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“We are a metropolis, we are huge, we have a great signature, this is a land of opportunity…We have three levels of government who are working closely together… So of course you can go on Twitter, you can have some troll pissing in your ear, ‘Oh that’s bad and ask that question,’ but the reality is that we are showing that Montreal is a great metropolis.” – Denis Coderre, on opposition expressed to a $39.5 million project to illuminate the Jacques Cartier Bridge, July 30, 2015.

For the record, Dr. James Farquhar, whose name may ring a distant bell with a lot of you although you’re not quite sure why, does not have a Twitter account.

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Farquhar’s name probably emerged in your memory for the same reason it did mine when I heard it again this weekend. That’s because when it comes to the issue of just how tightly this city’s social safety net is being stretched, Farquhar – a Montreal psychiatrist – has spent a couple of decades pretty much being a canary in a coal mine (or irritatingly incessant gadfly, depending on your point of view).