TWO WHEELS GOOD FOUR WHEELS BAD: For the second year in a row the city opened its bike paths two weeks earlier than usual, with many a pedal fiend taking advantage last Sunday. The paths will remain open two weeks longer than usual, to November 15, giving Montrealers an extra month to enjoy them. Photo by Rachel Granofsky

Quote of the week

“It’s moving faster than the political process to change the voting system.” —Brian Gibb, president of the Association for Democratic Rights, on his recently launched court case against the provincial government to adopt a proportional representation electoral system. Jean Charest said he would change the system in 2003, but reneged last December.

Eye on the hunt

Andrew Plumbly, the director of Montreal-based animal rights group Global Action Network, is enjoying the bracing weather on Newfoundland’s west coast these days while coordinating the U.S. Humane Society’s anti-sealing efforts. The baby seal hunt kicked off this week, and by the time it ends, an estimated 270,000 will have been either clubbed or shot to death.

The logistics of the anti-sealing campaign are complex, says Plumbly. “I have to coordinate our presence, making sure our helicopters, boats, trucks and people are in the right place at the right time,” he says from Deer Lake. “We have three helicopters in the area and they have to be refuelled.”

He also has to operate low-key. “The locals don’t know we’re here,” he says. “We keep it that way specifically, because we’d probably get a pretty hostile reception.”

Plumbly plans to use his findings—usually involving video images of seals being slaughtered—to sensitize activists and European Union officials and to alert the Canadian government about illegal hunting. Canada has been more criticized than usual this year for allowing hunters to operate in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, where a lack of ice is leading to the drowning deaths of far more pups than usual.

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Housing off radar

François Saillant of social housing lobby group FRAPRU isn’t too thrilled with last week’s election result. Not only because the victory of the Liberals, whom he says completely ignored the entire issue of social housing during the campaign, but also because the two other big parties only piped up about the topic after being hounded by FRAPRU activists at their events.

“Unfortunately, I’m pessimistic” about improvements in social housing, he says. “All through the campaign there was almost no engagement on the issue. Housing wasn’t seen as an important topic. There seemed to be some sort of revelation that the housing crisis was over—as if the 24,000 people on waiting lists was not an urgent matter.” Saillant says no new social housing units have been built since 1994.

Montreal and Quebec in general lag behind other, mostly European, leaders in providing low-income housing, says Saillant. But rather than create ghettoes of shabby housing for the unemployed or unemployable, he says he’d like to see units set aside that would mix the poorest of the poor with working poor.

Saillant wasn’t impressed with the Jean Charest Liberals’ performance in their first term in office either, even with $187-million coming from Ottawa last year.

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Notre-Dame memories

Thirty-five years ago this week, over 1,200 residents of East-End Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district had their homes expropriated and razed to make way for the Notre-Dame expressway. To commemorate this shining example of urban management, on Tuesday, April 10, the Table d’aménagement du quartier Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (TAQH-M), a neighbourhood organization occupied mostly with fighting the highway’s proposed enlargement, will be hosting a retrospective evening complete with presentations by local historians, photos and short speeches given by those who lost their homes.

“The main goal is to give [a historical] presentation of the Notre-Dame highway,” says TAQH-M spokesman Daniel Vernier. “Also, we’ll present photos by amateur historian Jean-Paul Savard, who took many pictures of the old houses.” Vernier says that contemporary arguments favouring the expropriation played up the area’s dismal hygiene and building standards, but, says Vernier, “these photos don’t represent that.”

The night will be more than just tears over memories gone by, he says. “We want to let current residents rediscover part of their history and also break down certain myths about the demolition.”

The presentation takes place at 1475 Bennett, from 7–9 p.m. Call (514) 251-2081 for more info.

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Junk into art

Our homes are cluttered with all kinds of useless junk that we’ve bought over the years, occupying space and existing as a silent, taunting reminder of money wasted. We know that someone, somewhere, would want this stuff, but finding new homes for old baby clothes, kitchen appliances and outdated-but-still-functional computer monitors is a real hassle.

Troc-tes-Trucs, a new Villeray-based project, is taking steps towards finding good homes for these unwanted items by organizing exchange events where families can trade their used goods. TTT also holds workshops on making your own environmentally friendly cleaning products and reducing waste by turning old crap into art.

On Thursday, April 5 from 7–9 p.m., project organizers Véronique Castonguay and Maude Léonard will present TTT and discuss its viability in the Plateau during the “Comment être à la fois consommateur et citoyen responsable?” conference on responsible consumerism at Centre de formation sociale Marie-Gérin-Lajoie (1215 Saint-Joseph E., donations accepted).

“Families need a place that encourages responsible consumption and the exchange of both objects and ideas”, says Castonguay. “We’re creating a sharing network.”

For more information, see http://centremgl.org.

by STEVE ZYLBERGOLD

Rear-view mirror

11 years ago - April 4–11, 1996

On the cover: Fleurette Fernando, the 22-year-old Black Theatre Workshop’s artistic director, for Odondo, “the history of blacks from Creation to today.” “A lot of things … were debated and digested,” she says. “It’s an American piece and we’re not in America; the perpetuation of stereotypes—the junkies and pimps and prostitutes; the use of the word nigger. There was also a kind of political division between the older actors and the younger ones.”

• Linda Gyulai vents her spleen after Pierre Bourque’s Vision Montreal violated party financing laws. The party had to reimburse $33,000 in illegal contributions—“about 10 per cent of the party’s contributions of $100 or more in 1994.”

• The Kingpins’ Paddy Walsh tells the RantLine™ that Domenic Castelli threw him down the stairs at Finnigans, not the other way around.

• “I will do everything in my power to destroy [Toronto gay mag] Xtra,” says Kid in the Hall Scott Thompson. “I loathe it.”

Angel: Green-minded Canadians It looks like Canadians are becoming increasingly impatient with the glacial pace the federal government is moving at when it comes to decisive action on climate change. A new government study, polling 2,000 Canadians, found that over three-quarters of us think current environmental regulations are too weak, and that over 60 per cent would be willing to pay some form of pollution tax on consumer and industrial goods. And worse news for the Harper Conservatives: Only 19 per cent of Canadians think they’re doing a good job fighting climate change, and only three per cent a very good job.

Insect: Decreasing Canadian abortion access According to Canadians for Choice, a national abortion rights group, it’s getting harder for women to get an abortion in Canadian hospitals. Less than 16 per cent of hospitals in the country offer the service, down from 18 per cent four years ago. In Quebec, 24 per cent offer it, down from 35 per cent in 2003. In the survey of 800 Canadian hospitals, the group says telephone receptionists were often rude or unhelpful, or referred them to antiabortion groups and, on one occasion, a psychiatric hospital. The group said that they detected the influence of American anti-abortion organizations. Meanwhile, a group of women in Quebec filed a class-action suit against the provincial Health Ministry on Monday, saying they were forced to pay for abortions at private clinics because no space was available in hospitals.