An Ottawa man travelling in the U.S. in 2021 tried to obtain the French version of the ArriveCan application without success, despite indicating on his user profile that French was his preferred language for communications with the federal government.
January 22, 2021
Welcome to the garbage hole. The sulphuric, rotten-egg stench coming off the heaps of brown sludge at Montreal’s Francon snow depot is putrid even on a cold, grey March day. Here, in this former quarry, the melt of early spring has revealed crumpled laundry deter- gent bottles, the petrified carcass of a badminton birdie, used tampon applicators and other shards of hardened, forgotten plastic. It’s the stuff you think is destined for landfill or recycling when you toss it, but instead it ends up on the street, then in the path of a snow plow and then on a dump truck, then at the snow dump. The trash mingles with mountains of snow stained by a cocktail of pollutants, releasing a nauseating assault on the senses.