialik, a nearby private school, has been experiencing a decline in enrolment, was in merger talks two years ago with United Talmud Torahs/Herzliah High School. The talks led nowhere.

Glenn Nashen, a municipal councillor with Côte-St-Luc whose three children attend private Jewish schools, defended Bialik’s viability.

“JPPS-Bialik is a community Jewish school,” he said. As for a decline in enrolment, Nashen said, “It’s cyclical. In (Bialik’s) heyday, there were four streams (classes per grade level), now there are two and in a couple of years when my son reaches Grade 1, there may be just one, but that was the same as when I started.”

Nashen added, “They’re doing their best to make it economically accessible and they’re offering an advanced French program.”

jbagnall@montrealgazette.com

Twitter: @JanetBagnall

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/competition+C%c3%b4te+students/8410269/story.html#ixzz2TsRcVdnk

Watch more on Global News: Côte Saint-Luc School | Global News Video.

Parking-gate: PQ minister takes aim at Jewish ‘parking tolerance’

How lucky we are that the PQ isn’t in charge of parking.

That didn’t stop PQ Democratic Institutions Minister Bernard Drainville from coming up with the latest moronic notion of what parking rules would look like in an independent Quebec where the PQ would control everything from pasta on menus to the language kids may use while playing in the schoolyard.

PQ parking rules would never accommodate any Jew whose religion prohibits him or her from driving on a holiday. But G-d forbid that Quebec would ever remove the display of Christmas trees, or close roads for a Santa Claus parade or remove the crucifix from the National Assembly. Not to mention other tolerances such as road closures for the St. Patrick parade or Italian festival or any number of multi-cultural or religious festivities enjoyed by hundreds of thousands across Montreal. Secularism in the PQ’s Quebec is one way, against “les autres”.

The PQ doesn’t miss a chance to insult or denigrate one minority or another in its pursuit of linguistic purity and uni-culturalism. Whether it’s parking, playgrounds or pasta this mean-spirited and ill-advised government has shone a light on itself for the world to see.

Does parking tolerance here or there threaten the French language any more than a christmas tree threatens Judaism?

The vast majority of Quebecers know that accommodation is reasonable, that tolerance is welcoming. The PQ should figure it out too. Live and let live. Park and let park.

Read more:

PQ minister takes aim at Jewish ‘parking tolerance’ in apparent attempt to inflame Quebecers | Full Comment | National Post.

Related articles

• PQ minister nixes parking accommodation for observant Jews (cbc.ca)
• PQ minister riled up over street-cleaning delays on Jewish holiday (montreal.ctvnews.ca)
• Rotrand calls eased parking restrictions on Jewish holiday ‘a Montreal value’ (cbc.ca)

Nostalgic, CSL Urban Agriculture plan adopted

Councillor Ruth Kovac, Mayor Anthony Housefather and Councillor Glenn J. Nashen celebrating adoption of the CSL urban agriculture initiative

The goals and principles stated in the Food Charter set the tone for all the “Côte Saint-Luc Grown” initiatives. Over the coming weeks and months, residents of all ages will have the opportunity to participate in urban agriculture, in whatever ways suit their lifestyle. They can sign up for a space in one of our new community gardens or plant their own backyard or balcony garden. They can participate in gardening classes at the library and get involved with the demonstration garden located behind it. People can shop at the CSL farmers’ market, subscribe to a food basket, and more.

All these initiatives, the brainchild of City Manager Tanya Abramovitch, are further explained in a comprehensive document available on the city’s website in English and in French.

I was pleased to support the adoption of this plan, as seconder at this week’s public council meeting.  The notion of growing and buying one’s food close to where they live is gaining traction as the rebirth of an olden day practice.

I recall the stories of my grandfather, Avrum Nachshen, the fruit wholesaler, who would buy boxes of apples, pears, oranges, lettuce, carrots… from the importers located at the fruit terminal on Richmond St.   He would service his customers at grocery stores throughout the city. This was his occupation from 1928 until about 1960.

As well, his brother, my Uncle Motle, had a grocery store called M. Nachshen.  (He was located on Duluth at the corner of City Hall, now Hotel de Ville in the 1930s and 1940s, then moved to Cuthbert, corner Clark, until about 1950, St. Lawrence near Villenneuve until 1970).  He specialized, and was famous for his sour pickles.

Then there was my Uncle Fred Schertzer who would pull up to our house on Cork Ave always with a trunk full of fresh fruit and veggies from the Marché Central.

So it seems appropriate, and somewhat nostalgic, for me to support this excellent initiative.  You can see it’s part of my roots!

Yield signs will replace stop signs in Beaconsfield

Less frustration for motorists.  Less pollution in our neighbourhoods. Still safe for pedestrians. Good idea or madness?

Beaconsfield will soon be replacing stop signs with yield signs, improving the flow of traffic on their side streets. This somewhat off-beat sounding method is the norm in many jurisdictions outside of Quebec.

When I first saw this kind of setup 25 years ago in Winnipeg I thought it was kukoo.  But lately we’re seeing roundabouts make an appearance in Quebec and so this yield sign craze might just take off too.

Can it work in Cote Saint-Luc? It’s worth watching Beaconsfield and studying the situation here at home.  I’ll be bringing this idea to our Transportation committee to ask our experts what they think.

Meanwhile, what do you think?  Please offer your input by clicking comment.

Read the Gazette article here: Yield signs will replace stop signs in Beaconsfield | West Island Gazette.