LOVE THE OVEN: Mackenzie Ogilvie serves pizza from the Mile-End Bread Oven at the corner of Clark and Arcade. The traditional four à pain, meant to make eats for community events and food banks, is on unused property in a park zone, and the city wants it gone. To help save it, sign the petition at le Cagibi (5490 St-Laurent). PHOTO BY RACHEL GRANOFSKY

Quote of the week

“It’s not as big of an event as it should have been, and it shows the morose state of the separatist movement.”—Société St. Jean Baptiste President Jean Dorion over the lack of enthusiasm for the 40th anniversary of Charles de Gaulle’s “Vive le Québec libre” remark

La belle province
et la Bush

Montreal activists are busy preparing for next month’s Security and Prosperity Partnership (SSP) summit in Montebello, QC, where Prime Minister Stephen Harper, George W. Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon are expected to forge an über-NAFTA plan that, activists say, will further shrivel Canadian sovereignty and rights for immigrant workers and indigenous people. The Council of Canadians got a taste of the summit’s security coordination two weeks ago when the U.S. Army and the RCMP pressured the town of Papineauville, six kilometres from Montebello, to quash an academic forum that had been planned to take place during the summit, from Aug. 21–22.

The move predictably irritated local activists, who are organizing demonstrations and holding community assemblies about the summit, starting on Saturday, Aug. 4, at Toussaint-l’Ouverture Park (de Maisonneuve, between St-Dominique and Sanguinet) from 1–5 p.m., with more assemblies to follow on Aug. 11 and 13. Go to www.psp-spp.com for details, and to reserve transportation to take part in protests in Montebello on Aug. 20.

Activists also hope to set up an “anti-capitalist convergence camp” as close as possible to Montebello, which will be secured by a 25-kilometre security parameter, according to the Council of Canadians.

by SAMER ELATRASH

Get out,
eat up for shut-in

In their continuing efforts to keep their meals-on-wheels clients well fed, the staff at Santropol Roulant is enhancing their menu with locally grown fruits and vegetables, and they need the public’s help. But all we have to do is party.

The Rooftop Gardens Project (RGP), a joint initiative of Santropol Roulant and international co-op network Alternatives, has already created gardens for six public and semi-private local buildings, and plans to do the same next to McGill University’s Burnside building, to incorporate its harvest into the meals on wheels. The public is invited to the garden (805 Sherbrooke W.) to support the project at next week’s fundraiser BBQ, on Wednesday, Aug. 1, 6–11 p.m. Bring your own dishes to load up on hamburger meat from the West Island’s Morgan farm, as well as locally made veggie burgers, fruits and vegetables, which will be for sale alongside the vast amounts of alcohol one expects in a university setting.

“It’s called the Heatwave BBQ,” says RGP’s Rotem Ayalon. “There’ll be live music, DJs, dancing, drinks and food, and sprinklers to cool off. The point is to get people out to the garden to enjoy themselves.” Go to www. rooftopgardens.ca.

by Lorraine Carpenter

Cancer vs. the King

Look out, cancer, Dan Hartal, aka Schmelvis, Montreal’s very own Hebrew King of rock ’n’ roll, has declared war on your sorry-ass disease. “I lost my mom to cancer, I watched her go through the whole ordeal, and now I just want to find a cure for this sonofabitch,” declares Hartal, whose non-profit organization, the A.H.! Friends Radiotherapy Society, will be holding a fundraiser this Saturday, July 28 at 9:30 p.m. at Club Lambi (4465 St-Laurent).

Hartal birthed the A.H.! Friends Radiotherapy Society a little over a year ago with fellow entertainer April Collins, a comedian/cancer survivor who credits her continued existence on the planet to the radiology/oncology department of the Jewish General Hospital. “Most of the money we raise goes back to the Jewish,” says Hartal, “but our organization donates funds to anything having to do with working towards a cure.”

In addition to sets by both Collins and Schmelvis, Jason Bajada, James Correa, We Are Star 69 and Famous Lovers will be on hand to entertain the troops and raise public awareness of the fact that, just in case you weren’t entirely sure, cancer is a bad thing. Tickets cost $12.

by Chris Barry

Eye-catching kickoff

For the first time, Divers/Cité will launch its week of gay pride festivities (on Wednesday, Aug. 1) with a hybrid event, one that’s especially easy on the eyes: a screening of Billy Elliot, a film about a working-class boy who discovers his talent for ballet, will be preceded by a live performance by the Jeune Ballet du Québec featuring a single young male dancer amid a group of female ones.

“The choreography is breathtaking, beautiful,” says festival director Ian Abinakle of the piece by Argentinean choreographer Miguel Robles, entitled Just Go! “We are so happy about having the Jeune Ballet open Divers/Cité. It will add beauty and magic to the evening, and it means a lot to us.”

Also that evening, catch the vernissage of this year’s photography exhibit Mascara in Your Eyes, a retrospective celebrating the 10th anniversary of Divers/Cité’s famed drag night, Mascara. The exhibit features the work of Michel Bazinet, Marik Boudreau and Aydin Matlabi.

The exhibit opens at 6 p.m. at Café-Terrasse Ste-Catherine, on Ste-Catherine E. between Berri and St-Hubert. Ballet and cinema begin at 8 p.m. at Émilie-Gamelin Park at Berri and Ste-Catherine. For more info, visit www.diverscite.org

by Andrea Zanin

Rear-view mirror

18 years ago - Aug. 4 – 17, 1989

• On the cover: Lou Reed discusses the Big Apple’s depressing crime rate, the passing of Andy Warhol and collaborating with his fellow Velvet Underground alumni John Cale and Maureen Tucker (his opening act). When asked why the quasi-reunions took so long, Reed said, “I don’t know. Why is there no God?”

• The mainstream media is ridiculed by Cecil Adams for overblowing a Washington Post report about the impact of bovine methane on the greenhouse effect. The “cow-fart menace” isn’t dismissed entirely, but the Post is corrected for confusing burps and farts in their statistics.

• Responding to a complaint filed against him with Quebec’s human rights commission over an editorial he wrote for the weekly The Suburban—stating that homosexuality is “aberrant” and “the real killer,” as opposed to AIDS—Christy McCormick says he doesn’t expect justice from a body that recently “forced the army to take on women infantrymen.”

• Director James Cameron, promoting The Abyss, talks about his fascination with oceans: “I use the ocean metaphorically, as we previously used space metaphorically. It’s a place where we come in contact with something wonderous, that is potentially terrifying, but can teach us.”

Angel >> Dogsledding A report on the impact of global warming on Quebec’s North recommends that the Inuit revert to traditional dogsledding and ditch their snowmobiles, an obvious hazard on thinning ice during ever shortening winters. Not only are dogs a lighter load, they can sense thin ice, rescue people from the elements and find their way home. But why stop up North? Imagine car-free, smog-free cities, with dangerous emissions reduced to nearly nothing, thanks to dogs. They’ll drive you to work, take you out in the evening and get your back during alcohol-induced blackouts, all for the price of kibbles, bits and innovative street-cleaning and parking plans. Best friends indeed.

Insect >> Global warming deniers In another tiresome editorial questioning the validity of “climate change,” the waste of wood that is The National Post begins by trumpeting a 29-part series of profiles on scientists skeptical of the phenomenon, printed in the Financial Post section of the rag and on its Web site. The editorial goes on to argue that today’s concerns are negligible due to fears in the ’70s of an opposing trend, a new ice age. True, we have not had an ice age. But today, an overwhelming majority of scientists agree that global warming is in progress, and the monolith of evidence backing it up could provide Conrad Black with reading material for life. In prison.