Quote of the week:

“The whole episode ought to be a reminder that putting campaign staffers on the air is generally not a good idea.” —former Jean Chrétien communications director Peter Donolo, on Scott Reid’s “beer and popcorn” gaffe, in Tuesday’s Globe.

Anti-sealer on trial

Last week, the Mirror reported on Lisa Shalom, the 23-year-old Montreal anti-sealing activist who was arrested last March 31 after a confrontation with a group of sealers turned violent in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Shalom and 10 other members of the Sea Shepherd conservation group were in the area to document and confront, non-violently, she says, the sealers. After a fistfight between sealers and Sea Shepherds on the ice floe, the RCMP arrested the activists.

Last Friday, Shalom was in Prince Edward Island to contest the charge that she was violating the Seal Protection Act, which forbids anyone not participating in sealing activities to keep a half-nautical mile from said activities. Shalom’s lawyer wanted the charges struck, saying the law is unconstitutional. The judge didn’t bite.

“It’s not really that big a surprise,” Shalom says of the judgement on Monday. “But it’s ludicrous. As a Canadian citizen, I should have the freedom of movement throughout Canada, as long as I’m not causing trouble.”

Shalom’s criminal trial will take place on Dec. 15, 16, 22 and 23 in PEI. —Patrick Lejtenyi

Strike nixes kids’ play

The rotating strikes throughout the city’s schools have added another casualty to education. This time, it’s a student-written and -acted play, created by the kids at Montreal North’s École Louis-Joseph Papineau, the scene of a teachers’ strike against school violence and the principal’s handling of it. The play, a musical called Les fleurs du ghetto, addresses issues that the school’s students came up with: gang violence and prostitution, and was to be performed this Thursday, Dec. 15. The school strike, however, will put it off until at least late January.

“It’s hard, but at least this way we’ll have more time to rehearse,” says the play’s musical director Matt Lipscombe (the former bassist and songwriter for Montreal band Me Mom & Morgentaler).

The concept for the play was born last May, “from scratch,” says Lipscombe, with the collaboration of a local community group and the school’s theatre program. The students wrote the script and songs themselves, with some help from Lipscombe.

Following the opening performance, the play will tour other high schools, with at least two other dates planned. —Patrick Lejtenyi

Bike paths roll

A new city initiative to inject $3,765,000 into bike paths on Clark, St-Urbain, Notre-Dame, the Point and Angrignon Park is seemingly insufficient to please tireless bicycle activist Peter Krantz. The 45-year-old, who says he has cycled an estimated “million kilometres downtown” in his lifetime, showed up at council this week with 5,000 signatures on paper, urging the city to “address the problem of a lack of bike infrastructure downtown.”

Krantz proposes a ban on parking from the right side of Ste-Catherine to allow for a bike path through the heart of the city. He also has some barbs for the city’s not-always-reliable Pattison–funded ad display/bike racks, which he says are “designed for thieves.”

Krantz, who has beaten some bike tickets, believes that rolling rebellions can bear results, noting that in 1997 activists were arrested for laying a chalk path down Milton and now a real path was recently laid.

“Everyone who rides a bike is helping their environment and their health, and it’s a pleasant way to get around,” he says. —Kristian Gravenor

Downtowners unite

A real town downer for many downtowners is the lack of a sense of neighbourhood. Not easy to build a sense of community from a population that ranges from Asian noodle shop proprietors, natives congregating at Cabot Park, Arab immigrants as well as the usual uncombed student population. So the Peter McGill Community Council is trying to make a community vibe in the area bounded by Atwater, Guy, Sherbrooke and René-Lévesque.

“There’s a lot of isolated people we’re trying to reach because they’re the population that changes the most and they’re not necessarily involved in the community,” says the group’s Stephanie Dupont.

The Council’s next community building initiative happens Saturday at the Atwater Library (1200 Atwater) Saturday, Dec. 17, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., where crafts will be peddled and clothing and food donations accepted for threadbare urban dwellers. The event toasts the lengthening of daylight rather than that not-universally-celebrated Christmas thing that people keep talking about. “The solstice underlines the holiday time without celebrating a specific religious holiday,” she says. —Kristian Gravenor

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

12 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Dec. 16–Dec. 23, 1993

On the cover: A topless male model with various instruments, for the Mirror’s “look at the year in music and the Montrealers who made it happen.” Included are industry notes like who signed to which album, music store guides and this statement by local promoter Dan Webster: “All these anglo bands and artists are moving to Montreal to escape the doldrums of English Canada.”

• Following a Mirror cover story on downtown strip bar Club 888, which employs Asian women under terrible conditions, the club announces that it’s hiring Allô-Police editor-in-chief Jean Brousseau.

• Toronto film fan Reg Hartt comes to Montreal to present the 1925 Phantom of the Opera and The Best of Bugs Bunny and Friends (Uncensored) collection. “To me there isn’t a better training ground for survival than to sit in front of as many Bugs Bunny cartoons as possible and watch them,” he says.

• The fact that there doesn’t seem to be a serial killer murdering gays—15 since 1989—isn’t comforting, reads an editorial.

Angel >> The “Dodo Atlas” Research scientists from the Alliance for Zero Extinction have drawn up an atlas that shows 595 hotspots around the planet that identify the remaining areas of habitat for species facing extinction. Only a third of the hotspots are considered protected, and most of them are in tropical, developing countries like Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia and Colombia. The scientists say it would cost between $470 and $3.5-million a year to protect each site. A total of 794 species were considered at risk, including the Indian pygmy hog, the Mallorcan midwife toad and the golden-crowned sifaka (pictured) of Madagascar.
Insect >> 1,000 days in Iraq This week—Tuesday, Dec. 13, to be precise—was the 1,000-day mark since U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq. Since then, insurgents, both foreign and, increasingly, homegrown, have stepped up the roadside- and suicide-bombings, kidnappings, beheadings and assassinations. America had its reputation sullied, perhaps irreparably so, by Abu Ghraib, secret CIA flights and staggering civilian deaths—Bush put the number this week at 30,000, but it’s probably much higher. Allies like Spain have quit, and domestic support is sagging. And while Sunni Arabs will vote in parliamentary elections for the first time on Thursday, Dec. 15, the insurgency will keep fighting. Meanwhile, no weapons of mass destruction have been found.