ROBBED! Last Saturday’s Table Tennis for Charity Tournament, part of the Puma French 77 Party, was opened by a competition between members of the Fédération de Table de Tennis du Québec, each representing an organization—the Mirror, Pop Montreal, Nightlife and Maisonneuve—that would donate door money to the charity of their choice. Benoit DIon, left, representing the rarely seen Maisonneuve, won, with the $375 gate going to the Quebec Writers’ Federation Mentorship and Literacy Program. Maisonneuve staff, if any, will also enjoy the ping-pong table. Photo by WILL LEW

Quote of the week

“My leadership has been questioned so intensely that I cannot begin the essential process of reflection that the party needs.” —A teary André Boisclair, announcing his resignation as PQ leader on Tuesday, following a crushing electoral defeat and recent public spat with Gilles Duceppe.

Earth soirée

It promises to be a fun evening, and if you attend you could boast that you helped beat back global warming for a while. Montreal environmental group Équiterre is hosting its second annual benefit concert on Thursday, May 17, at the Metropolis (59 Ste-Catherine E.)

Donations (that’s $29 tickets for students, $35 for everyone else) would go to Équiterre’s various environmental and fair trade campaigns, says Équiterre fundraiser Halima Elkhatabi. The group has several ongoing campaigns, including a campaign to have hospitals and schools serve healthy and organic food, an awareness campaign aimed at less polluting ways to get about the city, and a campaign to pressure the government to implement the Kyoto Protocol.

“Most people are dumbfounded by the scale of the [climate change] problem,” says Mirella Di Blasio, who is helping organize the concert. “They think they can’t do anything by themselves. Everyone can make a little change, and if we add them together we can help the environment.”

More than a dozen acts, including the Dears and Vulgaires Machins, will perform at the concert, which starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are on offer at www.ticketpro.ca or call (514) 908-9090. See www.equiterre.org for more info.

by Samer Elatrash

Anarchy in the café

Perhaps it’s finally just become a rite of Spring in these parts, but one thing is certain, this year’s Festival of Anarchy has been packing ’em in like never before. According to Norman Nawrocki, noted local activist and co-organizer of the annual event, “It’s really quite something. We’re seeing much greater public interest in ideas challenging the status quo. More than ever before, people are pissed off, fed up, frustrated with everything going on and they’re looking for new ideas. So here we are, giving people tons of them, other ways to look at the world.”

In that spirit, next Thursday, May 17, at 7:30 p.m. in the glorious confines of Café de la Cinémathèque (335 de Maisonneuve E.), the festival presents “Realizing the Impossible: A Discussion on Art and Anarchism,” with prominent thinkers Josh MacPhee, Erik Reuland, Allan Antliff, Cindy Milstein, Jonah Crow and others inviting the public to participate in a discussion on the role of art and culture in the anarchist movement.

“It’s a great opportunity for people to think in new ways about art,” says Nawrocki. “New perspectives on the connection between art and anarchy will be presented.”

Art of business

Lots of music fans see Keith Richards as the consummate rock ’n’ roll artist, a genuine rebel degenerate, living for his art. But without Mick Jagger, trained at the London School of Economics, Keith might have wound up playing Chuck Berry tunes on street corners and robbing drugstores for codeine pills. So if you’re an artist struggling to make a living off your craft and think it’s time to balance your Richards with a bit of Jagger, make your way to “Business Skills for Creative Souls,” the seventh Montreal Self-Employed Artists Conference, on May 14 from 9 a.m.–5 p.m. at the Centaur Theatre (453 St-Francois-Xavier), $30 entrance, lunch provided.

The conference, organized by Youth Employment Services (YES) Montreal, will feature successful Quebec artists and industry professionals, including writer and producer Kevin Tierney, Oscar-winning animator Torill Kove and Standard Radio VP Rob Braide, giving lectures and leading workshops on topics such as grant applications, copyrighting, tax deductions for artists and marketing strategies.

“The presenters are established artists who want to give back to the community”, says YES Montreal’s Iris Unger. “It will be informational and inspirational, very personal and very Quebec.”

For tickets and info, call (514) 878-9788 ext. 313, or e-mail ae@yesmontreal.ca.

Know your local mountain

Getting off the beaten path might seem like an inoffensive, if clichéd, life philosophy, but local conservation group Les amis de la montagne wants you to think twice before doing it. That’s because even seemingly harmless activities like mountain biking off trail can jeopardize the health and beauty of our city’s namesake.

“When bikes do go off trail, the impact is 30 times that of a foot on a trail. There’s soil compaction where nothing grows anymore; it can be compared to a receding hairline,” says Les amis’s communications director Gabrielle Korn. Other common offences include disrupting the species balance by feeding wildlife and picking rare plants that take years to grow back.

To prevent irreparable damage to the mountain, this weekend and next, Les amis’s Mount Royal Conservation Patrol is going beyond their usual direct interventions with park users. The 12–15-person-strong volunteer force plans to set up a kiosk, meet with the public, and present information about the pressure that Mount Royal’s estimated three million annual visitors place on its fragile ecosystem. The events are part of Les amis’s ongoing “Small Actions With Big Results” Mount Royal Month.

Rear-view mirror

16 years ago - may 9 – may 16, 1991

On the cover: Dennis Hopper, promoting his latest film, Paris Trout. Talking to journalists, he tells Martin Siberok, is a joy. “Sometimes they get the stories right, sometimes they get them wrong. Doesn’t really matter, I just love talking to them. I especially love talking to you, Martin.”

• Gay rights activists aren’t planning to “out” anyone in Montreal, says Michael Hendricks, because “in Montreal, there’s no one to out. For instance, in New York, there are some completely right-wing, homophobic Republican senators who are actually closeted gays. They vote for repressive legislation. Then at night, they dance! We don’t have many politicians like that in Canada.”

• After Me, Mom & Morgentaler’s first show, says singer Gus Coriandoli, “We decided, ‘If we’re going to do it, let’s do it right.’ Nothing will be half-assed. We dedicated all of our time to it, and school just became a nuisance.”

• Douglas Coupland’s “infuriating” but “bleakly funny” Generation X “may well become one of the cult favourites of the ’90s,” reads the review.

Angel >> SOS Orford Thanks in no small part to the efforts of this coalition group, Mount Orford park is safe—for now. The coalition vehemently denounced the Liberal plan to sell off parts of the park to developers so effectively that this week the government announced it would halt the sale (the two opposition parties were also against it). But the government has mandated the local authority, the MRC Memphrémagog, to develop a “new social consensus for a viable project” over the next two years, meaning that a future sale is still potentially possible. The coalition remains skeptical about the Liberal commitment to preserving the park’s integrity, calling the sale’s cancellation a battle half-won.

Insect >> The increasingly paranoid U.S. Defense Department The poppy quarter, the commemorative 25-cent coin issued in 2004 to honour Canada’s war dead, so puzzled U.S. military contractors working in Canada last winter that they thought it might be some strange Bond-esque nanotech espionage tool. The Associated Press reported this week the Defense Security Service, part of the U.S. Defense Department, wondered if the coins were planted on the contractors to eavesdrop on sensitive conversations. The idea itself is preposterous: Yes, the espionage world is a murky and treacherous one, but Canada having its very own Q Branch, much less one that’s effective? Those Yanks are getting crazier by the minute.