Quote of the week:

“Within a few months.” —Montreal Impact president and Quebec cheese baron Joey Saputo, asked when he would make a decision about the location of a new soccer stadium, on Tuesday. Saputo is deciding between the Technoparc and a site near the Big O.

Fresh veggie shares

It isn’t your typical IPO, but then again, Senneville’s Ferme Mange-tout isn’t your typical business endeavour. The one-acre community-supported farm is now open to people who want to plunk down $525 at the beginning of the growing season—which is coming up—and in return receive a healthy basket of fresh organic vegetables once a week for 20 consecutive weeks.

“We average about 12 different items per week, depending on what’s in season,” says the farm’s co-founder, David Merson. “Each basket contains an amount that’s suitable for a family that eats an average amount of vegetables a week.” Half-shares, returning a half-basket, are also available, he says.

With agricultural space continuing to decline on the island of Montreal, he says, small community farms, of which there are three others in Senneville, are a way to keep the supply of fresh veggies steady. “This is a good way to support small farmers who don’t have access to large-scale, industrial financing,” he says.

There will be an information session this Saturday, March 25, at Dix Milles Villages in NDG (5674 Monkland). —Patrick Lejtenyi

HIV heroes

Tonight, Thursday, March 23, the Farha Foundation holds its sixth annual Heroes Night gala to honour 10 Quebecers who have gone the extra mile in the fight against HIV/AIDS. This year’s award recipients include infection specialist Dr. Raymond Duperval, Dr. Sylvie Vézina of Clinique Médicale l’Actuel and Yves Lafontaine, editor-in-chief of Fugues magazine.

“The HIV and AIDS pandemic has existed for 25 years, and we’re still fighting against ignorance and prejudice, so thank God for people who stand up like these ones,” says Louis-Michel Taillefer of the Farha Foundation. He emphasizes that the disease isn’t just a concern for the old “four Hs” (homosexuals, heroin users, hemophiliacs and Haitians), but rather, “for anybody who’s having sex, really, and that’s pretty much everyone I know!”

Nanette Workman and Sylvie Boucher will provide live entertainment at the event, which is Farha’s only non-fundraising endeavour of the year.

Heroes Night takes place at 6 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Hotel (1255 Jeanne-Mance). For

more information, check out http://www.farha.qc.ca/en/html/

act_heros.html, or contact Justine Héroux at (514) 270-4900 for tickets ($20). —Andrea Zanin

Post-Slobo trials

The sudden passing of former Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic wasn’t greeted with joy by anyone—the families of his victims, his supporters or the people trying to bring him to justice.

But his death does present some interesting problems for the lawyers, judges and observers at the International Criminal Tribunal of former Yugoslavia (ICTY), including McGill professor Dr. Payam Akhavan, who advised chief prosecutor and fellow Canadian Louise Arbour on how best to try the Butcher of the Balkans. Akhavan will discuss what’s next for the ICTY this Friday, March 24.

“The death of Milosevic meant a lot of things,” says Annie Guerard-Langlois, of McGill’s International Law Society, which is hosting

the talk. “What are the implications?”

Akhavan, a native of Tehran, Iran, 40, has been involved with the ICTY from its inception, when he helped bring an indictment against Milosevic in 1999.

The talk will take place at the Moot Court of McGill’s Faculty of Law (3644 Peel), free. —Patrick Lejtenyi

When oil runs dry

Sustainable Concordia’s Cameron Stiff hopes that peak oil—a theory that oil reserves will run out after a peak in production—might warm you to environmental re-think.

On Tuesday, March 28, Stiff, a 2006 Mirror Noisemaker, will be joined by former environment minister Stéphane Dion and representatives of the Sierra Club and Canadian Petroleum Products Institute to discuss peak oil.

“I think that if nothing else is going to make people realize the need to change, peak oil may have that effect,” says Stiff. Peak oil has even brought some environmental debate to the usually complacent U.S. Congress. During a speech to Congress last week, Republican representative Roscoe Bartlett warned that while oil reserves are depleting, “mining and production of fuels destroy the ecosystems and biodiversity.”

Stiff says that “acknowledging that oil is a finite resource might make people realize that we have to move in another direction.”

The discussion starts at 6 p.m. in Concordia’s Samuel Bronfman Building (1590 Dr. Penfield). —Samer Elatrash

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

17 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
March 23–April 9, 1989

On the cover: Firefighters, as the Mirror asks, “Who’s Torching Montreal?” Brendan Weston writes that police are focusing on insurance scammers. “Fraud is the hardest to prove, because it’s premeditated, more professional,” says Sgt. Detective Jean-Pierre Lemay.

• Montreal choreographer Jean-Pierre Perreault’s Joe. “Quebec’s first political dance,” addresses “anonymity, fascism, Quebec Catholic conformity and mechanical mindlessness.”

• Self-proclaimed “feminist, anarchist, former fundamentalist, squatter, yippie, rape survivor, ex-psychiatric patient and storyteller” Michelle Shocked puts her “money where her mouth is” by keeping “my motivation fairly political.”

• Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer, a Quebec film based on Dany Laferrière’s book about black men seducing white women with “disturbingly anorexic bodies,” is “tired and nasty,” writes an infuriated Paula Sypnowych. “The nameless women…are stereotypes of two basic varieties: rich and stupid (white anglophones) or neurotic and stupid (white francophones).”

Angel >> The embattled national daycare plan With our portly Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowing to scrap the five-year, $5-billion federal Liberal daycare plan, women especially are speaking out. The YWCA Canada recently issued a report saying Harper’s plan would keep more women at home because there will be fewer daycare places available, and the problem will be even worse for shift workers and children with special needs. The report says more than two-thirds of Canadian women with children under six are in the workforce, although that may drop if they can rely only on Harper’s proposed $1,200 (taxable) annual payments. The Liberal deal is slated to expire by March 31, 2007.
Insect >> Muzzling Cabinet The Globe and Mail revealed last week that our root-beer loving Prime Minister is imposing central control over information and comments coming out of his Cabinet members’ mouths, in an effort to stay consistently on-message. “Maintain a relentless focus on the five priorities of the campaign,” reads an internal memo from the Prime Minister’s Office, referring to the Federal Accountability Act, a GST cut, the child-care payout, law and order and wait-time guarantees. The move certainly sounds Bush-esque, but whether it will be workable—as it runs the gamut from speeches to minor comments to letters to the editor—is doubtful.