HOOTERS FINALLY HERE! Patrons at Greenfield Park’s brand new Hooters—the first in the franchise’s Montreal area expansion—sample the food and the service at Saturday’s opening night party. The restaurant, at 3320 Taschereau Boulevard, is the first of four planning to open over the next four years. Hooters management says they are looking at locations in Laval, the West Island and downtown. PHOTO BY RACHEL GRANOFSKY

Quote of the week

“People voted for him, not for the party.” —Université de Sherbrooke political scientist Stéphane Paquin, on NDP star candidate Thomas Mulcair’s Outremont victory in Monday’s federal by-election.

Massacre memorial

Twenty-five years ago this week, the Israeli army surrounded the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut and sent in their Christian Phalangist allies. Over the next two days, between 800 and 2,000 Palestinian civilians were butchered in a scene of carnage that shocked much of the world.

This Saturday, Sept. 22, at 1 p.m., the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine commemorates this sombre anniversary by protesting outside of the Indigo bookstore downtown (corner Ste-Catherine and McGill College), where they will call on Chapters/Indigo majority shareholder Heather Reisman and her husband Gerry Schwartz to end their support of so-called “lone sol-diers”—young Jews who emigrate to Israel alone to join the military.

“This is about direct support to the Israeli army,” says Ehab Lotayef, a member of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, another participating group. “The history of the Israeli army and what it repre-sents is not consistent with the educational message that their bookstores should be advocating.”

It will be the 25th such protest against Chapters/Indigo in Mon-treal since they began in December, with similar demonstrations tak-ing place in Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria and Winnipeg. For more info, visit www.cjpp.org.

by Christopher Hazou

Mosques open doors

So far, the Taylor-Bouchard com-mission has heard a lot about the worry many Quebecers feel about the supposed assault on their beloved cultural institutions. The hearings have hardly started, but judging by some of the testimony to the commission, quite a few people seem to believe that there is an immigrant (especially Muslim) menace to Quebec society. From last year’s bizarre “We don’t stone women to death here” manifesto in Hérouxville to last March’s pseudo-scandal of pork-free sugar shack pea soup to the recent controversy about veils on voting day, local Muslims are feeling increasingly scrutinized.

“People are scared of the unknown,” says Salam Elmenyawi, president of the Montreal Muslim Council. “We’re seeing the surveys that indicate that when people get to know a Muslim, their perception becomes more positive. We live in a diverse society, and we have to know our neighbours.”

Twelve mosques in Montreal are holding open houses on Saturday and Sunday, from noon–7.pm. “We hope people would come to get to know us directly,” he says, adding people are invited to share in the breaking of the Ramadan fast at sundown.

For a list of mosques open to visits, see muslimcouncil.org.

by Samer Elatrash

Party till you’re green

Are you tired of destroying the planet and want to do your part to ensure that the next generation is not peopled by glowing mutants that savagely hunt the few remaining survivors?

If this prospect worries you, and you don’t quite buy the idea that occasionally turning your lights off when you leave your home can effectively combat a century’s worth of pollution (as proposed by the “Flick off!” anti-global-warm-ing television ad campaign), don’t worry, help is on the way.

On Saturday, Sept. 22, and Sun-day, Sept 23, the third annual Fes-tival écolo de Montréal (FéM) will be taking place at Laurier Park (Laurier near Mentana), and everyone is encouraged to come and take advantage of the free entertainment and educational programming. Information booths and workshops will teach every-thing from energy-efficient trans-port to safe battery recycling, and entertainment will be provided by musicians Henri Band, humourist Christopher Hall and many more.

“It’s about getting informed and having fun”, says FéM’s Helka Witko. “There are easy, effective solutions for many environmental problems. The information just has to reach the public.”

For more info, see www.festivalecolo.com.

by Steve Zylbergold

Greenpeace ahoy

This Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 22 and 23, from noon–6 p.m., Greenpeace is inviting the public to stop by the Old Port and climb aboard the mighty Arctic Sunrise, a 162-foot former ice-breaker. The organization most recently employed it in their cam-paigns to promote clean energy alternatives and highlight destructive logging in the boreal forests of Quebec and Ontario.

Visitors will be able to tour the ship, meet captain Pete Bouquet and talk to the crew about their adventures on the high seas. Since acquired by Greenpeace in 1995, the Arctic Sunrise has been used to investigate pollution from oil rigs in the North Sea, chase pirate vessels fishing ille-gally in the Indian Ocean, and at one time even manoeuvred directly into the path of a Min-uteman missile being tested as part of the U.S. “Star Wars” defence system.

“Basically, we’re doing this to give people a better understand-ing of what we do at Green-peace,” says local spokesperson Jocelyn Desjardins. The ship will be docked in the Old Port, Sec-tion 16, in front of the Bateau-Mouche at Jacques-Cartier Basin all weekend.

For more information, go to www.greenpeace.ca/shiptour.

by Chris Barry

Rear-view mirror

11 years ago - sept. 19–26, 1996

On the cover: David Cronenberg, for his sex-and-blood-heavy Crash. “Some people around here—some Ital-ian journalists, I heard—are saying it’s porn,” Cronenberg tells Joanne Latimer in Cannes.

The Mirror looks at the case of Gilbert Duclos, a Montreal photogra-pher who was sued, along with his magazine Vice Versa, for running a pic-ture of a woman outside an unidenti-fied building for breach of privacy. An appeal upheld the ruling, and Duc-los is considering taking the case to the Supreme Court. “I want to protect the right to freely take photos,” he says. “I hope the street will remain ours.”

Asked if his band did indeed break up as rumoured last year, Sloan singer/guitarist Jay Ferguson says, “I don’t know. I guess not.”

Gaëtan Charlebois roasts Marianne Ackerman’s new play, Blue Valen-tine. “It’s about an award-winning critic (which Ackerman once was at The Gazette). It’s about that tedious bunch (many from The Gazette) who hang out at Winnie’s and take them-selves for the anglo elite (not to men-tion far too seriously).”

Angel >> The Montreal Protocol Twenty years ago this week, world leaders showed what could be accomplished in the face of an environmental threat by agreeing to phase out chloroflurocar-bons, the chemicals destroying the ozone layer. And while it’s been largely downhill since, with the U.S. and Canada turning their backs on the Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming, this week representatives from 191 countries are meeting here again to dis-cuss speeding up the deadline for eliminating hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). And, remarkably, things are going well, with the U.S., China and Canada pushing for it. Due to the Montreal Protocol’s targets, the hole in the ozone layer could be reduced to pre-1980 levels between 2050 and 2075, and could lower the Earth’s temperature.

Insect >> Canada’s health-damaging weak environmental policy Calling Canada’s environmental management policy “weak and ineffec-tive,” a new report by the David Suzuki Foundation says it is putting thousands of Canadian lives and billions of dollars worth of productivi-ty at risk. The report blasts the federal government’s lack of a compre-hensive national strategy that would insure Canadians against chemicals that are known carcinogens or linked to cardiovascular, respira-tory and neurological diseases—which con-tribute, according to the report, to 10,000 pre-mature deaths a year. The report also says Canada is near the last among industrialized countries regarding environmental protection.