Women’s sport is on the rise
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The Montreal LPHF team faced the Toronto team on Saturday in front of more than 21,000 people, setting an attendance record for women’s hockey.
“It got into me. It gives you chills,” said Marie-Philip Poulin, the captain of the Montreal LPHF team, after playing in front of a record crowd of 21,105 wild spectators at the Bell Center on Saturday. The enthusiasm for this league is part of a broader context, wrote columnist Alexandre Pratt. “That of the beginning of a golden age of women’s sport. » Last week, the women’s final of the NCAA basketball tournament was seen by 18 million viewers. Last summer’s Women’s Soccer World Cup generated half a billion dollars in revenue. And the best cyclists here are starting to dream of a female version of the Grand Prix of Quebec and Montreal. Everything suggests that a wind of change is blowing.
Read Alexandre Pratt’s column
Read “Quebec and Montreal Grands Prix: the best here dream of a female version”
To pay or not to pay for the Magdalen Islands?
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Visitors to the Magdalen Islands will have to pay $30 starting next summer.
After Venice or Amsterdam, the Magdalen Islands represent the latest destination to implement a fee to help cover the costs associated with mass tourism. Visitors to this region of Quebec will actually have to pay $30 starting next summer. Two of our columnists, Patrick Lagacé and Isabelle Hachey, expressed their diametrically opposed views on this issue this week. For the first, it is a dismaying precedent of liberticide which must be denounced. For the second, it is a reasonable measure aimed at helping an island community preserve its magnificent territory. Which camp are you in?
Read Patrick Lagacé’s column
Read Isabelle Hachey’s column
Emergencies: more waiting than before the pandemic
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The Hôtel-Dieu of Quebec
Those who have visited a hospital emergency room in recent months have probably not been surprised: the average length of stay there is very long. It reached 5:26 p.m. in 2023-2024, reveals the 15e ranking of emergencies The Press. Before the pandemic, in 2018-2019, this average wait was 2:12 p.m. Small consolation, the situation has slightly improved compared to 2022-2023, when the wait reached 6:06 p.m. The increase in Complex cases and staff shortages partly explain the difficult situation. However, some hospitals, such as the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, are doing much better. Find out how in the file written by journalist Ariane Lacoursière.
Read “Fifteenth emergency rankings of The Press : worse than before the pandemic »
An AI robot on Facebook and Instagram
IMAGE GENERATED BY META AI
Meta’s artificial intelligence robot answers questions and generates synthetic images.
Meta, the company that owns the social networks Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is in the process of deploying an artificial intelligence robot on all its platforms with which users can chat. This robot, identified by a thin blue ring, can also generate images. Meta believes it will replace some of the human interaction on its networks, and push users to spend more time there. For now, this robot is “enthusiastic, but unreliable,” writes journalist Heather Kelly of New York Times. “With this in mind, use Meta AI for fun and non-critical tasks,” she adds. Don’t want to “feed the beast” by training this robot in spite of yourself? Be aware that it is not easy to deactivate it.
Read “Digital life: you can now chat with Facebook”
Royal PubKarl Tremblay’s farewell
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Cowboys Fringants members Jean-François Pauzé, Marie-Annick Lépine and Jérôme Dupras greet their friend during the tribute show to Karl Tremblay at the Bell Center in November 2023.
Launched as a surprise Thursday at midnight, Royal Pub, final album by Cowboys Fringants, will undoubtedly revive the memory of Karl Tremblay, leader of the group who passed away in November 2023. “A luminous goodbye, conceived with the awareness that it would be a goodbye (…),” writes journalist Dominic Tardif, who shared his first impressions, through hot tears. “Close the follow and the lights, no I no longer need to be enlightened, I’m going out through the back door, so that the universe swallows me up”, intones the late singer on the sadly prophetic The end of the show. Carried away by cancer at the age of 47, Karl Tremblay also has the final words of this opus with Thank you well!a testament song that begins and ends with the sound of his comforting voice.
Read “Ultimate Cowboys Fringants album: a moving “Thank you!” »
reference: www.lapresse.ca