Recently in Local/Provincial Category

One of the most obvious criticisms of the Canadian health care system (and Quebec system, and it pains me that I have to separate the two) is that it can take months to get important appointments such as checkups, scans and surgeries. But since being diagnosed with cancer, I haven't had to wait at all for anything, really. For example, I spoke to Suj last April and got an appointment with a GI on May 3. It took about two weeks. On May 4, I spoke to my surgeon. On around May 14, I had a diagnostic laparoscopy. On June 7, I started chemotherapy. When I got an infected blood clot, I was almost immediately sent to a room in the hospital. My surgery was scheduled only three weeks in advance. Post-operative care has been within three weeks whenever I needed it, and often much sooner than that. This latest round, my appointment with the oncologist was within two weeks, and my chemo (which is tomorrow) was scheduled within a week of that. Easy.

People say that those who get treatment as good or better than mine are considered or assumed to be privileged, as in rich; they get what they need when they need it. Everyone else can go to hell, it seems. First of all, who is everyone else? Am I privileged because I am close to a major Canadian health centre? Is that it? I think that's partially the reason, certainly. Someone in Kuujjuaq probably wouldn't have the same care as someone here, certainly. But what else sets me apart? Am I privileged even for those within a short driving distance of a major Canadian health centre? Are there people in Scarborough or Pointe St-Charles that have to wait and wait for weeks and months for care, while I have to just call or walk into the hospital and get what I want, sometimes even before I want it? Maybe the staff just likes me, I don't know. I think I get along pretty well with nurses, actually.

Can anyone comment on these phenomena? Who is not getting served properly in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, etc.? I know that I had an advantage at the very beginning getting into the system, and perhaps that made ALL the difference. I was able to get referred into the system, possibly because I knew someone. I can't say for sure if that's true or not, but it may be true. I was examined by this specialist. But I don't think that that explains the treatment I have received since then.

First name basis, of course. Me, posing with Patrick Huard himself. He was being interviewed by Penelope McQuade. While I didn't get an autographed copy of Bon Cop, Bad Cop, I did get to speak with him backstage and get this picture!

Oh, and check this out for more recent drawings.

Rose is going to try to get into a special needs education program at cegep where she needs to amass 35 hours of volunteering experience by mid-August. The volunteering must be in human services where she works with people in all manner of ways. The people could be mentally or physically challenged. It could be a women's shelter. Maybe spending time with poor kids. Anything. So far, the volunteer bureaus she's contacted haven't been very helpful; it's as if they don't quite need the help right now, and therefore aren't timely in getting back to her with opportunities. If any of you locals know of any orgs that need volunteers in English or French, please leave a comment here to let me know. It would be a terrible shame if she had to wait another year to get her training started.

Lots of discussion on this entry, which is good. I would just like to point out something about what my intentions were in that entry. I wanted to show how people might perceive us outside of Quebec and Canada. I remember speaking to American clients and somehow sign laws came up in conversation. When I mentioned the restrictions that are placed on English here, I could hear the sharp intake of breath. They said things like, "You aren't allowed to have signs in English?" or "There are fines?" "You are forced to give one language preference?" Now I didn't say that you couldn't have signs in English, they came up with that on their own by twisting my words. But you get the idea. International perspectives may be reasonably concerned.

From Overheard in New York:

Tourist guy: Why are all the signs in Chinese?
New York guy: Because we're in Chinatown.
Tourist guy: But shouldn't they have to advertise in English?
New York guy: New York isn't Quebec.
Tourist guy: What?
New York guy: Dude, you don't even know the difference between Chinese and Korean, you'll never understand a reference to Quebecois French.

"New York isn't Quebec". There's an undertone there and although I am being dramatically sensitive, it's doesn't mean it's not true. He meant to say, "New York isn't fascist Quebec". "We're not a bunch of uptight pricks shoving a weird language down people's throats." No, he didn't actually say these things, but he meant them.*

*The tongue is in the cheek.

Last night, while Rose and I were eating dinner, we looked out the window to see some cops and a group of about 80 people that seemed to be "against" something. Everyone in that whole end of the restaurant was looking at them. Then one of them pulled out a sign that said something about being against the Formula One weekend and against capitalism. They began walking down the street peacefully.

We walked around the neighbourhood a little, if you can call downtown a "neighbourhood" as such, and stopped by to talk to procrasto for a few minutes. (Rose thinks you're a pretty nice guy, by the way.) We got into the metro on the orange line. I didn't notice at first, but there was commotion at this station. We ended up stopped there for a while. People were screaming in excitement. I didn't pay it much heed; I figured that they were a bunch of revelers enjoying the Formula One weekend. But after about five minutes of waiting at the station, I decided to poke my head out.

It was chaos. There must have been about 10 cops and 50 of the people we saw at the restaurant fighting. The cops had their batons out, and I saw about five or six people getting hammered with it. It was a scene from the news in one of those unfortunate fucked-up countries that we only hear about, like Rwanda, or the United States. I think a good number of them escaped, into the metro system, though, as at the next station we saw a large number of similar people (white, wearing mostly black, young, hippie protester-like) getting off at the next station.

If any of you locals heard anything about a bunch of yahoos getting their asses handed to them by the cops yesterday, drop me a line here. I'd like to know what happened, and if these are the same people that we saw at the restaurant.

There was a murder right outside my work this morning. Two weeks ago someon tried to rob the bank downstairs. I love downtown.

Of course, I didn't hear any shots. This story isn't nearly as interesting as this one, but I'll take my excitement where I can get it, if by "excitement" you mean a murder occurring just feet from my work, just a few hours earlier.

Anyway, the guy was shot as he left the infamous Super Sexe last night. Serves him right, the fucking perv. That was God's wrath, that was. Actually, it was likely some criminal's wrath, as the victim was known to police. And even more surprisingly, I've never been there.

UPDATE: There's a huge pile of blood nearby that they couldn't clean up. Don't miss it!

A coworker who has had the lovely job of having to collect rent in his father's buildings when he was a younger had the following to say:

"The domestic odour of every deadbeat in QC reeks of ashtrays and cat piss."

He then added:

"Morin Heights is the cesspool of human failure."

I've never been to Morin Heights, and he never qualified his statement. He just walked away. But it makes you wonder about people sometimes, and what they really think about you when you're not around. But surely he was overstating himself for effect.