by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Breathe in. Can you smell it? That stench of sulfur and sweat is the odour of an epic clash. Archetypal titans duel in this classic boilerplate battle between ego and id, heart and brain, Bourassa-versus-Lévesque-style fight between the rational, in the form of Vulcan-like Gérald Tremblay, and the emotional, represented by schmucky populist Pierre Bourque. Last time around, pollsters embarrassed themselves with predictions of a Bourque triumph, overlooking the spectre of West Islanders turning out en masse against Bourque in protest against forced mergers. Many of those voters have demerged, and nobody is wasting money for pollsters to screw up again, so nobody has had much of a clue about who’s ahead. Rumoured internal polls, however, have put a spring in Bourque’s step and a droop in Tremblay’s (although Tremblay loyalist Marvin Rotrand puts the kibosh on that, predicting a massive team win).

• André Cardinal, 65, sat beside Michel Prescott for a long time, but the two are more neck-and-neck than cheek-to-jowl these days. Along with Richard Théoret, they formed the Three MCM Musketeers, serving up hell in the opposition from 1998 to 2001. These days, however, Prescott is a high-ranking Tremblay-ite and Cardinal is battling as an enviro-minded Projet Montréal guy in the Plateau’s Jeanne-Mance district (Théoret broke ranks and joined the Bourque team, running for office in Mile-End). Election Notebook couldn’t coax Cardinal into trashtalking Prescott except to say, “He was a colleague but he’s not a friend.”

Cardinal—who served 16 years as a councillor—is considered the Projet’s best chance to bag one of the six-or-so seats that they consider winnable. He’s keen on $2 bridge tolls for non-carpoolers and wants to open executive council meetings to the public’s eyes. Rounding out the Prescott-Cardinal duel is Bourque candidate Rose Carone, 45, a talkative mother of four who runs the St-Denis street merchants’ association and owns a cigar lounge. Carone promises traffic calming to make the area more welcoming for families. She’d add garbage cans, speed bumps and extra sidewalk benches.

• One might imagine that the huge South-West Montreal borough that engulfs St-Henri, Pointe St-Charles, Côte-St-Paul and Ville Émard would be dominated by friction generated by the proposed casino to be built in a barren corner of the Point. But neither big party opposes the casino, and even the grassroots grow ambivalent, according to neighbourhood busybody Wesley Dryden, who runs www.thepoint.ca, a non-partisan Web site dedicated to all things Pointe St-Charles. “About half are for it and half against it,” says Dryden. Pointers, according to him, are more preoccupied with an annoying new statue in Marguerite Bourgeoys Park. Borough mayor Jacqueline Montpetit (who switched from Bourque to Tremblay earlier this year) has incurred residents’ wrath over the art. Her main rival, incumbent councillor Robert Bousquet, worries the statue is unsafe, and meanwhile calls the casino “an interesting project.” Bousquet wants to spruce up parks and eradicate graffiti. The area showed some NIMBY tendencies when Émard firebugs torched a proposed residential facility for troubled youth. Yet Bousquet feels locals will welcome his proposed 1,200 new subsidized housing units per year because “they’d go to people already living in the area,” he says.

• Downtown’s Peter McGill has frequently been ruled by mercurial maniacs, but Team Tremblay borough council wannabe Karim Boulos might be a nugget in the dirt. The Alexandria, Egypt-born son of bankers coached swimmers in Beaconsfield for 15 years before deciding to do an MBA at Con U, where he was rewarded a top academic awards and was hired by Concordia. “My three-year-old daughter sees the graffiti, garbage, homeless, so I have to ask: How can I explain these things to her?” Boulos says that our downtown generates 10 per cent of Quebec’s gross domestic product. “That’s humongous, when you think of all the mining, electricity and other stuff that goes on in Quebec.” And he’s gracious. “Whoever comes out ahead will have to serve others, including his adversaries.”

• Election Notebook denounces superficial voters who cast their ballots on the basis of looks. So therefore we advise voters to study the ideas and not to be swayed by the babe-alicious hotness of the following candidates looking smoking hot on their campaign photos: Véronique Matte, Line Hamel, Manolis Makris, Debbie de Kochendoerffer, Michael Vadacchino, Jasson Finney, Marie-Andrée Beaudoin, Stéphane Harbour, Isabel dos Santos and Josée Duplessis.