HELP FOR HELLAS: Chris Karidogiannis, centre, serves up some corn on Sunday at Parc and Bernard to raise relief funds for forest-fire-stricken Greece. The sale raised $300, but additional funds can be deposited at any ScotiaBank.PHOTO BY RACHEL GRANOFSKY

Quote of the week

“Pop stars can suffer high levels of stress in environments where alcohol and drugs are widely available, leading to health-damaging risk behaviour.” —From a study in the British Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, revealing that musicians tend to die younger than the general public.

More cash, less food

When you’re living on $572 a month, the amount able-bodied Quebec welfare recipients are pulling in these days, you need all the financial help you can get from friends and relatives. And now, with the changes to Quebec’s welfare laws that came into effect Sept. 1, recipients will be allowed to receive occasional, additional aid in the form of in-kind donations like groceries, so long as it doesn’t become a regular affair. If the recipient’s welfare agent finds too many additional donations, the dollar amount will be cut from recipients’ benefits.

But according to Aaron Lakoff, a community organizer at poverty advocacy group Project Genesis, this isn’t enough. The modifications should also allow recipients to receive aid in the form of cash, currently a non-starter with Quebec Minister of Employment and Social Solidarity, Sam Hamad.

“Obviously,” says Lakoff, “it’s a big obstacle if your friend has to go all the way to the grocery store to buy groceries for you. It’s a hell of a lot easier for that person to simply give you the cash so you can go buy groceries yourself.”

Project Genesis is demanding a meeting with Hamad to discuss the situation. Hamad has yet to respond to their requests.

by Chris Barry

Farha funds

The annual Farha Foundation march, which raises money for organizations fighting HIV/AIDS, is still over a week away, but time is pressing to find an organization to sponsor. The seven-kilometre walk will gather all kinds of activists and ordinary folks who have either lost a friend or relative to the disease, or who just hope to put an end to it. Among them will be a contingent from sex workers’ rights group Stella.

“Sex professionals are really capable and well-placed to provide very good education on HIV prevention,” says Stella’s Jenn Clamen. An estimated 65 organizations take part annually and over the years have raised more than $6-million. “You’ll find a lot of allies there,” says Clamen. “It’s really a warm and friendly environment. Just come out and march and meet all these organizations.”

Clamen says turnout is especially important this year as she accuses the federal government of cutting back on funding for AIDS organizations—something that can have fatal consequences. “We don’t want to see HIV rates rise among the next generation,” she says.

The march takes place on Sunday, Sept. 16, at Place du Canada (Peel and René-Lévesque) at 10 a.m. For more info and to sponsor an organization, visit www.farha.qc.ca.

by Patrick Lejtenyi

End of days party

If, like so many others, you’ve been anxiously awaiting the apocalypse but weren’t quite sure how to mark the occasion, you’re in luck. This Friday, Sept. 7, the friendly folks at Parcs Vivants will be putting on Cabaret pour la Fin des Temps at Parc Judith-Jasmin.

“The natural resources of the world are almost finished, so we have a choice to either die or create a new kind of world,” says Sébastien Blais of Parcs Vivants, which is part of Éco-quartier Saint-Jacques.

The evening will feature music, dance and poetry, including performances by les Abdigradationnistes, Karim of the group Syncop, Claudine Vachon and many others.

In addition to putting on a rocking show for the people of Centre-Sud, organizers are hoping to raise the profile of Parcs Vivants, a resident-based initiative to bring life back to the neighbourhood, and which currently receives only minor financial support from the city.

“We want to send a message to the city of Montreal: we’re really poor and need more money,” says Blais.

The party starts at 6 p.m. at Parc Judith-Jasmin (Montcalm, north of Ontario), free. In case of rain, things move around the corner to Bar Fun Spot (1151 Ontario E.). For info, call (514) 522-4053.

by Christopher Hazoiu

Cleaning Chinatown

Picking up trash is not the only priority of this year’s Chinatown Clean-Up, a green-themed community event that will take place this weekend at Sun Yat Sen Park, at the corner of Clark and La Gauchetière.

“It’s meant to get the Chinese community together, but it’s also an intercultural exchange between everyone in Montreal,” says assistant volunteer coordinator Laine Tam. “I think it’s a great way to showcase what Montreal is all about, that it’s a multicultural and multilingual city, despite recent controversies.”

On Saturday, volunteers will put broom to pavement in an effort to give Chinatown a new sheen—but that’s not all. A variety show will present sketches on recycling in Cantonese, Mandarin and French, and information booths will tell you how to reduce your environmental impact. The Salvation Army will also be on hand to take and reuse old clothes and a green-themed mural will be unveiled at the corner of St-Laurent and de la Gauchetière.

The 2007 Chinatown Clean-Up will take place on Saturday, Sept. 8 from 11 a.m.–2 p.m. Contact Laine Tam at lainecfs@gmail.com or (514) 861 5244, ext. 231, for more details.

by Christopher DeWolf

Rear-view mirror

16 YEARS AGO – SEPT. 23–30, 1991

On the cover: La La La Human Steps dancers, for the Fall Arts Preview. Their new show, Destroy, is “guaranteed to create shock waves,” writes Walter Krajewski. Other performances include the Hungarian National Ballet’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens’s Les Sylphides and The Nutcracker.
• Previews in theatre: McGill Players’ Festival of B-Plays and Michel Tremblay’s Les Trompettes de la Mort at the “wretchedly uncomfortable Café de la Place.”
• Upcoming movies: Barton Fink, The Fisher King, My Own Private Idaho, Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country.
• The music preview only covers classical.
• Jenny Ross notes in her column: “Mod World: The Astro-Nuts: Live from Outer Space! ‘Thanks NASA for getting us here’ (singer/guitarist Bobby, once a Gruesome).” Dressed “all in silver space suits à la Klingon, and shades,” they open for the Sherlocks’ LP release at Foufounes.
• A photo shows pensioners and welfare recipients scrambling to cash their cheques at Sun Youth, as “mail distribution grinded to a halt this week.”

Angel >> A February holiday Strangely, there are some good ideas coming out of Ontario. Take, for instance, Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty’s idea of a holiday in February. The long, bleak stretch between the New Year’s hangover and the sleet of Easter is a slog, so McGuinty—in what’s an obvious ploy to win support come the Oct. 10 provincial election—proposed the third Monday in February be a statutory “Family Day” holiday, the first coming in 2009. Even the Conservative opponent says he supports the idea. With Quebec’s longer, darker, colder winter now officially on the way (and how depressing is that?), our own political leaders might want to propose something similar.

Insect >> The collapsing ice cap Scientists are saying that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than previously thought, and that this summer sea ice levels were at their lowest ever. Some now predict that the summer ice cap may disappear forever as soon as 2030. Two-thirds of Canadians believe that global warming is a very serious problem, according to a new poll, but that concern doesn’t seem to be translating to the Prime Minister’s Office. Stephen Harper is making political hay out of Canada’s claim to the once-mythical, now-opening Northwest Passage, and his decision this week to prorogue Parliament until October ensured the death of Bill C-30, which would have toughened up his laughably weak Clean Air Act.