Quote of the week:

“The elections did signal a change.” —CROP polling firm vice-president Claude Gauthier, after a recent poll showed Jean Charest’s dismal numbers improve somewhat following Stephen Harper’s election, in Tuesday’s La Presse.

Med school abortion void

This weekend, McGill hosts the Med Students for Choice conference, “Autonomous Anatomy: Our Choices in Reproductive and Sexual Health.” Speakers include well-known feminist Judy Rebick and Canadian Women’s Health Network chair Abby Lippman.

While most Canadians take abortion rights for granted, MS4C student coordinator Mei-Ling Wiedmeyer points out that, “Canada has 40 per cent fewer abortion providers now than in 1980.”

“You can come out of an OB/GYN residency without ever having seen or learned about an abortion,” says fellow student coordinator Erin Sandilands. “It isn’t part of the stated curriculum.”

Other workshops of note include sessions on sexual and reproductive health for sex workers and the disabled, having a child post-gender-transition and sexual assault follow-up in hospitals. “We want to give people a picture of the diversity of women seeking health care, and of their needs as they relate to abortion,” Sandilands says.

The conference, taking place on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Thomson House (3650 McTavish), is open to all; e-mail MS4Cmcgill@gmail.com for info. —Andrea Zanin

Get down for sex ed

Condom negotiation might be an unfamiliar concept but it’s no less important than, say, labour negotiation or hostage negotiation. Head & Hands wants local youth to become skilled at condom negotiation—making sure a sex partner has a condom and is ready to use it—in order to save them from unpleasant sex diseases and unwanted pregnancies. But the province has blueballed the effort by cutting funds from sex education.

The West End youth advocacy group has fought back by teaming up with the Farha Foundation to visit schools and educate snickering youth about their naughty impulses. The effort requires funding, so they’re calling in the DJs and charging people 12 beans to get by the velvet rope, Thursday, Feb. 9 at El Salon (4388 St-Laurent, 8 p.m.). Performing are Kill the Lights, Hearts in Transit, Tundra, DJs Maüs and Julie D. and burlesque troupe the Dead Doll Dancers.

The sex ed fundraiser is billed as the Anti-Hallmark Valentine’s Party because, “We’re against the commercialization of love,” says event organizer Cecilia Liotti. “We also think sexuality shouldn’t embody just physicality but emotion as well.” —Kristian Gravenor

AIDS hike in the Cape

From Feb. 7–12, Montrealer Greg Byng and nine other hikers will be strolling through the stunning geography of South Africa’s Western Cape Province. It sounds nice, but Byng and his comrades won’t just be thinking about the landscape’s physical beauty. They’ll be thinking about the six million South Africans who have AIDS, and the millions more dying of the disease around the world.

The 10 hikers—five from Montreal, one from Toronto and four from South Africa—taking part in the South African Grand Circuit will raise money for various groups fighting AIDS, including Médecins Sans Frontières, the Stephen Lewis Foundation and the Canada-Africa Community Health Alliance. The point, says Byng, is to bring together all the different kinds of people interested in curbing the spread of HIV.

“We’re all from different origins and backgrounds,” he says. “But we do want to emphasize that we’re open to gay, straight, men, women, positive or negative.”

The hikers hope to raise $50,000, and will be hiking again in August before the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto. To give, visit www.legrandcircuit.org/foundation. —Patrick Lejtenyi

New life for old PCs

While it’s hopefully obvious to sophisticated, socially responsible urbanites, all those antiquated computers you no doubt replace every few years wind up taking up one hell of a lot of room in our nation’s precious landfills. According to Environment Canada estimates, some 170,000 tonnes of information processing systems became obsolete in Canada just last year. And, while I’m admittedly taking a guess here, I’m willing to bet computer parts aren’t the most biodegradable items one could ever wish for.

With this in mind, and in light of it being the official Week of International Development (Really? You didn’t already know this?), Micro-Recyc-Cooperation is asking Montrealers to donate their outdated computers to communities in the developing world.

“Most people don’t realize their old computers can be given a new life, often five to 10 years, and contribute to the education of young people in the third world,” says Jacinthe Lauzon, communications director for the non-profit organization. “And it’s tax deductible.”

For more information, go to www.microrecyccoop.org or call 227-5776. —Chris Barry

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

15 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Jan. 31–Feb. 6, 1991

On the cover: Local filmmaker Yves Simoneau, making his English debut with Perfectly Normal, a comedy about an introverted beer-factory worker and his loud, brash Scottish tenant named Turner who turns his life upside down. “Everybody will meet his or her Turner one day,” he says.

• Handicapped groups complain about lack of “barrier-free access” to many Montreal buildings. Changes, like ramps, wider entrances and altered bathrooms, would benefit as many as 30 per cent of Quebecers, from the elderly to the handicapped, says activist Catherine Roy.

• Live, Toronto blues band the Phantoms “are a phantasmagoria,” says singer/harpist Jerome Godboo (“né Godbout”). “It has a cinematic effect where the image seems to be rushing at you, and it’s both a scary and a liberating effect.”

• Terry Southern’s early stories, collected in Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes, “capture the smell of booze and loneliness, the sound of old reeds in cranky horns and saxophones and illuminate the tragic nobility that sometimes glistens among the boring, late-night lush-life,” writes Ian Stephens.

Angel >> Coretta Scott King Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, dubbed the First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement, died earlier this week while seeking treatment for terminal ovarian cancer in Mexico, aged 78. She rose to national prominence after her husband’s murder in 1968 and carried on his work throughout the following decades, campaigning especially strongly against apartheid—she was arrested in 1985 for demonstrating outside the South African embassy in Washington. In 1986, after years of campaigning, she saw the third Monday in January officially recognized in the United States as Martin Luther King Day.
Insect >> Greenland going green A new report by the U.K. government, with an introduction by PM Tony Blair, says the rate of global warming is worse than previously thought. If that isn’t bad enough, it also says some effects may be irreversible. The biggest worry is the melting either of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheet, together accounting for about 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, which would result in water levels rising between six and seven metres, and the end of the Gulf Stream, which regulates northern Europe’s mild climate. Right in time for Prime Minister Harper to take swift, decisive action on climate change!