Quote of the week:

“Cancellation of the season is unthinkable.” —Pierre Lefebvre, president of the Magog Chamber of Commerce, after the owner of popular ski hill Mt. Orford announced the cancellation on Monday, citing labour relations difficulties

Parks ban rankles

Three months ago, the borough council of Ville-Marie passed a controversial measure imposing a midnight–6 a.m. curfew in those remaining 15 city parks and squares that were allowed to stay open all night. Advocates for the poor decried the move, arguing that it criminalizes the homeless.

“They receive tickets for acts that you and I do every day,” says Bernard St-Jacques, an organizer with RAPSIM, a coalition that represents some 70 local community groups.

This Friday, Nov. 24, RAPSIM will protest in front of the Ville-Marie borough offices to pressure the city to rescind the curfew and to do more to address issues of poverty and homelessness. Currently, anyone found violating the ordinance faces a fine of up to $140, a huge sum to most street people. And St-Jacques says the situation is only getting worse, with more offenders going to prison for not being able to pay.

Demonstrators will head out from Berri Square (corner St-Hubert and de Maisonneuve E.) at 11:30 a.m., ending up at the Ville-Marie borough offices (888 de Maisonneuve E.) at about 11:50 a.m. For info, call (514) 879-1949 or visit www.rapsim.org. —Christopher Hazou

Rally for Darfur

You can set your watch by it. The Sudanese government promises an end to the ethnic cleansing of Darfur’s Fur people, who have the misfortune of being ethnically different from the Arab Sudanese who control the government, and shortly thereafter soldiers and militiamen go on a killing spree. The campaign has already killed more than 300,000 people, many of whom starved or died of preventable diseases in refugee camps.

“People keep saying no more Rwandas and Holocausts, but they’re happening,” says Amnesty International organizer Marta Jones. Amnesty will hold a vigil on Friday, Nov. 24, to call for the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers in Darfur. “If you don’t keep it in the public eye, it will get pushed to the backburner,” she says.

Last week, the Sudanese government indicated it might accept UN peacekeepers in Darfur, after months of resisting international pressure to allow peacekeepers to deploy alongside a contingent of African Union soldiers stationed in Darfur since 2004. Within days, government troops and militiamen attacked several villages in Darfur.

The vigil takes place at Phillips Square, corner of Union and Ste-Catherine, from 6–8 p.m. —Samer Elatrash

Berri Square’s refugees

If you’re passing by Place Émilie-Gamelin—also known as Berri Square—this weekend and happen to notice it’s been transformed into a makeshift refugee camp, don’t be alarmed. It’s just the setting for the Action Terroriste Socialement Acceptable’s (ATSA) 7th annual État d’Urgence “manifestival”—an interdisciplinary event both for and featuring real live street people.

An enormous five-day affair running until Sunday, Nov. 26, in addition to providing three square meals a day, 24-hour snacks and on-site sleeping accommodations for some 150 street people, the gathering will showcase initiatives and presentations by artists and collectives from a multitude of disciplines, “thus stimulating reflection on the human condition and social cohesion,” according to ATSA co-founder Annie Roy.

“People will have the chance to really get involved with the artists this year,” says Roy. “The programming is all very much interactive. We’ll have 120 artists on-site—with circus performances, interventions, music, films, storytelling… oh, there will be so much to do, and everything is free, so everyone can really get involved and become a part of it with the artists.”

For more details on the event, go to www.atsa.qc.ca. —Chris Barry

AIDS Day events

World AIDS Day is Friday, Dec. 1, and there are lots of things to do between now and then to raise some money and awareness against the disease that killed almost three million people last year.

On Wednesday, Nov. 29 at l’Alizé (900 Ontario E. 7 p.m.–9 p.m., $10), you can test your knowledge of women’s achievements at the EVE’s Quest tournament, a trivia game drawing on charades, singing, drawing, intuitive knowledge and the like. According to organizers, 59 per cent of the 24.5 million people living with AIDS are women. All proceeds go to the Stephen Lewis Foundation. See www.evesquest.com.

Meanwhile, Head & Hands, the NDG-based youth outreach community organization, will be visiting several Montreal high schools and community events to hand out “youth-friendly” HIV/AIDS info packages, condom wallets, stickers and posters. They’ll also be holding an anonymous HIV testing clinic on Thursday, Nov. 30, and will raise more awareness about HIV/AIDS with some sort of street art on Friday, Dec. 1. For more info, see www.headandhands.ca.

On Dec. 1, OUTtv, the cable channel dedicated to gay programming, will have a full day of docs, beginning with highlights from the International AIDS Conference held in Toronto last August. —Patrick Lejtenyi

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

13 years ago - Nov. 25–Dec.2, 1993

On the cover: Two wrestlers hurting each other, as Ian Stephens examines the “vulgar” World Wrestling Federation, coming to Montreal on the circuit tour. “The shame of it all is that the WWF has killed the weird fun of professional wrestling,” he writes. “Its grand Disneyland blandness has destroyed the quirky joy of such characters as the Canadian Wolfman and Smokey the wrestling bear, or the lovely zaniness of the McGuire twins, who together weighed over 1,300 pounds and rode through the audience on mini-scooters.”

• Just as Mayor Jean Doré releases his new austerity budget, opposition leader Michel Benoit charges that the mayor doubled his chauffeur’s salary to $72,000.

• “The Black Rider is a violent, phantasmagorical fable of redemption, freak shows and magic bullets,” reads the review of the Tom Waits album.

• “By focusing on these characters, particularly gang leader Hondo (Russell Crowe)—an intelligent, brave and good-looking skin—is [Romper Stomper director Geoffrey Wright] not at the same time romanticizing Nazi youth?” asks the review.

Angel >> Mines Action Canada The organization that pushed through the Ottawa Treaty banning landmines a decade ago has a new enemy: the cluster bomb. These nasty little weapons are dropped by plane and release dozens of tiny bomblets, each one powerful enough to maim or kill. Because they’re dropped from high altitudes and have no guidance system, they often wander off course and end up in civilian areas, where they explode indiscriminately. Last week, a UN conference on conventional weapons discussed cluster bombs, especially their use in last summer’s Israel-Hezbollah conflict. Norway seems to be the new Canada: it agreed to start a process to ban cluster munitions, which Canada isn’t supporting.
Insect >> Greedy landlords For the past quarter-century, the provincial rental board issued annual suggestions on rent hikes that tenants could point to when arguing with their landlords about their new leases. Now, the CORPIQ, a group that claims to represent the interests of up to 10,000 landlords, is trying to get the board to stop. They say that the current system, in place since 1981, doesn’t account for inflation, making landlords responsible for footing the bill. But tenants’ rights advocates say the guidelines, which aren’t binding, are one of the only ways they can judge if their annual hike is excessive or not. A decision isn’t expected for months.