The QR Code
The QR code (or quick response code) was not given away before the pandemic. Little used, this format – which can be read thanks to the camera of our cell phone – has exploded thanks to COVID-19. Not only is the QR code used for the vaccination passport, but it is also very practical for consulting the menu in several restaurants as well as for obtaining information in museums or other public places. In short, 27 years after its invention by a Japanese engineer, this barcode has finally found all its relevance.
– Nathalie Collard
Rapid self-tests
Like a mirage, they sparkled them to us for months. While European countries have used rapid self-tests for a long time – in some countries children get their HIV test in the morning at school! – Canada was lagging behind. Two weeks before Christmas, we barely started distributing them in childcare centers and elementary schools in Quebec when they were still waiting for the rest of the population. Result: a few days before Christmas Eve, the self-test – the distribution of which began in pharmacies around December 20 – has become the most coveted object of this funny Christmas 2021.
– Nathalie Collard
Firearms
“It’s terrible. I do not recognize Montreal, ”said François Legault in mid-November in the wake of the death of a 16-year-old killed in the Saint-Michel district. Several high-profile murders and (too) many shootings have contributed to heightened feelings of insecurity. The metropolis has not turned into a war zone, far from it. The number of homicides has not broken records either. But 2021 was the year when the problem posed by the proliferation of firearms in circulation in the metropolis jumped out at us. So is the importance of taking it seriously.
– Alexandre Sirois
Cameras
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video can be worth a life. We have seen this this year with the spectacular release of Mamadi III Fara Camara, which has put the spotlight again on the importance of equipping police officers with body cameras as the City of Montreal has promised to do by 2022. Without the camera of the Ministry of Transport to capture the scene, the man with the predestined name would he still be accused of attempted murder of a police officer? And without cell phone cameras, would there be an independent investigation to shed light on the muscular interventions of the Quebec police?
– Stephanie Grammond
Boxing gloves
The most compelling way to win a boxing match is to induce a concussion coupled with loss of consciousness in the opponent – the infamous knockout. Scientists now know how much these traumas put a strain on the brain, but sport has never adapted. We measured the tragic effects of this laxity last summer, when Mexican boxer Jeanette Zacarias Zapata died under the blows of Quebecer Marie-Pier Houle. She was 18. What we called an “accident” was however the foreseeable consequence of a sport which it will be necessary to resolve to develop.
– Philippe Mercure
Chemical toilet
A chemical toilet is an unworthy place to die. Yet this is where the indigenous homeless Raphael André ended his days, on January 17. A curfew then prohibited being in the streets after 8 p.m., and everything suggests that Mr. André was in hiding from the police. His body was found the next day, inert and frozen. The community sector had however demanded an exception to the curfew for the homeless, but the Legault government had ruled out. Mr. André’s death has shone the spotlight on the judicialization of homelessness, a shocking way of punishing poverty.
– Philippe Mercure