Quote of the week:

"It's just speculation, there's no real value to it." - Mossy Akhabri, a Montreal Hall of Fame sports collectibles store owner, on the supposedly "last" hot dog ever sold at the Big O and fetching, as of Tuesday, $1000 on eBay, in Tuesday's Globe and Mail.

Expos to smash gay D.C.

Heartbroken local baseball fans have an unlikely gay bedfellow in their sufferings. Plans to ship the Montreal Expos to the American capital have Washington D.C.'s gays crying foul because the new ball park would require the demolition of the city's fabled O Street gay scene.

"It's a kind of unofficial red light district, but it's all perfectly legal and they've been paying taxes for decades," says Richard Rosendall, VP for political affairs at The Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance of Washington, D.C. "Washington is a tourist destination and there ought to be room for these kinds of businesses here. If the plan goes through, the city has a responsibility for finding another place for those businesses."

In the early '70s, D.C. police authorities suggested they'd leave gay bars alone if they moved to the warehouse district, and the clubs have been thriving there ever since. But the return of the Grand Old Game would wipe out two male strip clubs, a gay film theatre, a peep show and a drag queen showbar.

The controversy offers a glimmer of hope to beleaguered Montreal baseball fans who pray D.C. residents will derail the proposed move. Among the D.C. city councillors who oppose the current plan is the openly gay David Catania. Ross Weber, Catania's director of communications, says the Republican councilman "opposes - 100 per cent - the public financing of the stadium, and if it goes forward, he wants the [gay] businesses relocated elsewhere. But it's somewhat farfetched. No neighbourhood is going to want that in their district." » Kristian Gravenor

Welfare reform protested

The l'Organisation populaire des droits sociaux (OPDS) is inviting welfare recipients and their friends to protest the provincial government's approach to welfare reform next week. OPDS is angry about Bill 57, also known as the Individual and Family Assistance Act, put forward by Claude Béchard, the Minister of Employment, Social Solidarity and Family Welfare.

The bill proposes to "foster the economic and social self-sufficiency" of welfare recipients by encouraging mandatory volunteer community work, among other measures. OPDS coordinator Étienne Legault says the bill reinforces the idea that there is "good" poor and "bad" poor.

"One way of putting forward this proposal is to make access to welfare conditional on the fact that you must work in exchange for the cheque, like workfare in the States," says Legault. Bill 57 organizes people into four categories of welfare, depending on the person's employment limitations and age, which Legault says violates people's rights.

"What they are suggesting is that the person on welfare is responsible for the situation," he says. "I think it has been clearly documented that companies moving, amalgamation of services and massive layoffs are the reality right now. The law is not acknowledging the current situation in the labour market."

OPDS is one of 50 groups meeting at Berri metro on Oct. 26 at 1 p.m. OPDS will also be hosting free workshops on welfare rights and obligations in late November. The deadline to sign up is Oct. 27. Call 527-0700. » Noemi LoPinto

Peace studied

Four CEGEP students looking to further engage their classmates in the complex world of international affairs, terrorism and peacekeeping - and Canada's role therein - are about to see the fruits of their efforts bloom. This weekend, Champlain St-Lambert CEGEP will host a one-day conference and panel discussion dedicated to the future of Canadian peacekeeping efforts. Featured speakers will be independent journalist Gwynne Dyer, former Pearson Peacekeeping Centre director Jocelyn Coulon and University of Ottawa law professor Claude Emanuelli.

Born out of the conviction that students need to understand the world they live in, the conference was spearheaded by Valérie Bourbonnière, a liberal arts student, with the help of three fellow students. Caroline Boulanger, the conference's 18-year-old publicity manager, says the conference organizers hope to "raise awareness among students of what Canada is doing, and how Canada is making decisions. We want students to comprehend what's really happening."

The conference, which is not funded by any of the CEGEP's student associations but rather by a federal grant, is not for any extra credit, Boulanger says. She simply feels that, as young Canadians interested in international affairs - which both she and Bourbonnière plan to study at university - kids today should know more about the world they live in. "We have to know what's going on and what the government is doing, and how Canada contributes to peacekeeping efforts."

The conference takes place this Saturday, Oct. 23, at the Champlain St-Lambert CEGEP auditorium (900 Riverside Drive, St-Lambert), with free admission, breakfast and lunch. To register, visit www.peaceconference.info. » Patrick Lejtenyi

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

14 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Oct. 25 - Nov. 1, 1990

On the cover: Blixa Bargeld, frontman for Einsturzende Neubauten (spelled "Neubaten" on the cover), appearing at the New Music America festival. "I don't feel satisfied singing if there isn't some challenge - some extraordinary long scream, or some caws that you have to stay up for two nights and drink and smoke a lot to be able to sing," he says.

• The six municipal parties fielding candidates in the upcoming election are rated according to how they answer 20 yes/no/no answer questions on issues ranging from urban planning to the economy to transit. The Montreal Citizens' Movement is the biggest fence-sitter of the six.

• The first page of the Mirror's Literary Supplement is devoted to reviewing books about AIDS. Among them are plays, novels, short stories and non-fiction.

• The Straight Dope's Cecil Adams explains the word "skosh." Apparently it derives from the Japanese sukoshi, "a little," and was adopted by U.S. sailors during the Korean War. In the Navy it's applied to "any quantity smaller than a centimetre and larger than an angstrom."

Angel >> Canadian flu vaccines The United States is in an uproar over the perilous state of their flu vaccine stockpiles - more specifically, the lack thereof. The British company that makes half the American supply - around 48-million doses - had its licence suspended at the beginning of the month, and since then healthy Americans have been told to do without, if possible. Amid rumours of price gouging, profiteering and punitive fines for doctors administering injections to low-risk patients, Americans are looking to Canada for some shots - we have between one and two million doses to spare, and Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said he'd help as much as possible. Which is nice and neighbourly, but begs the question, why can't the most powerful country in the world make its own medicine?
Insect >> Surveillance on the Main Following on the heels of a recently completed pilot project on the St-Denis Latin Quarter stretch, the city's executive committee is wondering aloud about installing surveillance cameras on St-Laurent to deter potential evil-doers. But the final word on the St-Denis project still isn't in (the report's due at the beginning of November), and the dope dealers and skateboarders and other public menaces are still around. Perhaps the real point is that installing surveillance cameras is needlessly invasive. Many St-Laurent merchants, meanwhile, are cool to the proposal, saying it would stifle community spirit.