REGGAE FOR DUBE: Montreal reggae band Kali and Dub perform at the House of Reggae on St-Denis Saturday night in a tribute to Lucky Dube, a South African musician. Dube, an outspoken critic of the apartheid regime and the raft of social ills currently facing South Africa, was murdered in a carjacking on Oct. 18. PHOTO BY RACHEL GRANOFSKY

Quote of the week

“It doesn’t pass the Democracy 101 test.” —Ville-Marie borough mayor Benoît Labonté, on Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay’s announcement last week that the downtown borough would be run directly from City Hall.

Pine-Parc arc?

On Saturday, Nov. 24, the city will be holding public consultations to decide what to do with the newly freed land just south of the Pine-Parc interchange. And while City Hall has promised any construction on this prime block of real estate will be public and non-residential, Milton Park residents like Dimitri Koutsoufis are concerned the door is still being left open for “opportunistic individuals and groups” to step up to the plate “and build a Tim Horton’s or something there,” he says. “We don’t want speculators who have little to do with the local joie de vivre to come in with unsustainable, gargantuan or inappropriate concepts that will irreversibly box in and isolate our community from the mountain park we love and identify with.”

Koutsoufis has submitted his own plan to build an arc over the land in question. He and his fellow Milton Park residents are stressing all private citizens who care about the issue make their voices heard at the consultations, which will be taking place at the Notre Dame de la Salette church (3535 Parc) from 12:30–5 pm.

For more information and to register, go to ville.montreal.qc.ca.

by Chris Barry

A day to
not spend

For observant consumer-awareness types, it’s fortunate this paper is free. Friday, Nov. 23, the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. and reportedly the biggest shopping day of the year, is Buy Nothing Day, where people around the world are urged to stop and think about whether they really need to buy and spend as much as they do. And as usual, Co-op la Maison Verte (5785 Sherbrooke W.) is shuttering its cash register and throwing a party on Sunday, Nov. 25 from noon to 5 p.m.

“It’s a combination of our seventh anniversary party and our attempt to recognize the validity of Buy Nothing Day,” says the Co-op’s Kurt Houghton. “For a store, it is a bit weird, but we want to draw people’s attention to how much they consume and how actually scary it can be.”

The co-op will be open but will be selling nothing. There will be a “huge chocolate cake,” says Houghton, as well as music, activities for kids, tables for like-minded organizations and free coffee.

The Réseau Québécois pour la simplicité volontaire and Slow-Mot are also organizing a clothes exchange for BND at 7250 Clark. For more info on both events, see www.lents.ca and www.cooplamaisonverte.com.

by Patrick Lejtenyi

Palestine
at Parc

Sixty years to the day after the United Nations approved the partition of Palestine, Cinéma du Parc (3575 Parc) hosts an evening of film sponsored by local Palestinian solidarity activists.

Featuring mostly shorts and documentaries, all by Palestinian directors and all Canadian premieres, Palestinian Perspectives offers a point of view inadequately represented in mainstream film festivals and the media, according to organizer Mary Ellen Davis. “Palestinians are expressing themselves in any way that they can,” she says. “Not just in destructive ways that the media likes to show, but also in creative ways.”

The program begins at 5 p.m., with After the Last Sky, by Alia Arasoughly, and finishes with Palestine Blues, by first time Palestinian-American director Nida Sinnokrot, which recently won the Prix Ulysse at France’s Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival, at 9 p.m. Also on the bill will be the Lebanese-French co-production, Chacun sa Palestine, by directors Nadine Naous and Lena Rouxel.

Davis says plans are already underway for an expanded, three-day Palestinian film fest in May 2008.

Palestinian Perspectives takes place next Thursday, Nov. 29. Tickets are $10, $7 before 6 p.m. and for students and seniors. For the complete schedule, visit cinemaduparc.com.

by Christopher Hazou

Art for meals

Selecting art to display in your home or office is not easy. For as long as creative expression has existed, there have been critics intimidating those less inclined toward artistic analysis with their notions of what constitutes good art.

Fortunately, the upcoming Santropol Roulant Art Auction Vernissage, Wednesday, Nov. 28, at le Cagibi, (5490 St. Laurent), 6–9 p.m.), co-produced by CKUT, will not only give people a chance to admire and purchase artwork from local painters, photographers and sculptors, but to justify these purchases by saying that the money went to support Santropol Roulant’s meals-on-wheels program.

Todd Stewart, Louise Makovsky and Tyler Rauman are but a few of the artists who will be featured. The art will remain on display at le Cagibi until Tuesday, Dec. 4, as the final part of the auction will take place during the 12th annual Santropol Roulant fundraising gala on Wednesday, Dec. 5, from 6–11 p.m. at the Ukrainian Federation (5213 Hutchison). Artist submissions are being accepted until Sunday, Nov. 25.

“It’s very exciting to see all of this amazing work from local artists,” says Laura Howard, Santropol Roulant’s events coordinator. “Being able to promote our local artists and raise money for our program at the same time is really rewarding.”

by Steve Zylbergold

Rear-view mirror

12 YEARS AGO - NOV. 23–30, 1995

On the cover: Montreal poet and writer Ann Diamond, on being a QSPELL-award literary judge. In deciding who would win, she writes that she and the fellow judges felt that, “The operative word is AUTHENTICITY, a quality that seemed to be in short supply.”
• A photo of Lucien Bouchard and his wife, Audrey Best, is presciently captioned “Meet your new premier.” The caption also notes that while Bouchard will have to run a leadership campaign for the PQ, he “isn’t facing any serious challenges.”
• Facing retirement, Johnny Ramone discusses the future of his hair. “I don’t know what else I could do with my hair—I’ve had it like this since 10 years prior to the band!”
• Toy Story is “a good buddy film—for boys,” reads the review.
• Commenting on a post-referendum cartoon by Napoleon comparing “Quebec’s flag and motto with the KKK”, letter-writer G. Demers says “when it comes to Quebec nationalism, it seems the Mirror never shrinks from printing epithets such as Nazi, totalitarian or Aryan.”

Angel >> More money for general practitioners
Yes, doctors here make pretty good money, but not as much as they could elsewhere in Canada. The consequence? Well, try finding yourself a GP someday. The good news is, the Quebec government announced this week that they’ll be spending $150-million on 25 measures designed to keep doctors in the province, one that has long suffered from a shortage—some 29 per cent of Quebecers don’t have one. One measure will be paying MDs more to take on more patients. The agreement was hammered out between the province and the Quebec Federation of General Practitioners after nearly a year of negotiations.

Insect >> The new Conservative crime bill True to their word, the Stephen Harper Conservatives are cracking down on the epidemic of youth crime. The only problem? There is no epidemic of youth crime. Legislation introduced in Parliament yesterday calls for stiffer sentences for young offenders and detaining youths accused of serious crime from their arrest to the end of their trial. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson wants to overhaul the Young Offenders Act, considered by the Tories as too soft. But already, political and legal experts are saying the bill is at odds with the facts and panders to fears of youth crime stoked by politicians and the media.