Quote of the week:

“I’m not losing business, I’m gaining business from people who used to stay away because of the smoking.” — St-Lazare bar owner Richard Chartrand, after a patron ejected for rowdy behaviour, including smoking, fired a bullet through the bar’s door early Monday morning. No one was injured, and one man was arrested.

Plateau Speeding

Inuit Smiles

Inuit smiles Local filmmaker Robert Lewis met Isaac Augiak and Thomas Paru Weetaltuk, the subjects of his latest film, Be Smile, three years ago, and the two on-again, off-again-homeless Inuit men soon became regular guests in Lewis’s home. The film documents their transformation in Lewis’s eyes (and ours) from anonymous panhandlers to members of a community as culturally vibrant as it is wounded by colonial history. The men wrestle with trauma, addiction and poverty while telling stories, laughing and creating remarkable murals on the walls of a tiny apartment. Also remarkable is that they helped edit the film, having final say over how they were portrayed. “If anything comes from this film, it is a world view, an outlook of the mind that the Inuit seemed to have retained despite hardships,” he says. “How can Canada move for¬ward with the challenges it faces in a way that draws on this aboriginal wisdom? For me, that would be the most satisfying outcome, to re-ori-ent people’s thoughts, not only towards two guys living in the street, but towards their culture within our own culture.” Be Smile will be shown for the first time Monday, Jan. 22 at 7:30 p.m., in Concordia’s Rm H-110 (1455 de Maisonneuve W.), as part of the Cinema Politica series. Dis¬cussion follows. View the trailer at www.cinemapolitica.org.
-Michel Lithgow

Teenage Frigo bash

Having been in the business for 15 years now, the Frigo Vert has proved it has the ability to stay open through good and lean times—a testament to the Concordia-based non-profit vegetarian coop’s good management and quality of food, says Frigo worker Ambrose Kirby. Only the Frigo Vert, which started as a buying group for bulk foods, has no management, really—it is run as a worker’s collective. “The organization is also political,” he says. “We think not only in terms of the kind of products we buy, but also the structure.” The Frigo is celebrating its 15th anniversary Wednesday, Jan. 24, with free vegetarian food and an open house at its downtown location (2130 Mackay, 5–7 p.m.). The co-op is doing well these days, but just three years ago it was threatened with eviction when the landlord decided to convert the building into apartments. In the end, the Frigo stayed in place and expanded with an adjoining café and lounge. Run by workers since it began, the Frigo experimented with a hierarchal management about six years ago, but the manager was turfed and it reverted to worker control.
—Samer Elatrash

Sweat for Malawai

Some people like to sweat. And some people like to do charity work. For those of you who like to do both, this Saturday, Jan. 20, the Montreal chapter of Dignitas International, a Canadian medical humanitarian organization headed by Dr. James Orbinski, the former head of Doctors Without Borders, will be holding a stationary bike-a-thon at the McGill gymnasium to raise some much-needed dough for their Malawi-based field project, and a little awareness about the raging HIV pandemic in southern Africa. “The field project set up 23 testing and counselling sites around the country,” says Amy Smart, the 20-year-old McGill history student running the event. “The organization trains and links voluntary care-givers to the formal health system, and expands the distribution of medication and education and preventative material.” An estimated 650,000 Malawians have already succumbed to the disease, and another one million are living with it—this out of a population of just over 12 million. On top of the feel-good aspect, participants can also look forward to a bunch of prizes in the form of raffle giveaways like gift certificates, gym memberships and the alwaysappealing sight of sweaty students. For more info on participating, donating or both, visit www. dignitasinternational.org
—Patrick Lejtenyi

REAR-VIEW MIRROR
16 years ago - Jan. 9–16, 1991

On the cover: The Kids in the Hall, whose CBC-TV show is being described as “the future of comedy.” “We only take that stuff seriously when we’re drunk,” says troupe member Mark McKinney. “Then we regret it.”

• Astory from the Pacific News Service examines the influence of Kuwaiti petrodollars in the West. “Years of prudent investment of those petrodollars [between $100-billion to $250-billion U.S. into the American and British economies] have bought the [Kuwaiti royal family] al-Sabah extensive political influence in Washington and elsewhere.”

• “It took three listens to warm up to If There Was a Way,” reads Eleanor Brown’s review of Dwight Yoakam’s latest album. “The whine is not quite so nasal, the stripped-down hillbilly sound has a bit more swing, the honky tonk is a bit duller-edged, but it’s a respectable album, given perhaps unreasonable expectations of excellence.”

• Marian MacNair writes about tai chi in the Mirror’s Fitness supplement. “Self-defence is not the goal but one of the results,” says one master.

Angel >> Protecting weired creatures A   new conservation program by the Zoological Society of London is trying to save the world’s strange, unusual and endangered species from becoming mere odd memories. The politely-named Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) project is to encompass animals that have few close relatives, are genetically distinct and face extinction—animals like the long-beaked echidna, the Bactrian camel, the Hispaniolan solenodon, the golden-rumped elephant shrew and the Slender loris (pictured). Many EDGE animals aren’t protected under existing conservation projects, and although some 564 species fall under the new definition, the project will focus on protecting 10 “focal species” a year. Many of the species are threatened by human activity.
Insect >> Same old, same old in the war on drugs A new report to be published in the HIV/AIDS Policy and Law Review excoriates the federal government’s continued get-tough policy of failure regarding illegal drugs. By emphasizing law enforcement—a tactic that, pursued by itself, is wasteful, useless and even harmful—and ignoring treatment, prevention and education, the Conservatives are going to continue years of frustrating imbalance that has so far yielded no significant reduction in the amount of drugs available on Canadian streets, and has done little to help addicts recover their lives. Law enforcement, according to the report, consumed 73 per cent of the national drug strategy’s $245-million budget, with no demonstrated impact on drugs consumed.