Quote of the week:

“We don’t want to be the owner of the stadium.” —Montreal executive committee member Francine Senécal, disavowing municipal ownership of the Big O, which the city is supposed to own once it’s paid off, likely by summer’s end.

Woman vs. Wal-Mart

Following the soggy success of last Sunday’s inaugural Speaker’s Corner at Parc Lafontaine, the next edition, on Sunday, May 28, will feature one female Wal-Mart employee taking aim at the super-store over its union aversion.

“She’ll be wearing a veil,” says Speaker’s Corner organizer Carlo Tarini, also the co-founder of Injustice Québec, an organization that seeks compensation for victims of government ineptitude. Other speakers will also be on hand.

Speaker’s Corner is modelled on the tried and tested version found in London’s Hyde Park, where anyone with a grievance can literally stand on a soap box and mouth off about whatever’s on their mind. Last weekend featured an inventor angry that Hydro-Québec allegedly ripped him off, victims of Caisse de dépot et placement du Québec and Norbourg, who lost money through bad investments and sleaze, Pierre-Hugue Boisvenue whose daughter was murdered and ex-Foufounes impresario François (Yo) Gourd, who founded his political party Néo-Rhinocéros.

Tarini has high hopes that Speaker’s Corner will draw big crowds as the weather improves. “It’ll be like the Tam-Tams,” he says. “Less pot, but it will be mind-expanding.” —Patrick Lejtenyi

Normalized refugees

Last year, about 12,000 people seeking refuge in Canada were deported, often to countries torn by war and civil strife. Some fear that number could be even higher in 2006.

“The system is broken, completely broken,” says Sarita Ahooja, a member of refugee advocacy group Solidarity Across Borders. “People seeking safety are being criminalized.”

This Saturday, May 27, activists and their supporters will hold a day of action across Canada to press their demands; an end to deportations and detentions, the abolition of security certificates, and the implementation of a regularization program for non-status peoples.

Also of concern to many is the lack of an appeals process. “We’re in a dangerous epoch, where people are being denied due process,” says Ahooja.

In Montreal, a march will be held from Phillips Square (corner Ste-Catherine and Union) to Park Extension, where lunch will be had, and then over to Kent Park (corner Côte-des-Neiges and Appleton) where there will be food, music and dancing starting about 6 p.m. The march begins at noon. For info call 859-9023. —Christopher Hazou

Speed bumps wanted

Did you know that citizens of Plateau Mont-Royal own fewer automobiles, and use them less frequently, than any other district in Quebec? Well, it’s true, although you certainly could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, given the number of cars constantly speeding through the area.

“Even though it’s a residential district, the Plateau serves as a thoroughfare for people commuting downtown, and many of these motorists have little respect for speed limits”, says Irène Johnson, speaking on behalf of la Maison d’Aurore, a citizens committee whose public relations campaign, Maximum 30, is focused on finding practical solutions—like more speed bumps—to better address the issue of neighbourhood road safety.

“British studies show a 45 per cent risk of death for pedestrians hit by cars travelling 45 km per hour, whereas that risk drops to five per cent for cars travelling 30 km per hour,” says Johnson.

In order to raise awareness , the group has organized a march which will be leaving from Laurier Park, Saturday May 27, at 11 a.m., winding down with a picnic at their final destination, Lafontaine Park. —CHRIS BARRY

Sustainable partying

For the folks at Montreal Urban Community Sustainment (MUCS), it’s time to throw aside their urban planning treatises, push blueprints off their desks and par-tay.

MUCS is dedicated to the creation of an $18-million co-operative complex in NDG which would include affordable housing for 200 people, a community centre and a commercial space.

Plans for the project are being made according to an integrated design process that involves community consultation and the know-how of diverse specialists.

On May 26, MUCS, which has been in existence since 2002 and is hoping to have secured a building site by 2009, is throwing a “fundraiser and celebration for all the people who’ve worked with us over the years,” says board member Emily Carpenter.

The event will include an auction and live music and is open to anyone who wants to learn more about sustainable urban development.

The event happens at 7141 Sherbrooke W., room 307 (Loyola campus), 7–10 p.m. Tickets, at the door, will be $10 to $20 on a sliding scale. For info call 398-1829. —Marc Apollonio

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

13 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
May 27–June 3, 1993

On the cover: A house of cards on fire, as Patricia Bush reports on how Montreal became “Arson City.” The police estimate 35 per cent of the city’s fires are arson-related, a far higher percentage than in Toronto and Vancouver. “Virtually every time we investigate a case, a grocery store, a hotel or even a residence, the fire is set for financial reasons,” says an insurance underwriter.

• Rheostatic Dave Bidini is getting tired of the made-in-Canada label his band has acquired. “If more bands sang specifically, effortlessly and unabashedly about their reality—the reality of their surroundings—then our situation wouldn’t be so much an exception as a rule.”

• “There is a strong element of male paranoia in all these sexually-aggressive, often high-powered women who cut a swathe through ‘decent’ society,” Julianne Pidduck writes of recent “women stalker” flicks (Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, Single White Female etc.).

• Kirkland mayor Nick Discepola bans the Mirror from the public library after discovering an article on AIDS that “verged on obscenity.”

Angel >> The close Guantanamo chorus Over the past few months, a growing number of voices has been calling on the Bush administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison complex, and the numbers have been swelling in the past week. From a highly critical United Nations report released earlier this week to Amnesty International, the editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times, the U.K.’s attorney-general and the German chancellor, Guantanamo’s critics are becoming increasingly vocal, and increasingly heard. Since the camp opened in January 2002, only 10 detainees have been charged by a military tribunal. All the criticism, however, falls on deaf ears: a new $30-million (U.S.) detention centre at Guantanamo is scheduled for completion this summer.
Insect >> Failing Canada’s poor The UN slammed Canada for not living up to its obligations regarding its poor in a report released this week. Minimum wage, social assistance, unemployment insurance and child care (Stephen Harper, take note) are all below the UN’s Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights norms Canada committed to meeting. Aboriginals, blacks, immigrants, the young, the disabled and single mothers are particularly at risk, the report says. Welfare benefits in most provinces have dropped over the past decade, the report says, often covering less than half of what is needed for basic living needs.