Quote of the week:

“I have to get out my ball gown.” —Quebec City mayor Andrée Boucher, who gained notoriety earlier this year by appearing in a hideous Yves St-Laurent dress on a visit to Paris, on dressing up for the city’s 400th birthday bash.

9/11 lit splits

David Bernans’s reading from his novel North of 9/11, set largely amongst Concordia’s activist crowd in the days and weeks following Sept. 11, 2001, won’t be happening at Concordia as planned. After having approval mysteriously withdrawn days after it was granted in July, Bernans, well-known in Concordia’s activist community, his publisher and others are wondering why.

In a series of e-mails forwarded to the Mirror by David Widgington, Bernans’s publisher at Cumulus Press, the back-and-forth between university officials and Bernans soon descends into a bureaucratic morass. Initially, the university’s risk assessment committee turned it down, without an explanation. After bouncing between individuals and departments, communications from Concordia cease altogether, without ever providing an explanation.

Chris Mota, Concordia’s director of media relations, says Bernans didn’t fulfill important criteria for approval, such as being affiliated with a student organization, and that several other options were presented to him. Widgington calls the cancellation “arbitrary” and censorious.

Bernans calls the excuse “patently false,” saying the Graduate Student Association sponsored the event. Writers’ group PEN Canada is inquiring.

Regardless, Bernans will read from his novel at McGill (Leacock 232) at 4:30 p.m. on 9/11/06. —Patrick Lejtenyi

Caledonia confrontation on film

Representatives from the Six Nations tribe will be at the Native Friendship Centre (2001 St-Laurent) on Thursday, Aug. 31 for a presentation on “Land Repossession and Resistance,” detailing their struggle to stop a housing development on land buttressing their reservation near Caledonia, Ontario.

The dispute between local residents and the Six Nations began last February when natives set up a blockade to the Douglas Creek Estates, which the natives have re-dubbed Kanehstaton, or “Protected Place.”

For 184 days, natives and solidarity groups have maintained a camp there, which organizers say, sends the message that “Canadian colonialism, the criminalization of indigenous resistance and vile settler racism” will no longer be tolerated.

An account from behind the blockade will be given by Six Nations tribe member Jacqueline House and Stuart Myiow, of Kahnawake.

A documentary, Day Zero, will describe the infamous April 20 raid by the Ontario Provincial Police, which resulted in 16 arrests, tear gas and smashed police car windows. Doors are at 6 p.m., with a $5 entry to benefit the Six Nations. —Elise Hugus

Street kid media

The team behind L’Itinéraire—the monthly mag that has given both a voice and political clout to the homeless for over 12 years—is set to unveil its latest project, a part-magazine, part-DVD quarterly produced by and for 18 to 30- year-old street youths.

“3e Œil MagDVD is a pretext to help kids who’ve been through tough times and want to get back on their feet,” says production coordinator Bryan Dionne.

Dionne describes the joint mag/DVD, soon to be sold on Montreal streets for $5, as an anti-drug project that tackles issues of concern to youths and draws attention to emerging culture.

For 20 volunteer youths, it will also be a training ground in video production. Their involvement in the project—through its distribution and the creation of short films for each DVD—will become more tangible as they learn the tricks of the trade.

The launch on Wednesday, Sept. 6 at the SAT (1195 St-Laurent, 5 p.m.) will feature a performance by singer Damien, who also graces the mag’s inaugural cover. For info, visit www.3eoeil.com. —Michael-Oliver Harding

Coma to deportation

As if the indentured servitude Filipino domestics experience at the hands of their bourgeois Canadian masters isn’t difficult enough already, in the case of Laila Suan Elumbra, Immigration Canada has found a way to make life even harder.

Elumbra, who came to Canada via the government’s Live-in Caregiver program, is currently facing deportation. Her crime? Falling into a coma, and, only fully recovering from said tragedy some 10 months later, waking up to learn she was now two months short of the mandatory 24 months of employment required in order to apply for permanent residency.

“She had three years to acquire the 24 months needed, but then she got sick, and Immigration Canada won’t extend her visa,” reports Joanne Vasquez, chairperson of the Philippine Women’s Centre of Quebec. “Penalization for getting sick is only one of countless reasons why this Live-in Caregiver program must be re-addressed.”

In the effort to raise awareness of the issue, a benefit will be held at the Blue Dog (3958 St-Laurent) on Sunday, Sept. 3, featuring Krinjah, DJ Static, and others. Tickets are $6. —Chris Barry

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

11 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Aug. 31–Sept. 7, 1995

On the cover: The head of Michelangelo’s David, with blue eyes, chewing a toothpick and wearing a gold chain around his neck, supposedly symbolizing the Fall Arts Preview and Al South’s interview with futurist Bruce Sterling. Asked if the “issue of porn on the Net is a red herring,” Sterling says, “We’ve got a U.S. congress absolutely infested with Babbitts and Elmer Gantrys; these guys were made out of the ’20s…. They’re going to continue to be around as the population ages. But the question is, how psychotic does it become?”

• Bar impresario Bill Foster (Que Sera, Déjà Vu) commits suicide, age 52. “Little things seemed insurmountable,” says a friend. “When you mix that with alcohol, it doesn’t help.”

• New fall albums: Brian Eno (“the One, even if he spells it backwards”) with U2, Bowie, Jah Wobble, Smashing Pumpkins, Blur, Oasis, Sonic Youth, Green Day, Cypress Hill, KRS-One, Kiss, Anthrax, more.

• New fall movies: To Die For, Canadian Bacon, Broken Arrow, Casino.

• Under the logo: “Let me guess… McGill, right?”

Angel >> Quebec’s climate change grades A solid B+ average isn’t exactly honour roll material, but it’s enough to send Quebec to the head of the class. The 2006 Report Card on Climate Change Action, compiled by Montreal’s Equiterre, the Sierra Club of Canada’s Atlantic chapter and other green groups to monitor progress on a 2001 climate change accord between five eastern provincial premiers and six New England governors, gave Quebec the highest grade of the bunch, thanks to its strict emissions standards on cars and energy efficiency measures in new buildings. Bringing up the rear was New Brunswick, with a C-, and New Hampshire, with a measly D+.
Insect >> Dumb pseudo-health products People seem to do the craziest things when it comes to their health. Take losing weight. Instead of, say, eating less and exercising, the fat and lazy would rather pop a Hoodia pill. Recently, federal customs officers stopped 2,000 shipments of the southern African cactus extract from entering the country, as they haven’t been properly certified by the international body governing trade in endangered species—which Hoodia is. Certified Hoodia is available, but dozens of U.S. and British firms are shipping it without the proper paperwork. Also, Health Canada had to warn the populace this week against ingesting hydrogen peroxide, after discovering that some U.S. Web sites claimed—falsely, it turns out—that it can help fight cancer, emphysema and AIDS.