PARK THIS: Community activist Sharon Freedman prepares to present a 20,000-signature petition at city hall on Monday night. Montreal merchants especially are furious at the new, higher-fee parking meters and extended hours. But the Plateau and Ville-Marie boroughs are considering extending meter time limits to three hours in some cases. PHOTO BY RACHEL GRANOFSKY

Quote of the week

“It will be because she pushed the button.” —Premier Jean Charest, referring to the PQ’s likely new leader Pauline Marois, who is threatening to defeat the Liberal budget and trigger a new election.

Citizens’ input

Contrary to an old aphorism, you can fight city hall. As the fourth Citizens’ Summit of Montreal opens this Friday, June 1, at UQÀM, over a dozen community groups will discuss the best way to shape the future of the city and get the elected representatives to listen to the advice, concerns and ideas generated from civic-minded voters.

“The question we’re asking is, by what means can a citizen act to make a difference in how things are run,” says Lucia Kowaluk, who’s coordinating the English workshops.

The Summit will be organized around four broad themes, the urban economy, the urban environment, diversity and social justice, and civic democracy. There will be about a dozen English workshops and about 20 French ones.

There have been successes coming out of past summits, says Kowaluk, including pressuring the city to adopt Kyoto targets and drawing up a Charter of Rights and Responsibilities for the city. “When you get there, you don’t feel alone,” says Kowaluk. “There is a sense of solidarity when you’re going to a meeting and you see 400 or 500 people who care as much as you do.”

For more information, visit www.4sc.urbanecology.net or call (514) 281-6406.

by Patrick Lejtenyi

Local McGill eats

So, you’ve got a green thumb but you live on the third floor and your local community garden is contaminated. What to do? Why, grow your plants in containers, of course.

That’s the idea behind the Edible Campus, a new container garden outside McGill’s Burnside Hall, near Sherbrooke. Launched last week by Alternatives, Santropol Roulant and the McGill School of Architecture, it will provide up to one-third of the food Santropol Roulant uses to make its meals on wheels.

Gardening hours run three days a week and anyone can join. “If somebody wants to grow a tomato or pull up weeds, we can’t stop them. We wouldn’t want to stop them,” says Rotem Ayalon, one of the garden’s coordinators. “McGill is very visible, very public, so it’s a place where people can see the possibilities of what they can do at home, on their balconies or rooftops. It’s a way to inspire people. Gardening is possible without a lot of space.”

The Edible Campus will run until October. Over the summer, Alternatives plans to offer gardening workshops on everything from basic plant care to composting to garden art. Check out www.rooftopgardens.ca for more details.

by Christopher DeWolf

Suds up

For the 14th year running, the Mondial de la bière sets up shop for the city’s beer lovers. From the familiar to the obscure to the bizarre, hundreds of different flavours of beer will be on tap and in bottles at the Windsor station and concourse, until Sunday, June 3.

Marie-Josée Lefebvre, the festival’s coordinator, says 166 new products will be available this year, bringing the total to 375 beers, ciders, wines and other products (including Desperados, a tequila-flavoured beer). Visitors will also be able to sample, for the first time ever, four specially-made beers brewed for the Mondial: Freluquet, a Vienna lager by Laval’s Au Maître Brasseur, Le Grimoire’s Vitale framboises, from Granby, local microbrewers Dieu du Ciel’s Imperial Cream Ale and L’Alchimiste’s India Dark Ale, from Joliette.

Unfortunately, most of the beers, especially the foreign ones, aren’t available anywhere else in Quebec, so this is really the only opportunity for beer-lovers to try them. “This is more to help international brewers make contacts with local distributors here who may be able to help with future imports,” says Lefebvre.

There will be food, games and contests, as well as an evening of fine, beer-product-only dining. For more information, see www.festivalmondialbiere.qc.ca.

by Patrick Lejtenyi

Undies run

Next Saturday, don’t be surprised by a large group of people walking and running in their underwear in the streets of Montreal. The first Underwear Affair to benefit under-the-belt cancers and the Montreal Jewish General’s Segal Cancer Centre is about to hit the streets on Saturday, June 2.

Similar to the well-known cancer walks, participants can run for 10 kilometres or walk for five kilometres but unusually, they can do so in their underwear—that’s boxers, briefs or even pyjamas. Participants are encouraged to be as outrageous as they can be in the hopes it will raise awareness for cancers that are rarely talked about—colorectal, cervical, uterine, ovarian and prostate cancer.

Colorectal cancer is the second most common cause of death from cancer. Last year, 19,600 Canadians were diagnosed and 8,400 died. Ovarian cancer affects 2,400 women every year and 1,500 die from it. Prostate cancer is the most frequent cause of cancer for men—one out of nine will be diagnosed in their lifetime.

Each participant is required to raise a minimum of $300, but already several teams have raised much more. Online registrations are now over, but on-site registrations on June 2 will be accepted. For more info, visit www.uncoverthecure.org.

by Melanie Meloche-Holubowski

Rear-view mirror

11 years ago - May 30–June 05, 1996

On the cover: Lili Taylor, as Valerie Solanas in I Shot Andy Warhol, screening at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma. But the interview is with writer/director Mary Harron. “There was tremendous resistance to this film because of how difficult it is to position Valerie,” says Harron. “They wanted more about her unhappy childhood with that TV movie psychology.”

• “My first reaction; Thank God we have a union,” says business reporter Jan Ravensbergen, following Conrad Black’s Hollinger takeover of former publisher Southam.

• Rick Moffat, host of the Mix 96’s Loveline, thanks Mirror readers in a letter for voting for his show in the Best Spoken Word Performance. Meanwhile, a letter signed by spoken-word artists Todd Swift, Jake and Buffy Bonanza criticize the Best Spoken Word Emcee category as “divisive.”

• Love and Rockets bassist David J blames former Bauhaus bandmate Peter Murphy for El Chupacabra, the vampire goat-killer of Mexico. “Sounds like his handiwork,” he says.

Angel >> Friend of the Earth Canada The green group took the unusual step of deciding to sue the Canadian government over its failure to even try to meet Kyoto targets this week. The group says it doesn’t want money, but rather legislation that will force Canada to comply with the protocol’s greenhouse gas reduction targets, which are currently 35 per cent above 1990 levels. The targets call for emissions to be cut to six per cent below that level by 2012. Good luck to them: Prime Minister Stephen Harper said this week that he’s backing the U.S. in trying to water down environmental targets under discussion at next week’s G8 summit in Germany.

Insect >> Misguided poppy eradication The Senlis Council, a Brussels-based thinktank, released a report this week urging the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan to change its stance regarding the U.S.-led policy of poppy eradication. Destroying the one viable crop most poor Afghan farmers can grow isn’t doing much to help win the hearts and minds of people in a region where the Taliban insurgency is still going strong, the report notes—but letting them grow it for medicinal purposes would alleviate a global shortage of opiate-based painkillers. This isn’t wishful thinking either: In the 1970s, Turkey and India cultivated opium for medicinal purposes under a U.S.-led initiative.