VICTORY IS SWEET: The Rialto hosted the Save Parc Avenue Coalition’s victory party on Saturday night celebrating their successful fight to keep the artery’s name intact. Cutting the cake are Parc warriors (from left to right) Mary Deros, Jimmy Zoubris, Maria Griffiths, Louis Hondronicolas, Chris Karidogiannis and Mario Rizzi. Photo by Rachel Granofsky

Quote of the week

“[A student union] can have 10,000 students vote for its Beer Party; $17,500 is not a bad take.” —Crown prosecutor Roslyn Levine, urging the Ontario Court of Appeal to abolish the $1.75 small parties receive per vote, saying the system is open to abuse.

Welch sells

With apologies to Ben Franklin, only two things are certain when it comes to operating a retail business: increasing rent and taxes. Stephen Welch, the co-proprietor of the Main’s S.W. Welch used bookstore near Duluth, is blaming both for his upcoming move, scheduled for the week of March 12.

“I was paying almost 3,000 a month rent, and all the taxes… came to about 7,000 a year,” he says. “When you start adding that all up, you have to make a lot of money to make a living.” A new lease and St-Laurent’s trendy-ization made it impossible to continue.

“There was a community when I started here 15 years ago,” Welch says. “There’d be tons of people coming in, and we’d be open until 11:30 or a quarter to one in the morning… But [the area’s] become more corporate, and less of a neighbourhood.”

Which takes him up to Mile-End. The new location—the store’s fourth—will open tentatively on Friday, March 23, at 225 St-Viateur W. The new space will be considerably smaller than the current location, with less floor and storage space. That means Welch has to get rid of a lot of stock, so he’ll be selling off tons of old books at $1 a pop as of Friday, March 9, through the weekend. Show up at 3878 St-Laurent for the sale.

by Patrick Lejtenyi

FRAPRU drama

Social-housing activist group FRAPRU (Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain) has collaborated with the Mise au jeu theatre troupe to produce Le Privé au musée, a story about everyday Quebecers struggling to pay the rent. The play is intended to increase public awareness about Quebec’s social-housing problems as much as it is to entertain. Le Privé kicks off its provincial tour in Sherbrooke on Saturday, March 3, making four stops in Montreal, the first of which will take place at Maison du Père (550 René-Lévesque E.), Tuesday, March 6, at 7 p.m., free.

However, FRAPRU has not abandoned good old-fashioned public demonstrations in favour of artistic protest. On Friday, March 2, at 11:15 a.m., they will be holding a rally outside the Queen Elizabeth Hotel (900 René-Lévesque W.), where they will greet visiting Quebec Liberal Party leader Jean Charest and demand that he address the current housing situation.

“Politicians cannot stay silent about the social-housing issue any longer,” says FRAPRU spokesperson Véronique Laflamme. “Many people have to cut out basic needs just to pay the rent. It’s a big problem which keeps getting worse, and we want clear commitments.”

For more information, see www.frapru.qc.ca.

by Steve Zylbergold

Still quarrelling

A Quebec Superior Court judge ruled last week that Andy Srougi, the Fathers 4 Justice activist, was a “quarrelsome litigant,” barring him from filing lawsuits without the prior approval of a judge. In equine terms, the magistrate nicely gelded Srougi, who regularly lashed out with lawsuits against opponents, but the hot-blooded fathers’ rights activist still bucks. He is continuing his lawsuit against bimonthly magazine À bâbord!, which he is suing for $24,000 after it published an article identifying him as a “masculinist.”

Although the judge’s ruling had no effect on lawsuits Srougi had already filed, it might help À bâbord!’s case, says the magazine’s lawyer. “It won’t have an immediate effect, but it will help” the magazine’s argument that the lawsuit is frivolous, says Pierre-Louis Fortin-Legris.

Srougi blames the article by feminist activist Barbara Legault for tarnishing his reputation and causing him “emotional problems and stress.” In the article, Legault defined masculinism as a “specific form of antifeminism” that blames feminists for men’s problems. The magazine accuses Srougi of trying to shut it down through an expensive lawsuit (the magazine is run by volunteers, and is relying on donations to defend itself in court).

by Samer Elatrash

Beauty and cancer

With a plethora of brands to choose from, here’s advice that might narrow down the search for the right lipstick and nail polish: avoid the ones that could give you cancer.

Madeleine Bird, an organizer with the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women (MCRTW), recently discovered a cosmetic product she bought contained formaldehyde, a recognized carcinogen. And Bird knows all about toxins in cosmetic products. She coordinates the Health and Environment Awareness Project, a partnership between MCRTW and Breast Cancer Action Montreal, which plans to educate Canadians on the long-term risks of some cosmetics and cleaning agents.

Last November, Health Canada issued regulations that required cosmetics companies to label all the ingredients in their products, but it’s not enough, says Bird. “It’s a mediocre step,” she says. “It’s good because we have a consumer right to know, but it’s not very accessible.” The ingredients are in jargon most people wouldn’t understand, she says, and a dictionary for the nomenclature (not available online) can cost up to $1,000.

Bird will lecture on the risks of cosmetic products and cleaning agents Thursday, March 8, at 3857 Peel (Seminar room). The lecture starts at 5:30 p.m., For more info, see www.mcgill.ca/mcrtw/.

by Samer Elatrash

Rear-view mirror

On the cover: Timothy Leary. The 1960s acid legend and technophile is scheduled to perform his How to

Operate Your Brain show (“a multi-media affair where rave culture collides with the lecture series”) in Montreal March 9, but immigration issues force the performance to be pushed back to September. “The key to everything is the Internet,” he says. “In five or 10 years, every human being, including unborn babies, is going to be on the Net—probably dogs and cats too.”

• “Can we still talk feminism in 1995?” asks Julianne Pidduck. With International Women’s Day approaching, she laments how “the complex, far-reaching vision of radical social change [of the ’80s]… gets dismissed as dogma.”

• From the RantLine™: “I have been raving for almost two years now but I am still considered a new-school raver. The old-school guys are completely degrading us… Raves are supposed to be one of the only places where you are not being judged, yet that’s all these guys have been doing… P.S. This concerns you too, Tiga.”

Angel: RespectMyResearch.Org This new Web site is a place research scientists can go to blow the whistle on the misuse of their research by right-wing Christian crackpots with an anti-gay agenda. Created by Truth Wins Out, the Miami-based organization that calls out organizations like James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, the site has letters and videos made by researchers from Columbia, Yale, British Columbia and New York Universities outraged at how Dobson cherry-picks and distorts their work for his own politically putrid ends. It also urges other academics whose work has been distorted by Dobson and his ilk to step forward publicly and denounce the group for using their research out of context.

insect: The ivory trade It was supposed to be banned in 1989, but the illegal trade in ivory is still causing the deaths of an estimated 20,000 elephants a year, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Demand in China, Japan and other parts of Asia is still high, despite the $750/kilo it now commands on the black market. The study’s author says the trade is worse today than it ever was, in part because organized crime has become very heavily involved. But a new DNA testing technique is helping authorities trace where seized ivory originated and crack international poaching rings.